So in nearly 100 years computers stagnated so badly that the COMPUTER rating of a size 6 Galaxy is only 2 pts better than a venerable size 4 Miranda class.
If the frames listed in the core and expansion books are supposed to be straight period instead of upgraded, then technology has apparently stagnated for the last 200 Trek years.
In the TNG/DS9 episodes where they come across TOS era ships/tech it is always a thing about how primitive or quaint the “old” ship were. And yet systems if those small primitive vessels are apparently on par with the bleeding edge tech of the TNG/DS9/VOY.
To be fair Star Trek frequently doesn’t make sense in its continuity. The USS Discovery and warp speeds through the eras for example.
The STA system doesn’t lend itself to fine differentials in characters and ships. When you only have a range of about a few points (each point being more than just 5% due to upper and lower effectiveness) a comparison over multiple eras is never going to show the improvements that are realistic.
Something I would like to say is that my personal view is that you aren’t meant to compare Starships to each other, but Starship’s of the same era together. Like, the Galaxy is supposed to be compared to other TNG/Voy/DS9 ships, not to the NX class. Assume that the stats for a ship are appropriate for a ship of that power of that era. Assume that any ships that cross eras (like the Miranda) have been upgraded above and beyond their refits so that they can ‘play’ in the new era. I’m sure the Saratoga wasn’t running around with 23rd century phasers and warp engines against the Borg.
It is funny. It seems to me that everyone expects that technology in Star Trek develops with the same speed as it did in the last century. But all technologies have its limits. Take the development of computers for example: the difference between a computer from 1980 and from 2000 is much bigger than the difference between a computer from 2000 and from today (2020). Everything has its limits and the time between performance improvements increases. And in some areas noe real improvement was made in the last 50 years! So it makes sense that a vessel from the 23rd century can compete with one from the 24th century.
A couple of years ago I created some fast starship creation rules (which can be found in this forum) based on the spaceframes from the core rules. I realized that every spaceframe from a certain decade has the same sum of system points. According to my rules the overall performance of a Galaxy-class from 2366 is has only improved by 16% compared to that of a Constellation-class from 80 years earlier.
This. I’m writing this post on a laptop that was built in 2011 and that still lets me play comparably modern games. I don’t know whether anyone tried to install Windows 98 on a machine built in 1988…
Anyway: The ships’ representation in a 2d20 system has its limits. And these limits are a die with 20 sides and the math behind tasks and difficulties. Maybe the stats of the ships really don’t make sense at all, as the stats are too close to each other. But hammering this amount of sense into the system will break it.
But fear not, the 2d20 system has a way of dealing with it. Let me introduce another set of traits: The era trait. If you feel TOS era ships too powerful or TNG era ships too weak, define a number of eras (e.g. ENT/TOS/lost-years/TNG-DS9-VOY/after-TNG) and assign the respective trait to ships coming from that era. A Miranda built early would have the TOS-era trait, a later one the lost-years-era trait and a fairly late built one maybe even the TNG-era trait. Still count in refits.
If ships of different eras compete with one another on anything or if the ship has to do something that is a problem of another era, count any difference between the eras as a positive or negative influence, meaning that the GM would pull Threat, the players would get Momentum, the difficulty of a task would raise/shrink by this amount, there’d be auto-complications or whatever you feel appropriate. No idea what would be best in balancing, but this is what the rules already provide for.
One thing to consider is… did it stagnate, or is it incrementally reaching what the “peak” computers could possibly be? In theory there is a maximum ability that computers could have in real life, the doubling of power every 12-ish years is not infinitely sustainable.
Hermes and Saladin were both seen on-screen and thus are canon by anyone’s definition.
This is what I’m leaning towards… pre-Ent/Ent/TOS/TME/TNG/post-TNG but simply deduct two points from every stat per era between vessels. So Ent era vessels facing off against TOS era Defiant were at -2 on everything.
However, I also don’t consider things like grapnels to take up Talent slots… unless they are nonstandard for the era.
I’d recommend not to deduct from stats (and thus raising the target number) but to add to complication range (even beyond the normal 15 hardcap) or grant Threat or whatever. I feel that STA doesn’t profit from failing, but from succeeding at costs. The latter provides more drama while still driving the story.
But raising the target number is fine, if it does what you want.
As I see it, the stats measure the relative ability of ships in their own period. The stats also have a pretty narrow margin, typically 6 to 12, which doesn’t offer a lot of room for variation while keeping ships either usable or non-overpowered.
For cross generational interactions to reflect the net difference, I’d treat it as a trait issue, tied to the campaign period. (I.e., a TOS crew encountering a TNG ship would grant the TNG ship an “advanced technology” trait, making tasks by the TOS crew to use or oppose the more advanced tech more difficult. More advanced systems therefore would make torpedo attacks against the future vessel difficulty 4; things like jamming comms, encryption, etc. would similarly scale by the trait.)
You could even treat it as “Advanced Technology X”, with the value of X increasing with generations. Say, compared to TOS, Excelsior gets Advanced 1, Enterprise C is Advanced 2, and D gets Advanced 3. It would make it so that if the NX class faced a D’deridex, they’d have to be very creative in creating advantages to stand any chance at all. Yet, it also keeps each ship very useful in its own era.
I’m liking all 3 of the ere-based solutions - complications based on traits seems the most practical.
You could also rule that certain categories of weapons are less effective against later period weapons, maybe reducing the effective damage (or making them ineffective altogether) rather than the chance to hit. I’m thinking of the Talarian x-ray lasers - IIRC Data was a bit bemused that they were even using them on the Enterprise-D’s shields.
First off, thanks for all the inputs. This has been some really good reading and has allowed me to adjust my perspective to an angle I hadn’t even thought of.
The idea that the stats represent relative ability of ships versus other ships within their own period is something I just didn’t think of. That concept also redefines how I need to approach the entire idea for the ships.
I haven’t decided exactly how I will approach things, but I definitely have a lot of new ideas.
According to the fast starship creation rules I derived from the stats of the spaceframes in the core rulebook, spaceframes from the TOS era should have the sums of 49 (TOS & TAS) and 50 (TMP – TVH) points respectively in ship systems with a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 10 points in each system. Ships from TNG should have 59 points and a minimum/maximum of 8/12. You see that a ship of TOS is about 2 points weaker in every single system than a ship from TNG.
