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Monthly Archives: March 2020

State of the Frontier – March 2020

This has been a crazy month. With the world mostly locked down, it’s been interesting to see how things have changed and evolved. For me, work hasn’t changed much as I already worked from home full time. The main difference is that now I have even less free time since in addition to full time work, I have to manage the schooling for my four youngest children. But because of that, I haven’t gotten as much done as I had hoped.

Looking Back

As usual I started off the month with the Detailed Frontier Timeline post followed by a post on a new miniature and model, this time the freighter from the Federation Ships boxed set. Next came a post on the Blue Plague, inspired by the events unfolding around us right now. Finally, last week I finally put together the map of the Yazira Sector, the region of space beyond the Frontier where the HSS History’s Hope is exploring in an attempt to rediscover the Yazirian homeworld. I had originally thought to do a different, but related post in that slot. More on that later. And this post is the final Tuesday post this month.

You might have noticed that there wasn’t an RPG Blog Carnival post this month. The topic was Alchemy and I just wasn’t having any inspiration on that topic for a sci-fi setting.

A lot of my free time this month was spent on the Frontier Explorer. For the first time since we rebooted the zine, I’m actually ahead of the game. As of right now I’m waiting on one final article and a few pieces of art to finish of the issue. I was able to get all the submitted articles edited and into a preliminary layout. I expect that this issue will be out much earlier in the month than the last few issues, which squeaked in just before the end of the month.

Beyond that, not much has been going on. I didn’t get anything done on the website migrations and upgrades and don’t think I got any writing done on my book. The COVID-19 adjustments have just eaten up all my spare time.

Looking Forward

The timeline post is queued up and ready to go out next week. After that will be a post on the agriculture ship model I created. My plan is to do a post on the True Yazira secret society. I had planned to do that instead of the Yazira sector map post this month but two things resulted in putting that off. One was simply that I didn’t have time to do it justice. The other was that I wanted the HSS History’s Hope expedition detailed out since they are related. More on that later this month. The final post will hopefully be related to the Blog Carnival. April’s topic is “Corners of the Multiverse” so I should be able to come up with something.

The other big thing happening this month will be the Frontier Explorer. As I already mentioned, issue 28 is almost completely done. So watch for an announcement on that. Here’s a teaser of the cover.

With my house settling into a routine, I’m starting to have a bit more free time. Hopefully that means more of my behind the scenes projects will get some love including getting more web site work and book writing done. I also suspect that this month I’ll be starting in on my writing for the Space Kids RPG that successfully funded and which I mentioned last month. I also hope to start painting some of these miniatures that I’ve been creating.

I’ll also be working on new models as the ag ship is the last one I’ve finished. This month I’ll start working on the ships from the Privateers boxed set. Hopefully I’ll find my missing three miniatures but I have three to start with.

What have you been working on this last month? Are there things you’d like to see me post about? Let me know in the comments below.

March 31, 2020 Tom Leave a comment

HSS History’s Hope and the Yazira Sector Map

HSS History’s Hope

As part of my Detailed Frontier Timeline, one of the threads I’ve introduced is the voyage of the Histran Starship (HSS) History’s Hope, registered out of Histran in the Scree Fron system. The goal of this voyage is to attempt to reach a star system that recent astronomical observations believe to be Yazira, the original homeworld of the yazirian species.

In my Yazirian History and Legends and Lore – Yazirians posts last month, I pointed out that most modern yazirians don’t know the location of their native world having fled some 150 years earlier to escape an astronomical disaster. Early in the Detailed Frontier Timeline I introduced the astronomical discovery of a system that matches the description of the yazirian homeworld, complete with a nearby brown dwarf. It is this system the HSS History’s Hope is trying to reach.

Of course there are some complications. First, the system is over 100 light years, in a straight line, from Scree Fron. Jumping from star to star, it’s even further. And all of those jumps are uncharted so each one carries the risk of a misjump and the crew getting lost along the way. They’ve had several misjumps in the timeline already and they aren’t even halfway there. In fact, they’ve just barely left the area covered by my Extended Frontier Map. This is additionally complicated by the fact that the ship is heading into the Vast Expanse, a region of space where the stars are further apart and thus the jumps are longer and more difficult to chart.

