Blake's 7 Ships for FT

Someone in the Full Thrust FB group asked about SSDs for some of the ships from the BBC TV show Blake's 7. A few years ago I picked up a handful of ships from Shapeways. Sorry, I don't recall the supplier.
The principal one is of course the Liberator, otherwise known as Deep Space Vehicle 2. The aliens who built her also had a lighter scout ship. The main enemy are the Federation Pursuit Ships.
They are very much based on the TV show and not really built for more general FT games. The liberator is very fast and manoeuvrable but armed with only a forward facing long range torpedo. The scout has the needle beam so it can attempt to disable the DSV in a surprise attack. While the pursuit ships are designed to attack en mass with their single torpedo each.
Given that the ships are armed with torpedoes, the shields are probably redundant, but I included them for use against other classes of ships. I felt that the torpedo better represented the 'plasma bolts' used in the show. The alien ships also only have 3 hull rows rather than 3 to represent their higher technology level and armour to improve their survivability.
I usually play with the vector movement rules. I have not used these ships in cinematic mode, which may be tricky give the limited firing arcs.
Please enjoy and let me know how the games go. I'd be very interested in other people's attempts to model the ships.

Klingon Ships for FT

I have finally started painting the rest of the Klingon fleet. As motivation, I did the FT stats for the core ships. These ships should prove useful against the main Federation vessels found elsewhere in the blog.
Core Federation Ships
Additional Federation Ships
Variant Federation Ships

Note, the "D" weapons are "disruptors". These work the same as pulse torpedoes (photon torpedoes), except they do a fixed 2 pts of damage and cost a mass of 3 (+1 per extra arc) instead of 4.

First is the D5 War Cruiser. A medium sized ship built purely for war.

 

The D5W is an upgunned Heavy War Cruiser.

 

And finally, the venerable D7 Battlecruiser. A little less powerful than the Federation constitution class cruiser. Note, this ship is confugured with a science lab similar to the Federation cruiser. During a major war, that space may well be refitted to improve combat effectiveness.



 

While raising the subject of the science lab space, it might be appropriate to mention some rules. Typically, the Federation conducts research and exploration missions with its ships more often that military actions.

 

A ship conducting research (on a planet) must first establish orbit (see the FT rules), and then spend a turn collecting research data. For each point of lab space on the ship, roll a d6. A score of 5 results in one point of data collected , while a roll of a 6 results in one point, plus a re-roll. A typical mission might require accumulating 5 points of research to consider the mission successful. Of course, it wouldn't be a game if there wasn't an enemy vessel either trying to collect the scientific data first, or simply destroy the research vessel.

 

In a purely research oriented mission, a dedicated science vessel, with a larger lab, might be deployed to conduct the research, while being protected by a military vessel.

 

BFG Ships for Full Thrust

I posted some BFG ships a couple of years ago, but seem to have deleted some of them. I also realised that someone asked for the points cost for them. So, here are some updated FT ship diagrams.

While I have retained the BFG ship classes, they are all much larger classes when compared to FT ships. This is in part due to the physical size of the ships and in part due to the weaponry.

The Weapons labeled with a "T" are standard FT pulse torpedoes and those labeled "L" are long range torpedoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Space Fleets

It has been a while since I posted anything. So here are a few pictures.
The first shows some of my FT fleets.

The red ships are (old) New Swabian League from GZG, the blue ones are GW Imperials, the white are Federation ships from ADB. The bronze are Tholians also from ADB. The green ships are Savasku from GZG and there is also a small squadron of ADB klingons and ADB Seltorians.

The second shot shows my complete Federation Fleet. (well, we all know that "complete" means "for now" - there are whole classes of ship I am yet to acquire).
From left to right:
6 Battleships
3 Dreadnoughts (light batleships)
6 Battlecruisers
6 Heavy Cruisers (Constitution class)
3 Strike Cruisers & 3 Fast Cruisers
3 Destroyers & 3 Light Destroyers
3 Fast Destroyers & 3 Scouts
6 "old" Light Cruisers
6 Frigates
3 Battle-Frigates

Now to paint some more Klingons...

The FT stats for all of the Federation ships are scattered throughout this blog. Look for the Star Trek tags.

