Topic: SFC Technical Manual

[Starfox1701]

Looking good though I hope ther will be a bit more info

[Bernard Guignard]

Looking good though I hope ther will be a bit more info

Hi Starfox 
This project is very early in its infancy. What kind of information would you be looking for?
I'm going to need volunteers to do ship write ups.
I'm not going to do all this myself  but feed back and discussion is greatly appreciated,
in order to know what you all would expect in the manual. 
We Also need to work out table of contents and a credit page for all the modelers and individuals who will be working on this Project. 

I see this project in a series of steps
Step One: Come up with a format that is usable and set ground rules for material inclusion.
Speaking of specifications  does anyone know if you can get a text file out of the Vessel Library?
also do the extra ships that Firesoul added to his 4.1 mod show up in the Vessel Library ?

Here's a question should we just list Variants  IE CA CAD  CAE Etc or create  ships and orthos to represent the different ship types ie  for Klingon Drone Cruiser. Could be as simple as texturing on drone Launch tubes on the front of the secondary hull 

So many Questions and ideas so little time     

[FoaS_XC]

Commentary by expert pilots might be a good idea. "Here's a decent way to use the F-CLC" for example. Also a decent way to bring in veteran players onto the project instead of just us art-heads.

[TAnimaL]

I was thinking  the same thing Starfox said when I saw the nice mock-ups. Personally, I'd like to see "real SFC" data added into size/mass specs -i.e.; "warp," "impulse," and "aux" units add up to that ship's power, or phasers are listed as what types - "10 Phaser Mk 1, 4 Phaser Mk 3."

(As an aside, I still remember getting the FJ Tech Manual when it came out, how excited I was when I was 12, and then how I became disappointed in it by 13. The ships had a full page of names for each but next to no tech info on the ships, which was mostly the same "WF cruising, WF Emergency," etc. One of the things that drew me to SFB in '79 was tech stuff, even if it was game stuff like "turn mode" and "breakdown rating.")

Commentary on each ship sounds interesting too. Could be tactical, could be historical, could be anecdotal - "Flying the DNH against 3 Klink F5s once , and brole down on a HET early on! Got a few dents in my hull, but still took 'em all out. One tough motha."

And I'd love to help out however I can. Not sure this helps any, but I prepared this PDF for some additional ships I was adding for a campaign; it has the listings you might find on the ship in the Library section of the game, kinda what I was referring to above, FWIW.

[Bernard Guignard]

I was thinking  the same thing Starfox said when I saw the nice mock-ups. Personally, I'd like to see "real SFC" data added into size/mass specs -i.e.; "warp," "impulse," and "aux" units add up to that ship's power, or phasers are listed as what types - "10 Phaser Mk 1, 4 Phaser Mk 3."

(As an aside, I still remember getting the FJ Tech Manual when it came out, how excited I was when I was 12, and then how I became disappointed in it by 13. The ships had a full page of names for each but next to no tech info on the ships, which was mostly the same "WF cruising, WF Emergency," etc. One of the things that drew me to SFB in '79 was tech stuff, even if it was game stuff like "turn mode" and "breakdown rating.")

Commentary on each ship sounds interesting too. Could be tactical, could be historical, could be anecdotal - "Flying the DNH against 3 Klink F5s once , and brole down on a HET early on! Got a few dents in my hull, but still took 'em all out. One tough motha."

And I'd love to help out however I can. Not sure this helps any, but I prepared this PDF for some additional ships I was adding for a campaign; it has the listings you might find on the ship in the Library section of the game, kinda what I was referring to above, FWIW.

TAnimal 
I like the idea of using SFC stats in conjunction with the other information that we can derive. IE ship length and mass number of warp engines.   FOAS I also like the idea of adding commentary on each ships tactical strengths and weakness for the notes section  we just have to reformat that Specification section to to make it all fit or move things or add another page.   

[Starfox1701]

Looking good though I hope ther will be a bit more info

Hi Starfox 
This project is very early in its infancy. What kind of information would you be looking for?
I'm going to need volunteers to do ship write ups.
I'm not going to do all this myself  but feed back and discussion is greatly appreciated,
in order to know what you all would expect in the manual. 
We Also need to work out table of contents and a credit page for all the modelers and individuals who will be working on this Project. 

I see this project in a series of steps
Step One: Come up with a format that is usable and set ground rules for material inclusion.
Speaking of specifications  does anyone know if you can get a text file out of the Vessel Library?
also do the extra ships that Firesoul added to his 4.1 mod show up in the Vessel Library ?

Here's a question should we just list Variants  IE CA CAD  CAE Etc or create  ships and orthos to represent the different ship types ie  for Klingon Drone Cruiser. Could be as simple as texturing on drone Launch tubes on the front of the secondary hull 

So many Questions and ideas so little time 

I personly like story driven stuff like "historical info" that drove the design and production, or after action reports and service histories for a given class. The real world Janes Manuals are a good example. I wouldn't mind doing some writing as long as someone else is folding it into the spec sheets. right now I'm working from my wifes PC till I get mine fixed.

I have no ID on the Library or Firesouls ships.

On veriants I would do visuals to show differences you can see. Limiting the space any one artical takes up will only really shortchange better known ships like Constitution and the D7

[Bernard Guignard]

After some serious reading.  Here's the latest on the draft pages for the Technical manual. Reading the scribus documentation has shown me
how to add page numbers.    I also read up how to add tables from open office Calc spread sheets and I'll be trrying that in the next iteration

I'm proposing we work with a 4 page lay out:  1 page consisting of ship graphic  & ship registry.
The next page is specifications, after that comes ship history and finally any notes (we might want to find a better title)
this section would be where the Tactical commentary can be made.  I still want to refine the header and footer graphics
we will need something that will be high res for printing purposes  Looking at the footer graphic I'm finding it too blurry.

