Published Ships in Drake Notation

[Harrigan]

Say, do the published ships from the Imperial Starmada Sourcebook and Hammer & Claw exist anywhere in Drake Notation (for easy transport into Vassal...)? Apologies if I'm overlooking something obvious -- but I ain't seeing 'em.

[cricket]

I don't believe so.

[Harrigan]

Aight. Well, as time allows I just might tackle that (and then post them).

[Nomad]

Ummm... would posting them necessarily be wise? They're the primary reason (as I see it) for buying the setting books, so posting them on the forums could kind of cut into that.

On the other hand, if such Drake notations did exist, I would be the first to applaud their maker. Provided the Powers What Is let you.

[Harrigan]

I hadn't thought of that -- good point. I'll try to check with the authors before doing anything like that then -- might even just send *them* what I generate and them them dispense at their discretion.

[MadSeason]

I don't think they should be made publicly available as it would greatly, IMO, cut into the sales of the products.

For use in Vassal, one needs to use one of the excel sheets to build ships from the settings and then cut and paste the drake notation into the Vassal properties box. Time-consuming, I know, but preserves the rights of MJ12.

[cricket]

Let me first say "thank you" to everyone for understanding and respecting appropriate boundaries.

If someone were to put together a collection of Drake notation for published ship designs and provide them to "dispense at [my] discretion", what would be fair? For that matter, should we make the Drake notation available as a matter of course when future supplements are released?

[Alex Knight]

If someone were to put together a collection of Drake notation for published ship designs and provide them to "dispense at [my] discretion", what would be fair? For that matter, should we make the Drake notation available as a matter of course when future supplements are released?

That's a good question... I guess it would depend on utility in a print format. Perhaps as a supplemental download for those that purchase the book, if such a thing could be tracked?

[RobinStirzaker]

If they were added as an extra page or so at the back of the PDF version of the product could they then not be copied and pasted into Vassal?

[bekosh]

If they were added as an extra page or so at the back of the PDF version of the product could they then not be copied and pasted into Vassal?

The source book PDF's are copy protected. You can't copy and paste from them.
The Drake notation would have to be a separate, unprotected PDF to allow copy and paste.

[Harrigan]

Good discussion -- I'm certainly not trying to infringe on rights or make more work for MJ12, but I do think it'd be a very nice perk to have the Drake stats available for published materials specifically because of Vassal. I've got three friends I'm trying to rope into doing some campaigning, and they don't feel comfortable yet trying to put together their own fleets -- so we've decided to each pick a race from the two books in question. If I end up coming up with Drake notation myself here in the next little while I'll either keep them to myself or share them with Cricket to dispense as he decides. Cool?

[cricket]

The source book PDF's are copy protected. You can't copy and paste from them.
The Drake notation would have to be a separate, unprotected PDF to allow copy and paste.

For those who buy the PDFs, this would be easy to work around -- either set the Drake pages to a different security setting, or include them as a separate file.

But for those who buy the hard copies?

And can I assume then that there's a consensus that this is worth doing?

[Harrigan]

You've got my (nearly worthless) vote!

[Alex Knight]

Another suggestion is to offer it as a separate purchase, mebbe at a lower cost bracket? Like, PDF is X, Hard Copy is X+n and Drake Notation is a couplea' bucks?

[RobinStirzaker]

I have just copied a ship sheet from the Iron Stars rulebook into a word document without any problems other than the formatting being all over the place (and I'm at work so I am using programs at least 5-6 years out of date).

If the PDF copy and paste can be done by different security settings then you may as well just put in a couple of extra pages of Drake notation and put the price up by $1 (or whatever the extra hosting & work costs) and maybe have a "secret code" in the hard copy that the purchasor can email in and get the Drake notation in exchange.