Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?

Michael Thayne · 02-09-2019, 10:44 PM

FWIW my take on GURPS Spaceships is less harsh than Ulzgoroth's. If you care about realism Spaceships gives you options far superior to the vast majority of sci-fi RPGs. Ken Burnside's games exist, but those are more wargames, and leave a lot to be desired in terms of the ship design system. (Attack Vector: Tactical forces you to use pre-designed ships, while Squadron Strike's system requires a big spreadsheet and is not remotely straightforward.) Unfortunately, "ability to replicate a wide variety of sci-fi settings" seems to have taken precedence over coherence. The wide variety of scale choices, for example, seems to have been necessary to accommodate drives ranging from miligees to hundreds of gees, but they give wildly inconsistent results.

02-09-2019, 10:44 PM	#46
Michael Thayne Join Date: May 2010	Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)? FWIW my take on *GURPS Spaceships* is less harsh than Ulzgoroth's. If you care about realism *Spaceships* gives you options far superior to the vast majority of sci-fi RPGs. Ken Burnside's games exist, but those are more wargames, and leave a lot to be desired in terms of the ship design system. (Attack Vector: Tactical forces you to use pre-designed ships, while Squadron Strike's system requires a big spreadsheet and is not remotely straightforward.) Unfortunately, "ability to replicate a wide variety of sci-fi settings" seems to have taken precedence over coherence. The wide variety of scale choices, for example, seems to have been necessary to accommodate drives ranging from miligees to hundreds of gees, but they give wildly inconsistent results.