Well I'll be honest in Star Trek I always took cloaking as a method of avoiding all attack. Unless someone is actively trying to find um.

So more like WW2 u boat hunting is my method of dealing with it. So the accuracy results would force the ship to effectively surface, or be crushed like a tin can underwater.

So that's my kind of approch to the mechanic. I remember hearing that star trek combat was meant to feel more like sub combat.

I like some of the other ideas too. In the end the mechanical properties of such an ability will depend heavily on the ships that can take it

4 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

I think, otherwise, I'd try to look at things from a completely Empirical standpoint...

For example, I don't know too much of a lore for Star Trek when it comes to the nitty details.

But I think if I had a basic Spreadsheet that listed Ships by 1) Overall Size, 2) Shield Rating and 3) Armament, I could probably knock up at least a baseline ship progression.

I think that's going to be the key to a project like this. Set a Smallest of Small, Set a Largest of Large, and scale things inbetween from there.

I would rearrange the progression from smallest to largest to weakest to strongest. Strongest should be the Sovereign , only undercut maybe if we add the Odyssey class, and the Dreadnought class from the Kelvin timeline. The Galaxy is a half step down, and so on, until the weakest, which I would imagine is the Miranda class light cruisers.

Hence why I suggested multiple columns in the spreadsheet.

Nominally order by Size. But give me the ability to order thusly by armament, etc.

One ordering is important for size . One ordering is important for points . Another is a good order to base additional abilities on, all thigns being equal (which, they never are, but that's the point )

Because, as I said, not a Lore Junkie of Star Trek. I can espouse to only be that for Star Wars and BattleTech, and not in that preferential order

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

Hence why I suggested multiple columns in the spreadsheet.

Nominally order by Size. But give me the ability to order thusly by armament, etc.

One ordering is important for size . One ordering is important for points . Another is a good order to base additional abilities on, all thigns being equal (which, they never are, but that's the point )

This is reasonable. I realized after I posted that there will probably be multiple definitions of strong. The Vesta s are lightning fast and represent the ultimate in science ships (mostly because they can also fight well). Prometheus and Defiant represent the pinnacle of Starfleet's warship design (even if they won't call it that). Multiple columns is very important. @Megatronrex remind me tomorrow after lunch and I will try to start a Google Sheet.

Once you have the full progression, you need to essentially map out your Maximum and Minimum Variables.

For example, using the Armada Platform, the maximum variable of Dice-on-target for a basic ship is 12. (An ISD throwing 8 out the front, and 4 out the side of a double-arc).

The Minimums are easy - the 0 of the flotilla. To see if there is any craft in your progression that is literally no threat to ships of the line, but can do something to Shuttles.

Then Shields.

Then Hull.

Its all about defining that Maximum Point. Considering you can essentially assume (before upgrades) a Damage Mitigation rate of Front Shields + Side Shields before you start Damaging Hull. Which puts the ISD's Damage Capability at 18, which is stupid good. The MonCal comes up second at 16, which isn't terrible.

Anyhow, just raw thoughts on the matter... Once you have a Maximum, and a Minimum, and a Progression that can be ordered in multiple ways, perhaps split by size, perhaps not... Then you can really start the hefty work of defining each value.

10 hours ago, Noosh said:

Well I'll be honest in Star Trek I always took cloaking as a method of avoiding all attack. Unless someone is actively trying to find um.

So more like WW2 u boat hunting is my method of dealing with it. So the accuracy results would force the ship to effectively surface, or be crushed like a tin can underwater.

So that's my kind of approch to the mechanic. I remember hearing that star trek combat was meant to feel more like sub combat.

I like some of the other ideas too. In the end the mechanical properties of such an ability will depend heavily on the ships that can take it

I like the U-Boat analogy. This is pretty close to my view on it as well.

7 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

Because, as I said, not a Lore Junkie of Star Trek. I can espouse to only be that for Star Wars and BattleTech, and not in that preferential order

I certainly can't claim to be an expert on Trek lore. Some of its iterations I've loved (Wrath of Khan, DS9, Voyager) while others (Enterprise, TNG when it started) have either never hooked me or took years to reel me in. What I am is a fan with some free time to spend on the Wiki and a general sci-fi / space opera addict.

