I’ve been working on converting about 20 of my favorite FASA Star Trek starships to the STA format. I’m happy to say that the first batch of 5 starships is now ready for download at Continuing Mission here. The first five starships are: Andor-class missile cruiser (TMP era with Dominion War era refitted variant) Loknar-class frigate (TOS and TMP eras) Thufir-class destroyer (TMP era) Ticonderoga-class light cruiser (TMP era) Wilkerson-class destroyer (TMP era)
I’ll update this list as the rest are published at Continuing Mission in the coming days. Several Klingon and Romulan starships from the FASA game will be published in the third and fourth groups. Here’s the list of upcoming ships:
Group 2: 1) Remora, 2) Charger, 3) Northampton, 4) Kiev
And now Group 2 is up at Continuing Missions consisting of the Northampton-class Fast Response Frigate, the Kiev-class Fast Response Frigate, the Remora-class Escort, and the Charger-class Destroyer.
Group 3 (with three Klingon ships and three Federation ships) should be up in a week, and Group 4 (the all-Romulan group) should be up the week after that.
And I think I got a request to do the Ranger-class scout, another FASA ship, so there might be more FASA starships being posted at CM in the furutre.
If I recall correctly, the Charger-class destroyer was one of those Jaynz ships. Brad Torgersen of the Star Trek Combat Simulator has write-ups of several Jaynz ships. I’ll see what I can do.
I wasn’t sure I could find decent artwork of the Wizard-class as it’s not one of the ships detailed at Brad Torgersen’s Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator. I lucked out, though: Neale Davidson did a redraw of the Wizard with far more realistic dimensions (FASA is notorious for getting all their starship dimensions wrong with their cutting and pasting of Constitution refit saucers everywhere) and I DL’ed a copy of it.
I’ve decided to classify the Wizard as a “testbed platform” type of starship since it doesn’t seem to fall under any conventional type of starship…and Memory Beta just says its a “testbed.” Furthermore, while the FASA artwork of the Wizard doesn’t have a photon torpedo launcher, Neale’s artwork does, which makes sense: a testbed ship for new weapons systems would necessarily have to include a torpedo launcher if you’re gonna be testing new torpedo weapons.
There are a few other discrepancies I noticed:
Memory Beta says the Wizard was launched around 2265 or 2266, but the Wizard is equipped with a TMP-era linear nacelle, which weren’t designed until 2268 at the earliest (so far as I’ve been able to determine). This is why I’m re-writing the Wizard’s commission date to 2268; it could very well be that as a testbed, the Wizard was the very first starship to be employed with a linear warp nacelle for the sole purpose of testing it.
Of course, the FASA measurements are way off: Memory Beta says the width of the ship is 35 meters, compared to its height of 22 meters, which would make the saucer section not even twice as wide as the ship is tall. SMH. Needless to say, I’ve revised the Wizard’s dimensions according to Neale’s redraw.
Jay, it’s gonna be a long while before the Wizard-class gets published at CM, if ever, so drop me a PM (does this forum have a system for private messages?) with your email address and I’ll send you a PDF of the Wizard when it’s ready. (I still have to write up its Overview and Capabilities, but judging from the stuff on Memory Beta, I have far more to work with than I did with the Ranger-class scout.) If you can’t PM me, just post your email addy and I’ll get it off to you that way.
EDIT 8:05pm EST on 7/21: Jay, the Wizard-class Testing Platform is just about ready. Let me know how to get this PDF to you. If worse comes to worst, I can just post a link to the Wizard in my GoogleDocs. Just let me know.
Ok, Jay, the Wizard-class testbed platform is done. The PDF can be downloaded here. I gave the Wizard a more detailed backstory, gave it the STA style stats I thought were appropriate, added the known names from Memory Beta, and took it upon myself to add a few more “thematically appropriate” starship names to the Wizard’s registry numbers, which you can use or discard as you see fit.
I hope you like what I’ve done with the Wizard class.
