Best Ships to use for my game

Star Trek Adventures
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So while we wait out the pandemic I am going to be running a ST game for my group.
The set-up will be that they start off as non-bridge crew of larger star ship for a few missions before they encounter an old Star Fleet vessel that went missing several decades previously. Thus allowing me to set them up as the new bridge crew and have them find out what happened to the ship originally.

My question for the hive mind is what would be the best ships for me to use?
I am setting the game around 2360 so was considering an Ambassador class for the initial ship. It is large enough for me to have a non-bridge character who is still senior enough to command the smaller vessel when they find it.
I am struggling a lot more with a smaller vessel that could have been around in 2340 or so. There are a couple of candidates and I am probably leaning towards an Oberth-class but I’m not fully sold on it.

Does anyone have any suggestions for either ship?

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Maybe Constellation or Miranda?

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The ‘Movie Era’ (pre TNG, post TOS) has relatively few ships to pull from, since ships weren’t explored that much. The canon ships to pull from are The Constitution Refit (Enterprise-A, not sure if any other constitutions were refit), Miranda Class (The Reliant, Saratoga), The Excelsior class (The Excelsior), the Oberth class (USS Grissom and USS Phoenix) the Constellation class (USS Stargazer, From TNG episode 1x09) Ambasador class like you said, and, judging from the Design Architecture, the Centaur Class (shows up in one episode of DS9, 6x01, the Centaur under command of ‘Charlie Reynolds’). I am partial to the centaur class, but any are viable options.

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I think you got them all :slight_smile: The Centaur is definitely ok if you go by the Command Division dates. Or there’s the Sydney if you want them on a transport…

The Miranda is probably the safest bet.

You could use a fan design alternatively - there are quite a few appropriate designs on Continuing Mission.

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Oh! Didn’t even know that the Sydney class was a Starfleet vessel. Just thought it was. Like, a civilian earth transport

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It’s detailed in the Command Division. I know what you mean though, but it’s likely that Starfleet has a lot of essentially civilian vessels, used as transports and freighters. The Lantree was basically a civilian transport version fo the Miranda.

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Yeah, IIRC there is also the ‘Soyuz class’ (from TNG episode “cause and effect”) that is a Miranda class with some ‘sensor pods’ glued to the side. Probably just a Miranda Class with some form of better sensors talent.

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Retired by the late 2280s though - so possibly a bit too old?

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I’m thinking this would be a good plot for junior officers.

One of Roddenberry’s original inspirations was CS Forester’s Hornblower stories - and there’s one short story that tells about his command of a “prize” vessel while still a junior Lieutenant, so there’s a good precedent.

And lots of good opportunities for adventures as they try to get home, especially if their original ship has another urgent mission to attend to.

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I had the books as a child and it was something I was thinking about when I had the idea for them to be a prize crew of sorts.

Though I won’t be holing their ship below the waterline like in the story. :rofl:

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Warp core failure? Or a shields failure would hold them up until they got it fixed…

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Always loved the Constitution Refit, but fe3l I would be remiss in not sugfesting some alternatives. It seems unlikely to me that all Starfleet had was what we saw on screen. The old Fasa manual would be a great starting place. To say nothing of speculative designs, maybe a one of a kind. Space is, as Douglas Adams maintatained, very big (indescribably huge, even). After that, find a spaceframe that is close to your thoughts of what it is capable of and tweak the numbers.

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Thanks for the suggestions. I’m definitely going to look into the possibility of using some of the more ‘civilian’ vessels for the smaller ship they will command.

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Just note that the Sydney class has NO weapons. . .

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I would use a Constellation Class myself as it can be run with a minimal crew.

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I read the books YEARS ago, & I loved that one. & yes it has made its way into a D&D game and a modern spy gam I ran over the years.

I’m sure there are a lot of ways to pull in the effect of 'Holed below the water line & bags of rice expanding to pop the ship at the seems" into a Star Trek scanerio.

Now, speaking of the Sydney, what is the normal and minimum crew complement for one.

I know it was a pax trans ship, so there wouldn’t be a ton of crew on it, especially science etc. However, what would be the crew complement be to run one 24/7.

As for unarmed … normally yes. However, if running in areas that have pirates, Cardassian raiders etc, it could easily have a phaser bank installed so it in’t a sitting duck.

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According to memory Beta the Sydney class has a standard crew compliment of 125? Though it was run, at least a while, by two Engineers.