The number of deck plans available for players and GMs are considerable. The Ships of the Expanse (SoE) sourcebook provides a substantial amount and variation. However, as is inevitable, players and GMs want more. Not only that, we want them in high resolution for use with VTTs, and in print for use at the table.
Arguably, the deck plans in the SoE are more than sufficient, at least to those of us that mostly use them as references in a theatre of the mind style of play. However, if your style of play is more geared towards battle maps and tactical movement, higher resolution, and more variation, is desirable.
My experience in making deck plans is limited, there is one example in resources, and I am in the process of making another one of a larger ship. The process has thus far been slow and a lot of ctrl+a -> delete, or ctrl+z.
I use Arkenforge, which I recommend; it has useful assets and is a map making software (and VTT apparently, as well as being useful on touch screens around the table). It is however not free. Also, it has a limitation in that the various science fictions assets and modules are not designed towards hard space opera (or hard sci-fi if you insist). There are spaceship assets, but these are geared more towards the artificial-gravity-kind of space opera and science fiction. You can make and import your own assets of course. So, this limitation is only a limitation in that regard.
Making deck plans is challenging (to me). Figuring out what scale I want the decks to be made at for instance influences the level of detail and the size of environmental assets. So, should a square (or hex) be 1 or 2 meters? For the shuttle I made (you can find it here), it was easy to choose the 1 meter scale; shuttles are small and cramped. However, once I started work on a light freighter, a question has to take into account about the usability in VTTs and for printing on A3 paper (yeah, metric is superior). If only using it for reference, then the scale matters less, but once it becomes a battle map, it matters more.
What do you and your group use deck plans for? Reference, planning, and intel? For battle maps and tactical movement during combat?
The reason I ask is that, given sufficient time and interest, I would like to make more deck plans. I know that the stealth frigates have no deck plans and the community has been asking about it; we are also missing deck plans for space stations; at least smaller ones are doable, but larger ones may be more challenging to make – depending on level of detail desired.
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