Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Spaceships] Paying more for better system?

Kelly Pedersen · 04-25-2018, 09:21 PM

As mentioned, there's not much provisions in Spaceships for systems that are just better than standard, without going up a full TL. However, there are some reasonably simple house rules you can use. I've used these before in a couple of games with space travel, and they've worked pretty well.

First, if you figure your setting is reasonably close to the next TL, or you've got characters with appropriate invention skills and advantages (like Gadgeteer), you can allow them to buy or build prototype versions of the next TL's systems. Usually, these will have bugs or flaws, which can be used to keep them under control, and provide adventure hooks. For engines, a good flaw is "functions about half-way between this TL and the next in effectiveness". For example, if you're at TL 10 and have standard reactionless drives, you could allow the ship to have prototype TL 11 standard reactionless drives, that produced 0.75 Gs of thrust per system, better than the TL 10 0.5 Gs, but not quite up to the full 1 G of "mature" TL 11.

Note that this approach is only barely a house rule anyway - it does basically fit into the standard rules for inventions and guidelines for what sort of tech should be available.

The next option is to allow systems to be optimized for certain tasks. For this, use the normal rules for equipment quality (p. B345) to apply to a specific skill roll usually made with that system, for the normal cost increases to the system. For instance, your engines could be optimized for emergency thrust tasks. For 20X their normal cost, they'd count as fine-quality equipment, giving +2 to anyone rolling the relevant repair skill for them to give more thrust.

In general, don't allow this to apply to rolls that are directly affected by the ship's stats already. For example, don't allow people to buy Fine control room systems to get a boost to handling, since that's already covered by the Maneuver Enhancement system that Varyon mentioned. Similarly, upgrading your guns to get better effective Acc should be disallowed. But specific subsets of such tasks are probably reasonable, like buying maneuver drives optimized to give bonuses in very tight quarters, or to improve vehicle Dodge only, or weapons specifically good at targeting a single class of ships.

04-25-2018, 09:21 PM	#4
Kelly Pedersen Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada	Re: [Spaceships] Paying more for better system? As mentioned, there's not much provisions in Spaceships for systems that are just better than standard, without going up a full TL. However, there are some reasonably simple house rules you can use. I've used these before in a couple of games with space travel, and they've worked pretty well. First, if you figure your setting is reasonably close to the next TL, or you've got characters with appropriate invention skills and advantages (like Gadgeteer), you can allow them to buy or build prototype versions of the next TL's systems. Usually, these will have bugs or flaws, which can be used to keep them under control, and provide adventure hooks. For engines, a good flaw is "functions about half-way between this TL and the next in effectiveness". For example, if you're at TL 10 and have standard reactionless drives, you could allow the ship to have prototype TL 11 standard reactionless drives, that produced 0.75 Gs of thrust per system, better than the TL 10 0.5 Gs, but not quite up to the full 1 G of "mature" TL 11. Note that this approach is only barely a house rule anyway - it does basically fit into the standard rules for inventions and guidelines for what sort of tech should be available. The next option is to allow systems to be optimized for certain tasks. For this, use the normal rules for equipment quality (p. B345) to apply to a specific skill roll usually made with that system, for the normal cost increases to the system. For instance, your engines could be optimized for emergency thrust tasks. For 20X their normal cost, they'd count as fine-quality equipment, giving +2 to anyone rolling the relevant repair skill for them to give more thrust. In general, don't allow this to apply to rolls that are directly affected by the ship's stats already. For example, don't allow people to buy Fine control room systems to get a boost to handling, since that's already covered by the Maneuver Enhancement system that Varyon mentioned. Similarly, upgrading your guns to get better effective Acc should be disallowed. But specific subsets of such tasks are probably reasonable, like buying maneuver drives optimized to give bonuses in very tight quarters, or to improve vehicle Dodge only, or weapons specifically good at targeting a single class of ships.