Star Trek Variant Ships

Here are a few more Federation ships. These are all variants on existing classes of ships.

This is the plasma armed variant of the standard dreadnought.

Here is the plasma armed battle cruiser.

 

  

Here is the photon armed battle cruiser.

 

And this is the phaser armed battle cruiser.

 

 

The Command Cruiser is based on the standard Heavy Cruiser, but has a little extra mass to accomodate a flag bridge.

This is the scout variant of the destroyer with some weaponry replaced by superior sensors and an area jammer.

The fast variant of the destroyer has slightly less weaponry, but extra manoeuvrability.

 

 



Full Thrust Training Scenario

This scenario is designed to help players understand how inertia works and how manoeuvre orders are plotted.

Playing Area

The scenario is played on a standard 6x4ft playing surface. The map is fixed, not floating.
Six drones, or markers, are placed on the table: three on one side and three on the other. Each drone is placed nine inches from the table edge in two columns, one on the left and one on the right. The drones on the right column are placed 8, 30 and 52 inches from the base edge, while those on the left are placed 19, 41 and 63 inches from the base.

Forces

The player controls a single ship of any desired class.

Deployment

The ship is placed at one end of the table exactly in the centre. It begins with a velocity of zero, a facing of 12 and a bearing of 12.

Objective

Destroy all of the target drones in the shortest amount of time.

Special Rules

Only beam weapons and pulse torpedoes may be used to fire on the drones. Regardless of the class of weapon, the maximum range is 12 inches. So, a class 3 beam weapon will still use 3 fire dice, but it can only be fired within 12” of the drone.
Drones only have 1 hull point, so a single hit is enough to destroy one.

Variations

A number of variations are possible such as, using different ships, randomising the location of the drones, have the drones move, give them more than one hull point, or even have them fire back. You can also place terrain such as asteroids or planets on the table to make movement even more difficult.

Example Play

The inertia (or vector) movement option in Full Thrust can be a little confusing to use at first, so this scenario can be used to practice how it works.

In essence, each ship has 3 attributes that affect its movement: facing, bearing and velocity. The facing is the direction the ship is actually pointing, while the bearing is the direction in which it is moving and the velocity is how fast it is moving in that direction.
Ships also have a thrust rating. This is basically movement points. Up to half of the thrust may be spent on manoeuvres, such as turning, and the reminder (up to the maximum thrust rating) may be spent on acceleration in the direction the ship is facing.
Once a ship starts to move, it will continue to move in that direction at the same speed unless it applies acceleration (or thrust) to change movement. That is, ships will obey Newton’s first law of motion: a body moving at a constant velocity will continue to move at that velocity unless acted upon by an external force.
So, let’s work through an example…
In the above scenario, the ship starts with a speed of zero. I am using a Federation Battle Frigate which has a thrust of 6. In turn one, I plot the following manoeuvre orders: Face 2, Thrust 5.
What this means is the ship turns to face direction 2 o’clock (costing one thrust point) and accelerates 5 inches in that direction (using the remaining 5 thrust points). In this instance, we can just move the ship to the new location 5 inches away in direction 2 and we know that its new facing is 2, velocity is 5 and bearing is 5. But now the ship is moving, it gets more interesting.

As it happens, the ship is now within 12” of drone 1, so it takes a shot. At this range and direction, the ship has 5 beam dice and it scores a hit so destroys the first drone.

Now we plot movement for turn 2. We are heading in the wrong direction to close on drone 2, so the best thing to do is change facing and accelerate towards the second drone. We plot face 10 and thrust 5.
To work out the ship’s new position, we first determine where its inertia will carry it. From the last turn, the ship has a bearing of 2 and a velocity of 5, so first place a marker at that location: 5 inches from the ship in direction 2 o’clock (red die). From that point, we then apply the manoeuvre orders, which were to thrust 5 in direction 10. So we measure that and place a second marker there: 5 inches from the first marker at 10 o’clock (blue die). Then we work out the ship’s new facing, bearing and velocity.

