As far as i understand it each ship in game will need a brief description describing it's history, capabilities or what ever you would feel is necessary.

I know Dafedz is generally handling all or most background information regarding a good chunk of the content ingame. He has already written descritpions for some of the federation ships, though i'am unsure if he has written any more for the other races.

Considering the large!!! number of ships, not even including the minor race ships, the fact that a lot of ships have very little info on them, i'am sure some can see what a huge task it may be to write descriptions for each of them.

Now i know there are people out there who want to contribute but perhaps feel they can't because they can't code or model new ships or create musical content etc.

However if you want to add a little of yourself to the game and feel creative enough, here is one way which though arduous doesn't require years of programming knoweldge etc.

A list of ships which are ingame can be found at Dafedz excellant website:

http://www.trekmania.net/temp_files/botf2_home.htm

Any volunteers feel free to post.

Regards Wolfe

Thanks Wolfe. Yes we need someone to do that and more.

Also if you are more artistically inclined but do not want to take the time to learn 3D models try some 2D art here:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2388

Yes, this is a good idea Wolfe. 90% of the ships have no description yet, and this is something we will eventually need. I'll set this thread as an announcement and rename it so people know that it's a job thread.

This is still a work in progress. I assure you several of the descriptions are done for the other empire ships, but as I never completed them all I didn't upload it to the DB, but it is in hand and the work continues. Are they specifically required post haste? If so np, I will speed things up a bit and update..

No, these's no rush Daf coz I can add the descriptions whenever. I haven't started sorting out the ships in the editor yet as i'm just tidying up the last few buildings now and making sure they work correctly in the game. Once i've done that, i'll compile updated lists of the structures that are in need of images etc. Zeleni has been kindly churning out images for me in anticipation of this, but if anyone has any useable images please send them to me with info on the origins of the images and whether permission to use the images in the game has been both sought, and, most importantly, has been given.

Hi, I'm currently a History student at University and Star Trek history is certainly one of my personal interests. I would be willing to contribute writings on anything to do with Star Trek history. Many thanks.

Welcomes to the collective Capt. We here are all thankful for what help we can get.

Hey there Capt.SSBanwait, welcome to the forums!

The big historyish/writing thing that we've got at the moment is writing descriptions for the starships in the game. You chose the right thread to introduce yourself in then.

Information in the starship descriptions on how the ships were designed, who designed them, where they were designed, etc etc would certainly give the game a more authentic feel. Are you up to the challenge?

Okay here's an update, as I had a little time today. The first is a revision of the Federation ship descriptions, as they needed work, and some entirely new text for the Scouts which until now were entirely absent:

Federation Ship Descriptions

And also below is the first Cardassian submission. Note that they are a little shorter than the Federation ones (although we do know more in canon of the Feds), but I hope to get round to expanding them in due course...

Cardassian Ship Descriptions

cheers

WTF? The Nova doesn't look anything like a Defiant. How the hell can it be a modified defiant class????

Thats probably a typo, but i've read elsewhere that the basic Nova design - or at least some of the technologies used on board - originated from the Defiant project. The Nova and Defiant are definitely related.

Check this http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Nova_class. The DS9 tech manual had a picture of what the Defiant pathfinder was supposed to look like before the Borg threat forced a redesign (looks like the Nova, or more accurately the Nova looks like it). The model creator of the Nova later used this design to make the Nova class for Voyager. Without this info the description does appear confusing, perhaps it can be added (Dafedz, and anyone else what do you think?).

Also, Dafedz, a little while ago I volunteered to help with ship descriptions, but I was waiting to see if you would update the database with additional descriptions which you did with new Cardassian ship descriptions. Don't know if you want/need any help with descriptions of ships, but if you do let me know.

Thanks for pointing that out and backing up my Nova Class description. The Defiant Pathfinder thing is no mystery or secret, the Nova was an offshoot of that project: fact.

(Rest assured, I, Dafedz am a Trek guru, best perhaps to check facts first eh Trashman before issuing a challenge..)

Here's more info on it:
http://www.neutralzone.de/database/Federation/Other/Four-NacelledDefiantPathfinder.htm

And this below is my own model of a kind of next gen Pathfinder refit design, which I tagged Resistance class.

(change *** to www): http://***.trekmania.net/art/resistance1.jpg

Anyway I had thought it was common knowledge, or was to anyone worth their Treknology salt etc. I don't think the decription needs extra clarification; those who know have the fact validated, those who know little or nothing at all about Fed ships have enough to go on. Besides, it states that it derived of the Defiant Pathfinder design, not the Defiant itself.

And Steg, by all means have a crack with some descriptions. The other empires (although I've done some) are yet to be completed.

Quick question Dafedz, currently there is a separate construction ship for Supremacy in addition to a transport. Will construction ships have an entry into your database, or is this just only for Supremacy? Currently in Supremacy the Starbase construction and invasion functions are in two different ship classes.

