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Old 03-01-2020, 06:53 PM   #31
Pectus Solentis
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Live in Seoul, Korea and I have never been abroad.
Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
However, you have no more firepower than you would have using 3 Major Batteries in the front section.

It does allow you to use the Central Core section and a rear Section instead of 2 Front sections but it makes me wonder who's selling you those long skinny weapon systems that are otherwise identical to your standard Majoe Battery.

It's one of the core concepts of Spaceships that every increase in SM is a 3x (3.1x actually but we round for neatness) as large as the SM that went before. It's another core concept that spaceships is deeply agnostic about shape, volume and density and deals only in mass. That's what makes the fuel calculations work out as well as they do.

It complicates matters when you try and deal with one of those factors by itself. I'd need to hear a really good story about where you were getting those long skinny weapon systems.
Quote:
Front
System 1 : Armor, Diamondoid : dDR 10.
System 2 : Armor, Diamondoid : dDR 10.
System 3 ! Weapons, Spinal Battery : 28cm Caliber Missile Launcher Fixed Mount
System 4 ! Weapons, Medium Battery : 2.5cm Caliber Very Rapid Fire Electromagnetic Gun Fixed Mount * 3
System 5 : Tactical Sensor Array
System 6 : Control Room : Complexity 8 computer, no crew aboard
Core System : N/A
Central
System 1 : Armor, Diamondoid : dDR 10.
System 2 : Armor, Diamondoid : dDR 10.
System 3 : Defensive ECM, TL11
System 4 : Defensive ECM, TL11
System 5 : Defensive ECM, TL11
System 6 : Engine Room : Represents high-end Damage Control systems.
Core System ! Weapon, Spinal Battery
Rear
System 1 : Armor, Diamondoid : dDR 10.
System 2 : Armor, Diamondoid : dDR 10.
System 3 ! Weapon, Spinal Battery
System 4 ! Reactionless Engine, 1G.
System 5 ! Reactionless Engine with Contragravity Lifter, 1G.
System 6 : Super Fusion Reactor (4!→3!)
Core System : Super Fusion Reactor (4!→3!)
It is my sheet of Venator Bomber.
I want to design Venatrix Interceptor which is the sister model of Venator whcih shoot a bundle of small but agile missiles to intercept small drones and fighters.
But there is no rule for Rapid/Very Rapid Fire Missile Launcher so I looked for the possibility of Bundles of Spinal Battery.
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Old 03-01-2020, 06:53 PM   #32
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
Maybe you want a ship with five armour systems in the front and three major batteries in fixed mounts firing forwards.
I didn't say there was no concievable reason to do it. I did think of that one specifically. It's jsut that the whole smells to me of rules-lawyering rather than engineering.

It seems designed to take advantage of some of Spaceships' simplifying assumptions. If you went to a system like Ve2 you could ahve any combination of weapons and armor you wanted and it wouldn't require any exotic maniipualtion of the rules at all.

My impulse when i come up against one of Spaceships' inherent limits is to stop rather than finagle my way around it.
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Old 03-01-2020, 06:55 PM   #33
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Pectus Solentis View Post
It is my sheet of Venator Bomber.
I want to design Venatrix Interceptor which is the sister model of Venator whcih shoot a bundle of small but agile missiles to intercept small drones and fighters.
But there is no rule for Rapid/Very Rapid Fire Missile Launcher so I looked for the possibility of Bundles of Spinal Battery.
Sorry, it is an inherent limitation o fspaceships that there is only one missile design of a given missile size and nothing smaller than 16 cm.
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Old 03-01-2020, 06:56 PM   #34
Pectus Solentis
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I didn't say there was no concievable reason to do it. I did think of that one specifically. It's jsut that the whole smells to me of rules-lawyering rather than engineering.

It seems designed to take advantage of some of Spaceships' simplifying assumptions. If you went to a system like Ve2 you could ahve any combination of weapons and armor you wanted and it wouldn't require any exotic maniipualtion of the rules at all.

My impulse when i come up against one of Spaceships' inherent limits is to stop rather than finagle my way around it.
What ve2 means?
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Old 03-01-2020, 06:59 PM   #35
Pectus Solentis
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Sorry, it is an inherent limitation of spaceships that there is only one missile design of a given missile size and nothing smaller than 16 cm.
Well I know. But what about thinking bombs described in Spaceships #4? It won't be fine that I make the distinct missile types that is specialized to intercept drones and fighters?
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Old 03-01-2020, 07:12 PM   #36
Varyon
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I'd need to hear a really good story about where you were getting those long skinny weapon systems.
The same place you get the long, not-as-skinny weapon systems for a typical Spinal Battery? It's not like a spaceship designer goes to the local Blasters R Us to pick up such a thing for the vessel they're building - rather, such would be built to the specifications the design team decided on, just like the thrusters and similar. Many of the components in a spaceship are likely designed specifically for that ship design, and Spinal Batteries are certainly going to be such a component.