The second complication for their voyage is that the Family of One doesn’t really want them going out there and finding Yazira. And are willing to take measure to ensure that they won’t return. They have already been set upon by unknown assailants but managed to escape and continue their journey. They can expect more of the same in the days to come.

At some point I’ll probably do a write-up and timeline of the whole endeavor as a single post instead of having it spread out through the full timeline project for those that want to see how the mission played out and more of the background related to it’s organization and funding. If that is something you’d be interested in, let me know.

The Yazira Sector

As part of this project, I needed to place the yazirian homeworld. I chose to put it way off to the left of the Frontier, well beyond the area covered by the Extended Frontier Map (EFM). Since I didn’t have any maps of this area I had to create one.

For this map, instead of doing a large area, I chose to do a small, long strip. Enough to allow for multiple possible paths through the area, but not too big. I the end, I made it 90 light years wide (the same width as the EFM), and 20 light years tall (1/5 the EFM). However, I added in a new wrinkle. Unlike the EFM, which has all the stars in a single plane, I added a third dimension to this map making it 24 light years thick. So instead of all the stars being in the same plane, they have a z-coordinate as well.

This is a feature that was already part of my star map generation program that I had turned off for the EFM. I talked a bit about this in my post on the Rael Core Sector map. The image to the right shows how this is represented on the map with the z-coordinate represented by the small number to the lower right of the stellar symbols. Those three systems look close to one another but are widely separate in actual space. RS069 and RS073 are actually 5.1 light years apart, RS069 and RS064 are 9.1 light years apart, and RS064 and RS073 are the closest to each other, separated by only 4.6 light years even though they appear to be the furthest apart on the map.

Additionally, the Yazira sector is part of the Vast Expanse, an area of low stellar density, i.e. not a lot of stars. So in addition to turning on the z-component of the position, I also dialed down the density parameter in the program by a factor of almost 3. So we now have 1/3 the number of stars spread over about 4 times the volume of space. This means that in this region, there are going to be fewer stars than in a comparable area on the EFM. It doesn’t look that sparse to the eye because of the projection on the the 2D plane of the map, but crunching the numbers (and assuming a thickness of 5 ly for the EFM even though they are all on a single plane) you get a density on the EFM of 1 system per 159 cubic light years and in the Yaziria Sector of 1 system per 645 cubic light years. A factor of almost exactly 4. If I strictly held the EFM to a thickness of one, it would be a factor of 20.

So what does this region look like? Well, here’s the map. You’re going to have to click on it to see the details. In fact, I recommend right clicking, downloading it, and opening it up in another window where you can zoom and pan around.

94x20 ly map of the Yazira Sector containing 67 star systems

The EFM is to the right of this map. OFS222 is shown on the far right (the blue star about 1/3 of the way from the top) so you can connect it up with the EFM if you want. (This map is actually 94 light years wide. I added on the extra 4 light years so that OFS222 would be on the map, showing the overlap). OFS215 should be on this map as well, but I forgot to add it in when making this draft version of the map. I’ll be sure it gets on there for the next iteration when the HSS History’s Hope gets a bit farther along on its voyage.

The first thing we notice, even without looking at the map at full resolution, is that there aren’t a lot of bright stars here. We see a few, but mostly we see small red dwarfs (M stars). There are a few blue stars and a few giants. This is why the yazirians had to go all the way to the Frontier sector to find a suitable planet. There just weren’t any around.

Also there aren’t any nebula. That’s intentional, this area of space is actually devoid of them. That is a part of it being more empty that the Frontier sector. I won’t be adding any in on the final version of the map once it is done (other than the one between OFS222 and OFS215).

Zooming in you can see that most of the star systems are unlabeled. The only ones I have labeled so far are those that the HSS History’s Hope have visited and the one they believe to be Yazira. Others will get named as they travel through the sector and the final map will be presented in a future update.

The system that the crew of the HSS History’s Hope believes to be Yazira (spoiler, it is) is located at the far left of the map above the legend. This system is represented as a K4 star with a brown dwarf companion. The brown dwarf that disrupted the planetary system is still very close the star, less than a light year away, so it is represented as a single system on the map.

