Hi all - love the game as I am bit of a nerd and buy everything on Drivethrough even though I don’t have a group to play with. Captain’s Log has been a fantastic innovation, but I am having major decision paralysis selecting a ship!
Since LUG days I have had a bit of a love affair with the New Orleans class and have spent many hours pouring over online reconstructions. When the Command book came out with its specs, I eagerly turned to the page - and stopped dead. It was a science ship. Memory Alpha quotes relatively canon sources as the New Orleans class being a frigate, and a frigate is a ship rated for combat. Obviously there would be other uses as its a Starfleet vessel, but even using mission profiles the New Orleans as a pseudo-ship-of-war is a hard sell due to the inbuilt talents that the hull has (the department bonuses are almost tangential).
You could use significant and arc milestones to shuffle things around, but is this the best way? Or would it be best to simply build the spaceframe from scratch and use my version in Captain’s Log? I mean, that is possible, but part of me always prefers using official stuff rather than ‘house rules’, even in solo play.
So, back to my original point - as I’ve loved the New Orleans for years but don’t love the Modiphius version (including the launch date as the Rutledge was a apparently a New Orleans and it fought the Cardassians in the 2340s), what would you suggest? Use my own build? Use the Continuing Missions Version (which I also have a few issues with)? Rationalise it all by using the Modiphius stats but applying some milestones to tweak it (which would basically be the same as rebuilding from scratch)?
As a side question if someone official wants to comment, an explanation behind the thinking as to why the New Orleans was statted as a science ship and not the more conflict-centered frigate semi-alpha sources say it was would be amazing.
There are few canonical references to the class, so my development team went with the interpretation that made sense to us. If it doesn’t match your vision of the class, change it to suit your needs. Swap out talents and system and department ratings to fit your needs. Literally no one will stop you.
The command book, Utopia Planitia, and Captain’s Log might be official for the purposes of STA and Captain’s Log, but they’re not canon. Inject your own point of view and make it your own.
How about make a story out of it? Either by having the New Orleans class a Frigate and your ship a kind of prototype exception (using it as a science vessel as in the rules), or vice versa. Take the best of both worlds – and enjoy!
Well, since terms change over time, “frigate” here could be refencing a ship’s size. Or it could even be a catch all term. There is nothing saying it couldn’t be a science frigate. Also, there could be peacetime and wartime designations.
@Sans: For context: It’s a meme common at least among (German) service members that the German Navy has a tendency to call everything a “Frigate” with about 100+ crew, regardless of armaments or mission profiles. So it’s, indeed, pretty much a “catch all term”.
You could argue that every Starfleet ship is geared for combat. I believe aliens in TNG point this out more than once that the Enterprise is quite heavily armed for an explorer. It’s just the Starfleet way.
Even pure science vessels like the Nova class is armed with phasers and photon torpedoes (!). What civilian ship is gonna have that (except of course when the plot demands it)?
In my head canon, the term “frigate” refers to a medium-sized ship for medium-duration missions. They are not self-sufficient enough for deep space exploration. For that, you have to pick a cruiser.
