One thing I notice that I’ve come across. Ships like the Connie and the Excelsior have the Saucer Separation as a special rule, but not the Talent. However, the Galaxy has the Saucer Separation as a Talent, but no Special Rule. Should the Galaxy have a different Talent instead and an additional “Galaxy Class Saucer Separation” Special Rule?
Is it the fact that the Galaxy Can separate and reconnect without any spacedock and the Special Rules are the Emergency separation feature?
IIRC, that was the intention. Galaxy and Nebula can separate and redock on their own without external assistance. Other ships can separate, but aren’t able to reconnect without external assistance or dock time.
Insights from our team as we discussed the questions. Trimmed the quote for extreme verbosity.
We weren’t really aware of the fanbrew numbers system. We tend not to look at community stuff because we don’t want to be accused of taking someone else’s ideas. We’re all working from the same common ruleset with the same overall connection to the franchise, so it’s easy for the fans and writers to come up with similar solutions to issues. By not looking too closely as what the fandom is doing protects us from potential issues where a fan might get precious about ‘their’ creation, see something similar in a STA product, and get chippy about thinking we stole it.
The idea of system totals being influenced by scale was always there. Larger ships have more space for more systems
Engine score was never linked directly to warp speed. It was linked with how much raw power the ship can put out. Engines, like all the other stats, are general approximations and shouldn’t be examined too closely for a 1:1 comparison.
I think I covered this in an earlier post, but if you want photon torpedoes instead of quantums, go for it. If you want to give a spaceframe quantums and photons for ‘free’, go for it. If you want to use the munitions talent, do that. There’s no game balance issue that’s suddenly going to break because your ship happens to have additional firepower.
The +2 Diff is because its tough to aim such a weapon in high velocity and acceleration during ship combat in space. The extra damage is wow, but this is a weapon where you are seeing diminishing returns since it has to be lined up just right to even be useful.
My only quibble is with the ship rules themselves, and not really the hook.
Why foes standard equipment for some eras, like grappler cables, take up a talent slot while standard equipment for other eras, like tractor beams, not use a talent?
Why is the NX charged for hull posting, but the Constitution class not charged a talent for shields?
Yes, I know I can just change it…. and I do. If something is unusual for the era it uses a talent. Quantum torpedoes in the DS9 era for example. When they no longer are unusual they don’t use a talent anymore. They are just standard equipment.
I’m really just curious if there was a specific rationale for doing things that way.
I agree with your point, but as a counter consideration, I think using up a talent slot in this way can help to really drive home how comparatively low tech these ships were. It would be similar to having other talents take up additional space (talent slots) on the ship, because technology tends to be bulkier when it starts out.
…but the very first Daedalus class ships had grappler cables. The Delta class has them. Why are they still using a talent in the NX class?
…same with polarized hull plating…. but phaser cannon don’t use a talent despite most Earth ships still being armed with pulse plasma cannon when Enterprise was launched?
Daedalus gets five talent slots, but uses two with its “standard equipment package” of polarized hull plating and grapplers.
I was more talking about the other talents you take. Improved Warp Drive for example- how much more space and percentage of the tech does the warp core take up, compared with the later ships? Rather than punish you for taking those kind of talents (which objectively and narratively would be a much bigger deal to have installed on earlier ships), the system reduces the amount of talents you are able to take by using slots.
I guess a different method for doing this could have been to just have a rule reducing the amount of talents?
Again, I agree that it feels weird that things are done this way, but I can see reasons why it might have been
…but that doesn’t explain the inconsistency of grappler cables taking a talent slot, but phaser cannon not.
Worse, ships of the same era are different. The NX uses a talent for its grapplers, the Intrepid class does not…. but still has them.
If they want fewer talents, just give another special rule: the NX class only has one talent slot. The Daedalus class has three. The Intrepid has none. Whatever.
I can’t think of a single plausible scenario where a writing and editing team sit down together and made a conscious decision to give both Intrepid and NX grappler cables but charge NX a talent for it, but not charge Intrepid…. and then give intrepid another talent in that spot.
Same with polarized bull plating snd shields.
The rules should be internally consistent. They aren’t.
Then why aren’t phaser cannon talents? Why isn’t the Warp 5 engine a talent?
Why does the NX class have grapplers as a talent, but Intrepid class not?
Why does the Daedalus class have grapplers and polarized hull plating as talents 100 years after its introduction, but phase cannons (something that didn’t exist when the ship was launched) are simply stabpndard equipment.
They stripped the station when they left. It’s not explicitly stated how well-armed the station was before they left, but it did have phaser banks and torpedo launchers.
The Cardassians took every component of value. We’re virtually defenceless.
I never had the impression that the Cardassians armed or shielded their mining stations that well.
In any case, perhaps you or somebody else can explain why the Warp Delta, Daedalus and civilian freighters have the latest Starfleet weaponry (phaser cannons) and there are “free electron lasers” that are never mentioned on screen, but the plasma weapons everything in Starfleet had before phase cannon are completely absent.
The cardassians also utilized Terok Nor (DS9) as the command post for their whole occupation of Bajor and the surrounding systems, and while yes, the 6 main docking pylons had massive ore refineries built into their superstructures, the habitat ring had mounted weapons platforms and the core had a dedicated shield generator (all of which you can see in the open credits of the Pilot episode of the series). Plus, why would a military force that was being forced to withdraw from a perfectly good military station leave it armed when they knew their enemies would be taking possession of it? I’m fairly certain that the only reason the Cardassian military didn’t scuttle the entire station, was because they were already planning an eventual return to Bajor in order to reconquer the planet and figured they’d need the station again in the future.
But yes, DS9 was a heavily armed station before the Cardassian withdrawal, and was again once Starfleet was able to retrofit everything.
As for the pre-federation weapons inconsistencies, best i can say is that the plasma weaponry that early starfleet and UE civilians used in that time period functioned approximately the same way as later phase cannons and phasers do. Hence why the publishers and writers just wrote it in as one thing instead of multiple that would require even more work on their part… I could also be talking nothing but smack here, though if modiphius doesn’t correct me, then it’s safe to assume that i hit it on the head…
It’s amazing to be right in this instance. I also suspect we’re going to see the Pathfinder in season 3. maybe in a “bit part” but we’ll proably see it
So a friend of mine online tells me they got their copy today, they ordered the collector’s edition. Mine, a standard edition, hasn’t even SHIPPED, is this something I should contact CS about or are the collector’s editions just going out first?
Did you order from the US store or the UK store? The latter has stock and is shipping all 3 editions. The stock for the former is on a ship somewhere between England and the United States. Orders from the US store still have some time before they’re shipped.
