[FT] Shiptool - Kudos to Roger Burton West.

As a fairly recent convert to FT, I just wanted to thank RBW for
developing
his Shiptool suite of programs. My apologies to anyone who isn't
interested,
but I couldn't find a private e-mail address.

The ship design tool is very handy when I'm working out designs for my
"Rawlplug" ships. There are a couple of quirks, which I was able to
handle
easily once I'd performed a couple of experiments to work out what the
program "expected" as input. RBW's program design choices do, however,
make
life easier for the ship designer once the requirements are understood
(the
handling of merchant ship holds is a case in point).

Some of the ship design functions COULD be performed by a spreadsheet,
but
where the Shiptool suite REALLY scores IMHO is in fleet management. The
neatly organised pick-list for ships, automatic ship naming and ID
coding,
simple "loading" of different groups into fighter bays and other nifty
features makes it really quick and easy to whip up fleets when my
nephews
come over and fancy a game. Of course basic stuff like automatically
tracking the points total for the fleet is taken care of too.

All I can say about the SSD printing feature is that it works very well.
After a little one-off tweaking to work out the printing boundaries, the
program just churns out very neat SSD sheets that are clear and easy to
use.
Again this boosts the "instant gratification" factor for my young
captains,
and makes life easier for me too! As a geeky aside, this program is an
excellent example of how hard Postscript rocks!

Finally, could I ask if Shiptool is "functionally stabilised", or will
some
of the new beta systems like grasers and anti-matter torpedoes be
incorporated in future?

Best regards, Robert Bryett.

P.S. I tried to show my appreciation as suggested in the Shiptool
documentation, but the link doesn't seem to work...