[Magnum357]

To Manofwar,

Actually, what my plan was too use old SFB style ship pictures of as many SFB races I could get my hands on (Feds, Kling, ROM, Lyran, Hydan, Mirak/Kzinti, ISC, etc.). I was also planning to make the mode have aspects of TNG-DS9, like Cardassians, Dominion and Borg maybe. Although I would have to change things in TNG-DS9 stuff, I was going to make it a "What if SFB was played during TNG universe". It would have been basically a Star Trek universe under the SFB timeline.

Ships were going to be under a radical change. Instead of the system in place for SEIV, I was going to make it where "generations" of ships would be used. Early era ships would be those we see on SFB like the old Constitution class ship for a CA. SFB had ships called "X ships" which where basically advanced forms of ships before it. The Excelcior class ships where one of my favorite so I was thinking of using them as the "Second generation of the CA" or in SFB a "CX" crusier. The Galaxy Classes would be the basically would have been "CX2" Versions in the 24th century. One bold plan I was thinking about doing was learning how to use a 3D modeling system and basically create new SFB ships for the later eras. For example, since I loved the Excelcior class ships, I think it would have been neat if I could design a "CX" that had many features the Excelcior did in the movies yet retained some the design approches that the old CA class did (for example, bussard Ram scoops on nacels). Basically, I wanted to make later era designs look like they had elements of the previous generation, but added design concepts from the movies and TV shows of today. I thought about using Milkshape, but I have no knowlege on making ship graphics and I can't find milkshape (I heard its cheap to buy).

As for weapon systems, I was going to use the damage values used in SFB. I was even thinking about using Drones/Missiles soly used with the Drone units in SE4 (sure am glad MM put those in their finally). I would eliminate Cap Missles since they have no ammo limt and Drones do in SE4. Drone limits would be esential if your going to design an SFB mode with the Mirak and Klingons in SFB.

Cardassians and Dominion where going to be a bit tricky though since we don't know what their early designed ships looked like back during the 22nd and 23rd century looked like, it was going to be difficult to make pictures for them. Also, I'm still confused what to use the Cardies for weapons. Since all races in SFB use Phasers (guess they are kinda like the "Laser" in the SFB world, even the Andromadians use them), I plan to implement them for the Cardies. But what to use for heavy weapons? I've heard people say they use torpedos, yet I swear I have seen the Cardies on DS9 use Plasma Torps (especailly on Defense Satilites).

I was also going to make Phasers unique compared to otehr Star Trek modes. Phasers in SFB where basically made in 4 types... Type 1 Offensive, Type 2 Offense-Defensive, Type 3 Defensive, and Type 4 Heavy Phasers. Since Star Trek has a completely different naming convention for weapons, I was thinking about naming each type of Phasers with Letter instead of Numbers. For example, Type 1 Phasers where going to use the Designation of Letter "Class A Phaser". These would the best Phasers avialble for ships, and mostly the Feds would be the only ones available to use them. Type 2 Phasers where lettered as "Class B Phasers" because in the SFB game, these Phasers are cheaper and more efficent then Class A Phasers, but have less range and firepower, used widly buy other races like Klingons, Romulans, Lyrans, etc. that don't have huge budgets or good research labratories. Type 3 Phasers where going to be designated as "Class C Phasers", the least powerful of all the Phasers and short range. But their advantage would be very cheap and some Point Defense capability to them. All Phasers would have the ability to target Fighters and Drone/Missiles, but Class C Phasers would have the special ability for Point defense and a must for any ship going against seeking weapons. Type 4 Phasers would of course be classed as "Class D Phasers". I was having trouble trying to find as sytem too keep Class D Phasers from being able to be put on ships (they were not allowed in SFB) but I was thinking just making them very large weapon systems and hard to implement on a ship. Class G Phaser would off course be the Gatling Phasers (would have double the firepower of a Class C and able to fire twice a turn) and Class P Phasers would be the all famous Pulse Phasers used by the Defiant (A special Fed Design similar to the Class G phaser except a little more powerful and longer range). With the letter class system in place, this would allow me to add numbers to the Phaser types to indicate what tech level they are (example, a Class B1 Economy Phaser compared to a Class A2 Offensive Phaser). Also, Tech was going to follow a forumla where you could only sqeeze so much juice out of it. For example, today guns are more powerful then they were a Hundred or two hundread years ago. We might be able to make them a little more powerful, but its likely this could be the limit to how powerful we can make an Cartrige round today. Next genertion of guns would use a different physics for shooting projectiles (like mass driver weapons). My mode would show the same thing, Phasers would reach a certain point of firepower but it wouldn't make much sense to keep researching it because you would hardly get any more firepower out of it. you would be forced to find new technologies in order to find a weapon more powerful then Phasers yet have similar functions with Phasers.

Just some ideas I had in my head when I was trying to design this massive project. I might still do it, but I would prefer to know how to make 3D images because I would like to make my own ship pictures for it.