Looking at the right side of the map, you can see the jump routes plotted by the HSS History’s Hope as of today (March 24, 2020) as posted in the timeline posts on Twitter. A new feature on this map that wasn’t on the EFM is the one-way jump, represented as a dashed line with an arrowhead on it. The arrow points in the direction that the jump can be considered “charted.” The jump from YS01 to YS02 is the most recent jump made; they are still slowing down to make the return jump. They had a misjump that took them to YS03 (so no charted jump there) and while trying to jump back to YS01, misjumped again and ended up in YS04 (again no charted jump between those two systems). They did successfully chart the jump from YS04 back to YS01 but did not try to go the other direction, hence that connection is only one way.

Right now the HSS History’s Hope is in the YS02 system slowing down and preparing to chart the jump back to YS01. They are somewhat hesitant about that as the ship that attacked them is probably still in that system and they may have another fight on their hands. We’ll see how it goes as the timeline unfolds.

Going Forward

The HSS History’s Hope still has a long way to go. From YS02 to Yazira is still another 80 light years in a straight line. It’s taken them over half a year to cover the 29 light years they’ve traveled so far. And their path forward is far from straight with lots of long difficult jumps ahead. Who knows what waits for them along the way.

If you want a fun exercise, you might try finding a path forward to Yazira and see how difficult the journey will be. Remember that the chance to plot a new route is 50% + 10% x astrogator’s skill level – 5% x jump distance in light years. They have a level 6 astrogator, plus deluxe astrogation equipment (which in my house rules gives a +10% bonus to astrogation checks). This means their base chance of success is 120% – 5% x distance. With a roll of 96-00 always being failure.

If the jump fails, they end up somewhere other than where they planned and then have to try to figure out where they are (30%+10% x level chance and takes 2d10 x 10 hours per attempt). Each jump takes 9 days (180 hours) unless it’s over 9 light years long. Then it takes a number of days equal to the number of light years. How long did it take you to get to Yazira?

What do you think about this sector map? Are there things you like to see added? Clarified? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

March 24, 2020 Tom 2 Comments

The Blue Plague, Revisited

This was not the post I had planned for this week but with all the precautions and closures due to the COVID-19 coronavirus the last few weeks, it got me thinking about medical technology and then about the differences between Frontier technology and our modern tech.

A Look at the Frontier

One thing that always stood out to me, even as a preteen/teenager in the early 80’s was that the relative levels of technology in the Frontier was very different from our own, and that was ignoring things like spaceflight, laser guns, and FTL travel.

Take computers for instance, even in the early- to mid- 80’s, the computer technology here on Earth was beyond that of the Frontier, or at least on par with it.  And looking at the game with modern eyes, we are way beyond the Frontier tech.

Zeb’s Guide did a little to advance the computer technology and shrink it down, with the introduction of the bodycomp.  This helped to bring the tech somewhat in line with what was available in the mid-80s.  But a visitor from the Frontier to Earth today would be amazed with our modern computer technology.

However, if you look at Frontier medical technology, it is light years ahead of even our modern medicine.  With just a handful of relatively inexpensive drugs, you can cure most diseases, neutralize toxins, heal injuries, and even postpone death.  Not to mention the freeze field and storage class transport fields that can put you into indefinite suspended animation (as long as the power doesn’t go out).  These wonder drugs would be a dream come true for medical professionals on Earth today.

I don’t know if it was a question really, more like an unsatisfied curiosity, but I have always wondered and thought about why the Frontier went down that technology path rather than the one we did.  Why is the medical technology vastly beyond the physical technology?

Game Play

At a practical level, it is what it is so that the game can be exciting and playable.  You need advanced medical technology (just like you need healing spells in a fantasy game) so that the PCs can get right back into the adventure after getting hurt.  And you don’t want the tech to be so amazing that it overshadows the abilities of the characters.

In fact, it was either Larry Schick or Dave Cook, the original creators of Star Frontiers, who, in an interview said that they set the tech level where it was so that it was the PCs that had to do the tasks and not be able to just call on the technology to solve all their problems.  That was why they made the computers big and clunky, with no real networking, and many of the other design choices that they made.

That said, it is still a fun exercise to think about what events we could work into the history of the Frontier to account for such a balance of tech levels.

A Sweeping Pandemic

Which brings me back to COVID-19 and the events happening in the world today.

