Topic: What Shipname descriptions do you use?

[Atrahasis]

You know what? I wonder if even the dash is necessary.  

[cap'nzack]

probably not, force of habit I guess.  The only problem with my system is if you are into the X era (which I am not) is that you could loop the years.  I tried to do a TNG shiplist once but lost interest. my heart is firmly rooted in the TOS/TMP era.  What I theorized is that, in keeping with the 'touchy feely' vibe of TNG, the entire nomenclature of ship designation would change- cruisers,  and battle cruisers (CA's and BC's) become 'large explorers' (EX(L)),light cruisers become small explorers, EX(S),  battleships and dreadnaughts become 'large combatants' CB(L), and frigates, heavy frigates, destroyers and heavy destroyers become 'small combatants' CB(S).  All the designations, in my mind at least, would change around 2330, which (and being no serious trekkie) would indicate a timeframe when fed-klingon hostilites ended for good.
Again take it all for a grain of salt, I don't really care if it is canon or not, it just seems to work in my eyes.
On a side note, what I'd really be interested in seeing is the whole timeframe of the game being pushed back by fifty years or so if we had the models (hint, hint).  I think it would be really cool to get to the late era and see constitution's and D-7's arrive as superweapons.  Just think, PLAYING the starfleet museum version of SFC. perty cool I'd say  

[Atrahasis]

Yeah, it could loop in the 24th century, but then again, as you said, they might have different designations for ships altogether.  

[cap'nzack]

Heres the list of all the fed designations and the ships I use;
BB-Battleship (excelsior, P81's x era cruiser)
DN-dreadnaught (Lord shtupps (or whatever) federation, P81's star empire)
BC-battlecruiser (decatur, andruils?, and the churchill)
CA-cruiser (ALL of atrahasis' connie varients, P81's enterprise, moonrakers constellation,  and I forget whos' phase II enterprise)
CL-light cruiser (too many to name)
FH-heavy frigate (atras surya and coventry, and a modified P81 Miranda that I did myself to make it look more like the SOSF aveneger)
FF-frigate (atrahasis burke, duct tapes okinawa, P81's locknar)
DD-destroyer (atrahasis (see a theme here?) saladin and siva, andruils nagomo, ductapes deope (sp) bay)
DH-heavy destroyer(atras' detroyat, P81s' Baker)
RC-Research cruiser (P81's oberth and atras' Bonaventure)
CV-Carrier, slim pickins here, atras Coronado and I forget whos' TMP upgrade
EC-Escort (Remora, pardon me, I again forget, P81's Sol, slightly upsized using M6 editor)

and these are the varient codes;
(D) drone
(E) escort (I only use ADDs' on escorts, makes the game much more strategic I think)
(T) troop transport
(M) minelayer (I kinda made this one up, but it's an excellent support vessel, and alot of fun  to start beaming out mines at a hapless enemy)
(H) hospital-don't know why I bother

I wanted to monkey around with the transports but I fear it would screw up the convoy escort and raid missions.



 

[Atrahasis]

You know, another aspect of this game that is lacking is mineSWEEPER capability. If we could somehow target mines with our drones like I think you can in SFB then you'd have minesweeping. Just send out a drone, watch the fireworks.  

[cap'nzack]

I agree.
I like the idea of commanding support vessels but unfortunatly the game engine won't support it.  I think it would be neat to command a transport trying to make it through a blockade without getting killed, or survive as part of a convoy with three enemy cruisers trying to get you.  I sometimes tire of driving around in the 'tricked out dreadnaught'.  Guess I'm just dreaming. What I think would be the coolest, and no one has modeled it yet is a RESCUE SHIP, right now I use the funkyass Azel class in my shiplist, which is way cool.  But it's there more for flavor as it is very lightly armed, has no marines and a ton of shuttles.  No missions that it can complete, however, it looks cool in screenshots!  

[Atrahasis]

Yeah, support vessels would be cool to have at least one of in your 3-ship flotilla. Minesweepers, minelayers, rescue ships.....

Notice in my modelling I've been a great advocate of freighters and essentially Class-II support ships....gives things a much more interesting flavor than the "tricked out DN" like you mentioned.  

[cap'nzack]

Right On!
When I use a three ship flotilla, which, by the way, I never do before reaching rear admiral rank, I use a capital ship, an escort with ADDs, and a general purpose destroyer or cruiser.
I'm a huge advocate of removing all ADDs from all ships except escorts.  I think the introduction of ADDs pretty much whacks the balls off of any drone armed ship and I enjoy the game much more since getting rid of them all except for the escorts.  The flip side, which is fun to play too, is that any ADDs armed vessel, and I usually make them verrrrry lightly armed, is  near useless mano e mano against another ship.  Removing ADDs' also makes carriers much, much more powerful, as they should be.
I like the idea of specialization, it adds a 'rock paper sizzors' aspect to the game that was lacking before.  
I pretty much have it nailed with the feds, roms, and klinks, the other races I'm not that interested in.  The klinks I followed the same guidelines as the feds and the rommies I up'ed the power across the board, they are HARD to kill now, which is the way I like it!  

[cap'nzack]

can't believe I spelt scissors wrong,
goes to show you what a bottle of merlot will do!  

