I had an old freeservers account collecting dust so I thought I would collate my house rules ideas in one place for my group to be able to access any time they liked. I'm also tossing our modified SSD's on the site so they can print them off from their own homes (and save me ink on my printer)!
Several people have asked me to email the SSD's to them in attachments as well, so I figured it would work out well for anyone interested in what we're doing or the SSD's we use for our games.
NOTE: As I've mentioned several times, we don't claim our house rules are better than canon rules...just different and we wanted to use them. If they work for others as well then great.
I will be adding SSD's in the various classes as I am able to put them on the site. I hope they can be enjoyed :)
What program did you use to
What program did you use to create your SSDs?
I just used paint. It is
I just used paint. It is simple to use and I think does a pretty good job.
How long does it take to make
How long does it take to make up an SSD using Paint?
Depends
If you're editing an existing SSD, just pasting in some different weapons charts, it only takes a few minutes.
I whipped up a couple Seltorian Q-ships that way for my home campaign.
Making a totally new SSD from scratch? I imagine the layout would take forever. Might be better in Publisher than Paint, but not by much.
Excel
I've been using Excel to make mine. They look pretty good when printed straight from Excel spreadsheet or saved as a .xps format and printed with Publisher. But if you try to make it a .pdf, it looks pretty bad.
Are you willing to put
Are you willing to put others' unofficial SSDs on your site?
Sure. After I do them in
Sure.
After I do them in paint I just 'save as' in jpg format so it goes on the site pretty easy. I'd be happy to create some pages for anyone that wants to share what they've done.
When I first started it took a pretty good bit of time as I didn't really know much about paint. So I basically just taught myself by trial and error. After a while I would get bits and pieces and open up several paint pages at a time and put the pieces together. Then I learned how to put some different coloring and such in the various tables. I'm currently working on the B10 which is basically taking the shape of the C7 I've done and widening it here and there. I have a few other ideas I'd like to try as well so in addition to adding SSD's I might be updating the ones I've put on there already as time permits.
Posting SSDs
We're happy to post SSDs here too. Email me the files. It might take a few days for me to get to them, but we're here to help share resources in the community. We can give you your own part of the forum, or create some straight HTML pages. Whatever works best.
-DC
That is a really great idea!
That is a really great idea! SSD's are such an big part of the game that it would be fun as well as interesting to see what SFB'ers have developed. I spoke with SVC several years ago and he commented that the reason SFB SSD's looked like they were done on an primitive 80's computer was because....they were done on a primitive 80's computer (lol). And I understand it might not be worth the time/effort/money for ADB to update all the SFB SSD's. However, since SFB'ers are an intelligent and extremely imaginative group, there is no reason we can't update them amongst ourselves.
I have my SSD's in jpg, will that be okay? I'll send some to you as a test to see how they work for you and we can go from there.
Many thanks :)
I have added NEW updated CA
http://ikvavenger.8m.net/index_1.html
I have added NEW updated CA class SSD''s to the website. More will be added soon as I complete them. Each race will have TWO SSD's on that page, the first a more basic outline and the other a more detailed, realistic color SSD. Hope you enjoy. :)
What would be cool is if you
What would be cool is if you could put up just the outlines of the ships. Then people could plug their own systems into the open areas as they want. But your ship styles are pretty slick. :)
I give it a nine
The CA looks darn good. I do think it has too much detail in the saucer. If you could find a way to keep the curves for the floors but got rid of the panels it would be perfect.
What address do I send SSDs
What address do I send SSDs to? Really need someone to critique them. They are all for my new race talked about in the minelayer thread.
Fed CA
Needs an 'L' and an 'R' above the word 'Warp'.
Thank you. So far I've got
Thank you.
So far I've got the Fed, Klink, Kzin, Lyran and I just added the Hydran Dragoon and Ranger. Working on the Gorn right now.
As a side note, for anyone that would like to try them out it would be a simple matter to toss them on paint and edit back in the original weapons on our 'house rule' ships. :)
Gorn
What'd you end up changing on the Gorn?
It is pretty much similar to
It is pretty much similar to the CC version. I think I have an extra transporter. And a few things are rearranged a bit.
JPEGs coming soon
DS (and other gentlemen),
I got the SSD JPEGs you sent. I've been working lots of extra hours this week so I can take a 4-day weekend and head to Carnage ( www.CarnageCon.com ) this weekend. I will get them posted early next week when I return.
In the mean time, what do you think is the best way to present them here in the forum? Should we set up a new section under SFB, called "SSDs"? (By the way, what does SSD stand for? ___ ship display?).