In Zeb’s Guide, it talks about the Blue Plague and five worlds that were lost to this plague.  While I either like or don’t mind many of the setting elements introduced in Zeb’s Guide, this is one that has never really sat well with me.  So much so that I left those worlds off of my Extended Frontier Map completely.  What where the original names of those systems?  They wouldn’t have been called Alpha through Epsilon originally. Why weren’t they on the Frontier map from the original rules?  They would have been in setting at the time in the history that the original game occupies.  I understand the desire to expand the setting, but the way the Zeb’s Guide timeline was built made many of the things it presented inconsistent with the original game setting and modules.

I don’t like the placement that Zeb’s Guide gives to the Blue Plague, occurring from 17-27 FY – after the original sathar invasion that prompted the formation of the UPF.  It feels too late and tacked on.  And I don’t like that it wipes out five star systems that should have been part of the Frontier history but were never mentioned in the original game.

But what if something like the Blue Plague happened, just much, much earlier in the history of the region?  Back when all the technology was young and prompted a focus on the biological and medical sciences over the physical ones?  That could have prompted the technology development we see in the game.

Now you might argue that you need the physical and computer tech advances to produce the medical ones, we definitely see technology aiding medicine today. But we don’t know that it’s absolutely necessary.  We only have one sample timeline.  It didn’t work out that way for us, but that’s not to say they path we took is the only one.  It’s time for a little willing suspension of disbelief.

The Blue Plague Revisited

So let’s dial the clock way back, to the early settlement of the Frontier.  In the Knight Hawks rules, it states that the discovery of the FTL travel was an accident.  It was completely unexpected.  In my game it was the humans who stumbled upon Void Jumping and shared it around.  In the process of exploring it, they discovered a signal from the Vrusk and went to investigate.  But because of its accidental discovery, I have the human tech level originally set somewhere around that of the late 60’s, early 70’s somewhat consistent with the computer tech of the game.  They just happened to have developed better propulsion systems to get the necessary speeds.

Instead of hunkering down, they exploded throughout the region.  There is a reason there are many more human worlds than those of the other races, and even then, you find humans almost everywhere.  They had the ability to travel to the stars and they did, aggressively. The other races expanded outward as well, but not nearly as much.  As I detailed my Yazirian Lore posts last month (part 1, part 2), the yazirians were expanding outward out of a sense of preservation.  The vrusk and dralasites didn’t expand out nearly as much.

And then, shortly after all of these worlds were being settled, the Blue Plague struck.  In Zeb’s Guide, it describes the plague as receiving its name due to its early symptoms: large blue welts that appear about the face and extremities that leave horrible black scars even if you survive the plague.

No one knows exactly where it came from.  The first cases were on Prenglar, the hub of the Frontier where travelers from all over mingle and visit.  As more and more cases were discovered on Gran Quivera, it began to be studied more, restrictions and quarantines were put in place, and efforts were made to get it under control.

But by then it was too late.  The disease, having a very long incubation period, had already spread throughout the Frontier and cases began popping up on every world.  Due to the horrific nature of the plague as well as the relatively high mortality rate, quarantines and restrictions became very strict.  Of course, this impacts production, research, and distribution, especially of food.  Because of the long incubation period, coupled with the long duration of the illness itself, these quarantines ended up lasting for a very long time.  As many people probably died of knock-on effects of these restrictions as died from the Blue Plague itself.

One impact of the long duration of the plague was the development of robot technology.  Since the citizens were afraid to come in contact with one another, something had to be done to produce the goods and food needed to sustain the populations of the various worlds.  Thus, robot technology got a huge boost.  The early models were crude, probably remotely operated, and not very sophisticated, but the plague launched the nascent robotics industry that would continue to develop over the intervening years.

More importantly, the Blue Plague resulted in a huge boost in funding into medical research.  This funding came from everywhere.  Governments heavily supported it at the behest of their citizens.  Companies supported both to try to keep their workers and as a public relations measure.  And private citizens supported it for a wide variety of reasons ranging from altruism to a desperate desire for self-preservation.

Regardless of the reason, funding into the biological and medical science boomed and universities and research institutions flourished.  It took several years, but a cure was finally found.  Along the way, other interesting avenues of research were uncovered but left unexplored in the rush to find the cure.  Eventually, all this research payed off and the Blue Plague was eradicated.

