The Nerfing of the Starship Enterprise: Part II

As a quick review of Part I, here's the short and quick list of what I consider the key elements in simulating the original Star Trek's USS Enterprise.

1. It was a Warp Speed warship best used in combat at FTL speeds.
2. Non-ablative Deflector shields, able to withstand (for a time) planet wrecking attacks and completely ignore attacks below certain power levels
3. Shields were divided into at least four 'arcs' that were damaged and reinforced independently
4. Phasers and photon Torpedos were FTL weapons. There were a number of weapon mounts pointing in different directions.
5. The phasers were fired 'one bank' at a time in a twin beam using all the ship's offensive power in a single attack. Torpedos were launched in spreads (typically in sets of double launches) and never fired at the same time as the phasers
6. Ship's Power was critical in how the ship operated. Often balanced between needs it could divert for increased offense or defense.
7. Warp Factors were a cubic conversion times light speed (maybe with a constant added)
8. It was the fastest ship in Starfleet as warp drive was power intensive. Shuttles were sublight only.
9. The Enterprise was the most powerful, and most versatile ship in Starfleet

I'll use the above as I examine how the Ship was treated in gaming and fiction after the end of the original series.

In 1975 perhaps the single most important Star Trek related gaming publication was released. It wasn't however a game. Rather it was the Star Fleet Technical Manual (SFTM) written by Franz Joseph Schnaubelt. Written 6 years after the series ended, this one work would determine in many ways the future of Star Trek.

Schnaubelt wasn't a member of the original development team, but a fan who took to drawing and detailing things Star Trek as he saw them. He struck an agreement with Roddenberry (who thought the franchise dead) and was allowed to publish a book containing his work. The sales were impressive, and this was perhaps a deciding factor in bringing Star Trek to the big screen. It was certainly a landmark in Star Trek gaming.

It was also the beginning of the nerfing of the Starship Enterprise.

In it's defense, much of this wasn't its fault. The SFTM didn't going into operation details for the most part. It was a set of drawings, names, and background information. Not a tactical or operational work. Even so, there were two bits of information that would have a massive impact on gaming.

• The inclusion of ship classes other than the Enterprise.

Here Schnaublet decided that Starfleet fielded other types of ships in addition to its Heavy Cruisers like the Enterprise. This made sense from hints dropped during the series and its writer's bible but they never really appeared on screen due to expense.

Thus Starfleet also had destroyers, scouts and tugs. And... it had dreadnaughts.

In the original writer's bible, it was stated that the Enterprise was a dreadnaught or battleship- but that the Federation used the term Heavy Cruiser as it was a better fit for a ship that had exploration duties as its primary role during peace time. Schnaublet missed that memo, and reduced the Enterprise to the second most powerful Star Fleet ship type.

Schnaublet in a way tried to contain the damage, saying that the Dreadnaughts were kept at a home Starbase unless the Federation went to war, at which point they would set out to heap death upon their foes. But normally they were too expensive to operate. Thus, the Enterprise was still the best the Federation had in daily operation.

That such a concept wouldn't work didn't seem to occur to him. Just consider it. Who would crew it? Would you pull experienced crews off a Heavy Cruiser and toss them under war conditions onto a ship they've never operated before? Would you maintain a 'hanger' crew who did nothing but train on simulators and thus send green crews out manning your best ships?

Has any Navy operated effectively like this? No. Did anything like this appear on any TV or movie screen before or after? No.

But it's here, and as we'll see it became an important part of the gaming world of Star Trek.

• The SFTM defined how many and in what locations the Enterprise's weapon mounts were. For the phasers, it claimed there were three pairs. One was on the bottom of the saucer facing foward. The other top on were on the top with one facing port and the other Starboard. The twin torpedo launchers faced forward.

Now the original show used a lot of stock footage (cost was a issue), and never showed anything but the main forward phasers or photons firing. However they did say on screen that there were others. So adding them to the drawing was worthwhile

However, does that type of mounting make sense to anyone? It doesn't to me. If the ship could always turn towards a foe, you'd only need two weapon mounts- a primary and a backup. If it couldn't be counted on to make that turn (far more likely IMO for tactical reasons if no others), it should have weapons pointed everywhere.

