/STG/ - Star Trek General

Industrial replicators aren't that big. Even with them you have to replicate pieces and put them together the old-fashioned way.

Presumably, they do both, just replicate it in sections instead of the whole thing g at once.

It's probably fair to assume they don't have replicators large enough to build entire starships.

Is there an in-universe reason you can't build a replicator that big?

efficiency is probably an issue, but beyond that, I imagine it would be possible, I imagine it's mainly a difficulty thing.
Transporters don't exactly have infinite capacity either, you can't transport a starship for instance, and they're very similar technology.
However there are some materials that can't be replicated (Dilithium being a prime example)

That doesn't mean that some more advanced species didn't pull it off.

I think the important thing for a good antagonist faction/race is to establish their goals and how they conflict with the protagonists'. The what and the why. With the Ferengi, they failed to establish either in a meaningful way. The first appearance of the ferengi had them gnerally interested in power but otherwise nebulous. subsequent appearances in TNG never established that the Ferengi had an active interest in destroying the Federation. They were dodgy traders and sometimes pirates, but that's basically it.

Similarly, the Suliban failed as antagonists in Enterprise because their goals were nebulous and even the principal cast didn't really seem to know why they should be stopping them. They needed a few visits from Captain TIME to keep them on track. While the Suliban were supposed to be the primary antagonists of season 1, the Klingons were a much more imposing and impactful enemy because we knew what they were about. Conquer weaker races and enslave them. Just as the development of the Ferengi in the first 2 seasons of TNG was completely overshadowed by the return of the Romulans.

So if I were introducing a new primary or secondary antagonist, I'd make sure to demonstrate how their plans are a significant threat to the Feds, as well as how they are capable of being a legitimate threat. That doesn't necessarily have to be their true end goal, but from they get go you need to feel like they could and would shit you up, given the opportunity. For my money, the introduction of the Jem Hadar and the Dominion was the best introduction of a new antagonist in all of Trek.

>Message to Voyager
Fuck off, don't come back, tell the whale one it's not worth it either.

A big advantage of the Dominion is how much more range their transporters have. I also always liked how the Cardassians had some brutal anti-boarding tech like 'transporter shredders'.

Yeah, having a clear goal is really important since Trek is all about clashing philosophies and it keeps you from trying to let your antagonists do EVERYTHING. You want four or five more specialized enemy groups instead of one superpower unless you're using a horror like the Romulans when they're not fucking around.

Quick Survey: How bad of an idea is having a Chameloid supporting character? I really liked how Odo was portrayed in DS9 (outside of a few instances) and Chameloids seem to be the best option for a shapechanger that isn't a Founder. Now this all comes with the caveat that I don't want my players to know the character in question is not who (or what) they seem to be until either they receive some major injury or Starfleet starts going nuts with blood tests and other anti-changeling tests. That way there's a chance for the players to get to know the character before (possibly) throwing them out an airlock and/or exploiting their abilities.

By Chameloids you mean that one alien in Klingon prison planet in undiscovered country ?

You could actually dig into that. Have Chameloids be native to a planet deep in Klingon space or in contested area. That could explain why this particular Chameloid is on Federation business.

That sounds dope. Another good fear heightener; there are OTHER shapeshifting species, who are all panicking as Starfleet goes full crazy with changeling tests.

Aye that's the one. I just gotta find an appropriate bit of art that won't give her away now.

That was my thinking too. It'll make the players really think if Starfleet's paranoia is harmful or not.

Quick! Favorite ships everyone! Federation, Klingon, Cardassian or otherwise!

In Enterprise, we see a space station that uses a series of replicator appendages to repair damage to ships. Perhaps by the 24th century Starfleet is using something similar in their ship yards, instantaneously producing replacement pieces and then assembling them manually.

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Beat me to it.

The comfiest of ships.

excelsior is the only acceptable answer

As if I could say anything else.

>Federation
Gotta go with the Nebula. I just like the arrangement and proportion of all it's parts.

>Klingon
The K'tinga. I'm actually not a huge fan of the TNG aesthetic

>Cardassian
I mean, there ain't many to choose from. I quite like the look of the Galor anyway so yeah, that.

>Romulan
You know, I think I'm gonna go with the Mogai. Nemesis did a lot of shitty things, but introducing a new Romulan cruiser wasn't one of them.

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So, if we're doing multiple races, like did, then here's my updated list.

>Feddies
Steamrunner, natch.

>Klinks
Vor'cha, actually. Love that weird pitchfork thing. D7 is runner up though, just for classic looks.

