The Department of R&D has announced its plans for the next year!
New classes
I think we're probably good with those for a while, we’ve had a lot of new classes over the last year, notably the Vikrant, Century and Sunbird, we’ve one more class in the works, the Selous class, which has been graphically designed by one of our own here in Obsidian Fleet and as a result we’re really excited about this class, which also represents a new step in Federation design philosophy.
Apart from that, R&D is at the moment, not looking at any more playable Starship classes, although as always we will be continuing to design non-playable starship classes for reference purposes, focusing in on Foreign Powers and Civilian vessels, as we have done throughout this year.
Fighters
I'm going to take a look over the fighters, whittle them down and rearrange into 3 Fighters and a Fighter Bomber, with an Interceptor (Probably the Razor), "Strike Fighter" (Raptor), Fighter / Bomber (Broadsword) and a Heavy Fighter (Valkyrie) with perhaps the Peregrine staying in as a kind of Torpedo Bomber for Starbases and Carriers, this'll probably need a re-jig of most fighter complements to go with them and will see most fighters get a stats boost, however this is in an embryonic stage at the moment and of course any input for these changes will be welcomed.
Starbases
I'm also looking into the possibility of having a Deep Range Starbase, with a more Science / Colonisation outlook than we have at present, sort of a DS9 type base, so it'll likely have a significant civilian section, good strong defensive capabilities and excellent Science facilities as well as Storage. We'll also look at giving Starbases the ability to add external "structures" to their complement, like Drydocks, Storage facilities and even shipyards and probably give the Wallace a bit of a tune up too.
Wiki
I'm planning to, with the help of Fleet Corps put together a team of people (ideally somewhere between 5-10) who'll help me expand the Tech articles on the wiki, notably the Tools section, which is a little light on details in many areas and work on Starship internals, using our deck listings as a guide to create "Room descriptions" for the function and capabilities of many rooms not seen on screen. This will serve as a reference point for curious simmers and hopefully serve to enhance everyone’s simming experience.
In line with that, if anyone out there would like to help out the Department in any way, with the wiki, then that help would be most appreciated and even if you've never edited a wiki before, we'll provide training and help that'll get you up to speed in no time whatsoever, all you need is to be enthusiastic! So if you're interested in helping out in the wiki, then drop me an email,
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is, as always, where you can find me!
And of course, if you think there's something here that I've missed that needs R&D's loving attention, then let me know!
Thanks for reading and happy simming!
-Greg-
aka
RAdm Boris Pakarilov
Director, Obsidian Fleet Department of R&D
