06-26-2014, 03:51 AM | #11 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
It depends very much on the campaign. Is the mecha your character (such as when you're playing Transformers)? Is it a gadget for a super? Is it basically a character in its own right and acts as the ally to the PC? Or is it a piece of gear, easily discarded and replaced with another? In the last case, it should almost certainly be a piece of gear, rather than a character.
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
06-26-2014, 07:04 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
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The first would be if the mecha were essentially a _big_ superhero that only used "technology" as a Power Source rather than having anything in common with technology as used elsewhere in the setting. The second would be as a shortcut where I built the mecha as a very simple "character" (ST, DR, Move) but gave it Weapon Mounts and used heavy weapons from UT. The whole Gurps character creation system is not simple, not even in comparison to Ve2. Building weapons as Innate Attacks in Powers might actually be more complex than building them as plain ol' weapons in Ve2. However, if mecha can have blaster cannons and non-mechs can have blaster cannons and they're supposed to be the same blaster cannons even when they're definitely equipment and not an intrinsic part of a "character" I would build the mecha as equipment.
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Fred Brackin |
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07-06-2014, 09:39 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Apr 2013
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
Hello everyone, just doing some necromancy here to ask some more questions after having bought the books and the design program -
Why is HP based off of surface area? this seems to lead to some absurd values, like a 10 ton plane of mine having nearly one thousand hit points. Should I just do HP myself as if its any other unliving object? - what if the frame of my aircraft is heavy, doubling its HP in the standard system- do I double it for my plane? I'm getting some weird sizes and weights- my plane really doesn't like to get more than 8 meters long while weighing more than 25 thousand lbs- its also really thin and short vertically- There doesn't seem to be any mention of wingspan anywhere- it doesn't seem to be factored into the width, as to explain the incredibly thin size of the thing. |
07-07-2014, 09:19 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
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If you're going to be mixing your GVB stuff with 4e sources calculate HP with the 4e rule. 4e is done in much lower detail and does not allow for inanimate objects to have HP not related to their gross weight (except for shields which on a per lb basis are the toughest things in the universe). If you wonder, shields get fixed in Low Tech. Cars are still quite fragile. As to your last paragraph, even Ve2/GVB as detailed as they are just don't directly address your points. Shapes are handled abstractly when handled at all. Mostly this is factored in as streamlining or hydrodynamic lines. If you're getting suggested linear dimensions from GVB you should probably ignore them. They have no game effect and were probably intended to describe something other than airplanes. Tanks or Roman galleys or starships or _something_. :) Ve2/GVB very specifically do not calculate wingspan. Draft is about the only real world stat that they do calculate and even that needs to be manually adjusted in many circumstances.
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Fred Brackin |
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07-07-2014, 11:36 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Sep 2011
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
Wingspan isn't precisely calculated in Vehicles, 2nd Edition, but neither should you find that the wings seemingly don't show up at all. You do have the 2nd and not the 1st Edition, correct? Both are meant to be used with the 3rd Edition Basic Set. A bit confusing, but there you are.
The procedure is at follows: First, choose your wing shape (VE6, Wings) and apply the results of any streamlining (VE8, B. Streamlining) to the results of our next step. Second, calculate the Wing Volume (VE 17, E. Wing Volume) remembering to add empty space, if needed to give both wings the same volume, and then apply the effects of streamlining (and slope, if applicable) to the wing volume. Finally, calculate the surface area of the wing subassembly using Wing Volume, (VE17-18), taking particular note of the wing surface area multipliers given in the paragraph immediately above Total and Structural Surface Area. Dividing Wing Volume by the final wing surface area will give you the approximate thickness of the wings. You should be able to estimate a rough width:length proportion for the wing of the plane you're designing, which will give you a somewhat oversized wing if you use it as is. An important point from VE8 in the Wings section is that the two wing subassemblies also include the tail of the plane, so you will need to make a rough and ready guess as to how much of the wing volume is actually tail and then reduce both wing subassemblies by half that amount to find out how much of the wing volume and surface area is actually wing and not tail. You can then arrive at wingspan as equal to both wing lengths plus the width of your fuselage. It's a bit of work and there is a fair bit of estimation but it should get you in the ballpark if you want to go to the trouble of working it out. Last edited by Curmudgeon; 07-07-2014 at 11:38 AM. Reason: clarity; dropped word |
07-07-2014, 02:43 PM | #16 |
Join Date: Sep 2011
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
Just checked on the internet. The length:width ratio I was speaking of is properly called the aspect ratio and the width is the chord. There was a dearth of easily accessible hard numbers for aspect ratios of real aircraft but one site (and I can't remember what it was) did have wing area and wingspans for some aircraft of WWII to modern vintage.
The aspect ratios varied from a low near 10:1 to a high of 18:1. A value in that range should certainly work, with more maneuverable aircraft aiming for low aspect ratios and endurance aircraft aiming for the high end of the range. Lower aspect ratios, and possibly higher ones, shouldn't be ruled out. |
07-07-2014, 04:41 PM | #17 | ||||
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
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I wasn't aware supers tended to have Gundams. Generally they use their own superpowers to save the day. The closest you can really get is Roger Smith (Big O) who tries to be Bruce Wayne and succeeds only in being a chauvinistic dork. Quote:
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07-11-2014, 03:21 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
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Now, perhaps all the above seems more complicated than just building the mecha as characters, but what it gives are good guidelines for how a mecha should function, rather than saying "Here's 500 character points, build an SM+4 or +5 mecha." |
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07-11-2014, 04:01 PM | #19 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
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07-13-2014, 03:17 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Charlotte, North Caroline, United States of America, Earth?
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Re: Considering getting Vehicles 3e for use in 4e games.
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This is largely what I used and still use Vehicles for. Even if I know my players will never encounter a Panzer* except as a prop piece, it's handy to know how the Panzer's behave, so I can describe them properly and have context for them in the world. In this case, I eventually found that a fairly good sized fusion reactor and multiple redundant turbofans for lift, coupled with some pure thrust fans, gave me a vehicle that could hit 500mph in flight(and gain enough lift from it's body and canards to stay airborne), but when it slowed down it has to use much more of it's power to stay aloft. It also let me benchmark the armor and payload of those panzers, So I knew if the autocannon carried by the power-suit troopers can damage it or not. Did I ever use the vehicle stats? Nope. But it was good to have the comparison so that I could describe the effect of the Panzers smugglers were using in the campaign. *Shadowrun slang for armored VTOL vehicles that serve as a sort of mix between a light tank/afv and a helicopter gunship
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Tags |
mechs, planes, spaceships, third edition, vehicles |
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