Aftermath

After the Blue Plague was under control, the citizens of the Frontier took stock of the situation and the results were horrifying.  Millions dead across every world of the Frontier.  Millions more permanently disfigured for life.  No one issued a proclamation, no one passed any laws, but collectively as a Frontier-wide community, the people resolved to never let this happen again.  The funding in the medical sciences, while never again as high a proportion of the total wealth of the Frontier as during the Blue Plague itself, remained very high.

Because of this high state of funding, all those interesting side avenues that had been discovered during the Blue Plague research were able to be pursued and developed.  Over time, this led to the development of the wonder drugs known in the modern Frontier as Biocort, Simdose, Staydose, Omnimycin, Antibody Plus, and AntiTox.  Six drugs that together can treat almost anything the universe might throw at you.

Having seen the benefits of using robots for many of the menial jobs required during the Blue Plague era, robotics continued to develop a heightened state, although nowhere near the level of the medical sciences.  Effort was put into developing robotic systems that could be autonomous and operate independently of direct supervision but rather controlled by programming or robot management software.  This heightened development has led to the relatively inexpensive and highly capable robots found in the Frontier today.

Of course, the cost of this increased medical and robotics development was a slowing of the development of the other technologies.  Computers, vehicles, starships, and even weapons systems fell behind the curve.  Advances were made, but not nearly at the pace of the robotics and medical technologies.  Thus we get the technology levels presented in the game rules.

Using This in Your Game

If you chose to use this history in your version of the Frontier, what impacts might it have in your game?

One aspect is survivors of the Blue Plague.  Depending on how long you made the extended history of the Frontier, and where you place the Blue Plague in that history, there might still be survivors bearing all the scars of their ordeal.  Personally, I don’t like the 400+ years of the Zeb’s Guide Timeline and prefer to compress it much more than that. Making it 200 years at most.  That allows me to have the technology not as developed.  But that means, given the 175 – 250 year average lifespans for the various Frontier species, there will be survivors of the Blue Plague still around.  They will be older, but could still be active members of society.  How do they see the world?  Do they have agendas they push for?  What stories do they have to tell and how has their experiences shaped the way they look at the world?

The modern wonder drugs can solve almost any issue.  What does that mean for all the companies that have invested in the research side of things?  Is research slowing down?  Is the funding shifting?  How does that impact the economy and the people working in those industries?  Maybe there is funding slowly shifting to other areas?  Are computers becoming smaller and more powerful, starting to move along the path of our Earth technology?  Is the money going other places?  Or maybe there are occurrences of other diseases like the Blue Plague that break out but never to the same extent that require constant retooling of the medicines keeping the biotech industry alive and well.

Is the Blue Plague really eradicated or do new cases pop up occasionally around the Frontier?  How do people react when it happens?  Are the causes natural or contrived?

How did the enforced isolation required during the Blue Plague era affect communities?  Would the isolation become standard?  Would it cause an increased awareness of the need for community?  Would it spark an increased care and understanding of the needs and interests of one’s neighbors?  Maybe it did all of those on different worlds or in different communities.  When you create a community for the PCs to interact with, you might sprinkle in an unusual custom that dates from the time of the Blue Plague.

What other ideas does this alternate timeline bring to mind?  How else might you apply it in your game?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

March 17, 2020 Tom Leave a comment

Freighter Model and Miniature

The model and miniature this month is a recreation of the small freighter model that was part of the Federation Ships boxed set. This is the last model I needed to recreate to complete that original set. With this one done, they are now all available.

The image to the right is the original miniature from the boxed set. I hadn’t tackled this particular miniature in the past mainly because I was initially focused on the military vessels. But I was also a little worried about recreating the shape of those struts and all the detail at the tail of the ship. But with lots of experience behind me, it was time to reproduce this miniature.

The Model

Let’s start with the final model and then I’ll talk a bit about what it took to create.

I started with the main body/oval shape at the bow of the ship. My version is a little more rounded than the original as I just used a stretched sphere for this part. To get the exact shape would have taken creating a custom curve and then doing a rotate_extrude() to make the 3D shape (and then squashing it to make it flattened). I’m happy with how this turned out although I originally expressed some desire to revisit that bit of the model.

