What RPG has the best spaceship design system?

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

David, thank you for writing such a detailed guide. Based on what you've said, maybe I should take another look at FFS. One specific thing—

This was very much my understanding. In fact, I would say that the main things I find unsatisfying about GURPS Vehicles all derive from the need to "fit in with a huge amount of pre-existing GURPS design continuity", as you say. Uh, I maybe shouldn't pick at this wound, but this is why I find Vehicles 4e never being published so frustrating. GURPS 4e cleaned up a lot of that "pre-existing design continuity", which I expect would create space for some fairly straightforward improvements in Vehicles 4e. If the RPG market still supported such a book. Alas.

The 4e rules actually had just as much "stuff" that got in the way thanks to High Tech and other books being published beforehand. The Vehicle Design rules did turn out to be a lot more "accurate" than the original version, though, which struggled with many things like hovercraft, small drones, or seaplanes. (The main areas that annoy me are beam weapons and sensors, largely due to some troublesome decisions made in the core GURPS rules.)

A book like FFS or VEHICLE DESIGN serves a rather limited market: people who want to say "with these technological limitations, what is possible". As Anthony says, it's not that much use if you want to emulate something you already have detailed real-world statistics for, real, or, especially, fictional; making it up in reference to existing rules is easier. What it does do, if you trust its numbers, is let you say "what else is possible, within these parameters (cost, size, weight, tech level, etc.)" and also provide some "fill in the gaps" options for when you have incomplete data. The importance of checking something like VDS against a real-world numbers for this purpose is simply to ensure they give accurate results when used in this way.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

A book like FFS or VEHICLE DESIGN serves a rather limited market: people who want to say "with these technological limitations, what is possible". As Anthony says, it's not that much use if you want to emulate something you already have detailed real-world statistics for, real, or, especially, fictional; making it up in reference to existing rules is easier. What it does do, if you trust its numbers, is let you say "what else is possible, within these parameters (cost, size, weight, tech level, etc.)" and also provide some "fill in the gaps" options for when you have incomplete data.

There are also the stats from the GURPS 4e vehicle rules which don't have a real-world equivalent (Handling and Stability).

I think that the market for rules like this often has little overlap with the market for playing at a table with your friends. Like many other types of RPG material, they provide fun but not often "at the table" fun. Maybe like cookbooks?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

There are also the stats from the GURPS 4e vehicle rules which don't have a real-world equivalent (Handling and Stability).

This is true of combat statistics more generally. I still don't know how to stat weapons in GURPS beyond "look for the closest similar weapon that does have canonical stats, or possibly multiple similar weapons that can be used to extrapolate or interpolate". DR is theoretically easier if you can find a RHA-equivalence estimate, but IIUC this can produce unrealistic results without some fudging.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I think that the market for rules like this often has little overlap with the market for playing at a table with your friends. Like many other types of RPG material, they provide fun but not often "at the table" fun. Maybe like cookbooks?

I mean, they might get used at the table indirectly if you are a prep-obsessively-type GM.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I still don't know how to stat weapons in GURPS beyond "look for the closest similar weapon that does have canonical stats, or possibly multiple similar weapons that can be used to extrapolate or interpolate". .

This might boil down to "figure out what class the weapon belongs to and assign the stats of that class.". Except for range, damage and weight this is exactly how you do weapon stats in "Laser and Blaster Design" in Pyramid 3/37.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I think that the market for rules like this often has little overlap with the market for playing at a table with your friends. Like many other types of RPG material, they provide fun but not often "at the table" fun. Maybe like cookbooks?

"Cookbook" seems like a fair analogy, at least when it comes to preparing things that don't need to be consumed more-or-less immediately - you prepare it beforehand, then bring the finished product to the party for everyone to enjoy. Similarly, with a vehicle/weapon design system, you use it to create the spaceship, tank, rifle, etc, then bring the finished product (the statline) to the table for your players to interact with.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Varyon

"Cookbook" seems like a fair analogy, at least when it comes to preparing things that don't need to be consumed more-or-less immediately - you prepare it beforehand, then bring the finished product to the party for everyone to enjoy. Similarly, with a vehicle/weapon design system, you use it to create the spaceship, tank, rifle, etc, then bring the finished product (the statline) to the table for your players to interact with.

What I mean is that probably 90%, 99% of the recipes in cookbooks in the world are never used for utilitarian meal preparation. People like the idea of having cookbooks in their kitchen, and maybe they flip through them and enjoy the pictures and the descriptions and fantasize about being the kind of person who learns new recipes, or even try them out once when they decide to spend an afternoon experimenting, but when it is cooking time and hungry people are waiting they fall back on one of their old standards or something out of one book. Vehicle design systems in tabletop RPGs are like that: the use case is very rarely "creating something for Saturday's game" and much more often "flipping through and enjoying the details" or "building something for the intellectual pleasure."

In my experience, this is true of RPG materials in general: the vast majority of what I own I never played, and the things I read and re-read tend to be things I rarely or ever used at the table.