The Top Ten Ways to Get a Ship Rejected

10. Include this sentence: “They improved the turn mode by doing [something you cannot see on the SSD and which has no cost].” A favorite here is “lowering the engine struts”.

9. Take a sheet of graph paper and see how many boxes you can draw on it to make a really big ship.

8. Create a grid listing all of the common variants for the selected empire and all of the basic hull types. Then fill in the grid with the ships already in the game. The empty boxes are then the ships you submit. For example, the survey version of the Kzinti CL and the drone bombardment version of the Klingon E7.

7. Add foreign technology to your ship. The Klingons always wanted ESGs, didn’t they? If the Feds can buy plasma-Fs from the Gorns then why can’t the Kzintis?

6. Create a single ship designed for at least two missions that do not work well together, for example, a commando ship that does drone bombardment, or a base constuction ship that mounts extra heavy weapons so it can defend itself. Give rare technology to ships likely to get killed (penal-SFG) or to a  low-priority ship that would never have it (police carrier with F14s).

5. Take any SSD in the game and add a couple of weapons (or even less creatively, a couple of fighters) and some more power by rearranging (but not eliminating) the existing boxes.

4. Create a ship for which there is no valid mission, or create a special mission ship for an empire that never does that mission.

3. Combine sections of ships from at least two different empire, and call it an “allied project” or “conversion of a captured ship.”

2. Create a ship that carries things that are very rare, such as a Federation carrier with F14s, F15s, and F111s.

1. Adding nuclear space mines to any non-Romulan ship other than a minelayer. This includes adding mine racks to standard warships just because you want those NSMs.

(c) 2005 Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc. Captain's Log #31.