The tail of the ship is just a long column that the cargo pods and bits at the end are attached to. That was added next.

Then came the cargo pods. These are a recreation of the original miniature (although the rings around the top and bottom are probably a bit thinner than the original). Interestingly this was the part of the ship that generated the most commentary on the Facebook group when I posted this picture. Everyone wanted me to get rid of the double container and make one big one. Which is something I’ll probably do in the future but for now I’m keeping to the original model.

Next up was the engines. Since these are different than the engines on most of the other ships, but similar to those on the minelayer, I’m assuming that these are ion engines as well. The engines themselves were easy enough, just some cylinders will a sphere at the top. The hard part was getting the curve of the struts right.

That shape is not one that OpenSCAD can do natively. At first I looked at doing some linear_extrude()’s of a few stretched circles. But that wouldn’t give me the curvature that the strut has. So I went looking for an OpenSCAD module that would allow me to extrude along a curve and vary the scale along the extrusion.

The first one I found was the “Extrude Along Path” module by gringer. However, it didn’t allow me to do the scaling the way I wanted or at least easily. So I went looking for another option. What I found was the “path_extrude with scaling” library by tpchuckles. This module built on gringer’s Extrude Along Path module and added in the scaling in a way that was easy to use.

Now that I hd the tool, I just need the path to extrude along and how much to scale at each point. To figure this out, I took another picture of the mini, this time with a ruler for scale (seen at right). This is actually a different mini that had a primer coat on it. Next, I imported the picture into Inkscape. I then scaled it so that there were 10 pixels to a millimeter. This would allow me 1/10th of a millimeter resolution when I was making measurements. Next I drew a curve onto the image down the middle of each strut and then averaged the two curves. This would be the path that the extrusion was to follow.

The next step was to get the scaling at a number of points along that curve. The question was, how many points would I need. As you can see, the entire strut is only a little more than half an inch (about 17mm) in length. I could go really finely detailed but that would be overkill. But if I didn’t have enough, it wouldn’t look smooth enough. I ended up just looking at it and finding points where either the path made a significant change or the width of the strut had a change in curvature (the derivatives changed for those who remember their calculus). In the end, I picked 12 points along the path.

Once I had the points I then drew a line perpendicular to the path that touched the two edges of the strut. With all that done, I read off the coordinates of each point and length of each perpendicular line segment. That gave me the points for the curve and the scaling in one dimension. The scaling in the other dimension came from just making a few measurements with the calipers at a few points along it’s length since the strut is mostly the same thickness with a big of flaring as it approached the main body of the ship.

With all that done, I plugged all the numbers into a few arrays, called the path_extrude() function from the module and out came the strut. I had to do a few small tweaks but it worked quite well and generated the shape you see in the image above.

The final bit was all that stuff at the back of the fuselage. As you can see from the two images of the original miniatures, it was kind of hard to see. But working carefully between the two miniatures, and looking at both sides of each, I was able to tease out a structure. I have the advantage that I don’t have to get molten metal to flow through a mold in making these models so I can go with slightly finer and more defined features in my models than appear on the original miniatures. I had already noticed this on the bigger UPF ships, especially the cannons on the battleship and light cruiser. I took advantage of it here as well.

Printing

With the model complete, it was time to print. Nothing really exciting here, it was a fairly straightforward print. I printed it nose up like I did all the other ships and, standing 41 mm (1.6″) tall, it took about 4.5 hours to print. Given that there isn’t a lot of detail on this one, it might be possible to get a good print with it lying flat which would reduce the print time to about 1.5 hours but require a bit more support on the “down” side of the ship.

Here’s the final printed miniature next to the original (unprimed) mini.

A few things stood out to me comparing the two, some of which I’ve already mentioned. One is the shape of the bow. The other is the rings around the cargo pods. They probably need to be a bit bigger on the model as they didn’t stand out as much as I was expecting.

The other major difference is the details at the back of the fuselage. I think in the end I made them a little bit smaller than on the original. That said, there is more detail in the printed one than in the original.

I also noticed that the engines have a bit of a wobble to them but that can be cured in future prints with a little more support structure to hold things steady.