Regarding Specifications:  what other weapons does the Federation use? I'd like to see a Generic Federation specification
spreadsheet with all weapons and systems that the Federation uses, we can then just fill in what the ship has and Paste
the information into the proper page

[FoaS_XC]

300 DPI is the resolution you want. You can get away with 150 but just to be safe.

The ellipse at the top is buggin me a bit, but that's the designer in me having fun. I wouldn't label each box with a title, I would let the layout go a bit more liquid. Let the section titles reside inside the text boxes so that each section takes up as much room as it needs and the next section starts. Otherwise you're going to have a lot of empty page space if a section only takes up half a box.

[Bernard Guignard]

300 DPI is the resolution you want. You can get away with 150 but just to be safe.

The ellipse at the top is buggin me a bit, but that's the designer in me having fun. I wouldn't label each box with a title, I would let the layout go a bit more liquid. Let the section titles reside inside the text boxes so that each section takes up as much room as it needs and the next section starts. Otherwise you're going to have a lot of empty page space if a section only takes up half a box.

Not a problem we will put section headings inside the box    What do you suggest for the header should we just keep the Logo and be rid of the Ellipse ?  would a thin blue line be better up there ?  Any idea about the footer lines. ? 
 

[FoaS_XC]

You're using Scribus, hmm?
Let me download it and see what it can do, graphically speaking.

My first inclination is to do everything layout-wise with vector, not bitmaps - (A) to get the print resolution you need, guaranteed. (B) lower on the filesize at that resolution.

[Bernard Guignard]

This past week I've been back at work playing catch up, so I haven't had much time to delve into the technical manual project  too much 
Before I went back to work I created a spread sheet of the OP 4.1 ship list.    I want to break it down into sections and put it into a project management gantt chart,  if I can find a free one that works with open office and is easy to use.  To start tracking the work that needs to be done on each entry tasks with sub sections, would look like this as an example. If any of you can think of any orther tasks that should be done on the ship entry
Please pass it along to me so I can set up some sort of template to speed things along.

 FED DN 
  task 1  -  Ship model orthographics creation
  task 2  -  Ship mass calculation
  task 3  -  Ship Specification Write up
  task 4  -  Ship Registry write up
  task 5  -  Ship History write up
  task 6  -  Ship Tactical notes write up
  task 7  -  Draft ship page compilation
  task 8  -  Entry review
  task 9  -  Revised ship compilation
  task 10 - Final Entry review

Thank you in advance

[Bernard Guignard]

My searching on the internet found a what I hope to be a free gantt Chart program.
Here's what I've managed to lay down so far.   

[atheorhaven]

My searching on the internet found a what I hope to be a free gantt Chart program.
Here's what I've managed to lay down so far. 

Gant TT is free..

Have another one kicking around as well similarly named, I'll try and find it then post its name as well.  (Does similar work)..

(edit: The other one I found was Gantt PV).

[Bernard Guignard]

You're using Scribus, hmm?
Let me download it and see what it can do, graphically speaking.

My first inclination is to do everything layout-wise with vector, not bitmaps - (A) to get the print resolution you need, guaranteed. (B) lower on the filesize at that resolution.

Sorry Foas
I wasn't ignoring you just wanted to get some ideas out there after vacation was over.  I think it would be great if you could take a look at scribus  it can handle SVG files and a host of others.  The bringing in of a spreadsheet is a pain though have to convert it to an image in order to bring it in to the program.  Its own table creator is not much fun to use I found it very finicky and trying to get proper column widths was difficult. well got to keep that in mind 
wondering if it would be better to be working in open office write instead?

[FoaS_XC]

Well, I'm pretty handy with illustrator - as is Norsehound (hell, he's better than I am at it) - and that can export SVG files.

[Tus-XC]

My searching on the internet found a what I hope to be a free gantt Chart program.
Here's what I've managed to lay down so far.   

AAAHHH!!! a gantt chart!!! get it away, get it away! (i see a gantt chart everyday for work )

[Bernard Guignard]

My searching on the internet found a what I hope to be a free gantt Chart program.
Here's what I've managed to lay down so far.   

AAAHHH!!! a gantt chart!!! get it away, get it away! (i see a gantt chart everyday for work )

Hi Tus
I guess I can't fault you for that  I suppose if people started to create Starfleet Solicitation requests or Starfleet engineering change requests
and Engineering Change notices.  I'd feel the same way 

To that end Do we have any good Spreadsheeters or Programers  to design an application to do Ship Mass calculations  I figure we should
try to automate the process as much as possible due to the number of entrys in the SFC Ship List 

[FoaS_XC]

I'm just gonna leave this here...

[Starfox1701]

That sir kicks ass

[Bernard Guignard]

I'm just gonna leave this here...

FOAS
I like the layout and look of it    Only suggestion is add Command to the title.
since Franz Joseph Pulblished the Star fleet Technical Manual.

What is it done in ? 

Real Life has been crazy and I've really not had the time to allocat to this. I've taken the shiplist spreasheet and am
breaking it down to the individual races one race for each tab  I can then hopefully create a secondary spreadsheet
with the various ship entry tasks and combine it to create gantts for each ship entry.