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Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Another Update on the Progress of the Hydran Master Starship Book

This is Steven Petrick posting.

Jean is reading the Hydran Master Starship Book and finding very little of major import that is in error. She did find one place, as an example, where the fighters of a carrier were still listed as Stinger-Ss and Stinger-Rs in Y179 rather than Stinger-Ts and Stinger-Us. No one else had caught that (and of course I am the one who made the original error).

On the other hand Jean had problems with the (to use her one words) "incestuous nature of Hydran ships." The problem is that most Hydran ships are . . . well not one line. A Federation New Light Cruiser is a unique ship (the Federation War Cruiser) that can become an New Heavy Cruiser.  The Hydrans,  however, have the Horseman as their war cruiser, except it is not. The Horseman becomes the Mongol, which is their war cruiser, but since they are both war cruisers the Horseman is the Light Cruiser and the Mongol is the Medium Cruiser and neither is actually called a "war cruiser" as a result (because they are both war cruisers). Both have hellbore variants (Traveler, Tartar), and both remain in production (the Mongol going on to provide the Mohawk New Heavy Cruiser and its Iroquois hellbore variant), but he Horseman remains in production to provide the "variants" (Chasseur Scout, and etc.), but  a Horseman is also capable of being converted into a Mohawk (or an Iroquois). And of course there are advanced technology (X) versions, and . . . well suffice to say that poor Jean's head exploded, and my efforts to try to explain it to her led me to finally (literally) bang my head against a door because I could not get her to understand (sigh).

Poor SVC had to finally sit down and broker a peace treaty between us on this one.

The same thing happens, of course, with the Hunter (which becomes the Buffalo Hunter in the same way a Mongol becomes a Mohawk), and the Ranger (which also spawns the various Hydran Command Cruisers and the Overlord Heavy Battlecruisers) and the Gendarme (which leads to the Heavy Gendarmes).

Thank the maker that Lancer Destroyers pretty much remain Lancer Destroyers even if the Lancer hull does lend itself to the standard variant lists (Knight Hellbore variant, Uhlan carrier variant, Lancer-X advanced technology variant, etc.).

I have been taking time to review things and think things over in my head, and then go and look to see if the necessary things have been done.

As with all books after the first one there is much in this book that is taking the previous book and making changes. Thus, in all of the Hydran General Units data it turned out there was one place where I missed the word "Federation," as in "ships of this type in Federation service." Only one place, but still. I have fixed that item and searched the whole book (one of the advantages of computers) for the word "Federation" to make sure no other such entries occur (unless the word is actually being used correctly, but I do not think the word shows up in the book at all).