You could sort of get away with it. After all, the Enterprise would only fire one of those mounts at a time. And if it rotated along it's axis (i.e. banked or even turned 'upside down') it could bring a weapon to bear in any direction but directly astern. Maybe that was a blind spot you couldn't fire through anyway? This never happened on screen. But one could excuse that.

That works. Well, there's a problem. If you listen to the backgroud chatter on the original show as the Enterprise goes to Red Alert, you'll hear something interesting. A report of "Aft Phasers Ready".

Years later, the blueprints for the movie Enterprise would show 18 phasers (14 in paired banks, 4 independently mount) pointing in all directions. The Enterpise TV episode "In a Mirror, Darkly" would show the aft phasers firing on an original Constitution class cruiser.

So the SFTM is wrong.

Thus the SFTM gives us two problems, but only one is a nerf. The reduction of the Enterprise to second tier breaks item #9 above. The weapon mountings are an incorrect detail that could be easily forgotten. But we'll see how that error bites us going forward.

Edit: Almost forgot something. All the ships in the SFTM have the same warp speeds. Highly unlikely, and this breaks requirement #8 above.

Next we starting examing game designs.

Part: I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, Conclusion

The Nerfing of the Starship Enterprise: Part I

I downloaded and tried out the Star Trek Online MMORPG yesterday. This despite my hate for all things Next-Gen or later (it's set 30 years ahead of the last Next-Gen movie).

As I was playing it, I couldn't help but do some reverse-engineering on their Starship Combat system (which to my mind isn't very star trek like except for sights and sounds- but seems fun so far). And that started me thinking about the whole subject of what such combat in Star Trek was and has become. A subject that touches TV, Movies, computer games, war games and table-top rpgs.

Star Trek got around you see. It was in fact the first game design that I ever did, a ship to ship simulation that was used for a rpg campaign.

And it seems to me this may be an interesting subject for the blog. I'm not really sure what one can learn from it, but there might be something. So here we go, the start of a rambling series of posts that will cover far more on the subject than anyone would want.

When I design a game, I pick what I consider the core mechanic section and those parts of the source material that cover it. The idea is to make them match, i.e. simulation at its purest.

For a Star Trek style game, ship combat and modeling would be a major subsystem. So I began there.

The original show Enterprise was a marked departure from sci-fi ships before and after it. It was also interesting in its influences. Unlike most sc-fi (the Honor Harrington series is a good example) it didn't use just one historical influence, but a number of them.

It's length was picked to be about that of the supercarrier USS Enterprise. The number of the ships built of it's class was 13, and that's close to the number of carriers the US maintains in operation (I think it's currently 11, but it was 12 and even 13 some time back as I recall). I doubt those numbers were picked at random. The ship was to invoke the power and prestige of the modern supercarrier set in the 23rd century.

It wasn't a carrier however. Strategically and operationally it was more like an Age of Sail Frigate, say the USS Consitution. It's crew of 430 nearly matches that ship's crew of 450. Like those ships, it would 'sail' beyond an effective chain of command and due to the limits of subspace radio- could be weeks away from direct communication. Indeed, in some cases it could out-run long range subspace radio for that matter and arrive before the signal.

Thus its Captain was given vast decision making powers- including the decision to go to war.

Along that same line of thought, the ship itself was the power projection, not it's shuttles. Perhaps this was due to budget, or perhaps it was due to keeping the focus on the bridge crew. Whatever the reason the Enterprise herself projected the Federation's power- not a fleet of starfighters she carried.


That sets the background. As to details, in pure sc-fi terms the Enterprise had other marked differences from ships before and after that would need to be mechanically reflected. Let's define those in the following bullet points:

• She was a warp speed warship. That is the original Enterprise fought at faster than light speeds. Indeed, engagement at sublight was said by her engineer to be akin to "wallowing like a garbage scow against a warp-driven starship."

In contrast almost all other sci-fi ships used jump drives, i.e. you 'leaped' from point A to B without really crossing the space inbetween. Combat was restricted to only subspace speeds. This is true of Traveller ships, The Mote in God's Eye, Star Wars, etc. The list is nearly endless.

