Topic: Klingon Barge In Lyran Service.

[Panzergranate]

With the alliance between the Klingon Empire and the Lyrans, during the Four Powers War and subsequent General War, the Klingons were dismayed at the chaotic Lyran logistics operations.

Subsquently the Klingons gifted the Lyrans with 200 standard barges plus a large number of ore refinery pods in the hope of improving the Lyran's war economy and war efforts.

However the Lyrans distributed the barges and ore pods amongst the clans on a favouritism basis, so any improvements in logistics, war economy or war effort became questionable.

Unlike the Klingons, the Lyrans pressed the barges into front line service with their warfleets. Some were deployed with marine fleets carrying troop landing pallets, others acting as fleet battle tenders and some as PF tenders.
 
Being slow vessels, this forced any fleet using them to travel at the speed of the barges they had with them.

Needless to say quite a large number of barges were lost on both the Kzinti and Hydran fronts by being deployed in this manner.

One useful use for the barges, was to transport mobile bases (BLM) for both the Klingons and Lyrans. Another was warship rescue and recovery. Unlike repair freighters a barge could actually attach itself to any warship up to cruiser hull size and move it to safety for repair. Repair barges carried only one pod (repair) on the lower mounting pad and attached crippled warships to the top mounting pad.

See the readme file for credits for the pods and pallets used with the models. Apart from the pods, pallets amd textures, all my own work....

[Panzergranate]

I've added in three FMSE written SFC 1 scripts for scenarios with the barges featuring in them.

I've also updated the shiplist scrap to include the barges with various SFB pallet configurations, including Q-Barge and CV Barge for Lyran front line service.

All are in the amended RAR file now.

Enjoy....

[GotAFarmYet?]

Wow thats pretty good, few ppl add more game play to old games, so you are now the total support person for SFC 1

[Panzergranate]

I have to  convert folks work from SFC 2 and SFC 3 into SFC 1. Perhaps I should post up the conversions along with the orginal owner's credits here.

I converted all of I Mudd's UEN fleet ships recently to SFC 1. They look exactly the same and look neat in game play swatting Romulan Crackers (another SFC 2 conversion).

Some models don't have hardpoints set even for SFC 2 so I add them in as well. Perhap I ought to offer a volunteer service to Dynaverse modellers unable to do hardpoints or convert their work to SFC 1.

I have several hundred models in the libary here so E-mail me if you want any of the conversions.

Maybe I should just start a thread with SFC 1 conversions of some of the work of others. What do you think??

They could then add the conversion into their own shipyard site downloads.

[FoaS_XC]

That's a fantastic idea, assuming the creator in question allows it (I don't think you'd convert without permission, but I have to throw the disclaimer out there)

[Starfox1701]

How come you don't put these up on Battleclinic?

[Panzergranate]

I do have some stuff on Battleclinic from a while back. Before the site was updated it was easy and straight forward to find where you needed to be to upload models. Obviously in trying to be clever, the IT folks there forgot the principles of KISS....

Generally I thought that critical review by peers here might be interesting first and that you guys should have first dibs.

Because SFC 2 is as rare as lawyers in heaven in the UK and Europe due to extremely low distribution, most people have SFC 1 only.

I'm not sure if making free copies of a long out of circulation game from a company that is long out of business and circulating these copies for free amongst friends or friends of friends who've never realised that a computer game version of SFB ever existed is piracy or recruiting new devotees??

At the end of the day, just as God created man to appreciate creation, we that model starships for this game need somebody to add critique to our creations (and occasionally be praised for some of them).

As for conversions, I converted a lot of stuff into SFC 1. Some it took hours, some took minutes. I Mudd's late UEN fleet took 5 minutes per ship to convert. Atrahasis's Ariadne had me spend a lot of hours over several days trying tosolve why only one part of the mesh refused to attach a texture. I still can't figure that out and now Atrahasis is helping with the problem.

I planned to ask the original author if they wanted their work converted anyway. I just need to leave a footnote taking credit for the conversion hastle / work on their original readme file. They'd probally add it to there own shipyard download library anyway.

I sent Cleeve a whole file of models that I'd kitbashed from his original Discovery class science ship last year. He was very impressed with how far away from his original model I was able to take things.

His Discovery itself was a kitbash of somebody else's Daedalus model.

Back home here we use a library of several hundred ship models in SFC 1 LAN games. I've added in a few items from SFB such as mines and a type of cloaked "Skipper Missile", which I though was a brilliant concept in the film "Wing Commander" for the Romulans as a TMP era secret weapon. It closes on the target and deploy 2 x cluster packs and has an explosion value of 200 just in case it is shot at when close to the target ship or station.

I also added in SFB Romulan maskerade decoy shuttles which can pose as whatever warship that controls them. The first time it was used in a LAN game it saw the Gorn team heading off exactly where the Romulan team wanted them to and then audible cries of, "What the f**k??!!", from the other room when they blew it up first shot. They though that were attacking a Condor. Meanwhile the real Condor was where we wanted to be unopposed.... True Romulan deception and sneakiness at its best.

Very easy to set up. Just paste and copy a file line for the Romulan shuttle next to each light cruiser or larger warship that you want to mimic. Remove the weapons. Change the shuttle's title to that of the ship being mimiced followed by -DECOY so that you know what it is. Change the ship model to that of the mimiced ship. On your opponent's screen he'll still see "R-CON" or whatever the shuttle is mimicing and the model of that ship.

In SFB the decoy shuttle are considered pre-launched before the scenario starts and in SFC it has to be the same. You select the decoy either as part of you squadron in the normal menu or in FMSE have it at any point along the agreed starting edge of the map and even as a stand alone unit. It is preferable to retain own squadron control of the decoy shuttle as feigning attack runs, luring suckers away and whatever else you need to do to convince the enemy that it is a real warship might be required.

[Starfox1701]

Intersting idea

[Panzergranate]

It ends up that after using decoy shuttles on opponents a few times, they sometimes suspect genuine ships of being decoys, especially if you keep the speed low and behave as a decoy would. (Hold fire even on easy / good shots, stay on a heading regardless, etc.) It takes them completely by surprise when you turn and blast them....

See the Wordpad scrap from my sfbspc13.txt  shiplist file to see how its done. You'll have to paste it into a Wordpad page or paste it into a duplicate sfbspc13.txt file to see it.