Under SSDs, we could have each person with SSDs to post have their own thread. Or, post them by race. Or, whatever else you guys think is optimal. Please discuss and we'll implement that early next week.
Thanks,
-DC
Have a great time this
Have a great time this weekend DC :)
SSD = System Ship Display (pretty sure that is what it stands for).
A specific section under SFB with the title of SSD sound good. It is self-explanatory and most everyone will know what it means. As far as specific threads in the new section...hmmm. Posting by race sounds like a good idea. Keeps them all together in one easy to find spot I would think. If people start contibuting TONS of SSD's then it might need to be broken down into class catagories but I wouldn't think that would be an issue for a while at least. I'm open to anyone's suggestions though.
Might be a good idea for the contibutor to note whether it is 'tweaked' SSD or standard. That way folks looking for an updated but standard SSD aren't playing one that has stuff changed around.
Might also suggest having a thread for tourny cruisers that have all the standard information i.e. haven't been tweaked but has an updated design. I was thinking about doing this if anyone was interested.
Thank you for the new section, looking forward to it!
Ship Systems Display
With one transposition, SSD is "Ship Systems Display".
Gorn and Romulan added :) Rom
Gorn and Romulan added :)
Rom is a WE designed Heavy Cruiser.
piracy
We shouldn't be posting unmodified SSDs anyway, even if they're just retooled or updated.
If you're referring to my
If you're referring to my comments on 'upgrading' tourny cruiser then my apologies. I certainly don't want to step on any toes. It was just a thought.
I misunderstood
Tournament cruisers are probably fine, afaik. After all, ADB puts them up for free.
I thought these were regular CAs you were modifying.
Ah, no problem then. The
Ah, no problem then. The CA's I've put up are the modified 'house rules' SSD's that our group uses. Not tremendously different, but tweaked here and there.
Had a little extra time today
Had a little extra time today and figured I'd screw around with an X2 ship. I've only the one so far and it is at the link below. The 'rules' are not set in stone of course and inserted for some experimentation. Don't hold me to how well it would play out yet against other X2 ships. Just tossing stuff out there for grins and giggles. Thoughts are of course welcome. ;)
http://ikvavenger.8m.net/photo4.html
You did a great job with that
You did a great job with that one. Did you ever get the SSD I emailed you?
Thank you. No, I didn't
Thank you.
No, I didn't recieve an SSD. Please try again cqdt1 at yahoo dot com
I'll make sure I check the spam folder in case it gets put in there rather than the inbox.
Added an X2 Fed CC/CA.
Added an X2 Fed CC/CA.
Gorn
Out of curiosity, since you're changing up weapons anyway, why not use the GW-era Quantum torpedoes (from CL28) for the Gorn? Leave plasma with the Romulans (since it's canon that's what they had anyway) and mix up the East side just as much as the West.
Sounds interesting. CL 28 is
Sounds interesting. CL 28 is one of the ones I don't have yet so I've not seen the Quantum torpedo. I'll have to do a little research on this, thank you.
I am impressed.
The Fed CA looks dynamite. Some of the others might be a little busy and get you thrown off bakija's lawn.
See? Simple to upgrade the SSDs!
quantum torpedoes
Until you get CL28, take a look at Y1. They're the Paravian seeking weapon. The GW-era version differs from the EY version in that it has extended range and an overload function.
Where did you get those
Where did you get those images of the ships, IKVAvenger?
I'll try to check out the
I'll try to check out the quantum torpedo, thank you.
I just went to images on yahoo and typed in the ship I was looking for. Some were easier than others, still haven't found a good top view of the ISC yet.
Andy wrote:
>>The Fed CA looks dynamite. Some of the others might be a little busy and get you thrown off bakija's lawn.
See? Simple to upgrade the SSDs!>>
Agreed--the Fed CA that is just a nicely drawn regular SSD (i.e. no color or detailed picture under the boxes) looks great. I wouldn't remotely object to something like that.
The SSDs that have color pictures under them, however, don't really work, for my money--overly busy, difficult to read, boxes that aren't inside the confines of the ship, won't copy well.
Color SSDs
"The SSDs that have color pictures under them, however, don't really work, for my money--overly busy, difficult to read, boxes that aren't inside the confines of the ship, won't copy well."
That's definitely true of the Lyran one. I thinks some of the others are fine, but your point is valid.
Perhaps reducing the saturation (I think that's the right term) of the colored bits would help. Same color, just more white bleeding through to give it more of a background feel would make it less distracting, but still attractive.