Navian
Inactive Member
This thread is meant to discuss one of the alternatives I proposed to the previous starship submission guidelines submission we voted on. I propose a set of guidelines for submitting new starships to the NTSE, based on their faction and role. Unlike the previous submission, these guidelines are intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive, and focus more on a ship's qualities than on any system of numbers.
For example, guidelines for Star Army ships are likely to explain what features are most important to the Star Army. I don't presume to know what qualities are appropriate to all Star Army vessels, though among these I'd list 'ultra-high tech', 'aether weaponry', and 'comfortable crew quarters', in contrast to Freespacer vessels, which rely on concepts such as 'failover', 'inertial control/solar sail-based propulsion', and 'nukes and radiation'.
Most people probably will already know factions have these inclinations before they design ships for them, but a detailed list makes it easier to maintain consensus and avoid confusion, particularly if an FM might otherwise have been reluctant to pin down what makes their faction's starships unique. More importantly, these guidelines will help NTSE staff assist designers without as much attention from FMs, and work together more closely with FMs to govern submissions.
I've explained basic faction guidelines, I'll move on to roles now, starting by giving descriptions of two largely universal examples that I hope won't be controversial. Starship roles are similar to, but not quite the same as starship classes. A fleet is made of starships in various roles working together.
Merchant fleets are mostly made up of freight liner vessels that travel the same route over and over with pre-arranged freight. These tend to be very large. Sometimes they're armed, or travel in convoys to stay safe from commerce raiding or piracy, but they often have moderate defenses just for navigational purposes. They tend to have the smallest crews they can to save money, which means they still tend to have large enough crews to work multiple shifts, to reduce liability. Heavy freighters tend to work in the freight liner role, the Origin Industries Caravan may be a good example of both.
Merchant fleets also include tramp freighters. These are smaller vessels that tend to pick up freight outside the main lines that no one else wants, lots that are too small for big ships to bother with or don't want to wait. They have more freedom to travel to interesting places, tend to have even smaller crews--sometimes as low as one to three, especially when independently operated--and are frequently less well-maintained. Despite their name, they often carry speculative cargo instead of freight. All these factors made them excellent plotships, especially for Independent plots. The light freighter class of ships often fills the tramp freighter role. The USO Broadsword is an example of this type of ship.
After ship roles have been defined, ships can be connected to them, just as they're already connected to ship classes. Ship classes tend to be defined in terms of a ship's physical characteristics while roles describe its purpose, this is why they often overlap. A ship can be used for many roles--there are even dedicated 'multi-purpose vessels' that are meant for a wide range of them. But, in general, a ship can be assumed to function best in its intended role, especially if that role is specialized. This is tempered by how much emphasis a faction puts on technology suited for ships in a given role, and by how 'advanced' a faction is in general.
All we need to know is, for example, that the Star Army of Yamatai has a significant technological advantage in the setting that allows its designs to sacrifice some efficiency, that it favours 'lightning bruiser' designs, and that its most famous equipment at the starship scale ranges from gunships to cruisers to battleships, and this will tell us both that Star Army ships meeting the above description will be highly effective, and that slow, weak, or brutally efficient Yamataian vessels should receive extra scrutiny from the NTSE staff, and probably be revised to improve them. For other factions, 'slow, weak, and brutally efficient' may well be exactly what they need, and it's anything else that should receive extra scrutiny.
More information can help with this further; missing from the above example, notably, is any description of what weapons the faction customarily uses, or how. Star Army starships rely on missiles only as secondary weapons, so a Star Army ship that uses missiles as its primary should either be underwhelming to the point where we'd question if it should be approved at all, or else highly specialized into a niche role. If we don't want missiles to predominate the setting, it's likely we should reserve their use as primary weapons to factions that have a technological disadvantage, so that any but the most specialized ships from them can be assumed to have underwhelming performance.
Don't forget DR isn't everything! A ship packing 10,000 tier 15 missiles, even one that can launch them all simultaneously, still loses the battle if its target dodges them, shoots down the few that lock on, and/or the ship firing them malfunctions or misses outright. If a ship that 'shouldn't' be powerful fights a ship that 'should', taking the situation and tech difference into account, GMs can still have the best ship win, no matter what the numbers say. There's always a good way to use GM fiat in such cases, and more cohesive descriptions and greater consensus stemming from these guidelines may make it easier to assert.