>Cardies
The Keldon, probably. Big fan of the Keldon.

>Romcoms
Yeesh, not many choices here. If I can go with something from one of the games, I'll take the Griffin, out of the Armada series. If not, the Mogai then. Not a big fan of the D'Deridex.

That's interesting, though the registry number makes no sense. Got more?

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The D7 is king. Best looking Trek design even 50 years later. The K'tinga is also good.

But if we're doing multiple factions, then Excelsior, D7, and D'deridex.

I like it...feels like a TOS-era Sovereign! All of the functionality (no flimsy necks or unbalanced impulse thrust), but with a clean 60s vibe instead of post-TNG shades of gray...

I remember seeing an Excelsior conversion with almost no neck, downturned nacelles, and an AWACS-style pod coming up from the nacelle hump that was pure bonerfuel...

>Nova
Small, comfy, sufficiently loaded with space magic, comfy as fuck, sufficiently techy-looking to merit its scienciness, and somehow cute, too. Also, did I mention comfy?

>NX
Like an Akira on a diet, with better nacelle placement, and a deflector in a place that makes sense instead of a Sovvie's engineering hull growing like a tumour on the bottom of the saucer. I'm also a massive slut for the internal's NASA Trek aesthetics, too.

inb4 "pleb"
>Steamrunner is nice, but it's hardly recognisable as a Trek ship with the weird layout and the angular aesthetics. I really like the look, it's just not very Trek.
>Nebbie is nice but impractical - if it was smaller, say, Ambassador-scale instead of Galaxy-scale, I'd like it, although the justification for the kitbash (made using the bits of the Galaxy program that weren't expensive failures) is fair enough.
>Excelsior - I'm sorry - is ugly. I don't quite know what's wrong with it, but I think it's mostly because of how jarring it all looks. The teardrop engineering hull doesn't look good with the angular pylons, and a circular (instead of stretched) saucer for a ship that long is not a good look. Materials and internals are lovely, but I just don't like the overall design.

Is there an in-universe explanation, canon or not, for why Andorians just stop showing up post-TAS?

They went full-retard with the passion and honor and shit and by TNG there were only a few hundred thousand left.

They stick to their own ships because sharing a thermostat with a Human, let alone a Vulcan, is deeply unpleasant for them.

>deflector in a place that makes sense
The deflector should have been in the recessed area under the edge of said raised area-if it would have been too small, the raised region could run all the way to the edge of the saucer like attached pic
Also, the ship's name should be on the raised rectangular portion under the bridge, and the pontoons generally smoothed out (no impulse engines on saucer, bigger squared-off units a very stern)
Credit where credit is due, I got both ideas from
3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/8b03d526-3790-4847-82ad-187155059d7f/USS-Soval-Forrest-class
and
orig06.deviantart.net/47aa/f/2014/320/0/f/nx_class_new_by_aalenfae-d86pafk.jpg

That is a SEXY ship. Almost a TOS-era Soverign class. Smooth, streamlined, it looks fast even sitting still but still has the retro look. I love it!

Source? Not trying to challenge you, I'm just legitimately interested in reading this material.

The full-retard thing is from the novels.
The thermostat thing is speculation.

Do you know which novel?

Nah I just read the TVTropes shit on the novels.

>Steamrunner is nice, but it's hardly recognisable as a Trek ship with the weird layout and the angular aesthetics. I really like the look, it's just not very Trek.
You could break my heart harder, but you'd have to try. I can't argue with your choice of the Nova, since it's pretty good looking, but the NX is fucking horrible looking. It's an Akira that drank paint thinner and retarded itself into oblivion. Can't believe you're throwing shade on my shipfu but like the NX. Making me sad, user.

First is from the Typhon Pact Novels as well as Andor: Paradigm.
Latter is a soft fluff explanation tht was either made by /STG/ or might have existed in the FASA canon, what with the blue fleet.

It's in the FASA canon, though you have to dig for it. The Andorians have their own highly militant branch of Starfleet crewed by Andorians, for Andoria. They become less relevant and powerful over time as Starfleet picks up member races and downplays the military nature of their genesis.

>"we're not a military"
>is primary defense organization of federation

"Oh 40% of our fleet is specialized to deliver as many torpedoes and nuclear missiles to your face as possible, and has armored nacelles and actual marines with swords? Yeah those are for scientific and educational purposes. Look at how many pacifist Vulcans we have though!"

>and actual marines with swords?
I've seen all of Trek but TOS S3 and TAS and I don't remember this.

It's FASA nonsense.

