[Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Considering the size (38 yards long) and wide/flat dimensions, what size hull do you think would be most appropriate for the Millennium Falcon? 7 seems too small, but 8 seems to big. What do you think?

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I could be convinced either way. Since it's roughly twice the dimensions of an X-Wing or Y-Wing, but bulkier (that size is all "body" rather than wings and booms), and the fighters probably a largish SM+5, I'd probably go with SM+8.

Also, there's "Stubby cylinders, teardrops, saucers, and other more complex shapes average about 50%-75% of this length." (Spaceships, p 9, emphasis added)

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Very good point. I had extrapolated the size chart out to accommodate the Death Star which, being spherical, qualifies for 50% of the measured size it would normally qualify for its diameter.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

When you have mass numbers available for a fictional spaceship you use those to whatever extent you can. Linear dimensions are just too variable and Spaceships design is all about the mass.

So SM+5 is 30 tons or roughly a maximumally loaded F-15e Strike Eagle and huge amounts of that are external stores that don't compare well to Star Wars fighters that don't use such things.

SM+4 is 10 tons and only about 2 tons less than a light-load F-16. If you look at comaprisons of pilots to fighters in photos and models SW fighters are smaller than F-16s. They actually look more like the size of P-51s and other WWII fighters.

However, only the lightest WWII fighters (the Zero) come in at or under SM+3 or 3 tons/6000 lbs. So WWII fighters are SM+4 as a general rule and I would make SW fighters that size too. Make very large ones like the B-wing be SM+5 if you like.

Go to Spaceships 4 and you'll find SM+4 rules and examples.

Now we don't have total mass figures for the Falcon or even the stock YT-1300 but the stock ship is noted sometimes as carrying 100 tons of cargo. SM+6 is 100 tons so the Falcon can't be that but SM+7 is 300 tons.

So that's the figure I'd use. SM+8 is for substantially larger vessels i.e. up to 1000 tons.

What Traveller calls small ships start as SM+8 but Traveller ships are _huge_. One of their SM+8 100 dTon scout ships would be 500,000 cubic feet or like a 5000 sq,ft house with 10 foot ceilings. Also note that such a vessel would not merely fit inside a rectangle of that volume. It would _fill_ a rectangle of that volume. If the ship wasn't brick-shaped its' external dimensions would be even greater than those of the 5000 sq.ft house.

I know some of this may seem odd but whatever a unit of "SM+" is in the rest of Gurps it is not a measure of linear size here. It really, really is a unit of mass in Spaceships. Do not try and figure Spaceships SM from linear size. It will not only drive you crazy it will give you bad answers too.
paceships..

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

For better or worse, though, linear size is the *only* quantified bit of data we have on any given Star Wars vessel. Taken from the only tangible and measurable source that exists: The movie assets (in this case, ship models). Everything else (e.g. the amount of cargo mass a YT-1300 can carry) is apocryphal at best, usually grabbed out of thin air by an author (with the occasional use of real-world analogues, as you suggest with the F-15) or supported by vague and useless statements in the script ("She'll make 0.5 past lightspeed").

Beyond that, the only thing that is important is getting roughly the stuff in the design that appears in the movies. If that means I only get 50 tons of cargo instead of 100 tons, I'm okay with that.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

But, to be fair, I agree with you. Some concessions have to be made beyond simple linear measurement. Which is why I put the Nebulon B frigate at SM+12 and the Star Galleon at SM+14. Both are about 330 yards long, but the Nebulon is a long, spindly design (much of its length being taken up by the boom that goes between the fore and aft structures), and the Star Galleon is a more bulbous design with much of its interior space being dedicated to extremely heavy loads.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

You could also extrapolate from a smaller movie model, which was
A 'full scale' model was made for ESB, but some sources say it was 2/3 of the full size. It weighed 23 tons and was kinda sorta a hovercraft, tho they pumped in compressed air and pulled it with a forklift. The interior wasn't complete/scale though, had to bend over to avoid bumping your head apparently.


Full Scale Falcon Project Jason Scott Martin, the numbers that we are using in order to have everything fit (more or less- the builders added more width to the main hold in TFA) are:
114' long
80'6" Wide (docking ring to docking ring)

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Star Wars fans like to argue about the size of the Falcon, because its hard to fit the inside sets inside the outside sets. I would just assign it the size which SS says it should have given its apparent dimensions and shape.

That was true 15 years ago, but then Curtis Saxton, the physicist and Star Wars fundamentalist, got the rights to publish the cannonical books on vehicles in the prequels. So now there are all kinds of numbers with the Lucasarts imprimateur on them.

