Quote:
Originally Posted by dataweaver
I'm hoping that when and if they finally get around to 4e's VDS, the one-line vehicle "stat block" will be front and center in it, not sitting on the sidelines or tacked on as an afterthought. That is, I want everything in the system to be geared toward filling in one or more of those numbers; anything that fails to do so should be stripped out of the design system if at all possible.
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Many elements that have a huge effect on COST and WEIGHT are completely unrepresented in the stat block. Electronics, weaponry, stealth systems, damage control, etc. A good example of a simple things not represented in the stat block: seats. In many passenger vehicles - cars, ferries, buses , airliners - the seats occupy the majority of the total volume. Total volume has a huge effect on surface area, size, weight, and performance.
Now, seating is simplified in the stat block to one kind of seat (crew/passenger). However, in the real world, you can have seating that is cramped tightly together (like a subcompact car or light plane) or which is very spacious with aisles for drink carts, head room, etc. like a modern airliner. This represents about a tripling of volume and since most of the body space is the seating, is a huge difference.
If this distinction not in the stat block was not made, you'd fine that either your cars and light planes were two or three times larger (+1 SM, and much heavier and slower due to the extra drag of the huge body) or your airliners, trains, etc. were super-compact (half the size, and thus much higher performance, much lighter, and so on).
So, if the system is designed to follow the paradigm of "choose components and see what results" the level of detail on non-stat block (but important) things are indeed needed, because otherwise its garbage in, garbage out.
That said: the system is designed to generate the standard stat block as the final end result of the rules. And for people ONLY concerned with the basic stat block, an entire chapter is devoted to working around things and how to assign that stat block without going through the complexities of the rest of the system.