Shipping costs to Australia are bonkers (not fault of Modiphius of course); I bought the 3 diferent editions of Utolpia Planitia and the shipping is $120 Australian Dollars. Enough for nearly 2 of the non-collectors editions 
I wish Modiphius could open an Australian warehouse, like Chaosium has. Cuts my shipping costs by over 80%.
Shipping costs base on weight. To Europe/Germany, first increase of costs was after two / with the third book.
A cost saving tactic would be to buy only two and wait for the next single book you buy and add the third.
So I just got the Discovery campaign book pdf, and Specialized Crew appears in that one. Obviously it’s still a usable talent, since it appears in a book, but now I’m curious: does the UP book contain a list of all talents published so far, or only new ones?
The specialized crew is useless, it adds nothing and put restriction on your support characters. A better formulation add 2 support character that must be from the specialized division
I believe its been removed in the latest edits
UP contains a list of all starship related talents published. Specialized Crew was removed from the final print version and revised PDF. Feel free to use it, though, if it fits your needs.
I noticed Hot Rod got changed from a talent (Delta Q p85) for Delta Flyer to a Special Rule.
If it’s alright to ask, was there a specific reason for that? Are special rules like unique/free talents?
Sort of, yeah. No reason you couldn’t turn it into a talent, though, if you wanted. Or just add the special rule to your original spaceframe. System’s pretty flexible.
If a civilization uses a different method of warp travel for their ships, like the use of underspace corridors for example, does that still count as a sort of warp drive when deciding a ship’s system point totals?
In STO the turei and vaaduwaar (I’m pretty sure that I misspelled those) both utilize the “under space” for long distance rapid transit of ships, but not everywhere is connected to the under space network, so they also have traditional warp drives on their ships… voyager was able to utilize the under space network just by flying into a node as opposed to having a special drive engine for it.
I was just wondering about that since the Vaadwaur assault fighters would be at the 14 point cap for their systems when they meet the Voyager crew since they didn’t have the opportunity to upgrade their ships since going into hibernation in 1484 and then being awakened by the Voyager crew in 2376.
If I wanted to do a Delta Quadrant campaign, set sometime after Voyager’s return, were they are the main antagonists their system points would go up since they likely upgraded their systems to in order to match the other civilizations of the Delta Quadrant, whose technology has likely advanced since their long hibernation.
Also another question, how do I determine the scale for some ships in STO? Some pages on the wiki have links to articles that gives the crew size for the ships, but there are some that don’t and based on the aforementioned articles the tier system doesn’t match scale system as described in UP.
you would have to go in game and compare them side by side in the game engine with ships that are listed in UP (I use the sovereign as my baseline normally). For example, the Jupiter class carrier from sto is a T6 science-based carrier whose main body has a vastly larger volume than the sovereign (or even the Odessey), but given the sheer amount of empty space in the hull (due to the massive hangar bays) I would only give the Jupiter class a scale of 7 because the Jupiter will not punch at its own weight (I will let all the STO players here rant and rave about how the Jupiter can in the game, but my point remains) and the ship relies on the ship’s in her hangars for her offensive might.
Easiest rule of thumb is to find crew value and use that, but that won’t provide a complete picture of the ship’s capabilities. the example in UP is “A kilometer long cargo vessel with a crew of 20 may be considered scale 2, while a 300 meter heavily armored and overly engineered starship may be considered scale 5.”
The ruleset is here to provide guidelines for you to use/abuse to limits you set yourself. If you feel that a vaadwaur fighter would be scale 4 (and the equal of a New Orleans class frigate) upon starfleet’s return to the delta quadrant, then so be it. your story, your creation. you’re just using these guidelines as a framework to hang your story on.
Hope this shpeal helps!
A lot of ships in STO are variants or just visual skins of existing STA ships, so depending on the ship, you may be able to use an existing spaceframe as the base. But it’s going to be up to you how you adapt STO ships, probably drawing a lot on comparisons to other ships in-game. Size, abilities, tier… all could be used for comparison.
