I'd just like everyone to know I got close to a thousand words into a hypothetical about how ship licensing, registries, and transponder codes might work within Known Space, citing various other sources (including, but not limited to, the Edge of the Empire Star Wars RPG) and existing maritime law, with a long digression into how the presence of the Corporate Sector just fucks everything up, before it did occur to me that, yes, I do occasionally miss the point.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Mazal tov! (Slithy tove even, but I digress...)

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

If I ever play a Star Wars scoundrel again, I'm going to have him get his ship in the One Piece At A Time method.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

I did that once. I was playing an Imperial Officer in a WEG campaign; a former Star Destroyer captain who'd defected to the Rebels. I was in charge of the group's ship, a onetime bulk freighter that I was slowly converting into a battlewagon as we went. (Part of the cargo hold converted to hold some Z-95's, several turbolasers off of wrecked B-wings fitted as gun turrets, &c... I was trying to work out a way to heist a few AT-AT heads to mount on it when the campaign went under...)

While that's a completely legitimate method, I can't help but think that Peter was referring to the Johnny Cash song. Carting off a starship by smuggling pieces off the assembly line during your day job. Probably take a little longer than the "Psychobilly Cadillac" of the song, but you'd get just as interesting a vehicle in the process.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

Circle gets the square!

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Polychrome

Look! A monkey!

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

Chris Foss the illustrator of The Joy of Sex? That Chris Foss?

Gonna be honest: afraid to click that link now.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

http://www.chrisfossart.com/

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

She's actually quite a lot smaller than either of the common bird-of-prey classes, but particularly the K'vort, which is enormous. Ye olde Haynes guide notes that no two birds-of-prey are exactly the same size because they're not built according to any sort of standardized procedure, which might be the most elegant explanation of the effects people screwing up scale shots I've ever encountered. However, it also claims that the smaller B'rel class averages around 140 meters (which is, what, 450 feet or thereabouts), while the K'vort class clocks in at a mighty hefty ~680m (2200-odd feet).

By contrast, I don't have final measurements for the Phoenix Queen yet, but we think she's roughly the same length as a large real-world airliner or strategic airlift jet, ca. 250 feet (B747/A380/An-124 territory). Longer but narrower than a YT-1300-class freighter, with a roughly similar interior volume, but arranged in a more crew-friendly way (since the Queen doesn't have to be configurable to carry cargo) on three decks.

As for the color scheme, that is perfectly legitimate Fire Nation livery. Hell, compared to the way her old man would have blinged that shit up, it's positively low-key. :) I was especially pleased by how tasteful the gold stripes came out. I had experimented with a couple of configurations that looked a lot better in my head than on the screen, and Adam split the difference perfectly.

--G.
"It's a bit showy," Azula mused. "Of course, sir," said the Sink Central Intelligence Unit dryly. "What was I thinking. You're usually so discreet."
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Because apparently the replicator can handle any parts replacement required by scaling the blueprints up or down as necessary, thus making my instinctive "that's going to kill you on maintenance, guv" response nullified.

O'course, the amusing fallout from that would be the ability to raise funds for buildings/monuments/etc. by providing unique collectibles replicated from the CADs for the original...

Well, technically I think it's because the canonical Klingon military-industrial complex is a "total war" command economy based largely on slave labor, and so the heads of the Great Houses - who commission warships individually and without reference to one another - don't particularly give a shit if it does kill somebody on maintenance.

It doesn't work that way in the UF universe, but then, we don't have to worry about the effects people using the 36-inch shooting model of the bird-of-prey in the same shot as the 44-inch model of the Excelsior-class, and suchlike. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yes, I know. And I was playing on it, because we were talking about the Klingon military-industrial complex, and they have different interpretations of these things.*

>there's a reason why interchangeable parts greatly enhanced
>the capabilities of armies during the 19th century...

I think you may be guilty of examining these things too closely, particularly since the explanation of why Klingon stuff is all hilariously nonstandardized is endemic to Star Trek and not the case in the universe for which I am responsible. :)

That said, there's still plenty of room in the UF universe for hand-crafted (or at least hand-designed) one-offs and special editions. In the 23rd century particularly, there was a "craft ship" movement which saw dozens of famous makers of custom one-off starships make names for themselves. Starships being big, unwieldy objects with lots of moving parts, these makers didn't literally build their products personally by hand - they generally operated out of workshops that were massively automated, and devised their creations to make use of off-the-shelf major components wherever practical - but for the most part, their ships were (as the sums of their parts) the products of single intelligences. They were comparable to really-high-end custom carmakers today, or musical or scientific instrument makers of earlier ages.