7 hours ago, GiledPallaeon said:

I would rearrange the progression from smallest to largest to weakest to strongest. Strongest should be the Sovereign , only undercut maybe if we add the Odyssey class, and the Dreadnought class from the Kelvin timeline. The Galaxy is a half step down, and so on, until the weakest, which I would imagine is the Miranda class light cruisers.

Arranging the ships by size is easy enough to do. A quick google search will give you plenty of comparison charts. The wiki is pretty good about listing types of armament and how they're arranged for most ships but not so good at explaining the power of those weapons. For example phaser banks and phaser arrays are sometimes given as two different weapons systems and other times used interchangeably and both are defined as basically collections of phaser emitters. I haven't found a good way to compare the shield ratings or even the relative sub light speeds of ships.

We also need to consider how much of the Trek timeline we're going to cover. I'd opt for the TNG era because we could then use anything from TNG, DS9 and Voyager and with it being Trek we always have the option of bringing some specific ships and or characters in via the catch all excuse of time travel.

7 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

Once you have the full progression, you need to essentially map out your Maximum and Minimum Variables.

For example, using the Armada Platform, the maximum variable of Dice-on-target for a basic ship is 12. (An ISD throwing 8 out the front, and 4 out the side of a double-arc).

The Minimums are easy - the 0 of the flotilla. To see if there is any craft in your progression that is literally no threat to ships of the line, but can do something to Shuttles.

Then Shields.

Then Hull.

Its all about defining that Maximum Point. Considering you can essentially assume (before upgrades) a Damage Mitigation rate of Front Shields + Side Shields before you start Damaging Hull. Which puts the ISD's Damage Capability at 18, which is stupid good. The MonCal comes up second at 16, which isn't terrible.

Anyhow, just raw thoughts on the matter... Once you have a Maximum, and a Minimum, and a Progression that can be ordered in multiple ways, perhaps split by size, perhaps not... Then you can really start the hefty work of defining each value.

All of this makes perfect sense and might be easier to do with a fresh start on the whole thing. Thanks for chiming in with some helpful guidance by the way.

@Drasnighta , @Megatronrex , @GiledPallaeon I'm gonna be real honest I kinda get a kick out of devising mechanics for stuff like this. Is there anything you guys can think of that I can sit around and brainstorm about. Abilities like cloaking and the like, if you guys can think of anymore I'd love to have a crack at um.

In the meantime I'll come up with some formalized break down of clocking fiddle with your suggestions maybe play a couple 'forever alone' senarios with the ships you've already posted and see what plays the best.

Also are there any Klingons or romulan ships developed yet? I missed them if there were.

17 minutes ago, Noosh said:

@Drasnighta , @Megatronrex , @GiledPallaeon I'm gonna be real honest I kinda get a kick out of devising mechanics for stuff like this. Is there anything you guys can think of that I can sit around and brainstorm about. Abilities like cloaking and the like, if you guys can think of anymore I'd love to have a crack at um.

In the meantime I'll come up with some formalized break down of clocking fiddle with your suggestions maybe play a couple 'forever alone' senarios with the ships you've already posted and see what plays the best.

Also are there any Klingons or romulan ships developed yet? I missed them if there were.

That's great. I enjoy making homebrew versions of games myself. I haven't touched any of the factions other than Federation, except for playing around with Cloaking, and I don't think @GiledPallaeon has either.

49 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

That's great. I enjoy making homebrew versions of games myself. I haven't touched any of the factions other than Federation, except for playing around with Cloaking, and I don't think @GiledPallaeon has either.

Do we have equivalency across factions yet? I.e. vor'cha class crusier for the Klingons = glalaxy class for the federation? Not literally mind you, but more in the sense of what weight class it's in.

27 minutes ago, Noosh said:

Do we have equivalency across factions yet? I.e. vor'cha class crusier for the Klingons = glalaxy class for the federation? Not literally mind you, but more in the sense of what weight class it's in.

No not at all. I think Giled will be around here some time after lunch and maybe we can all brainstorm some type of overall plan like Dras suggested instead of just randomly spitballing ideas which is largely what I've been doing.

46 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

No not at all. I think Giled will be around here some time after lunch and maybe we can all brainstorm some type of overall plan like Dras suggested instead of just randomly spitballing ideas which is largely what I've been doing.

