This is Steven Petrick posting.

More progress has been made on the Klingon Master Starship Book. Jean Sexton has found several typo and format errors that the staff checkers had missed (it has a lot of information that has been added by the Master Starship Book format).

Like the Hydran Master Starship Book, the Klingon Master Starship Book is somewhat different from the Federation Master Starship Book, and also from the Hydran Master Starship Book.

While all three follow the general format, the books are inevitably different.

The Federation has few "hybrid carriers," but almost half of the Hydran ships are hybrid carriers, and thus text defining fighters on those ships had to be inserted into the format that was not really needed for the Federation.

The Klingons are the first "disruptor" empire we have done. Like the Federation there are few "hybrid carriers," but many (not all) of their ships have access to UIMs (requires Range-22 or greater disruptors and there are some "political" considerations which deny the system to some ships nominally allowed to have it). This gets into some ships (such as the D6 series, D7 series, F5C leaders, dreadnoughts, etc.) are in service before UIMs are available, but some of these (D7Cs, F5Cs, C8s, C9s, etc.) have UIMs as standard equipment, and most that have UIMs available as a refit, can also purchase additional UIM modules as part of their commander's options. So every ship includes a UIM line in the format. DERFACs on the other hand is handled as the straight refit it is (there is no allowance for using commander's option points to purchase additional DERFACS back up systems).

Another evolution is that the Klingons, more than the Federation, have "separation." So every ship that has a boom able to separate includes notes (where appropriate) about the change to the boom's weapons arcs, and (a problem not found on Federation saucers) the fact that if the boom has a shuttle bay, that bay can be used to lay mines only if the boom has separated.

All stasis field generator variants are covered with their own listing (SBA, B11A, B11VA, B11SA, B10A, B10VA, B10SA, B10TA, etc.).

The carrier escort tables have been relaid out to show all escort groups in order from the larger escort to the smaller, and the background of all of the escorts has been scoured to make sure the escorts appear where they are appropriate with a tighter view. Not only is the lone AD6 accounted for, but also the lone E5E. FWE escorts have been more restricted in availability in concert with their ship description (the FWV is no longer eligible to have one in keeping with the ship description of the FWE for example).

And while all this is going on, the Romulan Master Starship Book is itself being worked on. It has not gone to the staff yet (pending publication of the Klingon Master Starship Book we do not want to divert their attention). The Romulans, of course, do have "hybrid carriers" (if no where near as many as the Hydrans), but do not have disruptors. They do have cloaking devices, and whether a given ship has a cloak or not is noted. (Mostly auxiliary ships and a few police ships do not.) Format problems identified in the Klingon Master Starship Book are being addressed in the Romulan Master Starship Book at the same time, which should (along with the smaller number of fighter types over all compared to the first three empires) make the book easier for the staffers to check.