The Romulan Master Starship Book Draft Advances

This is Steven Petrick posting.

Currently the parts of the Romulan book that are not "generic," and not counting the needed graphics, are all in completed draft.

That leaves the General section.

I have reached Module R8 in inputting the General Units. Basic Set, Advanced Missions, Module J, Module J2, Module K, Module M, Module R1, Module R6, and Module R7 have all had their material reviewed, and decisions have been made.

In the case of Module R6 (tramp steamer) and Module R7 (Operations Base and Mobile Operational Auxiliary) that pretty much meant looking at them and moving on.

The major thing in the Romulan book is "Year in Service" and "Cloaking Device." Most of the General Units are not available to the Romulans prior to Y161 (most "general unit ships" are warp units and the Romulans pretty much cannot even use a warp powered skiff before that date). But there are things to look at. Captor mines (plasma-F-armed only) become available to the Romulans in Y140 [when according to (Y0.0) they are freed from many early years restrictions, but still do not have warp, transporters, or good tractors, or even phasers]. So aspects of technology need to be reviewed (which means they still do not Defense Satellites because even the plasma-F defense satellite has phasers).

There is an existing argument over Romulan Gladiator-0 and Gladiator-L fighters, Legate heavy fighters, and Maniple medium bombers. Sure, they are sublight, but the fighters (not the bombers) were deployed on the Romulan early bases, and perhaps a super modern just built shiny new Romulan Starbase in Y161 to Y164 might go ahead and keep a squadron or so of, at least, Gladiator-0s (if not Legates) as an adjunct to its defenses until the Gladiator-I appears (Gladiator-Ls are less likely, of course). There is also a technology question that perhaps Romulan Defense Satellites with plasma-F torpedoes and warp-targeted lasers could be deployed in Y140. And these are not the only issues and questions.

Mostly a decision  has been made not to list "Freighter, Small, available in Y161, maneuver limits, and, oh, by the way it does not have a cloaking device." Basically if the only reason to list something is to say it does not have a cloaking device, or was not available prior to Y161, it is not listed. (There is, for example, no listing for the Exploration Freighters or the Minelaying Freighters or the Troop ship freighters just to say they are not available prior to Y161, and by the way do not have cloaking devices.) But if a unit is listed, it will definitively state if it has a cloaking device or not (and sometimes, in the case of large bases, there needs to be a note that the cloaking device is sort of optional, i.e., the Romulan player is not required to purchase his starbase with a cloaking device if he does not want to use it in the battle, but if he buys it as part of a campaign he is pretty much going to have to decide to pay for it then or not, or have some campaign rule allowing him to install it later). Of course units that have "optional weapons" are always going to be listed to spell out what weapons are available to them when the Romulans get them. Like the Skiff mentioned above, which is not available prior to Y161, does not have a cloaking device, does not have a drone rack (so its BPV is reduced by two point), but does gain a plasma-D torpedo rack in Y165 which restores the two lost BPV, and later on gets both a Y175 refit (adding a second plasma-D reload) and the sabot refit.