Missing Darrian Ships

[robject]

By "missing" I mean not found in print.

I'm missing canonical Darrian starships. Mainly I mean "current" ships, not the relic pre-maghiz wonders. The only mention I see in print of specific Darrian ships is from Beltstrike, I believe, which mentioned a pre-maghiz Darrian ship (nonfunctional of course). Even there I believe the details were very, very sketchy.

Does anyone have any opinions, suggestions, or concepts?

Maybe Darrian ships are just too similar to Imperial ships. I mean, there's only so many design patterns...

 

[rancke]

I'm missing canonical Darrian starships. Mainly I mean "current" ships, not the relic pre-maghiz wonders. The only mention I see in print of specific Darrian ships is from Beltstrike, I believe, which mentioned a pre-maghiz Darrian ship (nonfunctional of course). Even there I believe the details were very, very sketchy.

I can't recall any contemporary Darrian ships, sorry. The only two I can think of are both Old Darrian designs, and one of the a prototype to boot.

There's the Barekdoldin Class Patrol Cruiser on page 92 of Regency Sourcebook, the new, reconstructed ships based on pre-Maghiz designs that the Darrians have finally learned to build by 1202 (not the phony Barekdoldins mentioned in BtC; those were real pre-Maghiz ships that the Darrians used to run a bluff in the GTU of 1120 to make their neighbors believe that they were capable of building new GTL13 ships).

And there's Lon Geryen from my JTAS adventure "Trade Pioneers" and the campaign setting "Outrim Frontier, Part II", but I was deliberately quite vague about details (And it's not canon either).


Hans

 

[robject]

There's the Barekdoldin Class Patrol Cruiser on page 92 of Regency Sourcebook, the new, reconstructed ships based on pre-Maghiz designs that the Darrians have finally learned to build by 1202 [...]

And there's Lon Geryen from my JTAS adventure "Trade Pioneers" and the campaign setting "Outrim Frontier, Part II", but I was deliberately quite vague about details (And it's not canon either).

Hans

Hmm. Well, my interest is piqued. I'd like to hear more about both of them, vague or not.

 

[aramis]

There are a couple in AM 7 - Darrians.
There are a couple in one of the TNE books.

 

[Whipsnade]

Robject,

Three things come first to mind:

- The CT Darrian alien module says the Darrians prefer Solomani ship designs and routinely import plans for said designs. (IIRC, there's even a sentence saying something along the lines that the Darrians imports S0lomani designs but not Solomani politics.)

- There's also their canonical post-Maghiz distrust of gravitics; their grav designs all have gliding capacity if the gravitic modules fail.

- Merchant Prince states that there are two large, Confederation-subsidized, shipping lines. One handles business between the worlds in the Confederation and the other handles business between the Confederation and its neighbors. While I don't think these two lines monpolize all Darrian shipping, I do think the two lines handle a large chunk of that shipping. There most certainly are Darrian free traders, but there might not be something like Ukaye Trading Partners or McClellen Factors. We're only looking at a subsector sized market here and two of the Confederacy's four hi-pop worlds have Class E starports.

Stitching all that together:

- Due to Solomani influence, we'll see ship designs different from the local Imperium norm.
- Due to "gravitic squeamishness", many may resemble flying wings or be tail landers.
- There might not be a large number of different designs because there might not be a market for a large number of ships.

Have fun building them and please share the results with us.


Regards,
Bill

 

[robject]

Browsing AM8 ("Darrians"), I find mention of a transport (and a transport company -- probably one of the two mentioned by Whipsnade from Merchant Prince), plus three ship benefits: a trader, a yacht, and a lab ship. Furthermore, traders are mentioned as being in the range of 400-600 tons (I presume the yacht and lab would also fit into these categories), and I suppose even the transport mentioned above could fit in there as well. I also find mention that Imperial warships (or their designs) are imported, while as mentioned before, Solomani designs are also common.

The subsector line can do fine with mostly Jump-1 and Jump-2 ships; J3 ships would seem to serve a luxury market, or else reach the furthermost scattered worlds in the Confederation.

The interface line would need Jump-3 ships, I think.

Add to that airframe or lift body configurations, and I'm starting to get a picture.

 

[Theophilus]

Also the Darriens recieved one Azhanti High Lightning, and "probably" recieved some Atlantic heavy cruisers. But the cruiser's are just a guess based on the cruiser write-up which says some went to client states.

 

[rancke]

The subsector line can do fine with mostly Jump-1 and Jump-2 ships; J3 ships would seem to serve a luxury market, or else reach the furthermost scattered worlds in the Confederation.

For regular traffic between any worlds that are exactly three parsecs apart, jump-3 is cheaper than jump-2 (and either jump-2 or jump-3 is always cheaper than jump-1 for any distance of more than one parsec). Jacent, jump-3 from both Mire and Darrian, seems to be a bit of a chokepoint for trade with Entrope and the Sword Worlds, although there are alternate jump-2 routes. However, while jump-2 and jump-3 are roughly equally cheap (given the requisite intermediate systems), jump-3 gets the goods delivered faster and would probably be preferred. Darrian to Zamine might have some jump-4 passenger liners. While jump-4 is about 25% more expensive than jump-2, it's also twice as fast.


Hans

 

[boomslang]

Add to that airframe or lift body configurations, and I'm starting to get a picture.

I always just re-purposed Solomani designs, with an upgrade to fiber-optic computers as per HG1 (+50%, no additional displacement).

Isn't there something about their Naval forces in the Alien Realms adventures somewhere?