Not all factions will have or even consider having ships in all roles. They might also have ships in the same role with divergent implementations. For example, one faction may require that all battleships be submersible, while others won't bother to make them capable of entering atmosphere. One race might consider a ship 200 meters long to be a battleship, while another won't accept anything less than a kilometer, or base it on the number of guns it has (using their own definition of 'guns'). So, each faction defines the roles in its fleet independently, and might change these at any time. Think of them as semi-official designations, or a wish list in the case of roles which have no ships to serve in them yet.
This concludes the overview of how starship design guidelines can be created for each faction and role. Since these guidelines are only relevant to designers and the NTSE, and FMs and the setting manager are the only other parties involved, I would recommend organizing them into their own pages, in each faction's namespace, starting with a general description of the faction's starship technology and the purpose of its fleet--as well as can be described--followed by a list of the fleet's roles (with example ships, if available), and finally descriptions of the roles themselves.
FMs can customize these pages to encourage designers to work on ships for the most desirable roles, and staff can ask for edits if there's something they're wary of. This should work to preempt totally unexpected or unacceptable designs, because FMs won't have asked for them, and should make it much easier for staff to exercise their judgement, as they will be able to see immediately what about a design is or isn't consistent with a faction's design philosophy, or given requirements. It will also provide an overarching resource for anyone who doesn't know what a ship 'should' be, although the ship's pages themselves should answer that in their opening paragraphs, and perhaps these pages will help designers convey that more efficiently.
As I'm not an FM, I can't write a true example page, but here's a substitute based on the subfaction I created:
The Shravana Hive fleet of the Freespacers endures in a star system hazardous to space travel, operating out of an underground hangar within their home planetoid. Though they have plentiful living room, the small colony has limited resources, and their fleet would be better described as a militia than a standing military. In particular, they are unable to manufacture FTL drives.
Due to their environment, their ships are extremely well-hardened against EM radiation and spring back rapidly when their systems are disabled, though their sedentary lifestyles and pacifistic nature encourage them to sacrifice long endurance and heavy armour. Their ship structures are crystalline or made of light metal, and their hulls are formed from slag or ceramics. The overall form of their ships tend to be very basic and utilitarian, but their surface features are often highly decorative.
Shravana Hive ships are generally competent in electronic warfare, mining, and salvage operations. In battle, they usually rely on long range guns and defensive tactics, rather than on maneuvers, though their ships are more agile and less durable than this strategy would suggest. Though they are capable of ambush and subterfuge, only rogue elements of the faction are likely to rely on them except in desperate situations, so systems to support such tactics are modular additions to existing designs, not standard features of any.
The Shravana Hive fleet has the following roles for starships:
Flagship
The Shravana Hive flagship, while functional for fleet command, primarily serves a diplomatic role. It is prestigious, the most imposing vessel in the fleet, and completely unarmed. It needs to coordinate fleet actions and be available anywhere the command crew or its diplomats are in demand, so it ideally has greater endurance and speed than other vessels.
Examples: The SHS Nirvana
(Note: Ignoring for a moment that it's a refurbished Yui-class scout, the Nirvana also deviates from its stated role in that it's a more effective support and logistics vessel than its role requires. It's up to the NTSE staff to decide if such deviations make a ship better or worse for the setting, and up to the managers to decide if their guidelines should be adjusted to better include or exclude such deviations.)
Workhorse
The Shravana Hive's workhorse vessels are slow and heavy by their standards, although the sector at large would classify them as light corvettes. They are jacks-of-all-trades and may possess heavy firepower, though they tend to have few tactical options, aside from the potential to be used as Q-ships. Workhorses are most often used to carry cargo or collect salvage, though when there's a call to arms, they are the last line of defense. Because the Shravana Hive has so few starships, it is essential to be able to outfit these ships for any mission within a few days time, thus the basic design is likely to be little more than a skeleton.