Don't worry I do that alot then at the end I go what in ****'s bells did I do here. Always need organization otherwise I'm chaos incarnate.

This isn't my work but I thought it might be usefull

Federation : "Individual lives have value." Ships are balanced offensively/defensively and have large power plants and redundant systems.

Klingon : "Glorious battle assures immortality." Ships are strong offensively and are highly maneuverable, but at the expense of defenses and support systems.

Romulan : "Subterfuge cloaked in mystery sheathed in deception." Ships are well-powered with good support systems, but speed and firepower suffer, requiring ships to be larger (more massive) to carry more weapons.

Borg : "Identical cogs in a perfect machine." Ships are fast, strong and survivable (through regeneration), but become too big to be maneuverable. They are also dependent on centralized command and control.

Cardassian : "Winning is everything." Ships mount a lot of offense, but require a lot of bulky power systems to do the job, reducing maneuverability and space for other systems.

Ferengi : "There's no profit in dying." Ships are fast, maneuverable, and have good active defenses. They're somewhat underpowered offensively when alone, but they can be dangerous in numbers.

Jem'Hadar : "My life for the Founders." Balanced offense and defense like Federation ships, but virtually no support systems.

Species 8472 : "Enough pure energy can solve any problem." Species 8472 ships are essentially maulers: single-weapon ships where all systems exist to support the weapon.

Breen : "#%$& $*&#@ #@^&." Not much is known of Breen design philosophy, but it seems to emphasize energy/power systems. So Breen ships tend to have good support systems to power their energy weapons.

Gorn : "I'm tougher than you are." Their ships would have basic offense and support systems, and they'd be painfully slow, but they'd be so massively armored that taking one down would be a real challenge. (Note: There are no Gorn ships in canon Star Trek... but there should be. ) )

"Never turn your back on a Breen" is a cautionary quote of the universe, too.

Do I happen to be re-watching the Dominion War?

Yes. Yes I am.

Right Now.

This is where that list came from...

http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2007/07/comparative-rankings-of-starships-in.html

Haven't finished reading it all yet much less checked any of it for inacurracies.

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

Do I happen to be re-watching the Dominion War?

Yes. Yes I am.

Right Now.

I'm so jealous right now.

Just now, Megatronrex said:

I'm so jealous right now.

Between me and my father, we own every Non-Discovery Star Trek Episode.

Yes.

Even the Animated ones.

But my focus is just more on Star Wars backgruond, since dealing with Armada for years... So I enjoyed parts of the storyline without actually divesting in it.

1 hour ago, Megatronrex said:

No not at all. I think Giled will be around here some time after lunch and maybe we can all brainstorm some type of overall plan like Dras suggested instead of just randomly spitballing ideas which is largely what I've been doing.

Unfortunately I've been playing all of it by ear. I think with this many eyes floating around on the project, a single reference spreadsheet would probably be ideal. So I have started this.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jYCNq9eyKz-lvRlg4kFPCBLoqCIWcxMmpGEqJRmCIbU/edit?usp=sharing

This includes a master reference sheet, which we will need to fill in, and a template for ship characteristics for when we get that far. At some point I will rewrite the costing functions into the sheet, but they're long af, so that comes later. I'm very open to adding more categories for later, and eventually more organization, but I slapped this together in fifteen minutes to give us a jumping off point.

49 minutes ago, Noosh said:

Don't worry I do that alot then at the end I go what in ****'s bells did I do here. Always need organization otherwise I'm chaos incarnate.

Chaos can be useful if it can be channeled. Also, that is one of the most creative curses I've seen in a while, I'm taking it.

3 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

This isn't my work but I thought it might be usefull

Federation : "Individual lives have value." Ships are balanced offensively/defensively and have large power plants and redundant systems.

Klingon : "Glorious battle assures immortality." Ships are strong offensively and are highly maneuverable, but at the expense of defenses and support systems.

Romulan : "Subterfuge cloaked in mystery sheathed in deception." Ships are well-powered with good support systems, but speed and firepower suffer, requiring ships to be larger (more massive) to carry more weapons.

Borg : "Identical cogs in a perfect machine." Ships are fast, strong and survivable (through regeneration), but become too big to be maneuverable. They are also dependent on centralized command and control.