Up Next

At some point I’ll revisit this model and tweak the cargo pods. Both to make the ring around the top and bottom more defined, and also to make one or two more different shaped pods and produce miniatures with the different cargo containers. The great thing about working in OpenSCAD is that the cargo containers are just a function. Write a new function for the new shape, call that one instead, and viola, you’re done with a new miniature. But for now, I’m happy with the way this one turned out.

Next month’s model will be an agriculture ship. This will be a new creation as there is no existing mini for this type of ship. There was some discussion about it recently on the various Star Frontiers social media hubs and that inspired me to make that model before tackling the privateer minis.

You’ll be able to order this mini from the Order Miniatures page here on the site if you want a printed miniature, or grab the model from my 3D Models page on DriveThruRPG if you have your own printer.

Let me know your thoughts, comments, or suggestions in the comment section below.

March 10, 2020 Tom 4 Comments

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.391 to FY61.019

This month see a new year in the Frontier, an escalation of the tension with a small battle between UPF and sathar forces, and the start of construction on a new UPF exploration ship. The HSS History’s Hope also runs in to some trouble with a few bad misjumps, ending up in systems they never intended.

Date (FY)Event
60.391 Construction of the CMS Swallow begins
60.392 The CRL-E1 maintenance robot on Jetsom stops functioning and refuse to move or obey any commands.  Resetting its mission and functions restores functionality but only for a few hours. The rescue team realize that it has become infected by the Matrix. (SFAD5)
60.393 – After reviewing the data from Patrol Group Flint, and in light of the information returned by the Discovery Squadron, the commander of Strike Force Nova decides to send another scouting mission to OFS019 before making more definite plans.

– Patrol Group Flint is again detached from the Strike Force and begins accelerating for a jump back to the OFS019 system.  If possible, they are to remain undetected in the system and transmit data back via subspace radio.
60.394 Second K’aken-Kar militia assault scout arrives in its home system.
60.395 Repair work and astrogation calculations complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating toward their next system, designated YS002.
60.396 Shakedown cruise complete, the fifth Saurian Ark Ship begins loading of cargo and passengers.
60.397 After over two weeks of dealing with issues caused by the Matrix, the rescue team finally discover its fatal weakness and start taking measures to destroy the virus and eradicate it from the Jetsom platform. (SFAD5)
60.398 Patrol Group Flint arrives in OFS019 once again. They stay near jump speed with engines off to reduce the chance of detection and coast across the system at high velocity. They begin cataloging signals from ships in the system.
60.399 The HSS History’s Hope initiates the Void Jump to YS02. Unfortunately, due to an error in their calculations, they end up in an unknown binary star system.  Designating this as YS03, they start deceleration and trying to figure out where they ended up.
60.400 – Preparations, which have been going on for weeks, are finalized on worlds around the Frontier for a major Founding Day celebration celebrating six full decades of the United Planetary Federation. While some events over the past year have been troubling, everyone is determined to make this a celebration to be long remembered.

– After two days of data collection, Patrol Group Flint catalogs an ever growing sathar presence in the system. They have identified over 25 military vessels including four of the new, unknown ship type, as well as a station and various ancillary ships. The data is relayed back to Strike Force Nova.
61.001 – Major Founding Day celebrations held throughout the Frontier. Although there were some small incidents, the general mood on every world was very upbeat.

– Having crossed the system so that their engine emissions should be less noticeable, Patrol Group Flint begins decelerating.  They have solidified the ship count to 8 fighters, 4 of the unknown ships, and 15 capital ships, plus a single space station.
61.002 WarTech factories on Hargut (Gruna Garu) attacked by unknown forces. Expecting a lower alert level due to the Founding Day celebrations, the attackers underestimate the automated defenses and alertness of the security staff and are repulsed with heavy losses.
61.003 Sathar forces in OFS019 detect the decelerating ships of PG Flint.  A light cruiser, two destroyers and a frigate are dispatched under radio blackout to intercept.  They boost hard for several hours and then kill their engines, minimizing emissions as they approach.
61.004 Streel files a protest with the Council of Worlds requesting that its ships that were part of Discovery Squadron be released by Strike Force Nova to return to the Frontier as they are private vessels and not part of Spacefleet or a planetary militia.
61.005 After six days of work, the History’s Hope astrogation team finally determines their location.  They shot way beyond their mark arriving in a system that is 6 light years beyond YS02. The good news is that they know where they were, the bad news is that it is well off the path they had planned to take, and they now have two uncharted jumps back to YS01.
61.006 – Deceleration complete, Patrol Group Flint continue to monitor the OFS019 system and begins plotting a return jump to Kazak from their current location.

