Federation Commander

Do SFU ships have them?

No. At least, none of the deck plans to date have them.

And think about it for a moment: if a ship explodes, other ships in the area can take damage. Under the old rules, a chain-reaction could take out a whole squadron of ships. How likely would it be for escape pods survive that?

Garth there are a few things not on the Deck Plans so that doesn't rule them out. We know Gunboats have them from fiction and they are not on the Gunboat Deckplans.

The gunboat escape pods ARE on the gunboat deck plans.

Two pods, each hold 14 people, both at the rear of the ship, one on each deck. Plus the boom on a Klingon G1 can be used as a lifeboat.

So, it can be assumed that most ships have escape pods for at least a normal compliment of a crew and passengers.
Are they warp capable, so they can escape explosions?
Do escape pods have suspended animation capability? In the vastness of space, I think that is reasonable.

Remember that shuttles can carry ten crewmen, or stuffed with twenty crewmen, or even double-stuffed with thirty crewmen. Life support will run out quickly, however, so there'd better be a planet or another ship nearby to land on.

One thought I had was that the turbo-lift cars could maybe be used as life pods. Five or six people can comfortably ride the turbo-lift without invading each other's personal space, so I figure one car might hold ten or twelve crewmen when used as a life pod. It would not, obviously, be warp-capable and probably could not survive atmospheric entry.

The Free Trader deck plans don't show escape pods, but as I'm in the early stages of drafting the APT plans, I shall see if I can cram a pod or two on Deck Four (where most of the life-support equipment will be).

In the case of freighter and Free Trader, the captains may have the opportunity to surrender and be allowed to escape via shuttlecraft.

>So, it can be assumed that most ships have escape pods for at least a normal compliment of a crew and passengers.

I would not say that for normal size ships (destroyers, cruisers). There is no SFU data to support such a theory. Nothing says they do not, but they have never been seen on any Trek deck plans I have seen. SFB has elaborate rules for evacuating the crew by shuttle and transporter, but no mention of escape pods. That said, if you want to assume your ship does, knock yourself out. Most RPGs are small groups of people so you're talkign about workboat versions of gunboats or skiffs which have escape pods.

Now, single-seat fighters have escape pods like an F111 does in real world.

>Are they warp capable, so they can escape explosions?

The ones for PFs just have little thruster jets that push them away from the gunboat. As for escape pods from ships, no data says such things exist but I don't see any likelyhood of warp power.

>Do escape pods have suspended animation capability? In the vastness of space, I think that is reasonable.

Again, no data for destroyers/cruisers having such pods at all. Gunboat and fighter escape pods do not have any kind of suspended animation. You just play solitaire on your gameboy until the rescue ship turns up.

I think one of the reasons escape pods never really came up in early-Trek and SFU lore is because they have always had the "saucer as a lifeboat" and "boom as a lifeboat" (for the officers...). Ship-separation yields a more survivable "lifeboat" than a gaggle of tiny pods.