Cardassian : "Winning is everything." Ships mount a lot of offense, but require a lot of bulky power systems to do the job, reducing maneuverability and space for other systems.

Ferengi : "There's no profit in dying." Ships are fast, maneuverable, and have good active defenses. They're somewhat underpowered offensively when alone, but they can be dangerous in numbers.

Jem'Hadar : "My life for the Founders." Balanced offense and defense like Federation ships, but virtually no support systems.

Species 8472 : "Enough pure energy can solve any problem." Species 8472 ships are essentially maulers: single-weapon ships where all systems exist to support the weapon.

Breen : "#%$& $*&#@ #@^&." Not much is known of Breen design philosophy, but it seems to emphasize energy/power systems. So Breen ships tend to have good support systems to power their energy weapons.

Gorn : "I'm tougher than you are." Their ships would have basic offense and support systems, and they'd be painfully slow, but they'd be so massively armored that taking one down would be a real challenge. (Note: There are no Gorn ships in canon Star Trek... but there should be. ) )

These look like a good start point. I'm lazy, so when I started I had the Cardassians loaded in with the Dominion, not in the least because they only have two ships, three counting the shuttle. I vote starting with the big four (Starfleet, the KDF, the Imperial Star Navy, and the Dominion), and expanding from there. Borg in particular will be a pain in the *** because they are explicitly overpowered in canon so writers don't have to worry about finding other dangerous antagonists.

3 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Do I happen to be re-watching the Dominion War?

Yes. Yes I am.

Right Now.

I wish I could be. DS9 was my favorite of the series, which given the reviews of Discovery are inclining me to at some point get my hands on that show.

Additionally, when we want more ships or want to outsource the work of differentiating them, I play Star Trek: Online, which is set about 30ish years after TNG (current in game year is 2412 but being Star Trek everything is still around), but the array of ships available to players is best described as dizzying. Everything (and I mean everything ) from TNG era onwards is prominent in game, so we can have that as a fallback if push becomes shove.

If I had to give any sound advice in designing and scaling this game, it would be this.

IGNORE THE BORG .

6 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

This is where that list came from...

http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2007/07/comparative-rankings-of-starships-in.html

Haven't finished reading it all yet much less checked any of it for inacurracies.

I am reviewing this right now. It looks like we tripped over the same categories, but I broke out Science into Exotic (science used to kill people/otherwise cause mayhem) and Overall Technology. The latter lets you say that the armament and durability of two ships (example the original Enterprise and a D7) are roughly equal, but Enterprise 's tech rating is higher, reflecting that the D7 design is a brute force ship, whereas the Starfleet ship relies on technological superiority to the same end.

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

If I had to give any sound advice in designing and scaling this game, it would be this.

IGNORE THE BORG .

Yeah, I second this. Borg are dead last. We can do the Undine (STO's name for Species 8472) first.

Yep, concentrate on the "Big 3" first.

Dominion/Cardassian then evolves as a natural 4th.

At that point, decide wether you really need to go any further.

12 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

If I had to give any sound advice in designing and scaling this game, it would be this.

IGNORE THE BORG .

Third vote for this. I do love the Borg though.

I agree big 3.

I'll be honest Im excited to do the gorn. Low manuvering, crazy toughness, high powered close range. I loved playing them in those Starfleet command games way back when.

Definitely though the Klingons should be redicoulsly offensive based. Not that they are orks or anything but their design ethos would seem to value frontal conflict and winning and surviving through the star trek equivalent of a slugfest. While they do have cloaking tech they use it more in the manner to move forces undetected rather than a combat ability. Again not saying they won't use it in that fashion, but they do prefer the frontal assault ( when tactically reasonable). So strong front firing arcs and sheilds, defence tokens that reward tanking dmg like contain or brace. In terms of hull and manouvers they should be balance because you can't fight if you can't move but you still need to take a hit. Subsytems should be limited and weapons, and crew only. Maybe something to increase manouvers but not really speed.

Romulans, should be the faction most rewarded for a-symmetric warfare. Maybe some cool rules for cloaking, and ambushes from cloak. They should have probably the most extensive upgrades and upgrade bars. Low direct combat capabilities, but upgrades that make what they do have devastating in the right circumstances. I think low hull decent sheilds, defence tokens should be more redirect and evade. Should be fast and handle like ****. Should be a faction that rewards the patient.