– The Sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system completes a destroyer.

– With only eight days until the orbital window opens for them to return to the Moneyspider, the recovery team on Jetsom has nearly eradicated the Matrix from the mining platform.  The only holdouts are areas where damage prevents them from pressurizing the area and increasing the temperature.
61.007 After three days of deliberations within Spacefleet, the Council of Worlds, and slow communication with Strike Force Nova’s commander, all of the ships of Discovery Squadron are dedeputized and allowed to depart Kazak and return home.The six ships of Discovery Squadron from Truane’s Star depart immediately upon their release.  The two Humma ships stay with the Flight forces in the system.
61.008 Patrol Group Flint detect the approaching sathar ships as they begin decelerating and angling for intercept.  With evasion unlikely, the UPF ships send off a subspace radio and begin a hard acceleration to try to escape, while expecting to fight a very uneven battle.
61.009 The sathar ships catch Patrol Group Flint.  After a short running battle, the two UPF destroyers are destroyed by the sathar forces which suffer severe damage to the frigate and one destroyer, but all ships survive the battle.
61.010 – Loading complete, the fifth saurian Ark ships departs the Sauria system for destinations unknown.

– With the destruction of PG Flint, the sathar launch a raid into the Frontier sector to try to draw off the Frontier forces from wherever they are basing from. Two light cruisers, three destroyers, and a frigate leave for Zebulon via a high-speed transit of the Kazak system.
61.011 The HSS History’s Hope’s attempt to jump to the YS02 system from YS03 fails and they land once again in an unknown binary system of two M dwarf stars. As they decelerate, they begin trying to work out their position.  It seems travel here in the Vast Expanse is more difficult than expected.
61.012 Construction is completed on the CDCSS Mystic at the Triad (Cassidine) shipyards. While it has the same profile as the CDCSS Nightwind, this ship is focused on passenger transport rather than cargo.  It begins a shakedown cruise carrying CDC personnel from Triad to Rupert’s Hole and back.
61.013 The Council of Worlds convenes for the FY61 session. 
61.014 – The CMS Osprey docks with a strange looking freighter for what its commanding officer, Lt. Tabbe, says is a “high security” mission.  When the airlock opens sathar swarm into the assault scout. After an intense battle, the Osprey’s boarding party neutralize the sathar and their agent Lt. Tabbe.  The freighter gets away, but the Osprey is saved.

– The sathar ships from OFS019 arrive in Kazak well outside the inner system.  They remain near jump speed search the system for signals of Flight or Spacefleet presence in the system.
61.015 Detecting Strike Force Nova and the Flight forces in the system, the sathar ships begin cataloging the ships detected. They remain near jump speed and coast through the outer system.
61.016 After five days of around-the-clock work, the astrogators on the HSS History’s Hope have determined their location and also uncovered an error in their astrographic catalog that may have been the source of their error. The system is designated YS04.
61.017 – After a day of rest, the HSS History’s Hope’s astrogators begin charting a route to YS01, the closest system with known jump routes.  It is a 10 light year jump, the farthest new jump they have charted.  OFS219 is closer, at 8 ly, but would require several new jumps to get back to charted space lanes.

– Discovery Squadron arrives in the Osak system where they spend a day resting before heading on to Capella
61.018 The rescue crew from Jetsom returns to the Moneyspider to the relief of Captain Akizk.  As the rescue crew is en route to the Captain’s office, the Captain dies, seemingly by suicide. The second in command (Ellen Coopermann, human) doesn’t believe their report about the Matrix. (SFAD5)
61.019 The Frontier Expeditionary Force begins organizing a project to explore beyond the Theseus system.  A new ship, the UPFS Elanor Moraes is commissioned for construction at the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards.

Here’s the full file:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload
March 3, 2020 Tom 2 Comments
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