(For surviving examples of this kind of work in the late-FI/NF bridge era, look to Naboo - the government of that planet possesses several fine examples of the 23rd-century custom shipwright's art, meticulously preserved and maintained in operational condition by the Royal Engineering Corps.)

Sadly, the custom starship scene rather died out in the early 24th century. Some say GENOM and the big Corellian shipyards conspired under the table to stamp it out. Others believe that the creativity and personal ambition required to succeed in the business were made much rarer in young people by the general ossification of galactic society that happened with GENOM in such a cultural catbird seat for so long. Still others think the massive overhead required to be a really independent creator in that field simply got to be too much for anyone to manage alone, particularly after the Federation came along in the 2330s, with its much more elaborate industrial regulation bureaucracy than the United Galactica had.

By the late 24th and early 25th centuries, you still see some pretty high-end small-starship customizers out there, but they all start with some major company's production spaceframes and drive hardware - letting bigger, better-heeled organizations do the heavy lifting in terms of engineering and large-structure production - and very, very few of them work alone.

(It happens that I've been thinking about this very phenomenon a bit lately... )

--G.
* "Banter's not the same if you say it slower, Squiffy!"
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

...and now I suddenly have an image of a planet-sized custom starship shop which has gone into hibernation awaiting the return of the galactic culture and economy necessary to support their unique services...

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

The guide should have a subtitle reading "Or Paramount is f**kin' cheap!" Different bridges? Captain's preference. Different sizes? Scaling up and down the same basic design. Little difference in the types of ships Klingons use? Standardization around simple designs that then are outfitted for a particular mission. It also makes semi-canon a fan theory that has been around since The Enterprise Incident, namely that of a short lived Klingon-Romulan alliance, just to explain how the Romulans got Klingon cruisers while the Klingons had cloaking devices after The Search for Spock.

>By contrast, I don't have final measurements for the Phoenix
>Queen yet, but we think she's roughly the same length as a large
>real-world airliner or strategic airlift jet, ca. 250 feet
>(B747/A380/An-124 territory). Longer but narrower than a
>YT-1300-class freighter, with a roughly similar interior volume, but
>arranged in a more crew-friendly way (since the Queen doesn't
>have to be configurable to carry cargo) on three decks.

IIRC, that's roughly in the same ballpark as the Normandy SR-1.

>As for the color scheme, that is perfectly legitimate Fire Nation
>livery. Hell, compared to the way her old man would have blinged that
>shit up, it's positively low-key. :) I was especially pleased by how
>tasteful the gold stripes came out. I had experimented with a couple
>of configurations that looked a lot better in my head than on the
>screen, and Adam split the difference perfectly.

Think it strikes a good compromise between showy and understated. Enough to let one know on first glance just whose ship it is, but not so ostentatious that people will assume she's just showing off.

>"It's a bit showy," Azula mused. "Of course, sir,"
>said the Sink Central Intelligence Unit dryly. "What was I thinking.
>You're usually so discreet."

So I wasn't the only one who thought the Sink CIU sounded like a poor-man's JARVIS.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

I'm not sure how that's a "fan theory", since they mentioned it in that very episode, but... :)

>Think it strikes a good compromise between showy and understated.
>Enough to let one know on first glance just whose ship it is, but not
>so ostentatious that people will assume she's just showing off.

Well, one has to know one's audience, after all. Even if it were not Azula's personal style to be sort of straightforwardly glamorous (and it is), Phoenix Enterprises does a lot of work for the likes of the Royal Astrographic Society of Salusia, the Federation Celestial Survey Board, and (usually under cover of the former) various intelligence agencies. For the firm's interface with that level of clientele, you don't want to be too showy-offy, but you do want to present a well-maintained, professional appearance - one that indicates you take pride in your equipment and the quality of your work.*

>So I wasn't the only one who thought the Sink CIU sounded like a
>poor-man's JARVIS.

I'm pretty sure that was entirely intentional.

--G.
* As Azula once said to Sokka, primarily in a successful effort to make Katara spit out some tea.
-><-
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I had to check Memory Alpha to refresh my memory, but they indeed never said outright that an alliance had been formed. There was a line about intelligence suggesting Romulans were using Klingon designs, but nothing more was said. Since Klingons subsequently showed up with cloaking devices in the movies and later TV series, the "alliance" was treated as canon.