 

The facing is whatever the last facing order was, in this case 10 o’clock. The velocity is the distance from where the ship is now (ie where it ended its last turn) to where the second (blue) marker is. In this case 4 inches, and the bearing is the direction from where the ship is to where that second marker is. In this case 12 o’clock. So we are left with the new information that the ship is facing 10, bearing 12 and moving at speed 4.
Now we plot the movement for turn 3. As the ship is roughly heading in the right direction, we plot just a thrust of 6 (its maximum). This means the ship will move 4 inches in direction 12, then 6 inches in direction 10 (the direction it is still facing). Resulting in a total distance of 8 on a bearing of 11: F10, B11, V8.
For turn 4, we asses we are moving in the right direction, but may need to turn slightly to make sure all weapons can fire, so we simply plot F9. This means the ship continues to move 8 inches towards 12 o’clock, but finishes facing 9 o’clock. It is now within range and facing the right direction, so it shoots and scores a hit on drone 2.
The subsequent movement plots are as follows, and the diagram shows the approximate path of the ship:

Turn 5: F4, T5: resulting in F4, B11, V4.
Turn 6: F3, T5: resulting in F3, B1, V4.
Turn 7: T6: resulting in F3, B2, V9 just out of range of drone 3.
Turn 8: F9, T4, F3: resulting in F3, B1, V6 and scoring a hit on drone 3.
Turn 9: F7, T7: resulting in F7, B1, V1.
Turn 10: F11, T5: resulting in F11, B11, V5.
Turn 11: F9, T4: resulting in F9, B10, V8 and ending just in range of drone 4, destroying it.
Rather than go onto drone 5, because we are heading towards drone 6, I elect to continue and plot the following:
Turn 12: F12, T5: resulting in F12, B11, V12, but just out of range of the drone.
Turn 13: F4, T5: resulting in F4, B11, V7. We are in range of the drone, but not facing it so we can only roll 3 beam dice, but we manage a hit.
Turn 14: T6: resulting in F4, B1, V3
Turn 15: T6: resulting in F4, B3, V7
Turn 16: T4: resulting in F4, B3, V10, but we are in range and destroy the last drone (drone 5).

Some More Star Trek Ships

I recently created a few more Full Thrust ship templates for some Star Trek Federation ships. This completes all the basic ship classes for "classic" Trek.

Once again, the ship classes match those from the Star Trek background, not the classes used in FT. The points value is that based on FT Fleet Book 2.

First comes the basic Destroyer and the Dreadnought or light Battleship. Both of these ships are equipped with a science lab capability in line with the basic Cruiser and the pre-war dual role of combat vessel and exploration platform.

The next two ships are built entirely as war ships for service during the war. They are Battle Cruiser and the Mars class Battleship.

Space Ships

Here are a few photos of some of my ships. I will try to add more over time and see if I can improve the lighting.

The Archeo-Tholian fleet.

The dreadnought.

The heavies.

A couple of Neo-Tholians.

The Tyranid hive ship.

Some medium Tyranids.

Star Trek Ships

I thought I would finally do some FT SSDs of the more typical Trek ships. First, a few words about the FT conversion.

I have a NSL fleet from GZG. I use this as my reference fleet for determining mass for ships from other ranges. Basically, I compare the size of the different models and pick a rough mass range.

For the Trek ships, I have used the models from ADB. I use the fleet scale ship diagrams to determine the weapon fit for the ships, adjusting size and arcs within the mass limit.

I use FT beams for Trek phasers and pulse torps for photon torps. Note, all my ships also have a couple of shuttles. These come free with the ship, like crew. They are not troop transports etc as described in he FT rules. They represent life pods, small interface craft, or a limited bording capability.

Here is the Federation Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser aka Enterprise.

The box with the "L" inside it represents the science lab facilities. Believe it or not, I do not have a painted, assembled cruiser.

I do, however, have a couple of related ships.

The "Strike Cruiser" is a minor variation made more for war than exploration.

The "new fast Cruiser" is another ship built for war. Specifically deep raiding.

Some smaller Federation ships.

For now, my enemy fleet only consists of Klingon F5 frigates.

Seltorian Ships

Some more FT SSDs. This time for the arch-enemies of the Tholians: the Setorians. Note, as for many of the Trek ships, the class (FF, DN etc) is based on the Trek description, not the FT mass rating. I have opted to use the Kravak K-gun to represent the Seltorian particle cannon.