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Originally Posted by Pectus Solentis View Post
What ve2 means?
Ve2 is GURPS Vehicles, 2nd edition, which was a supplement for GURPS 3rd edition (GURPS is currently in 4th edition, but the PDF of that is available as part of the GURPS Classic line). It's a much more in-depth design system than Spaceships, which gives it more flexibility but also makes it much more time-consuming (and difficult) to use.
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Old 03-02-2020, 07:20 AM   #37
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
The same place you get the long, not-as-skinny weapon systems for a typical Spinal Battery? It's not like a spaceship designer goes to the local Blasters R Us to pick up such a thing for the vessel they're building - rather, such would be built to the specifications the design team decided on, just like the thrusters and similar. Many of the components in a spaceship are likely designed specifically for that ship design, and Spinal Batteries are certainly going to be such a component.
That may be the case, but it doesn't have to be the case. If we look at real modern weapon systems, it's quite common for a new type of ship, tank, or airplane to be designed around off-the-shelf available weapons. (And sometimes other major subsystems, but weapons maybe more than most.)

Spinal batteries are possibly more likely than other mounts to use a specifically designed weapon due to how big and integrated a part of the ship they are. On the other hand, I don't really buy SS6's view that spinal weapons can be treated as modular and swapped out easily - if you build a ship literally around a new weapon that turns out to be a lemon in service, I suspect you'd find that very hard to exchange it for something more satisfactory.
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Old 03-02-2020, 10:01 AM   #38
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
The same place you get the long, not-as-skinny weapon systems for a typical Spinal Battery? I
The spaces it uses are the only difference between a Spinal Mount for one SM of ship and a Major Battery for a ship of +! SM. You will note that making a ship +1 SM (with all other factors being equal) does not make that larger ship 3x as long. Simple geometry would make it 1.45x in each dimension.

Again, I think this is rules-lawyering. trying to exploit an abstraction Spaceships makes for the sake of simplicity to get around that simplifying assumption.
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Old 03-02-2020, 10:14 AM   #39
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Pectus Solentis View Post
Well I know. But what about thinking bombs described in Spaceships #4? It won't be fine that I make the distinct missile types that is specialized to intercept drones and fighters?
The usual idiom is "smart" bomb. Checking SS4 p.40 I see that's what it says.

Smart bombs have no propulsion systems. They can't chase anything. To be used at all in space combat you need a situation where the target moves towards the bomb. Even then the very low Space Accuracy of bombs makes them very unlikely to hit.


Again, I'm sorry but the small, fast anti-fighter missile you're looking for does not exist in Spaceships.
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Old 03-02-2020, 10:55 AM   #40
Varyon
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
The spaces it uses are the only difference between a Spinal Mount for one SM of ship and a Major Battery for a ship of +! SM. You will note that making a ship +1 SM (with all other factors being equal) does not make that larger ship 3x as long. Simple geometry would make it 1.45x in each dimension.
I don't think that observation lends itself to the conclusion you're coming to (that an SM +n Spinal Battery is the same weapon as an SM +n+1 Major Battery). A Spinal Battery is, by definition, nearly as long as the ship itself. If we compare an unstreamlined SM +5 ship with a Spinal Battery to a streamlined SM +6 ship with a Major Battery, the first ship is roughly 15 yards long, while the second ship is up to 40 yards long. This most extreme case does allow for the same weapon that is a Spinal Battery in the SM +5 ship to be a (fixed) Major Battery in the SM +6 one (it's a little longer than 1/3rd the length of the latter ship, but close enough for Spaceships level of resolution). If we match up the streamlining, or reverse the situation, however, things change - a 15 yard battery is going to be difficult to fit within the first third of a 20 yard ship (both unstreamlined), as is a 30 yard battery on a 40 yard ship (both streamlined), and don't even get me started on trying to fit a 30 yard battery onto a 20 yard ship (smaller streamlined, larger unstreamlined).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Again, I think this is rules-lawyering. trying to exploit an abstraction Spaceships makes for the sake of simplicity to get around that simplifying assumption.
I don't think it's really a case of rules-lawyering so much as just trying to get a little better resolution out of the system. Note if he were dealing with anything other than launchers (which are bizarrely unable to be RF/VRF), there likely wouldn't even be a problem - an RF Spinal Battery laser, for example, could easily be described as being 10 weapons (each 1/10th normal mass) mounted next to each other.
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