[Atrahasis]

I'm not a big fan of ADD's myself. You know, if we could get the L and R firing arcs to work in the game, we could spec out Fed ships with the appropriate number of 12-phaser saucers, which would be enough defense against missiles and drones and so we could forget about the ADD (which is not canon anyways, which is why I don't like it). But as it is now, since the L and R arcs do not work, then we can't really put 12 phasers on TMP saucers because that seriously unbalances the game because all 12 of them can fire drecitly fwd. The ones at the sides need to have L and R arcs so that they can't fire directly fwd. Why don't you give your support in the following Geenral Fourm thread and epxlain your issue with the ADD's and of how having more phasers with the L and R arcs would be a more interesting solution?

http://208.57.228.4/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=188547&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

[cap'nzack]

Ok atra, at first I was a little confused but now it makes sense.
The L/R firing arcs should be at a 45 degree angle, I see now.
By the way I like your old idea of making TOS ships armed with ph2 and TMP ships armed with ph1s'.  I've done this across the board and it makes the game much more interesting.  Also, how do you feel about heavy photons? I don't use them much, in fact I only have 'em on moonrakers abbe class as a fire support cruiser.  There doesn't seem to be a klink ship that fits them.  Originally I used them on all TMP ships but it unbalanced the game too much.

[MarianoDT]

Quote:
You know, another aspect of this game that is lacking is mineSWEEPER capability. If we could somehow target mines with our drones like I think you can in SFB then you'd have minesweeping. Just send out a drone, watch the fireworks.  

I second the targeting mines.....Itīd be really cool.....

 

[Atrahasis]

Quote:
Ok atra, at first I was a little confused but now it makes sense.
The L/R firing arcs should be at a 45 degree angle, I see now.

You mean a 90 degree angle, straight off to the port and starboard, not covering the fwd arc.

Quote:
By the way I like your old idea of making TOS ships armed with ph2 and TMP ships armed with ph1s'.  I've done this across the board and it makes the game much more interesting.  Also, how do you feel about heavy photons? I don't use them much, in fact I only have 'em on moonrakers abbe class as a fire support cruiser.  There doesn't seem to be a klink ship that fits them.  Originally I used them on all TMP ships but it unbalanced the game too much.  

Yes.....especially if you sub in 2 Phaser-2's for a single Phaser-1.....which actually turns out to have a higher total damage value, and is more useful against drones and fighters. Also, the Paramount diagrams of the internals of the TOS Connie make it look like there are multiple firing chambers lined up one right behind the other behind the phaser turrets. Also, you see the TOS Enterprise in the original episodes fire anywhere from 2 to 4 vollies in a single attack form that fwd phaser bank.....obviously it was meant to shoot more often than once every 30 seconds or whatever the SFB/SFC rate is.

Heavy Photons should be Klingon photons for the D7's and Ktingas and upwards. The BOP would use just regular photons though. In the Ships of the Starfleet / Fed Ref Series material, the Klingon torps are called "Magna-Photon Torpedoes". This makes things interesting, because if a Ktinga has 3 Heavy Torps in the front, that's equal in firepower to 6 regular torps, and the original TOS Connie was actually supposed to have 6 torp tubes in the front and not just 4 as maintained in SFB/SFC (mentioned in "Elaan of Troyius".) That makes the Ktinga at least equal in torp firepower to a Fed ship, which balances things more, because it is already underwhelmed when it comes to beam weapons when compared to the full array of a TMP Fed ship's phasers, which are 12 on the saucer alone.  

[Clark Kent]

I like the smaller ships for the most part, but have found that they don't last unless you keep pumping prestige into keeping them running.  As such, I've ended up getting my own custom ship in game, I guess it would be classed as a BB because of it's BPV.  Actually, to say this custom ship is tricked out is an understatment.  In early mid and late era I can fly my frigates and DD or CL to my heart's content.  I'm more of a miranda guy when it comes to vessels vs the connie, but come advanced era in OP, the game keeps pitting me up against x cruisers or even X frigates.  I went up against a klingon X frigate in my fed DWV once, and it was a real wake up call.  My weapons just didn't pack enough punch to get through his super reinforced shilding.  He picked me apart with my by comparison weak shield and X phasers, and the only option I had left was to beat feet.  Not to mention what the four AMDs did to my measly four fighters.  I moved up from the DWV to a CLC, which I had hoped would work better for me (love that little ship), but instead I was just pitted against k-XCA's mission after mission.  I fought fire with fire and got a F-XCA, which was good for a few missions.  Then, it was my lone F-XCA vs 3 (not one, or two, but THREE!!)  B-11Ks or 2 or 3 of their top CVs, I forget the designation.  That's where the repair points really hit me- fixing that fancy expensive armor on the XCA.  1000 prestige to repair each mission, that's a reality check.  As such, I limited my engagements to sticking it out only when a hex was about to chnge if I won.  Eventually, I managed to build aenough points to buy my special ship, which I had actually added to the game not to use, but just to see in missions.  9226 prestige points, each of them well earned.  The result is that I still get pitted against 3 B11ks at a time, but I now have the fire power to back it up, and a couple handy features that I can use to my advantage to keep them at a distance.
I simply couldn't find another way to do it.
On the other hand, in my custom skirmish missions, most of the ships in there are FFs or DDs or CLs.  I haven't even touched the really big ones yet.
CK