You probably won’t find “crew” info on a lot of ships in the wiki, as the stat was removed from the game: https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Crew
Time to leave Spacedock, y’all! Those waiting for the PDF release of Utopia Planitia need wait no longer!
Byatis, this reply is a bit late as I don’t play STO so I don’t have a basis for comparison for the majority of STO starships. Not to mention that I was going to point you towards my Scale document for Middle Scale Federation starships based on Eaglemoss’ Federation Comparison Image, but this is based off size only and doesn’t take into account tech level and other factors, so it’s obsolete. Not to mention that I got the size margins wrong for the DISC and SNW ships
That being said, there is one way to determine at least some Federation STO starship scales: see if it’s based off a known predecessor. The STO Ross is a Galaxy variant, so we know its Scale is 6; the STO Reliant is a Miranda variant so it’s going to be Scale 4; the STO Pathfinder is an Intrepid variant so it’s going to be Scale 4; the STO Sutherland is a Nebula variant so it’s going to be Scale 5.
But your question was for the Vaadwaar assault fighters, right? It’s been a while since I saw the “Dragon’s Teeth” VOY episode (but I’m gonna rewatch it now as I eat dinner after this post), but if their tech is a 1000+ years old, that’s likely going to be a downgrade to their Scale, same as it would be for the Klingon-owned Hur’q ships we saw in DISC Season 1. But if you’re talking about the Vadwaar fighters that have a canon length of only 24 meters in the bottom corner of the jpeg linked here, then 1) I’d just make it Scale 1 if it just has a crew of 1 or 2 people or 2) if it has a bigger crew of a half-dozen people or more.
Honestly, this thing doesn’t even seem to have a visible cockpit, which makes me think it might even serve as a drone, which would make me rate it as Scale 1 if it doesn’t actually have a crew. But take that with a grain of salt because if I remember the ending of “Dragon’s Teeth” correctly, these fighters were capable of carrying all the Vadwaar who survived to the present day. Didn’t they number around 900 or so? That’s still alot of ships and, low Scale or not, quantity has a quality all its own if the quantity is big enough.
Anyway, my gut feeling is that the Vadwaar fighter is only going to be Scale 1 especially if it has obsolete tech in the 24th century.
Hope this stream-of-consciousness rant helped.
Just ran through the rules end of Utopia Planitia and wow, what a revamp. It adds a lot while changing the scaling of ship capabilities. It’s great and I have questions.
Up to this point the community has had a nice reverse engineered math to use for nice guesses scaling a custom/homebrew ship’s systems based on decade and era, guessing you were aware of this, was the deviation due to experience with the game mechanics up to this point? Were the ships systems totals rescaled so that the specialties of their faction and/or their design stand out more? Late 24th century designs up to this point have just been blocks of 10s and an 11. (This makes them look boring by the way, nothing stands out from each other). Or were they just reigned in for mechanical reasons?
What was the thought process behind changing system totals to being tied to scale? Was it again to rescale ship capabilities or to keep smaller ships from having the same kinds of scores? Small craft having 2 less I completely agree with and its a nice way to mechanically show they’re less capable than starships without being too restrictive.
As printed, and going from the rules in the core rulebook, many ships now have engine ratings below what would suggest they are capable of from lore. STA is a very narrative and lore first system with the importance of in the moment plot and story sitting beside that, context deciding which is more important that second. If I wanted to have a ship that’s as fast as the Prometheus is in lore, I’d need engines 11. 9 for warp 9, +1 for up to 9.9, and one more +1 for 9.99 for a total of 11. Prometheus in UP has an engines of 10. Is the idea for engine rating now more tied to acceleration and overall capabilities rather than raw speed?
Quantum torpedoes isn’t a talent anymore, which had me double taking reading the sovereign class in the preview. But also now ships have one type of energy weapon and one type of torpedo, ships can no longer have photon and quantum torpedoes. My crew in my game wait to bust out the quantum torpedoes until it’s appropriate. i.e. oh god that’s a warbird inOURFACEHOLYCRAP. Was this because you found having quantum torpedoes had crews acting unstarfleet-like and just spamming quantum torpedoes at every instance and the community was being very aggressive like that? Or did I miss something in the book where I can still have photon torpedoes on my ship? Or do I still need to take expanded munitions?
