Topic: Fed Saladin-class DD Unity
There are two ships that I simply must have as part of my Federation fleet that have not been brought over to Starmada yet. One of them is the Saladin-class Destroyer. I have created the ships below following the rules laid out by Daniel in the "SFU Unity" thread (including the bit about adjusting shield strength if it does not reach 20% of the FC value). Note that as I am still having issues with the Drydock (I use Libreoffice, and even Excel Online is problematic), I created these the old-fashioned way: by cutting and pasting from other ships. That's why there is no Victory Point Value. If someone can calculate it for these, or tell me how it is done, I will add them.
Why two versions? The Fed DD was a ship with a problem: it was notoriously underpowered for its standard weapons package. Overloading those 4 photons while maintaining a reasonable speed was nearly impossible, even before taking engine damage. For this reason, Fed doctrine was to send in the DDs already armed. Then, after firing one volley of OL'd torps, they would limit themselves to phaser fire for the remainder of the battle. Other captains (like myself) used only two photons and allowed the other two to sponge up torp damage, effectively extending the life of the ship's heavy weapons by a factor of two. Eventually, all but 5 of the Saladins would be stripped of two photon tubes. These would eventually be replaced by either two drone racks (the DDG) or two type-F plasma torps (the DDF) obtained from the Gorns. While the plasma torps did nothing to ameliorate the ship's power-curve issues, the drone racks did. Additionally, since they were Fed G-racks, which incorporated ADD, they gave the DDG a powerful defense against drones, making it a welcome addition to the Federation's Third Fleet along the Klingon/Kzinti border.
Coming next: the other ship I referred to above: the Federation Battle Tug!
EDIT: FH ph-1s were marked FX. Fixed and re-uploaded.
EDIT: Engine rating on DD changed from 4-4-3-2-1 to 4-3-2-1