Romulan D'deridex class Warbird (Star Trek):


This ship design should be used just before and during Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes as well as during Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager Episodes.


The Romulan Empire had a long period where they had not contact with any of the other Governments within the Milky Way Galaxy. During this time, they made many advances and built a very respectable fleet. One of the most important ships of their fleet is the Warbird. This ship is about the same size as the Federation Galaxy class but due to the fact that the ship is a true combatant, the ship carries a heavier armament than the Galaxy class does. The only real advantage the Galaxy class has over the Warbird is that it can attain higher warp speeds. The discovery of the Romulan Warbird was one of the reasons behind the Federation developing the Sovereign class Battlecruiser. The Sovereign class does have more firepower than the Warbird but in reality is only slightly superior to the Warbird in most respects. The Romulans keep tighter controls on their captains than the Federation does. They do this by the fact that several of the ships crew members are in reality Romulan Intelligence personnel.


These ships are generally a lower tech ship than the Federation Galaxy class. Much of the huge cost of the Galaxy class was the Phaser Arrays. The Romulans opted for another approach, they simply designed more powerful disruptors and mounted the weapons in standard banks. The ship has a total of eleven banks of disruptors for a total of 22 disruptors. The Galaxy class vaunted phaser strips actually cannot fire as many shots at one time as the disruptors on the Warbird can and the Warbird can in reality inflict more damage even though the are more powerful on an individual mount basis. The torpedo launchers are as good as those carried on the Galaxy class but the Romulan ship carries twice as many launchers. This gives the D'deridex a marked advantage against the Federation's Galaxy class.


Like almost all Romulan Ships (it may actually be all) ships, the Warbird has a powerful cloaking. The ship can use this to hide from other ships using both sensor and visual masking. This cloaking device is more advanced than those used by the Klingons. The Federation is capable of designing as advanced cloaking device designs but they were forbidden by treaty to fit them on their ships.


This design is written to be able to interact with modified phase world rules. See Revised Starship Rules for Phase World / Three Galaxies for more details. There is a lack of hard detail on this ship. Some materials have suggested accelerations that are simply beyond scope. I have taken a moderate level in writing up this starship for Phase World because otherwise the ship would either be far too powerful or far too weak for Phase World. Warp speeds are far slower than the FTL speeds for Phase World but they are very close to those from the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. Also, a note on the mass of starships. The original sources indicated much smaller masses for starships than Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual does and where possible, both masses are listed for the gamers to choose which one seems most appropriate.


Model Type: D'deridex Class Warbird
Vehicle Type: War Cruiser (Battle Cruiser by Phase World terms)
Crew: 750 (65 Officers and 685 Enlisted)
Troops: 600 Marines.


Vehicles:

10Standard Shuttles


M.D.C. By Location:

Siege Disruptor Cannons (11 Banks of 2):800 each bank
Torpedo Tubes (6):1,000 each
Warp Nacelles (2):40,000 each
Impulse Engine:20,000
[1] Primary Bridge:30,000
[1] Auxiliary Bridge (Also used as Flag Bridge):30,000
[2] Main Body:140,000
[3] Variable Force Field:12,000 per side (72,000 total)


Notes:
[1] In reality this is how much damage needs to be done for a weapon to hit the bridge through the ship’s armor. This ship does have an auxiliary bridge. Even if both of the bridges are destroyed, the ship can still be piloted from engineering but ship is -3 to dodge and all weapon systems will be at local control. Weapon hits near the bridges that do not penetrate the ships integrity can injure crew members on or near the bridge.
[2] Depleting the M.D.C. of the main body will put the Cruiser out of commission. All internal systems will shut down, including life support and internal gravity. The ship itself will be an unsalvageable floating wreck.
[3] Shields positions can be varied and all can be combined in one shield. Shields regenerate at the rate of 5% (3,600 M.D.C.) per melee round.


Speed:
Driving on the Ground: Not Possible.
Sublight: Has a special sublight engine that allows the ship to travel up to 60 percent of the speed of light. Star Ship can accelerate/decelerate at the rate of 0.7 percent of light per melee round.
As an alternative, the starship can reach .99 of the speed of light but is normally restricted to slower speeds so that starship is not effected severely by time attenuation that occurs at the higher sublight speeds.
Atmospheric Propulsion: Cannot travel within an atmosphere efficiently.
Stardrive: Uses a warp engine that allow ship to travel at Warp Factor 8.7 on cruise (0.155 light years per hour), Warp Factor Flank 9.4 (0.021 Light Years per hour), and Warp Factor 9.7 Emergency (0.238 Light Years per Hour). Speed is calculate using a formula designed to emulate Star Trek: Next Generation speeds. These speed are very slow when compared to Phase World ship, so if used in that universe, they could be increased enough to operate within Three Galaxy speeds but should not exceed them.
Maximum Range: Effectively Unlimited by either drive system. Ship carries about three years worth of supplies on board.