(The Nomad-class corvette suits this role superbly, though, to be fair, the Hive probably would not even consider using Q-ships if the design hadn't been made for them, first. This is still working as intended, though--I expect FMs to edit these articles in response to new designs!)
Fighter
For the Shravana Hive, the 'fighter' role does not describe smallcraft--as they cannot maintain carriers--but rather a small sort of gunship. They possess immense firepower and a variety of tactical options for use at short and/or long range, and they are--at least by Hive standards--brutally effective at gunnery. Though they have room for one body aboard, they do not carry crew into battle unless defending their home star system.
They have short endurance for starships, able to travel between stars in the one system and not beyond, but can still engage in interstellar expeditions so long as a support vessel is available.
Shravana Hive fighters are not especially fast by sector standards, but they are among the most maneuverable vessels available. Due to the limits of their technology, this comes at a cost: When making evasive maneuvers, fast attacks, or dogfighting with other vessels, pilot skill is of the utmost importance to maintain control. Little else about them remains relevant unless their systems start failing, or they accidentally fling themselves out of engagement range. As this tends to make battle results wildly difficult to predict, the Shravana Hive only sends fighters into close combat as a last resort.
All Shravana Hive fighters are obsolete by sector standards, which is reflected in their fragility and poor reliability. Some upgrades would be desirable. Their agility and firepower remain more than adequate.
(The Shravana Hive fighter is the Phantasm Mk I. The Mk II isn't necessarily what they want, but the flaws in the current design have been clearly identified, and it's suggested that some sacrifices could be made if anyone were to design a new 'fighter' for them. Ultimately, it's up to the setting manager to decide what language should be permitted in these articles, but presumably, the same guidelines against bombastic language apply here as much as anywhere.
The importance of their pilots means they're probably not going to be willing to adopt a more conventional gunship design. These ships are also the mainstay of their military, which explains the relatively rigid and extensive description of the role. I've failed to mention that their pilots would rebel if one was offered, but if it came up, I might add more information on this aspect to the article.)
Traveller Shuttle
(This is already a role, not a class of ship, so this article serves as an especially detailed example of what I'm describing. Nothing I could write here would be likely to improve on it. I could make it shorter and trim out the specifics, but the article serves a dual purpose of describing a role and a series of ship designs already. If you're lucky enough to have one of these in your faction, I'd recommend linking to it, rather than reiterating.)
(The Shravana Hive's vessels without FTL capabilities--which makes them spaceships, not starships--are not considered relevant to the article, or even particularly relevant to the RP in general. If your faction has a demand for exceptional craft of this type--hulking monitor vessels, for instance--I would list them here at the bottom, though. Mind you, saving the flagship for last is fine, too--these articles belong to factions, the only limit on what the FMs can do with them is what the site staff allows. I'm only providing recommendations.)
And that's the example. I'm particularly concerned about how to keep this practical for everyone to use, and prevent fights from breaking out over conflicts of interest. I don't think we need any central articles, and so I've only proposed faction articles, but it might be better to establish a separate baseline, at least for some things. There's no article telling us about space combat technology and tactics generalized across all factions, for example; maybe there should be, or maybe not. Something such an article could tell us is what the role of mecha or smallcraft in space combat is meant to be in this setting, which could be very relevant to many ship designs, and something some FMs may be leery of passing judgement on.
This is not a setting submission so much as a proposal for many of them, but if the proposal is accepted by even one FM it should provide immediate benefits not just to them, but to everyone, once their guidelines article is approved. Though these guidelines are most relevant to ship designers, and creating new starships takes time, the act of creating the guidelines will give the FM and everyone else a clearer idea of the faction's starships and its goals for them, both in the long and short term.
I don't expect it will be possible to apply these guidelines effectively to starships that have already been designed but have not yet been approved, but I don't foresee any difficulty with retroactively describing ships that are already a part of the setting, as I did in the example above. There are no strict rules to follow. FMs of factions that have not been established yet will need to put effort into figuring out their own theme and flavour before creating an article will be useful for them, but there's no pressure to do so, at least not from me. Such work would be for their own good in the long run--if players don't understand a faction thematically, how can they grow attached to it? And what motivation does anyone else have to interact with them?