Again, FASA canon. In which Andorians are hardassed motherfuckers that earth got into a genocidal war with shortly after the invention of warp drive. Eventually they signed a ceasefire with them that was later upgraded to include the Tellarites, Vulcans and possibly the Saurians, founding the Federation as we know it.

Oh man, I'm torn on whether ENT mighta been better with that canon.

Your waifu is too t h i c c, and in all the wrong places, to be aesthetically pleasing. The NX's "arms" were tasteful instead of being approximately the size of the original Xbox, and it overall had enough greebling to match the more-realistic-but-still-trek-y look that they were going for. Having nacelles to die for helps, too. I stand by what I said about the Akira, but honestly, if they'd just shift the deflector to the front like the Nova/Intrepid's secondary deflectors (or like suggested), it'd be bearable. As it is, the bulge is worse than the one in the Ent-B's engineering hull, and that says something.

You can't deny that the Columbia-Class refit is God Is Dead, Man Reigns In Heaven tier, though. Whichever way you decide that means.

>shits on the Steamrunner's ideal in-built nacelle design that increases speed and maneuvering
>glorifies the pin thin NX nacelles that snap off if you look at them wrong
>loves the Columbia-class despite it literally killing God so hard that Nietzsche looked at it and was like "slow the fuck down guys"
Ask me how I know you're a pleb. Just ask me.

All in good 4chin fun, user. Your choices are legit and I'm just playin because it's a good time.

I'm a big Lovecraft fan, and while a pure version of the mythos doesn't really fit Star Trek's attitude, there are an awful lot of obscenely powerful celestial entities wandering around the Trek verse, but the series never really explores the ramifications of that.

I always liked the episode about the Doomsday Machine, the idea of this incredibly powerful weapon just being left behind for millions of years to ravage the galaxy is cool. Using that as a springboard, I'd have Federation survey teams start finding ancient relics that seem to be related to that device out on the edge of known space. After a bit of build up and maybe some episodes about tribal cultures who have weird legends about monsters from beyond the sky, I'd have a fleet show up of incredibly advanced, incredibly ancient ships on the fringes of the galaxy. Most of the ships are fairly small, but they all cluster around one FUCK HUGE craft.

Anyway, the ships are crewed by a wide variety of ancient species, some of whom are unknown, others thought to be wiped out millions of years ago. The mothership is the housing chamber for a vast celestial being that they worship as a god. It sleeps for extremely long periods of time, and when it awakens it feeds on stars. Its high priests can interface with it through strange devices using elaborate rituals, and in so doing gain access to incredibly vast stores of information. The God-thing's intellect is only barely comprehensible to a regular sapient, but it basically protects the things that worship it and gives them knowledge in exchange for them securing it while it sleeps and helping guide it towards suitable star systems to feed on. The God-Thing isn't particularly malevolent, but it *does* want to survive and the side effects of its feedings wipe out civilizations which it doesn't see as a bad thing.
Sorta pseudo-C'tan, is what I'm thinking. I dunno, what do you cats think? Too overdone? Maybe I'll expand and mod it later.

Imagine seeing Shran as often as we saw Dukat. You could even keep the TIME WIZARDRY by having Daniels give the crew and ship Macguffins to protect against timeline shifts. Imagine the "temporal cold war" manifesting as the ship jumping back and forth between the Suliban/Xindi timeline and the FASA timeline at random, and seeing Shran as often as we saw Dukat.

What a coincidence! I'm a huge Orson Welles.

They're still around, just doing other shit.

If you like the Doomsday Machine you should read Fred Saberhagen's Berserkerverse. The Berserkers are just that: ancient, world ending machine intelligences from a war long before humanity became sapient.

As to your idea: It might or might not work in Trek, it depends on how it's handled, and in what medium you were using it. PnP would be fine, novels not so much (thanks to main characters being plot armored/OC donut steels being what they are).

If it were treated in the show, it would suck as an "alien of the week", but could potentially be interesting as a season long antagonist (or maybe multiple seasons).

Such as dying, desperately trying to save their race, and leaving the Federation.

Not the nacelles themselves, user, just the detail work on them that's more interesting than a highlighter pen with a blue stripe down the side, and the fact that you can still draw a straight line from them to the TOS-style ones. And besides, as I said, the Steamrunner's design would look great if it was just a generic sci-fi ship - the flat angular faces and built-in nacelles are great and as an armchair admiral the slightly better survivability is nice too, they're just a big departure from the classic round saucer/stardrive/nacelle look.
As for the Columbia, I did place it God Is Dead tier, but the nod to continuity's pretty sweet, and the NX being a literal fucking pancake is probably the one thing about it I majorly didn't like. And besides, at least it's not the Intrepid-type.