Statistical Data:
Length: 3,417.43,417.49 feet (1,041.65 meters)
Width: 2,534.22 feet (772.43 meters)
Height: 936.58 feet (285.47 meters)
Mass: 4.32 million metric tons (Deep Space Nine: Technical Manual)
Power System: Quantum Singularity/Fusion power system (20 year duration). Ship normally only goes 5 years between refuelings.
Cargo: Cargo holds are scattered about the ship that allows for carrying up to 150,000 tons of cargo in addition to standard compliment of supplies and ammunition.
Market Cost: 22 billion to construct.


Weapon Systems:

  1. Eleven (11) banks of 2 Siege Disruptor Cannons: These cannons are not quite as powerful as the phasers mounted on the Galaxy class but due to the far greater number of mounts, the ship end up having more firepower than a Galaxy class starship. Disruptors Cannons in each bank can be linked or can be fired separately. They cannot be used faster than the speed of light. Weapons system has half penalties to hit fighters and small targets.
    Maximum Effective Range: 187 miles (300 km) through atmosphere and 18,700 miles (30,000 km) in space.
    Mega Damage: 3D6x100 each or 6D6x100 for both cannons in a bank.
    Rate of Fire: Maximum of three (3) times per melee each cannon.
    Payload: Effectively Unlimited.
  2. Photon Torpedo Launchers (6): The ship a total of six launchers. The ship has three launchers that fire forward and three launchers that fire aft. Effectively very similar to Phase World cruise missile launchers but instead of having groups of multiple launchers, the Romulan Empire has concentrated on launchers that can launch more than one torpedo at the same time. Once spread of torpedoes has been launched, the launchers must reload and rearm before launching another spread of torpedoes.
    Torpedoes has a top speed of Mach 25 in an atmosphere and in space has an acceleration of 10% of light per turn (far faster than any starship). When drive goes dead, the torpedo will continue to travel in a straight line unless preset to self destruct or receives a destruct code but has very low odds of hitting star ships (Great for hitting bases and planets because target does not move and torpedoes when dead is at -25% to be detected.) See modified starship rules for more details - Sublight torpedoes have penalties to hit small targets but are all considered smart missiles. Launchers can launch on multiple targets each.
    Maximum Effective Range: Powered torpedo range is 8000 miles (12,875 km) in an atmosphere and 4,000,000 miles (6,437,376 km/ 21.5 light seconds) in space.
    Mega-Damage & Properties: Photon Torpedoes (Matter/Anti-Matter Warheads): Old Series inflict 2D6x100 each, Star Trek Movies One through Six inflict 3D6x100, and Next Generation inflicts 4D6x100 each.
    Rate of Fire: One at a time or in volleys of 2 or 4 per launcher, per melee round, for a maximum of 24 torpedoes per melee. Launchers are reloaded on the same melee and can be fired again on the next.
    Payload: 600 total, 100 torpedoes per launcher.
  3. Cloaking Device: The Romulan D'Deridex class Warbird has a cloaking device that allows the ship to be undetectable by most sensors. In phase world this system has the problem that it does not hide the ships signature on gravitic sensors (This is even more of a weakness on Romulan ships than other ships because they use essentially black hole in their power systems). The starship cannot raise shields or fire any weapons while cloaked, for one attack previous to cloaking, or just after decloaking.
    When attacking and if ship is not detected, the ship has +8 initiative bonus against a target that is not alerted and +4 initiative bonus against targets that are alerted (at general quarters). If the cloaked ship get a higher initiative, the ship can both raise its combat shields and can fire its weapons previous to any opponents attacks.
    Each time the ship main body gets damaged, the is a percentage chance the cloaking device will be damaged. This is done by determining the total damage the ship has sustained and dividing that by the amount of damage the ship can take (150,000 in the D'Deridex Warbirds case) and getting a percentage of the hull that the ship has taken for damage. A percentile roll is then made. If the percentile roll is less than the percentage of damage the cloaking device is damaged and will be non operational.



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Technical information partially sourced from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual (Mostly ship sizes.)


I would like to recognize Henning Rogge as giving assistance with the revision of the Star Trek starships.


CGI of ship created by Andrew Hodges. More of his CGI pictures of Star Trek ships and craft at Devil World 6.


Writeup by Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune).


Rifts Conversion Copyright © 1998, 1999, & 2000, Kitsune. All rights reserved.


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