That's all for now. I'll be ready for questions and comments, and hear out any suggestions.
For example, guidelines for Star Army ships are likely to explain what features are most important to the Star Army. I don't presume to know what qualities are appropriate to all Star Army vessels, though among these I'd list 'ultra-high tech', 'aether weaponry', and 'comfortable crew quarters', in contrast to Freespacer vessels, which rely on concepts such as 'failover', 'inertial control/solar sail-based propulsion', and 'nukes and radiation'.
Most people probably will already know factions have these inclinations before they design ships for them, but a detailed list makes it easier to maintain consensus and avoid confusion, particularly if an FM might otherwise have been reluctant to pin down what makes their faction's starships unique. More importantly, these guidelines will help NTSE staff assist designers without as much attention from FMs, and work together more closely with FMs to govern submissions.
I've explained basic faction guidelines, I'll move on to roles now, starting by giving descriptions of two largely universal examples that I hope won't be controversial. Starship roles are similar to, but not quite the same as starship classes. A fleet is made of starships in various roles working together.
Merchant fleets are mostly made up of freight liner vessels that travel the same route over and over with pre-arranged freight. These tend to be very large. Sometimes they're armed, or travel in convoys to stay safe from commerce raiding or piracy, but they often have moderate defenses just for navigational purposes. They tend to have the smallest crews they can to save money, which means they still tend to have large enough crews to work multiple shifts, to reduce liability. Heavy freighters tend to work in the freight liner role, the Origin Industries Caravan may be a good example of both.
Merchant fleets also include tramp freighters. These are smaller vessels that tend to pick up freight outside the main lines that no one else wants, lots that are too small for big ships to bother with or don't want to wait. They have more freedom to travel to interesting places, tend to have even smaller crews--sometimes as low as one to three, especially when independently operated--and are frequently less well-maintained. Despite their name, they often carry speculative cargo instead of freight. All these factors made them excellent plotships, especially for Independent plots. The light freighter class of ships often fills the tramp freighter role. The USO Broadsword is an example of this type of ship.
After ship roles have been defined, ships can be connected to them, just as they're already connected to ship classes. Ship classes tend to be defined in terms of a ship's physical characteristics while roles describe its purpose, this is why they often overlap. A ship can be used for many roles--there are even dedicated 'multi-purpose vessels' that are meant for a wide range of them. But, in general, a ship can be assumed to function best in its intended role, especially if that role is specialized. This is tempered by how much emphasis a faction puts on technology suited for ships in a given role, and by how 'advanced' a faction is in general.
All we need to know is, for example, that the Star Army of Yamatai has a significant technological advantage in the setting that allows its designs to sacrifice some efficiency, that it favours 'lightning bruiser' designs, and that its most famous equipment at the starship scale ranges from gunships to cruisers to battleships, and this will tell us both that Star Army ships meeting the above description will be highly effective, and that slow, weak, or brutally efficient Yamataian vessels should receive extra scrutiny from the NTSE staff, and probably be revised to improve them. For other factions, 'slow, weak, and brutally efficient' may well be exactly what they need, and it's anything else that should receive extra scrutiny.
More information can help with this further; missing from the above example, notably, is any description of what weapons the faction customarily uses, or how. Star Army starships rely on missiles only as secondary weapons, so a Star Army ship that uses missiles as its primary should either be underwhelming to the point where we'd question if it should be approved at all, or else highly specialized into a niche role. If we don't want missiles to predominate the setting, it's likely we should reserve their use as primary weapons to factions that have a technological disadvantage, so that any but the most specialized ships from them can be assumed to have underwhelming performance.
Don't forget DR isn't everything! A ship packing 10,000 tier 15 missiles, even one that can launch them all simultaneously, still loses the battle if its target dodges them, shoots down the few that lock on, and/or the ship firing them malfunctions or misses outright. If a ship that 'shouldn't' be powerful fights a ship that 'should', taking the situation and tech difference into account, GMs can still have the best ship win, no matter what the numbers say. There's always a good way to use GM fiat in such cases, and more cohesive descriptions and greater consensus stemming from these guidelines may make it easier to assert.