Thanks. I think the class like you said may have been the test bed for the TMP-era nacelles, it may have been given a refit at some point, or it could just be that FASA artists liked to use TMP-era nacelles on new ship class art and not worry much about background conflicts.
Heh, it could be all three at once. Man, but those FASA artists were lazy.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my Wizard class, Jay. I put you in my Acknowledgements since this starship sheet would never have existed if you hadn’t asked for it.
Group Three should be up at Continuing Mission on Monday. It will consist of the Anton-class science cruiser, the Baker-class destroyer, the Larson-class destroyer and the Ranger-class scout ship.
Group 4, consisting of the Klingon ships D-10 Riskadh assault cruiser, D-18 Gull destroyer and L-24 Ever Victorius battleship, should be up at CM in a couple of weeks.
The five FASA Romulan ships I converted (V-7 Whitewind, V-11 Stormbird, V-30 Winged Defender, V-33 Thunderbird [non-canon fanship], and Z-1 Nova) will be in Group Five, which should be published at Continuing Mission in a few weeks.
Group 4, consisting of three Klingon FASA ships converted to STA stats, is now up! The ships available are the L-24 Komo Val “Ever Victorious”-class battleship, the D-18 Lara’atan “Gull”-class frigate, and the D-10 Riskadh-class cruiser. Find them here!
The Group Three article at CM (see the link in the above post) has also had the Wizard class added, so there are now two places to find it for download on this thread.
Group Five will have my Romulan ships and will be up (hopefully) next week.
Fantastic! These are great to have (1) for use as-is in a game or (2) to use as examples/templates when creating other starships. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
I had exactly the same thought myself. When I first revisited the Kiev myself to create its write-up, the first thing I thought about its design was that it’s essentially the “poor man’s Miranda-class.” All it’s really missing is the roll-bar, even if it still has the dorsal torpedo launcher. I never liked the Kiev all that much and that’s even reflected in my write-up of it (see here) when I designed the Kiev as a failed prototype of the ship type that the Chandley and Northampton were more successful at being (namely a fast-response frigate that excelled at both ship-to-ship combat and boarding actions).
So essenitally, the Kiev looks like a poor man’s Miranda and operates like a poor man’s Northampton. And I treated it as such when I wrote up its description and even explicitly stated that the Kiev had one of the shortest starship deployments in Starfleet history as a sort of In-Universe Armed With CanonTake That! at the FASA-made Kiev.
They aren’t. Thus I restrict it to just a handful of types per era due to the ridiculousness (to me) of so many classes for the same job. So for the original era, for instance, I’m only using Constitution, Saladin, Hermes, and Ptolemy vessels for Star Fleet, with the big *Federation-*class dreadnought under development. I feel that’s plenty, especially with the Ptolemy being adaptable to so many purposes.
The plethora of designs gets less ridiculous (to me) the farther in time you get from Starfleet’s earliest days when the NX-01 was the top of the line. As the Federation expands its territory throughout the centuries, more ships are needed to cover more space and patrol more trade routes and protect more colonies. Although its not canon, FASA does make reference to the “Great Awakening” during the 2240s, right when the Constitution, Saladin, Hermes, and Ptolemy vessels were being built, when starship technology and Federation expansion were going through a significant boom period and more starships had to be built to meet the new demand. The boom may have slackened off in subsequent years, but never really stopped; at least one episode of DISC Season 3 stated outright that the Federation grew too large for its dilithium supply and demand for dilithium was critical even before the Burn. That would imply a lot of starships flying around, at least in the years leading up to the 3900s. The plethora of starship designs in the TMP era, though, does seem ridiculous when the Original Series movies (especially Star Trek II) have the Enterprise as “the only ship in the quadrant/sector.”
Then again, space is big and even a (relatively) large fleet of a few thousand ships would have trouble covering the several thousand cubic light-years of interstellar territory that is the Federation. So maybe the plethora of starship designs isn’t so outrageous after all. Not to mention that it gives Star Trek players a lot of options to choose from for their starships. If there are a bunch of designs that they don’t like, they can just say that they don’t exist in their game and only use the few designs they do like. That’s not a bad thing.
