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Old 07-23-2017, 07:47 AM   #1
Jayleia
 
Join Date: Jan 2017
Default [SPACESHIPS] Ships of Unusual Shape S.O.U.S.

OK, the Spaceships system has a front, center and aft, with roughly equal distribution of systems, implying that the three sections are about the same size.

And then you have shows like Star Wars where that really gets messy. The Nebulon-B, for example, looks like it should have two front sections, or an aft, fore, and ventral...or something. But if it has two front sections, it can clearly fire aft with some of the weapons on the second, lower front section, etc.

Or the Death Star (really, any spherical station/ship), putting systems on the "center" section leaves them exposed to attack from the sides, when it has no sides to speak of, and most of the systems in the center feel like they should count as [CORE] systems.

It feels like there should be options to add sections for weird ship designs, but then you run into problems with combat...

Has anyone else run into these problems, and have you successfully dealt with them?
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Old 07-23-2017, 08:38 AM   #2
Humabout
 
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Default Re: [SPACESHIPS] Ships of Unusual Shape S.O.U.S.

The key to making Spaceships work is remembering that it is super extremely vague and abstract. If you keep this in mind and don't expect the system to do sommersalts or backflips, it handles nicely. But as soon as you try ti make it more detailed or specific than it already is, it starts to crack, imo.
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Old 07-23-2017, 08:53 AM   #3
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [SPACESHIPS] Ships of Unusual Shape S.O.U.S.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jayleia View Post
Has anyone else run into these problems, and have you successfully dealt with them?
The problems are core to the system and obvious from when I first set eyes on it buy not particularly addressable without massive house ruling or indeed creations to variant combat systems.

A ship where its' shape conformed to the way Spaceships _works_ would look like a can of cat food flying sideways but it would morph into a sphere without doing much damage to SOD.

The thing is that Spaceships ship "shape" isn't literal at all. For example take the Klingon Bird of Prey. It has disruptors on its' wingtips. Where do they go in Spaceships terms?

Don't even bother trying to decide if the wings are in the middle or the rear. The disruptors go in the front. That's where you can get the right field of fire results so that's where they go. It just doesn't matter what the ship really looks like.

This is just one of those things that's baked into the system from the start because the start is an abstract battle game and not a detailed roleplaying supplement.
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Old 07-29-2017, 12:00 PM   #4
Jayleia
 
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Default Re: [SPACESHIPS] Ships of Unusual Shape S.O.U.S.

I've thought about this off and on for the last few days, I do want to simulate weirdly-shaped ships, but at the same time, making everything unique would be maddening. I think that, for the most part, I'm going to keep Spaceships rules as written.

But individual ships might get weird features to make them feel interesting and unique. One side, however, will have a specific design feature for their capital ships to allow for additional forward/side firepower, while limiting their aft firepower.

Their ships will be dagger shaped. <plays the Imperial March>
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Old 07-29-2017, 01:26 PM   #5
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: [SPACESHIPS] Ships of Unusual Shape S.O.U.S.

In many settings (Star Wars emphatically included) almost all capital ship weapons are turrets (and thus are best located in the middle in Spaceships so that they have a totally unrestricted field of fire) or are missile (torpedo, whatever name) launchers which can engage in any direction from any position (under SS3 rules, not SS1).

Running out of places to install weapons for the fields of fire you want (as opposed to not having the slots anywhere) is pretty unusual in Spaceships, I think. And if you do, your problem is most likely to be with rear-firing due to thrusters taking up slots. I don't really see how you could make a tradeoff that improves forward fire coverage in any useful way.
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