Not all factions will have or even consider having ships in all roles. They might also have ships in the same role with divergent implementations. For example, one faction may require that all battleships be submersible, while others won't bother to make them capable of entering atmosphere. One race might consider a ship 200 meters long to be a battleship, while another won't accept anything less than a kilometer, or base it on the number of guns it has (using their own definition of 'guns'). So, each faction defines the roles in its fleet independently, and might change these at any time. Think of them as semi-official designations, or a wish list in the case of roles which have no ships to serve in them yet.
This concludes the overview of how starship design guidelines can be created for each faction and role. Since these guidelines are only relevant to designers and the NTSE, and FMs and the setting manager are the only other parties involved, I would recommend organizing them into their own pages, in each faction's namespace, starting with a general description of the faction's starship technology and the purpose of its fleet--as well as can be described--followed by a list of the fleet's roles (with example ships, if available), and finally descriptions of the roles themselves.
FMs can customize these pages to encourage designers to work on ships for the most desirable roles, and staff can ask for edits if there's something they're wary of. This should work to preempt totally unexpected or unacceptable designs, because FMs won't have asked for them, and should make it much easier for staff to exercise their judgement, as they will be able to see immediately what about a design is or isn't consistent with a faction's design philosophy, or given requirements. It will also provide an overarching resource for anyone who doesn't know what a ship 'should' be, although the ship's pages themselves should answer that in their opening paragraphs, and perhaps these pages will help designers convey that more efficiently.
As I'm not an FM, I can't write a true example page, but here's a substitute based on the subfaction I created:
The Shravana Hive fleet of the Freespacers endures in a star system hazardous to space travel, operating out of an underground hangar within their home planetoid. Though they have plentiful living room, the small colony has limited resources, and their fleet would be better described as a militia than a standing military. In particular, they are unable to manufacture FTL drives.
Due to their environment, their ships are extremely well-hardened against EM radiation and spring back rapidly when their systems are disabled, though their sedentary lifestyles and pacifistic nature encourage them to sacrifice long endurance and heavy armour. Their ship structures are crystalline or made of light metal, and their hulls are formed from slag or ceramics. The overall form of their ships tend to be very basic and utilitarian, but their surface features are often highly decorative.
Shravana Hive ships are generally competent in electronic warfare, mining, and salvage operations. In battle, they usually rely on long range guns and defensive tactics, rather than on maneuvers, though their ships are more agile and less durable than this strategy would suggest. Though they are capable of ambush and subterfuge, only rogue elements of the faction are likely to rely on them except in desperate situations, so systems to support such tactics are modular additions to existing designs, not standard features of any.
The Shravana Hive fleet has the following roles for starships:
Flagship
The Shravana Hive flagship, while functional for fleet command, primarily serves a diplomatic role. It is prestigious, the most imposing vessel in the fleet, and completely unarmed. It needs to coordinate fleet actions and be available anywhere the command crew or its diplomats are in demand, so it ideally has greater endurance and speed than other vessels.
Examples: The SHS Nirvana
(Note: Ignoring for a moment that it's a refurbished Yui-class scout, the Nirvana also deviates from its stated role in that it's a more effective support and logistics vessel than its role requires. It's up to the NTSE staff to decide if such deviations make a ship better or worse for the setting, and up to the managers to decide if their guidelines should be adjusted to better include or exclude such deviations.)
Workhorse
The Shravana Hive's workhorse vessels are slow and heavy by their standards, although the sector at large would classify them as light corvettes. They are jacks-of-all-trades and may possess heavy firepower, though they tend to have few tactical options, aside from the potential to be used as Q-ships. Workhorses are most often used to carry cargo or collect salvage, though when there's a call to arms, they are the last line of defense. Because the Shravana Hive has so few starships, it is essential to be able to outfit these ships for any mission within a few days time, thus the basic design is likely to be little more than a skeleton.
(The Nomad-class corvette suits this role superbly, though, to be fair, the Hive probably would not even consider using Q-ships if the design hadn't been made for them, first. This is still working as intended, though--I expect FMs to edit these articles in response to new designs!)