The discussions over the roles of these ships has gone on for almost two years over multiple threads, and i'm not really sure it has ever been fully resolved.

We originally started off with a single ship that we called the Transport. This ship was the everything ship; it was your Troop Transport, your Construction ship, and your resource Freighter.

But some people didn't like the idea of an everything ship, so we diversified it into three separate designs; the Troop Transport, the Construction Ship, and the Freighter.

We then decided to scrap the Freighter design; it would be too tedious for players to constantly haul resources around the galaxy, and the raiding system in BOTF worked well enough. This decision had quite an impact on the minor race shiplist though, because a lot of their ships were designated as Freighters, so they had to be reclassified.

So we're now in a situation with two designs; the Troop Transport and the Construction ship. The Federation are actually the only race with an implemented Construction ship in the game; i'll rectify this when I start my ingame shiplist and stats updates. I doubt the discussion on the roles of these ships is over though, so if you have any comments then please post about them.

Version one of the models includes multiple transport ships for each major race. Each major races also gets one construction / fabricator ship. These should not to be confused with the multiple colony ships each major race gets. Major races also get medical / triage ships. I will have to play the game some more to understand how all this works.

Thanks for a further elaboration, I have gathered that there has been a long and exhaustive discussion on what ships to include, I only asked Dafedz about it because his database currently does not include a construction ship, nor any stats for one. I assume this is because the database is a resource for more than one game based on BOTF.

I am doing some descriptions for ships and his transport descriptions include the construction capability of making stations/starbases, which in Supremacy is now the function of the construction ship. I was hoping Dafedz or someone could tell me whether the database should be kept generic so all the fan games associated with the site can use it, and I should just write a description of transports that make starbases as well as carry troops, or whether I should make a separate description for a construction ship (or descriptions for the database and a separate version of them for Supremacy).

As it stands the descriptions of transports will have to be modified for Supremacy and a new construction ship description added.

Thoughts?

Whilst Dafedz's database is intended to be used by multiple games, in reality it is most specifically used for Supremacy. Over the last couple of months, me and Dafedz have been working on the Buildings side of the database rather than the ships side. (Since i'm working on the buildings updates first) It is entirely possible Dafedz didn't realise about this change in the shiplist. He is working on the ship descriptions at the moment though so will probably realise himself before long that something isn't right. I'll send him one of my uber PM's with a list of updates that I think are needed once i'm done with the buildings.



Actually this is something I have been doing myself with some of the buildings. I've been trying to write out out instances of where a specific Empire is mentioned, but i'm otherwise leaving them out as they are. If you could do the same, that would be useful. Obviously that's impossible with really well-known designs, ie canon. This will be a much easier process for the non-canon designs though.

Just to clear up the confusion, this is how I believe the different designs will work in the game. I've written descriptions like this before, but as there is still confusion and things may have changed since then, please disregard those other descriptions now and just read this one.

Colony Ship
Same role as in BOTF. Colony ships are unarmed ships (Klingon colony ships are armed however) with very weak hulls (Because of their modular, deconstructable form) that can colonize systems, and will eventually terraform planets. Terraforming will work differently to BOTF, and will physically cause planets to change class, (Eg. Arctic to Oceanic) not just simply make them inhabitable. Terraforming has not yet been implemented in the game, but will be based on the preferred planet type of the developing species, for example, Humans/Federation prefer Terran planets. Their terraforming attempts will therefore shift planets towards terran. The Cardassians prefer Deserts so their efforts will shift planet types towards Desert planets. (Population is also based on prefered planet type, so if a system containing only Desert planets was occupied by Cardassians, it would have a higher max population than if Humans had occupied that same system)


Construction Ship
A new ship design, the construction ship builds all of the stations in the game; Refuel Depots, Science Stations, Outposts, and Starbases. It is unarmed and poorly defended, but has moderately good hull strength. To my knowledge, we have not discussed the possibility of giving this ship some repair abilities for Stations and/or ships.


Troop Transport
Troop Transports have roughly the same role as in BOTF. They ferry troops around for planetary combat situations. They are usually unarmed (Klingon Troop transports have some light defensive armaments) and have heavily armored hulls to protect their precious troops. They rarely survive space-based combat however. They are NOT needed for the construction of stations, although the question of where Stations get their crews from has not been answered so this may change in future. Troop transports will also be extremely useful for planetary evacuations. (Eg if you know a devastating event is going to happen, eg. Borg invasion or the star is going to go Nova)


Hospital Ship
Another new design, Hospital ships are the most combat-capable of the unarmed ship designs. They are essentially starships in their own right, capable of performing limited research and exploration missions, and have extremely strong hulls and shields compared to the other non-combat designs. The late Hospital Ship designs are also armed. But the Hospital Ships excel at curing plagues and raising population health. Systems with low population health are highly likely to become infected with plagues, but this can be combatted by building special population health buildings, or keeping ships in the system; all ships in the game will have some inherent population health capability, but the health capability of the Hospital Ships will be equivalent to that of a small fleet. Plagues will randomly affect systems during the game, sort of like a random event, albeit a extremely common one compared to some of the other randoms. Plagues will quickly kill off large proportions of a systems population unless a Hospital Ship treats the infected. Non-Hospital Ships that visit an infected system will also have a small chance of spreading the plague to other systems they visit. Sending Hospital Ships to treat plagues in another races' system will result in a big improvement in relations with that race. Conversely, spreading plagues to another race will result in a big drop in relations. Like the Troop Transports, Hospital Ships also have an extremely high population evacuation capabilty.