The Enterprise on the other hand actually crossed that space at a faster than light speed. She could scan things in it, attack in it and defend in it. And she was almost alone in the sci-fi world in this ability.

Recently a new series of books provide another ship capable of this although the A.S.S. (yes tht's correct, and the humans are less than amused at that but it wasn't their choice) Vorpal Blade can't run it's sensors or fire weapons at such speeds. Even so, it gains vast advantage against foes who only have jump drives in its battles.

• The Enterprise Deflector shields were impressive. In some ways they were the classic force field. They were however quite powerful, able to protect the ship (at least for a time) against weapons that carved up planets into bite sized bits.

One important point about them, is that they all but ignored incoming fire below a certain power level. In other words, just any hit didn't reduce them ("shields holding firm Captain"). Rather it required either an attack of enough power or of a special nature to reduce them. In this they worked much as WWII battleship belt armor did. It could ignore 5" shells forever, and only had to worry about much larger weapons.

• The Enterprise had two weapons systems- phasers and photon torpedos in a number of mounts. What's interesting however is that even when one 'diverted all power to the weapons'- only one of these mounts fired at a time. Further its weapons (both the phasers and the torpedos) worked at faster than light speeds.

In power levels they granted the ship the ability to destroy planets although to what degree was never stated. Perhaps it was just boiling off the surface instead of reducing it to rubble, but whatever the case they weren't cap guns.

Normally sc-fi ships are like WWII battleships, dozens of guns going off. The Enterprise was quite the contrast to this- able to put much of the ships power into a single weapons bank for a single vastly powerful attack.

• This last feature meant that the Enterprise fought off it's power plant ("Scotty, I need more power!"). Thus power allocation would seem key to any simulation. It would have to pick between max effort for shields, drive, or weapons- it couldn't do them all but could do a solid mix and divert that to individual subsystems.

• Warp Factors were a cubic times the speed of light (likely multipled by a constant afterwards). Thus Warp 1 was the speed of light, and Warp 8 was 512 times the speed of light. The ship had engagements at both sublight and hyperlight speeds. This would require an interesting approach in game mechanics to represent.

• Given that the Enterprise wanted to fight at Warp Speed (and considered it a serious disadvantage not to), it is clear that the system should reflect this.

• Warp Drive was a function of the drive and the power plant behind it. The Enterprise was the larget Starfleet ship, and it was the fastest. No smaller ships had the power needed to outrun it, and shuttle sized ships were sublight.

• The Shields covered at least 4 arcs, each were independent both in damage and in how they could be reinforced with more power.
  

All in all, it was very impressive even in Sc-Fi terms. Converting it to a gaming system would a challenge. Note that I can provide excellent support for all the above claims (but haven't to save room), although I must admit that consistency failed sometimes on the original show. The first time phasers fired on screen for example they used the special effects of the photon torpedos...

As this blog series continues we will look at early attempts to design Star Trek space combat systems, and how they ended up nerfing the ship along the way both in games and in the following TV/movies.

Part: II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, Conclusion

Weakness of Western Culture- Movies and Games

You know, things like this shouldn't even merit a minute of my attention. In one way or the other, it's common in our ultra-rich culture where people can obsess on whatever subject they happen to fancy at the time. I couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an example.

Even so, I can't help but see things like this and think that an asteroid wiping out mankind might be a kindness. Who takes a movie this seriously?

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," Hill wrote on the forum. "It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."


It's enough to make me agree that it's a dying world, well maybe if I wasn't actually alive. After that passing thought I want to slam the guy upside the head with a two-by-four. He so freakin' deserves it. Oh, by the way, the quote above is from Ivar Hill- he's studying game design.

Really, game design. And I thought the Forge guys were screwed up.

We've seen this same sort of thing in gaming before, even more directly. Especially online gaming where people have actually killed themselves and endangered others by refusing to get up from the computer.

And I think many of us have seen table-top gamers just take things too far.

In fact we can visit just about any online forum and find examples without looking. I've seen the author of Little Fears claim his game helps victims of child abuse by playing it out again in a different setting. I've seen others claim you can gain important insights into rape, sexuality (of a type not your own) or racism by playing rpgs. The author of Poison'd spoke about how games can remake our culture and allow it accept... neck raping of corpses I suppose.

