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Starfleet Battles

There's an old interview (1999) with Franz's daughter Karen that can still be read, and it provides some interesting insights into the evolution of FJ's work with Gene's projects and there is a timeline of events as well, based on communications and other things she saved over the years. Karen came to feel, over time, that a lot of the souring of the relationship came from Roddenberry's end, as he resented the fact that he couldn't persuade FJ to initially use Majel Barrett's business (Lincoln Enterprises) to be the source of the Starship Plans and Technical Manual, as that would have allowed Gene to directly profit from their sales. Part of the problem seems to have been that, from FJ's perspective, it was not entirely clear who actually owned the rights to the series (as Gene had created but Paramount owned it, if I understand correctly, which is why they helped Ballantine publish the TM independently of Roddenberry). There were a lot of miscommunications and mixed messages flying around, compounded by the then hectic production of The Motion Picture that was evolving. The whole story is fairly complex, and it is indeed unfortunate that FJ and Gene didn't have a more amicable relationship.
Here is the interview. 6 enlightening pages.
 
And interesting as it might be in aspects it’s a third hand account of events decades earlier and ergo merits some degree of skepticism.
 
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In the 1980 Trek Spaceflight Chronology, there's the "Tritium", a Warp 4 (intended) cruiser with three engines. It didn't work out. Was that book authorized? Was the failure of the three-nacelle design part of Gene's master plan?

The Spaceflight Chronology?? You've got my attention!!
I do wonder if or how GR signed off on that volume. It was released to coincide with TMP, and was officially licensed.
GR's nacelle rules don't apply for many ships in SFC, including Verne class, Tritium class, Portsmith class, Rickenbacker class.

Maybe he selectively applied his "rules" based on financial stakes?
 
It's not just a matter of how many warp nacelles a given ship can or can not have in the SFU relative to the post-1979 Franchise, but what kind of function they serve.

In the SFU, there is no such thing as a "warp core"; all of the "stuff" needed to make a given warp engine work is within the nacelle proper.

Plus, even impulse engines provide a degree of "space warping" - they can also be referred to as Non-Tactical Warp drives. They permit a ship to travel at approximately nine parsecs a day from one star system to another, but must slow to "sublight" speeds in order to fight. Although they do avoid the effects of time dilation which would otherwise make combat at high fractions of c rather difficult.

While impulse engines are fusion-powered, true Tactical Warp drives require matter-antimatter reactions and the use of dilithium crystals. There are five generations of Tactical Warp drive in the Alpha Octant through to the end of the SFU timeline in Y225, though so far only four of those - plus a handful of adjuncts to "modern" Tactical Warp drive, such as "fast" engines - have been detailed in game terms thus far.

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Indeed, the onset of new iterations of warp drive is tied to the concept of further political integration in both the United Federation of Planets and the Inter-Stellar Concordium.

As noted in my last post, there is no equivalent to the NX-01 in the SFU; Terran-built ships did not have saucers. The "saucer-and-nacelle" template used by the unified Star Fleet was designed from the outset to succeed the "planetary" ships of the individual member planets. That said, the earliest unified Star Fleet designs still lacked the special sensors and type-I phasers used by Vulcan ships; the rest of the Federation did not catch up until the Y120s. And even Star Fleet found the old Terran light cruiser to be too rugged - and too cost-effective a succession of upgrades - to bother with a replacement CL design prior to Y170.

The five species which would eventually found the ISC were effectively trapped squabbling over a confined region of space known as the Resource Worlds for close to two hundred years, due to their being stuck with short-ranged and unreliable Non-Tactical Warp drives. The onset of Tactical Warp drive enabled them to move beyond the Resource Worlds for the first time, and over time led to a growing understanding that there were enough new worlds out there to go around. The onset of the "two-prong" hull designs of the unified ISC Navy and Police (the forerunners of the "three-prong" hulls the ISC use in the "modern" era) cemented the transition of the Concordium from an alliance into a government. This concept of "warp equals peace" had thus been firmly embedded across ISC society... at least until the reality of warp-powered conflict between the Romulans and Gorns was uncovered in Y160.
 
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The Spaceflight Chronology?? You've got my attention!!
I do wonder if or how GR signed off on that volume. It was released to coincide with TMP, and was officially licensed.
GR's nacelle rules don't apply for many ships in SFC, including Verne class, Tritium class, Portsmith class, Rickenbacker class.

Maybe he selectively applied his "rules" based on financial stakes?
I believe the entire reason the 1993 Star Trek Chronology exists, which totally contradicts the old Spaceflight Chronology in every single important date, is to ensure the money made from it went into the "right" hands.
 