Thanks Matress_Of_Evil!

In the beginning the database was established and compiled to support the original BOTF2 game, led by Gavin and Jig, long before Supemacy or even BoTE. But with other games coming into development over time I've purposely kept it reasonably generic, as you say, to support them all wherever needed. But Supremacy is its main focus I suppose, BoTE more or less evolving independently for a long while before becoming involved with afc.

As stated on the homepage of the DB, it was largely drawn from my own vision and interpretation of what a BOTF successor could or should ideally be like -- in combination with the Masterplan and numerous other inputs from the afc community. But anyway, the Construction ship thing was never part of that vision or masterplan, and has developed more recently.

Personally, (and this is just my opinion) I don't see much of a need for it. A). It is a spurious designation as far as canon is concerned, and B). greatly expands the shiplist when you consider at least 2 will be required per empire (along with 2 separate Troop Transports). The function of station builds and invasion rolled into one multi-purpose auxillary worked perfectly well in BOTF, so I didn't see any need for that to differ in a sequel. The only difference now being that, in relation to its multi-purpose adaptibility a type simply called 'Transport' and not 'Troop Transport', better describes its role.

But it's only a matter of opinion. If the consensus is that both a Construction ship and a Troop ship is the better way to go, then no problem. It would simply be a matter of editing the existing DB description of 'Transport' into two separate descriptions for each.

Yes, thanks to both of you for explaining all that. We can get a better feel for how it works with more play testing.

People haven't mentioned my comment yet about the Construction Ships though - could they have some sort of repair ability? Or should this be tacked onto the aforementioned Transport as an extra feature? Shoud this feature even be in the game? How would it work? Would it cost resources or be free? And how would repairs be handled by the game in the first place?

It seamed like most ships in Star Trek could do a lot of repair on there own. I guess helping others and some more efficiently than others would work.

Yeh I think a self-repair function is the way to go, as in Botf. It would be unworkable to have to deploy a special ship to repair all the ships of your scattered fleet. We have seen numerous examples in Trek of the self-sufficiency of starships, and crews conducting their own repairs (good old Scotty, Geordi etc)...

Perhaps we can set up kind of modifier to determine the exact speed and effectiveness of repairs, based on hull intregrity. For example: +5% hull repair per turn for the smaller ships, +10% for Cruisers/warships, +15% for Commands. Add to this also Stations and Starbases which could supply an additional +25%, but would only come into effect if the said ship was in the same system as the base.

I had originally proposed that damaged ships could 'dock' in one of the build slots of a shipyard or one of the docking ports of a space station for repair. This would accelerate the repair process significantly. I've since put the idea on the back burner because it seemed like too much micro-management, and it would complicate the user interface. I haven't ruled it out, but I'm not looking to make a decision any time soon either.

We've also seen ships sending crews over to help with repairs though. Whether it was a case of a lack of spare parts, a lack of manpower, a lack of power, or simply a lack of time, there were some situations where the resources available to repair a ship just weren't enough. Being able to increase another ships repair rate at a resource cost would be the most realistic way of implementing it into the game, even if it was further restricted to large cruisers or a specialist repair ship.

...Of course, this ignores the question of whether it is a desirable function that would increase the playability of the game. It's your decision in the long run Mike; I just wanted to get the ball rolling on the repair subject. At least the idea has been raised and discussed, whatever your eventual decision may be.

Just as a quick update for this thread, Dafedz has been working on the descriptions for the Federation and Cardassians. The ship descriptions for these Empires are now complete.

All comments on the descriptions are welcome however, so please post here if you would like to suggest changes.

Federation Ship Descriptions
Cardassian Ship Descriptions

We currently have no descriptions for the Klingons, Romulans, or Dominion, however. Please post here if you would like to have a go at writing some descriptions.

The Shiplists

I would like to help if i can. I think i could help in this department with whatever you need me to. I am guessing that it is just a paragraph on the ship containing capabilities and some history?

Yeah, that's precisely the sort of the thing we're after. Check out the Federation and Cardassian ship descriptions if you need inspiration and as a guide for the sort of thing we're looking for. I'll let Dafedz know that you would like to help as well.

Do you just want the paragraphs in a normal text file?