Movies are movies, games are games. They certainly reflect their makers, their viewers, and their players. But they don't control us unless we're so weak we allow it.

And many of us it seems are very weak indeed.

Answer to 5E HERO Quiz

Ok, it appears that no one is going to catch the problem with 5th Edition Dive for Cover that posed in the last article. Not unexpected, really. I don't think I have many readers who are really into that system.

As a said in the previous article's comments, Dive for Cover is a straight up Dex Roll (with a -1 per hex of distance you're 'diving'). It was originally only intended for use vs. Area Effect attacks.It was sort of neat as it provided a active defense against AoE attacks that would under normal conditions ignore target DCV and couldn't be blocked. It was also very genre in many cases (such the shout of 'grenade!' in any military setting).

I stated that 5th Edition screwed up this ability when it allowed it to be used against normal directed ranged and melee attacks.

Why?

Let's answer that by means of an example.

In 5th edition, let's check out a normal beat cop (DEX 11, +1 Skill Pistols) shooting at a Hydra thug (also DEX 11, no skills applied to DCV) from a range of 3". The chance to hit is 11+4+1-4 or a 12-.

The Hydra thug decides to dive for cover, and only needs a hex. It's an 11- with -1, or a 10-. He has a 50% chance to avoid the normal beat cop.

Now let's see the ulimate expression of human combat ability (Captain America for Marvel based settings) as he attempts to whack the same thug with a toss of his shield also at a range of 3".

He has a DEX of 25 with 6 combat levels, for an OCV of 8 + 6 or 14. 11 + 14 -4 gives him a 21- or less on 3d6 so he can't miss.

Which is fine, that's basically the way it goes in the comics.

However... The Hydra thug decides to dive for cover, and only needs a hex. It's an 11- with -1, or a 10-. He has a 50% chance to avoid the attack of Captain America.

Really.

The reason is because the Dive for Cover defense is completely unmodified by the abilities of the attacker.

The game result is marked:

1. Genre is broken as comman thugs are avoiding attacks from the greatest superheroes in the campaign as if they are normal people.

2. Actual combat is lengthened as the GM is now able to increase the 'life span' of all his agents in battles- just drive for cover for any that are attacked. Half the time it means the superhero must use at least one follow up attack on the same target- and that allows any remaining agents an additional (in effect) free shot.



Horrible game design. And worse, an unneeded change. The system already had Dodge to help in defense of this type. Long pulled a number of things like this in 5th, and I fully expect 6th to full of them.

To be honest, I feel the only thing Long does in HERO is build things- judging from his rules, he doesn't seem to play.

A pointer to HERO 6th Edition reviews

I can't bring myself to buy the two books needed to do my own review of 6th edition HERO System. But from reading online, these two reviews at RPGNet hit the high points: Character Creation and Combat and Adventuring.

They seem to be rather well done and match what I've read elsewhere with the reviewer hitting most of my own reactions.

Point Inflation. Beh. I knew this would happen, and the reviewer does an good job pointing out why it is a bad thing.

The nerfing of Killing Attacks stand out. The original design considered their advantages to be balanced by their disadvantages, i.e. for most settings not-killing is the preferred option to killing combined with consistent result and better knockback. Long disagreed and dropped the stun multiple markly (and unrealistically) to 1d3 instead of 1d6-1 (or 1x-5x with 3x as the average for those like me who use hit locations).

You could buy it back up of course, by spending many more points. One would have to buy more than just a mere +2 stun multiple however as non-resistent defense apply against stun (even when there are no resistant defenses) to produce the same effect against unarmored targets. Which of course changes the balance unless you buy some piercing likely with it's own limits(which may or may be in 6th, I haven't read anything saying one way or the other on that).

Reviews like this don't cover many minor but significant changes. So I imagine things are even worse than the review indicates. For example, Long changed Dive for Cover in 5E such that it worked against direct single target attacks, melee as well as range.

Brain. Dead. Stupid. Free (worthless) game design points to the reader who first tells me why (my players excluded).