Fighter
For the Shravana Hive, the 'fighter' role does not describe smallcraft--as they cannot maintain carriers--but rather a small sort of gunship. They possess immense firepower and a variety of tactical options for use at short and/or long range, and they are--at least by Hive standards--brutally effective at gunnery. Though they have room for one body aboard, they do not carry crew into battle unless defending their home star system.
They have short endurance for starships, able to travel between stars in the one system and not beyond, but can still engage in interstellar expeditions so long as a support vessel is available.
Shravana Hive fighters are not especially fast by sector standards, but they are among the most maneuverable vessels available. Due to the limits of their technology, this comes at a cost: When making evasive maneuvers, fast attacks, or dogfighting with other vessels, pilot skill is of the utmost importance to maintain control. Little else about them remains relevant unless their systems start failing, or they accidentally fling themselves out of engagement range. As this tends to make battle results wildly difficult to predict, the Shravana Hive only sends fighters into close combat as a last resort.
All Shravana Hive fighters are obsolete by sector standards, which is reflected in their fragility and poor reliability. Some upgrades would be desirable. Their agility and firepower remain more than adequate.
(The Shravana Hive fighter is the Phantasm Mk I. The Mk II isn't necessarily what they want, but the flaws in the current design have been clearly identified, and it's suggested that some sacrifices could be made if anyone were to design a new 'fighter' for them. Ultimately, it's up to the setting manager to decide what language should be permitted in these articles, but presumably, the same guidelines against bombastic language apply here as much as anywhere.
The importance of their pilots means they're probably not going to be willing to adopt a more conventional gunship design. These ships are also the mainstay of their military, which explains the relatively rigid and extensive description of the role. I've failed to mention that their pilots would rebel if one was offered, but if it came up, I might add more information on this aspect to the article.)
Traveller Shuttle
(This is already a role, not a class of ship, so this article serves as an especially detailed example of what I'm describing. Nothing I could write here would be likely to improve on it. I could make it shorter and trim out the specifics, but the article serves a dual purpose of describing a role and a series of ship designs already. If you're lucky enough to have one of these in your faction, I'd recommend linking to it, rather than reiterating.)
(The Shravana Hive's vessels without FTL capabilities--which makes them spaceships, not starships--are not considered relevant to the article, or even particularly relevant to the RP in general. If your faction has a demand for exceptional craft of this type--hulking monitor vessels, for instance--I would list them here at the bottom, though. Mind you, saving the flagship for last is fine, too--these articles belong to factions, the only limit on what the FMs can do with them is what the site staff allows. I'm only providing recommendations.)
And that's the example. I'm particularly concerned about how to keep this practical for everyone to use, and prevent fights from breaking out over conflicts of interest. I don't think we need any central articles, and so I've only proposed faction articles, but it might be better to establish a separate baseline, at least for some things. There's no article telling us about space combat technology and tactics generalized across all factions, for example; maybe there should be, or maybe not. Something such an article could tell us is what the role of mecha or smallcraft in space combat is meant to be in this setting, which could be very relevant to many ship designs, and something some FMs may be leery of passing judgement on.
This is not a setting submission so much as a proposal for many of them, but if the proposal is accepted by even one FM it should provide immediate benefits not just to them, but to everyone, once their guidelines article is approved. Though these guidelines are most relevant to ship designers, and creating new starships takes time, the act of creating the guidelines will give the FM and everyone else a clearer idea of the faction's starships and its goals for them, both in the long and short term.
I don't expect it will be possible to apply these guidelines effectively to starships that have already been designed but have not yet been approved, but I don't foresee any difficulty with retroactively describing ships that are already a part of the setting, as I did in the example above. There are no strict rules to follow. FMs of factions that have not been established yet will need to put effort into figuring out their own theme and flavour before creating an article will be useful for them, but there's no pressure to do so, at least not from me. Such work would be for their own good in the long run--if players don't understand a faction thematically, how can they grow attached to it? And what motivation does anyone else have to interact with them?
That's all for now. I'll be ready for questions and comments, and hear out any suggestions.
