Starship Homebrews for FASA

Master Book of Ships
My book of starships for the Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator

For the Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator by FASA, they created a Starship Construction Manual. This book contained charts and rules to create Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Gorn and Orion starships. I used this book in the 1990’s for quite a few creations. Usually my targets were the various starships seen in different fan made technical-manuals and blueprints. The ships had already been designed and contained enough statistics to convert into game statistics. I would then type of the stats, photocopy the image of the ship and quite literally cut-and-paste. I was able to make one look really fancy (Belknap), but most were just the text and an image of the ship. So these are presented in the format I had created in the 90’s.

I had made a master book of starships for the game for my own personal use. I had copied all of the ships from the various manuals, modules, magazine articles and fanzines and placed them into a three-ring binder alongside my own creations. As you can imagine, this book became quite thick. Luckily I was able to keep this book through all of my moves and I recently pulled it out of a storage box. I’ve been able to scan all of my creations into the PDF format for ease of distribution. If I had enough background details, I would include it with the statistics. Since this was the time before Google, I didn’t know the reason behind some of the class names.

Since most of the material I pulled from covered Starfleet vessels, that consists of the bulk of the entries. However there are vessels from Klingon, Romulan, Gorn, Tholian, Kzinti, Affiliation of Outer Free Worlds and Independent Merchants. None of these are official, of course, and I don’t know how they played out in the game. When I was making these, a lot of my gaming buddies had already moved onto other systems. But I loved this combat simulator so much I had to keep making more ships for the game.

Starships are listed by fleet, then alphabetically. If I remember the original source, I’ve noted it.

==Starfleet Vessels==

This design came from the fan-made Starfleet Prototype: The Journal of Innovative Design and Ideas. Even though it was listed as “Issue 25 2291-2292”, I don’t know if any other issues of this journal was released. It is a very well detailed book which has other designs that I have homebrewed, or would like to homebrew.

The source of this starship was the Starfleet Dynamics 25th Anniversary Edition. I thought the mix of a Belknap Class with a Knox Class was a good combination. There are quite a few other ships in this book that I’d like to homebrew.

I’m not certain what source I got this starship from. In 20/20 hindsight I should have referenced them when I created the document. I thought it was an interesting concept on the Saladin/Hermes family design.

From the blueprint set “Booklet of General Plans Command Cruiser Class” I was able to homebrew the Caracal Class for the game. I had lots of blueprints in the paper sleeves that I wanted to convert over.

One of the favorites of Tech Fandom. This Coventry class was pulled from the black covered Ships of The Starfleet Volume One (published in 1987). I thought that this design would have seen action during the Four Years War.

This ships also came from the Ships of The Starfleet Volume One. I believe I also saw vessels of this class make an appearance in the second run of Star Trek Comics by DC Comics.

The reason this one looks much nicer than my other “copy and paste” creations is due to the plan to submit it to the Galactic Engineers Concordance fanzine. This was a Treknologist fanzine that was published in the 1990’s. Unfortunately, the editor had just published another article with this same class so this never made the cut. The information on this class came from the “Starship Design” magazine.

Found in the Starfleet Dynamics (another excellent fan-made tech publication), the Guam Class was one of the few deck-carriers I had seen. Since FASA’s sources was lacking carriers, I converted this one over and added it to my book.

I don’t recall the source for this ship and stats. I want to go back and double check it again against the source material however. While I was scanning it, I was wondering if the 5000 passenger number was correct.

There was a blueprint poster that had the Horizon class and several variants (if I recall correctly). I need to find the original source so I can make sure they get the proper credit. This class was very popular in Trek fandom.

This starship came from a set of blueprints (also fan made) that I had found on one of my convention trips. I miss the days of going to a con and walking away with another resource book, tech manual or set of blueprints. Again I thought the idea was unique and converted it over.

While the Knox Class was in the Ships of The Starfleet Volume One, I pulled the image and stats from a different source (probably the same as the Hippocrates Class listed above). I wonder if the stats would have been vastly different if I had pulled the info from SoSv1?

While I got the image and details from the Starship Design magazine, I know that this vessel has shown up in other Star Trek fan publications.

Another starship from the Franz Joseph Star Fleet Technical Manual. I created the back story about the Four Years War and the namesake. This was another case of not knowing who Ptolemy was and not having the modern google tools that I can use now.

And speaking of the Saladin Class, here it is directly from the Starfleet Technical Manual. When I created this document, I had no idea that Saladin was a real historical figure. I created a backstory for the name and entered it into this starship description. If I was creating this document now, I would update it to properly represent it’s namesake.

This was definitely from a fan-made technical manual. It was probably one that I had borrowed from my fellow Treknologist, Dennis Hollinger. I’ll have to ask him if he remembers which book this was from and post it in a future blog entry.