>Well, one has to know one's audience, after all. Even if it were
>not Azula's personal style to be sort of straightforwardly
>glamorous (and it is), Phoenix Enterprises does a lot of work for the
>likes of the Royal Astrographic Society of Salusia, the Federation
>Celestial Survey Board, and (usually under cover of the former)
>various intelligence agencies. For the firm's interface with that
>level of clientele, you don't want to be too showy-offy, but you do
>want to present a well-maintained, professional appearance - one that
>indicates you take pride in your equipment and the quality of your
>work.*

And gunmetal gray or thermocoat white get boring after awhile. And it makes it easier to con authorities into believing one is a legitimate businesswoman and not a spy when your vessel doesn't look like you just dug it out of the Scrapyard.

>I'm pretty sure that was entirely intentional.

Can't say I had any problem with it. Though Azula probably got tired of being referred to as "sir" all the time after awhile.

>* As Azula once said to Sokka, primarily in a
>successful effort to make Katara spit out some tea.

That does seem like their relationship post-Twilight, a grudging friendship with the occasional spat after Azula needles Katara a little too much in one sitting.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

Not even the supremely well-traveled Sokka was expecting anything like Fisto.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

And of course the Doylist explanation is a lot simpler.
-
By the time they shot 'The Enterprise Incident', they'd -lost- the model used for the Romulan ship in 'Balance of Terror', so they just subbed in what they had and didn't really think anyone would care. (Trek producers have a long tradition of expecting continuity to be something that only people with far too much time on their hands should give a damn about.)

Early drafts of ST3, on the other hand, had it being a -Romulan- ship, thus Cloaking Device becoming a key plot point. When they changed the baddies to Klingons they threw in a plot-point about it being a Romulan ship that that individual captain had personally stolen, being the epic pirate that he is, but it got lost on the cutting-room floor and was never seen again.

I kinda like Diane Duane's take on it, where it's a bit of Klingon imperialism taken to Soviet-arms-export-deal-to-Iran heights, the Roms are forced to buy these ships by treaty that they really didn't want to sign but didn't have much choice about, and by gods but they SUCK, 'cause Klingon engineering and maintenance and design aesthetic is oh my god, but it's that or face war with both the Klinks and the Feds at the same time, and that's just so not happening.

(Alternatively, SFB's explanation that the Romulans just never could get warp drive working for tactical combat maneuvering, so it was useless except for getting from system to system, because the Klinks and Feds and Gorns kept sabotaging their research projects... that's taking intelligence failure to ComStar ROM levels of author fiat.)

Hey, I resemble that remark.

Seriously, when one considers that TOS kept dancing on the edge of cancellation for three years, putting a lot of thought into continuity for what would likely be a short-lived TV series probably wasn't high on the priority list.

>Early drafts of ST3, on the other hand, had it being a -Romulan- ship,
>thus Cloaking Device becoming a key plot point. When they changed the
>baddies to Klingons they threw in a plot-point about it being a
>Romulan ship that that individual captain had personally stolen, being
>the epic pirate that he is, but it got lost on the cutting-room floor
>and was never seen again.

And I think in a lot of ways the franchise was better for it. The BoP has become a quintessential Klingon ship, small but powerful and the cloaking device giving it that edge over larger foes.

>I kinda like Diane Duane's take on it, where it's a bit of Klingon
>imperialism taken to Soviet-arms-export-deal-to-Iran heights, the Roms
>are forced to buy these ships by treaty that they really didn't want
>to sign but didn't have much choice about, and by gods but they SUCK,
>'cause Klingon engineering and maintenance and design aesthetic is oh
>my god, but it's that or face war with both the Klinks and the Feds at
>the same time, and that's just so not happening.

Yeah, the Klingon approach to engineering really does have that Soviet vibe of "It may be slow, it may be heavy, and it may break down, but by Lenin/Kahless it can take one hell of a beating." It's fitting that in the Haynes guide, it explicitly says that engineers are expected to go down with the ship in order to preserve their honor, since the rest of the crew would not need to abandon if the engineers had done their job right.

>(Alternatively, SFB's explanation that the Romulans just never could
>get warp drive working for tactical combat maneuvering, so it was
>useless except for getting from system to system, because the Klinks
>and Feds and Gorns kept sabotaging their research projects... that's
>taking intelligence failure to ComStar ROM levels of author fiat.)

It also goes against pretty much everything we've been told, namely that Romulans are the masters of espionage and skullduggery, so multiple powers getting one over them seems sorta implausible.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

BoP sizes confuse me. But I'll take your word for it. :)

>"It's a bit showy," Azula mused. "Of course, sir,"
>said the Sink Central Intelligence Unit dryly. "What was I thinking.
>You're usually so discreet."

*shatters*