The Spaceflight Chronology?? You've got my attention!!

It is a very cool book, though it interprets the "no women captains" bit from Turnabout Intruder a bit too assiduously. Indeed, there are NO women making ANY entries until Sarah April...
 
i'm not following. :confused:

When Sternbach and Okuda published the TNG Technical Manual in 1991, there was a line in the forward stating something to the effect of 'any previous tech manuals or information books before this one were the product of threat forces and contain false information.' This is a direct reference to the FASA TNG Officer's Manual and the TNG Sourcebook mentioned above. This was an example of Roddenberry systematically invalidating FASA, Franz Joseph, SFB, and any other previously licensed works using the Star Trek IP. They were basically saying NOT to buy those publications. Why? Because Roddenberry wasn't making any money off them. I don't blame Okuda and Sternbach; they were just doing what their boss told them to do.
 
When Sternbach and Okuda published the TNG Technical Manual in 1991, there was a line in the forward stating something to the effect of 'any previous tech manuals or information books before this one were the product of threat forces and contain false information.' This is a direct reference to the FASA TNG Officer's Manual and the TNG Sourcebook mentioned above. This was an example of Roddenberry systematically invalidating FASA, Franz Joseph, SFB, and any other previously licensed works using the Star Trek IP. They were basically saying NOT to buy those publications. Why? Because Roddenberry wasn't making any money off them. I don't blame Okuda and Sternbach; they were just doing what their boss told them to do.
Here it is:
kk.jpg
 
In the SFU, there is no such thing as a "warp core"; all of the "stuff" needed to make a given warp engine work is within the nacelle proper. Plus, even impulse engines provide a degree of "space warping" - they can also be referred to as Non-Tactical Warp drives. They permit a ship to travel at approximately nine parsecs a day from one star system to another, but must slow to "sublight" speeds in order to fight.
So, fun fact, the so-called Non-Tactical Warp idea was born from an on-line conversation in which I purposed a weird claw-thing for the Ptolemy-class Tug to be able to two a separated full-size saucer back to a starbase / space dock to be re-united with an engineering section aft-hull. Steve Cole rejected the idea and said that "any ship with one working Impulse engine can limp home at warp speeds, but it can't fight at (in-game) combat speeds." Someone asked if that applied to Romulan so-called sub-light ships, too, and Steve said "Of course. How else could they build a Star Empire?" He's the one who coined the term Non-Tactical Warp.

Given that Non-Tactical Warp came first, it does beg to question: what was it called before Tactical Warp was invented?
 
My understanding is that the only direct nods to the Technical Manual were the dialogue chatter (which Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach contributed to adding, as they felt FJ deserved something for his work) and the occasional screen graphic.

And, while not 100%exact, the very large, very prominent Federation seal in the floor at Starfleet Command, was an obvious riff of FJs work.

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0217.jpg
 
It is a very cool book, though it interprets the "no women captains" bit from Turnabout Intruder a bit too assiduously. Indeed, there are NO women making ANY entries until Sarah April...

Right on, no women making captain's log entries but before Sarah April...

2032 Svetlana Krensky's log, as Governor of Asteropolis, capital of Asteroid Belt

2070 Miriam Akkoord's log, supervisor aboard Terra 10 Space Ark

2135 Janet Hester's log, inventor of first transporter breakthrough

Crazy how much the SFC is in my brain
 
So, fun fact, the so-called Non-Tactical Warp idea was born from an on-line conversation in which I purposed a weird claw-thing for the Ptolemy-class Tug to be able to two a separated full-size saucer back to a starbase / space dock to be re-united with an engineering section aft-hull. Steve Cole rejected the idea and said that "any ship with one working Impulse engine can limp home at warp speeds, but it can't fight at (in-game) combat speeds." Someone asked if that applied to Romulan so-called sub-light ships, too, and Steve said "Of course. How else could they build a Star Empire?" He's the one who coined the term Non-Tactical Warp.

Given that Non-Tactical Warp came first, it does beg to question: what was it called before Tactical Warp was invented?

The Romulan blueprints say that the Bird of Prey has warp drive, but that it can't use it and the plasma torp/cloaking device at the same time.

They are (c) 1977, which precedes SFB.
 
The Romulan blueprints say that the Bird of Prey has warp drive, but that it can't use it and the plasma torp/cloaking device at the same time.

They are (c) 1977, which precedes SFB.
Those were fan-published and had zero input from the people making the shows.
 
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