Another member of the Saladin/Hermes family. I believe this was from one of the Starfleet Academy tech books. I’m still unpacking things so I’ll see if I can track this one down. I know I’ve seen other (better) drawings of the Siva class.

In the original source for this starship, it was called the Ranger Class Cruiser. However FASA already had a Ranger Class. So I renamed it to Starranger. Many years later I’ve noticed that there have been several published designs (both licensed and fan-made) that use the “Ranger Class” name.

Off the top of my head, I’m not certain which source I used for this starship. I recognize the artwork, but not the book. I’ll have to see if I can find it so I can give it proper credit. It is another member of the upgraded Saladin family.

This also came from the same source as the Thunderbolt. It is also another variant of the upgraded Saladin class. This type of kitbash was very popular in the original source material.

==Klingon Vessels==

A Klingon ship from the Starship Design magazine that I enjoyed very much. I believe this may have shown up in other Trek fandom publications.

The D-34 Taq’r image and information came from a fanzine for a Klingon fan club if I recall correctly. I remember being excited because there were plenty of Starfleet ships to convert, but very few non-Starfleet vessels.

==Romulan Vessels==

A ship I found from a fan made Star Trek tech manual that was owned by a fellow starship enthusiast. I don’t recall the name of the manual. I’m not certain if this is their attempt at drawing up the Star Fleet Battles Sparrowhawk. I believe that I gave it the V-3 designation, but I could be wrong on that.

I did not create this, but I wanted to share it so others could appreciate the work that went into it. It was created by someone named Burke and published in a Utah gaming fanzine in 1987 or 1988. This page came directly out of the fanzine and was given to me by a friend. On the back are advertisements for gaming stores in Utah that are no longer in existence and an “upcoming releases” announcement. I’d love to find the fanzines that came out during that time. I know to brothers named Burke who are gamers and would have been around during this time frame, however both stated that it wasn’t their creation. If anyone recognizes it, please contact me via Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com to let me know.

So the images came from FASA, but it was for a different ship. In the early publications for Romulans, this was listed as the V-30 Winged Defender. It had the front, top and side views as well as the image seen in the header for this blog entry. Later FASA changed the image to the very birdlike (and very popular) design now marked for the V-30. I thought the original design was too good to go to waste, so I created an original ship using the construction manual.

==Gorn Vessels==

The name of this vessel in the fan-made Gorn Guidebook is the “Gorn Space Control Dreadnaught”. I don’t know why I had changed the name to the CK-5. Probably because I was trying to mimic the naming convention seen in the Klingon Ship Recognition Manual and the Romulan Ship Recognition Manual.

==Tholian Starships==

The image came from The Worlds of the Federation resource book. The stats were guestimated by me at the time of creation. The 2nd edition of the Starship Construction Manual doesn’t provide any stats for Tholian equipment. I didn’t know that the 1st edition of the book had Tholian equipment until I got a hold of it several years later.

A friend of mine had several fan-made technical manuals that he let me borrow in the 90’s. This Tholian ship came from one of them. I don’t recall the title of the book. Like the Spinner, I guestimated the stats for this vessel based off of the information in the publication. The name of the class came from the book.

==Kzinti Vessels==

There was a Dragon Magazine article that introduced the Kzinti into the FASA Star Trek RPG. It included information on the race and artwork for the ship. I took this artwork for my write up and guestimated some stats for a police ship.

==Affiliation of Outer Free Worlds Vessels==

One of the minor governments in the FASA lore was the Affiliation of Outer Free Worlds. Basically it was a mini-Federation found within the Triangle region. A lot of ex-Starfleet officers found employment in the AOFW Space Navy. The only vessel I found for my book came from a Stardate Magazine and it displayed that they used Federation based equipment. So I created the Emerald Class VII Scout. For the image, I quite literally cut-and-paste the top off of a Federation (Upgraded) Class Dreadnought for the images and used the assembly rules from the Starship Construction Manual.

==Merchant Vessels==

Stats for a passenger liner? Yes, I made these based off of the information on this vessel from the fan-made Starfleet Dyamics book. A liner could be caught in a pirate situation for both the starship tactical combat simulator or on the roleplaying side.

There were a ton of ships in the 1979 publication, “Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology“. Some of the illustrations by Rick Sternbach were even used as on-screen graphics in Next Generation episodes. There were a few different ships that I wanted to homebrew stats for. This was the first, and only one, that I did in the 90’s. I had planned to write up others, which may happen sooner or later.

So that is all that I created from the 1990’s. If I create any new homebrews, they will be posted in a different section. As you can imagine, I got a lot of use out of this book.

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