All in good 4chin fun user. Your choices are just as legit, but learn2read :^)
I'm surprised I haven't been shredded for shittin on the Excelsior, tbqhwyf

>If you like the Doomsday Machine you should read Fred Saberhagen's Berserkerverse.
And also watch the VOY episode "Prototype."

And rejoining once their species is saved and Bashir doesn't get court martialed/tried for theft of classified information. Using Genesis tech to save a species wins friends while making enemies.

I wanted to do a Lovecraft-esque mission in STO's Foundry, but lack of ability kinda sunk that idea.

Basic idea is a Fed member is currently under a state of emergency as armed groups have seized a number of weather control satellites and other orbital locations. The terrorists are members of an old pre-Contact religion that's frankly considered an embarrassment by the planet at large, with its obsession with ending the world and ushering in some kind of masters from beyond the oh shut up already you loonies.

The cult is using gravity generators aboard their targets to force the stars into the "right" position via grav lensing. In a combination of strike teams and ship-to-station combat, the USS (You) manages to stop them before the gravity generators finish powering up all the way, and the day is saved.

I also was going to add a stinger with one of your sensor officers who was monitoring the planet be placed under heavy sedation and observation in sickbay They collapsed just as the last generator goes online and have been muttering something about "mouths in the darkness" in between attempts to chew their own fingers off.

I don't remember Klinks having mind-rape devices in future series.

must have needed augment DNA to run

I'd assumed that Martia was a Founder, specifically one of the Hundred Changeling Infants sent out into uncharted space.

See, I like the Steamrunner's departure from the mold, it's one of the things I really love about her lines. It makes me feel like Starfleet really has been struck to the core by the Borg and is making big strides to change up things and keep with the times as other powers adapt and change as well. The Akira, Prometheus, and Defiant are good examples of changing it up as well and I like them too. Even the Nova and Sovereign are a departure as well, though less so (they have fused saucer and engineered hulls instead of relying on the neck strut structure).

Yeah, I was expecting you to get blasted over the Excelsior too. Wonder what that's about.

They do have them, just we never see officers who really have the coldbloodedness to do use it.

For me there's just something off about it. I prefer the original version but even that I think could do with tweaking. More obvious non-nacelle connectors to the aft pod would help for a start.

Primary hull shape though is neat.

That book was dumb and trek authors are way too into 'we haven't seen these guys in a while they must be dying out.'

According to Memory Alpha/Beta, they're different. See the following:

> Following the Dominion attack on the Antwerp Conference in 2372, a Chameloid named Wusekl was illegally detained and imprisoned on Triex, as the people believed he was a Founder. (ST novel: Articles of the Federation)

It would be pretty sweet if the pod was directly under the primary hull and the nacelles were shifted forward to either side of it: same front/rear profile, but it would be just the primary hull from the side/above/below (like a bigger, more modular Defiant)

Bump now within visual range, Captain.

My pet annoyance is that they retcon every shitty thing Star Fleet did to be a plot from Section 31. Why can't they let stupid decisions or downright villainy from Star Fleet officers to be just that what it seems.

I thought incompetence and insanity was a prereq for being admiral.

All the competent ones stay as captains like Kirk and Picard, or die horribly offscreen.

Are Vulcans that don't purge emotion basically exiled from Vulcan?

>kirk and picard stay captains
>sisko abandons his wife and baby to hang with timeless aliens
>janeway and archer become admirals
Sounds about right.

They're probably just super-shunned like what Mormons do.

Yes. They are either called Romulans or those nomad Vulcans Archer encountered.

Apparently Brooks forced them to add a line about Sisko returning in about a year, because he didn't like the implication of a Black guy walking out on his family.

They should have had Cassidy and the fetus go with Sisko, that way there's no abandonment implication and Sisko can leave forever to add finality to the subplot.

Especially seeing as the kid will be 1/4 prophet, like Jake. Though honestly I wish they resolved the Emissary subplot as more of a political thing ok Bajor, with Sisko facing off against Winn secure the future of Bajor once and for all.

Nova is most certainly Comfiest Ship. Not my favourite, but certainly the one that I'd find most comfy to serve on. Oberth running a close second place. Sabre rolling up in a comfy third.

Thats the one I posted a while back, and isnt part of the Broken Mirror stuff..

Lemme post if for you.

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This, it was exactly this comic i was thinking of.
Thanks user!

Waiting for post time sucks

No problem, user!