4th Edition Vehicles

[tcabril]

I loved the Vehicles book for 3rd (or Gurps Classic) edition. Is there a 4th edition version of that book or can one use the 3rd edition book?

I presently have Low-Tech, High-Tech and Ultra-Tech on order so I am not sure if its in there yet or not so let me know.

Thanks!

Todd

[Turhan's Bey Company]

There is a vehicle design book for 4e in the works, and it has been for several years. It's complicated and needs a lot of work, apparently.

Until then, there are scattered listings of vehicles, notably GURPS Vehicles: Steampunk Conveyances as well as small sections of the various *-Tech books, but there's no published design system yet nor a large cross-genre/TL listing of vehicles.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Currently, there's no exact equivalent to the 3e GURPS Vehicles, in the sense of a combination vehicle catalog and design system. The intent for 4th edition is to publish a number of smaller, more focused catalogs, each detailing a number of vehicles of a given type, from a particular era, or appropriate to a specific genre. So far, one of these, Steampunk Conveyances, has been published. There are also quite a few Pyramid articles that cover a few vehicles, or one in particular detail.

For the design system, well, it's being worked on. You can probably find discussion of it on the forums under the title "GURPS Vehicle Design" or "Vehicle Design System". It's been being worked on for more than a decade. David Pulver, the author of the original GURPS Vehicles, is working on it. But it's apparently a big, big, BIG mass of tables, charts, equations, and so forth, which takes a long time to review and cross-check anyway, and he has to work on it in between other, paying projects. So, long story short, it's still going to be a while.

[ericbsmith]

The closest to an actual Vehicle design system for 4e is GURPS Spaceships + Alternate Spaceships from Pyramid #3/34 (which adds ground and water motive systems and some gas guzzling power plants). Between these two you can design a fair number of Vehicles and, of course, Spaceships. However, the granularity of the Spaceships design system is considerably less than the granularity of GURPS Classics: Vehicles.

[Michael Thayne]

The closest thing we have to a vehicle designs system right now is the Pyramid articles that hack Spaceships into a more general system. The key articles for this are "Alternate Vehicles" in Pyramid #3/34 and "Sailing the Open Skies" in Pyramid #3/64. Unfortunately, this only works for SM+4 and larger craft. It's also awkward if you want to build, say, a 60-ton main battle tank and the system forces you to choose between an SM+5, 30-ton vehicle and an SM+6, 100-ton vehicle.

[mlangsdorf]

4e uses a different set of vehicle stats and a slightly different set of tech levels, so you're going to have to decide how you want to handle vehicle HP, handling, and stability, among others.

In general, though, you can use Vehicles designed with Vehicles Classic in 4e. The sample Kitty Hawk omnicar has a 4e statline something like:

TL  Vehicle       ST/HP  HT  Move  LWt    Load  SM  Occ  DR  Range  Cost   Locations  Notes
7^  Kitty Hawk    62    11f  72/3   3     0.25   +3  1+1  2  400    $760K   4WgrT     [1]
                             7/2                             68                       [2]
                             2.5/0.24                        5                        [3]
                             80/0.5                          330                      [4]

[1] Ground performance without turbofan enabled. Increase Move to 92/5 and decrease Range to 200 with the turbofan enabled. Uses Driving (Automobile).
[2] Water performance, uses Boating (Motorboat).
[3] Underwater performance, uses Boating (Small Submarine).
[4] Air performance, uses Piloting (Contragravity).

The Kitty Hawk's retractable turret has DR 22/12. The wheels are protected by DR 10 guards. The body is fully sealed and submersible and includes 1 day of limited life support for both the pilot and passenger.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

The closest thing we have to a vehicle designs system right now is the Pyramid articles that hack Spaceships into a more general system. The key articles for this are "Alternate Vehicles" in Pyramid #3/34 and "Sailing the Open Skies" in Pyramid #3/64. Unfortunately, this only works for SM+4 and larger craft. It's also awkward if you want to build, say, a 60-ton main battle tank and the system forces you to choose between an SM+5, 30-ton vehicle and an SM+6, 100-ton vehicle.

My Spaceships Spreadsheet has rules built into it that allow for choosing half-SM ships. I actually have an article with full rules for that which I wrote up that I had intended to submit to Pyramid but utterly forgotten about.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

There is a vehicle design book for 4e in the works, and it has been for several years. It's complicated and needs a lot of work, apparently.

The manuscript for GURPS Vehicle Design was submitted late last year. Due to its length and complexity (at least equivalent to the original in scope of the design rules), I gather it may take a while - probably several months - for SJ Games to evaluate it, and, should they decide to publish it, for it to proceed through editing and production.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

The manuscript for GURPS Vehicle Design was submitted late last year.

Ooh! That's good, exciting news! Even if it takes a few months more to come out, I'm still very happy to hear it's moving along! Thanks, David!

[Onkl]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

The manuscript for GURPS Vehicle Design was submitted late last year. Due to its length and complexity (at least equivalent to the original in scope of the design rules), I gather it may take a while - probably several months - for SJ Games to evaluate it, and, should they decide to publish it, for it to proceed through editing and production.

Great News, I hope all goes well and that I'll be able to order it when it's done! Thank you very much!

Cheers

Onkl