I get the idea that spinal mounts are hard to aim, but +2 difficulty feels punishing for a +3CD and long range. The +3CD increase is already wow and long range seems appropriate. It’s meant to be a BFG. Was the +2 difficulty meant to discourage every ship having one? I’m going to be honest, I’d simply change it to +1 difficulty. If it had something else to it like adding a quality (but it doesn’t because it’s a delivery method), I’d take the +2 or make it cost more power to fire. Hey I’m onto something…
The book is great and it’s wonderful to finally have a concrete way to balance homebrew ships. My crew’s ship is a homebrew scale 4 starfleet heavy cruiser that was built on 60 system points for being launched in 2380. Now it will have 58, and one more talent since quantum torpedoes aren’t a talent anymore, but no more photon torpedoes as well. It started with an 11 engines and I had planned to rebalance it to 12 after our first season finale making it more tied to the lore that it’s meant to be top of the line when launched and the fastest in the fleet. 12 engines is now apparently ludicrous if not eye-widening. The new paradigm feels weird, but it also feels more in line with characters.
Oh god I wrote all this out and it’s about bringing ships in line with the concept of characters isn’t it? 
Take the Expanded Munitions talent to add quantum torpedoes or photon torpedoes (or other extra weapon systems) to ships that don’t have them.
Or don’t, and just add the weapons to the ship and use the talent slot for something else. Unlikely to break the system if you want to add more weapons to your ship and use the talents for other things.
So the idea is if you have more than the standard 1 energy weapon and 1 torpedo weapon you would take the expanded munitions talent?
Also, anything you can add in regards to my other questions? I like knowing intent and reasoning behind the rules, especially in such a narratively drive system as this. 
I have just bought Utopia pdf, nice work (and nice artwork) and there’s nice talents there. I’m wondering if the rule that says that you can only one talent to a ship with an arc stone (Core Rulebook p294) is still in place or it has been revised somewhere?
EDIT: Thanks Maverick: Revised on Klingon Corebook p129
If you use the milestone and reputation system from the klingon core book, and you should its much better and works well and as intended, the arc milestone does not say that.
The talents are nice. I like the dedicated subspace transceiver talent for the idea of a door opening on the hull and this big antenna array or a big cable and satellite dish unfurling from the ship. It just amuses me.
The whole book is very nice. I do appreciate the new scheme of how ships systems scale. Overall they end up ~2 points less, which is fine since as I’ve mentioned, later publications beyond the corebook had ships chock full of 10s to the point you couldn’t tell what the ship was supposed to do on systems alone. The steamrunner in the command book has 4 10s and an 11, which is indicative of all 2370s designs. Eventually the only distinguishing thing is what are the talents because there’s only so many combinations of 59/60 system points you can make when you won’t put a 12 on a ship to make it stand out, or multiple 11s. There’s even less combinations of department bonuses. Everything felt omni capable, and fairly indistinguishable save for talents. I had a friend who I told the saber class ship’s stats and no talents or attacks tell me he thought it was a scout and survey ship. Now it looks like a smaller light cruiser/patrol ship like it’s supposed to be in lore.
So while it feels funny to have 9s be normal on current era ships I think it makes the 10s more special and shows a ship with an 11 to have a very powerful system. Heaven forfend something have a 12 now. Especially engines. That sidebar from the corebook saying engines can equal top speed in lore no longer applies. The defiant has engines 8 now, for a ship that’s supposed have a max warp speed of 9.5 (engines 10) and to have engines so powerful they’ll tear it apart if it’s not tuned properly, 8 power doesn’t feel like that. Engine numbers seem to be a very noticeable change, the defiant I feel is the most drastic. If it was 9 that’d feel more like it, but it having the same engine rating as a constitution class, despite different eras, feels weird. It seems more like an indication of overall ability like the rest of the stats so in that regard they’re more in line now.
Despite my differences with the book, again, I still think it’s a great book and was worth the wait.