Quote:
Originally Posted by Humabout
What are you trying to accomplish with this analysis exactly? It feels like you're trying to see what sort of gameplay using everything in GURPS Spaceships dictates instead of letting your design goals dictate which parts of GURPS Spaceships you should use.
|
Actually, I'm trying to do it the other way around - I have a set of rough design goals (or maybe a 'feeling of how it should look like'). However, I have difficulties going from the abstract design choices (types of weapon allowed, space drives, etc) directly to (a) how this changes the feeling of space combat and (b) how it influences space combat doctrine. And if I don't think about it, a player could end up slaughtering military forces with ease.
Going away from the abstract musings, consider the following: I like the concept of AKVs as a kind of networked and distributed lethality and as the extension of the cruise missile concept. For AKVs to be viable, several factors are necessary: They must be fairly difficult to intercept (otherwise they're toothless) and ramming must feature as a sometimes-necessary tactic (otherwise, they're a bit boring). Accordingly, damage of normal weapons shouldn't be able to vapourize any enemy spacecraft.
Another example: The last playtest showed that particle beams are a very useful secondary anti-AKV weapon. I'd have defaulted to lasers without gaming it out.
Quote:
|
For four worked examples of the latter approach, check out So You Want to Build a Spaceship... in Pyramid #3/94 - Spaceships III.
|
I have, and especially
Working Stiffs is an inspiration to me (it's actually mentioned in the first post :-) )