I would like to know if most people on the list use a common set of rules for
Star Trek or many home grown sets. I found a set I kinda liked on the web, but
it seems to produce some unbalanced results.
Also no,matter which rule set I use, the ships turn out to all be very large
to make room for the extra systems that all ST ships seem to have, ie:
shields, transporters, tractor beams. Fighters as such seem to work out to
small escort ships, based on the fact that they all (except Bajoran and Kazon)
have warp power. For example, a type IV shuttle is mass 2 (FTL,drive and
sheild system). An armed shuttle is mass 4.
> I would like to know if most people on the list use a common set of
Though many people will probably disagree, I would strongly suggest
disregarding the basic FT construction system when trying to rate ships for
specific shows or backgrounds such as ST, SW or B5. The problem with using a
construction system to try and reflect the capabilities of ships on TV or film
is that mostly the ships are designed for dramatic effect, not military
effect. For the B5 EFSB, we threw any idea of a construction system out the
airlock and just went for giving each class as close as we could to the
abilities and weapons it has in the series, with Mass and
damage points based on an ad-hoc assessment of how it looked compared to
other ships in the show.
Using this theory, for ST you could start with one class as a "baseline", say
whichever version of the Enterprise fits the time period you're doing,
and set it at a reasonable mass (say around 60-80??); everything else
should then be judged from this, and given weapon/system fits as close
as possible to what you see in the shows.
The FT design system is a starting point for both the GZG and "freelance"
backgrounds, but don't feel too restricted by it if you are trying do recreate
something else.
> [quoted text omitted]
> I would like to know if most people on the list use a common set
Another way to handle it but provide faster play is to divide the tons of the
weapons by 1/2 or 1/4. Thus you wou would fit 2 (or 4) C Beams into 1
ton. Or a Romulan Plasma beam, pardon me SMNC into 8 (or 4) tons. This would
lower the damage point total and overall tonnage of the ships while
maintianing the balance of the weapons.