Whether you think they are interpreting a set of rubber-science movies wisely or not, Curtis Saxton and Mike Wong have done a lot of work to calculate the numbers they use.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I use SM +8 for two reasons: 1) that's the size at which you have a four-seat bridge (in the Falcon's case, it's Pilot (Han's seat), Co-Pilot (Chewie's seat), Astrogator (the seat behind Han's), and Comms (the seat behind Chewie's), backed up by the four-man crew Lando had on the Falcon's bridge in RotJ - those weren't just Passenger Seating); and 2) I use SM +5 for X-Wings and Y-Wings, SM +4 for the A-Wings, Delta-7s, and Eta-2s, and SM +6 for the shuttles and B-Wings. The Falcon looks more than a bit larger than the shuttles.

That said, I can see arguments for SM +7, but you have to reconcile the Falcon's four bridge stations with the fact that SM +7 gives you only three stations on the bridge.

(I don't believe in Saxon's numbers, as he gives the A-Wing an acceleration number that can have it hitting the speed of light with an hour's straight acceleration.)

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

GURPS Spaceships includes the Dark Horse, which is clearly a reference to the Millenium Falcon, and it's SM +8. In Psi-Wars, my meditation on Star Wars, I go with SM+8.

I can see the case for SM +7, as the Falcon is almost as agile as a fighter. SM+7 ships have the same movement modifiers as SM+8, but they're still as close to fighter-scale as you can get without actually being a fighter.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

My 100 tons of cargo numbers came from the WEG D6 Star Wars game and Lucasarts signed off on that o. I think they were used in official SW deckplan books before that.

No one wants to hear it but working from linear measurements will give you bad numbers. Spaceships is not based on linear measurements.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

The numbers still have no real basis in anything other than "that sounds about right." Lucas signing off on it means next to nothing regarding the feasibility of the "realism" surrounding the established numbers.

I seriously doubt that anyone is tied up enough in it to have a desire to hear it or not. The linear measurements are good enough in this situation.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Last time I checked, which was many years and several change of policy ago, the WEG materials had a low level of cannonicity (so people writing the tie-in novels and video games did not have to read up on them, although some did anyways). But there are other numbers which have been published since then and had official status until the sale to Disney and the most recent change in cannon policy.

If I were running a SW game, I would not worry about what the IP owners think is and is not cannon. But there are plenty of numbers which are not apocryphal, pulled out of thin air, or based on technobabel in the scripts (whether you think Curtis Saxton and co. pulled them out of anything solid is another question, but they sure put a lot of work into the pulling).

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I don't disagree that they did a lot of work on the subject. And they are interesting numbers. But they are, in the end, fuzzy interpretations based on tenuous logic built on observations extrapolated from the artistic rendering of a distinctly non-scientific genre. In other words, people took an author's haphazard recreation of the whimsical science of Flash Gordon and attempted to apply real-world physics by making half-baked observations of on-screen performance and dialogue. The only thing evident from Lucas stamping such data with his approval is that he ultimately doesn't care about the science of it all. And why should he?

In any case, getting such numbers to match up in an RPG that (for the most part) works off a more literal extrapolation of reality is an effort in futility. Thus it is easier for me to take the only true observable data (physical size) and extrapolate my own conclusions on other aspects on my own. Since it is unlikely this will produce any contradictions from what we observe in the movies, I feel this is an acceptable route.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Those is true of the "official" numbers people are using for linear measurement. Those come of the same deckplans.

Even if you based your numbers off the full-size sets you might have to choose between which one. To take an example from a different series the internal sets for the TOS shuttecraft are 30% larger than the external mock-ups.

So there are no numbers based in "reality". Privileging the linear measurements isn't all that reasonable. Spaceships however _is_ a mass-based system. Maas numbers (eve if they are estimates) should always be used before linear measurements.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Are there any alternatives to the Spaceships rules for GURPS 4e right now? IMHO any set of vehicles rules which starts from our physics is not the best fit for the setting ... near-C rocks, questions about distances and acceleration and vectors and masses, "what happens if I fire a missile like the one which just blew up that asteroid at the scavenger camp?" and so on are just not in genre.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I'd definitely go with 8. You do need a bit of cargo capacity after all.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Honestly, this is one of those deals where I want a bit wider granularity in Spaceships. SM +7 is 300 tons, SM +8 is 1000 tons; I'd expect the Falcon to be in the 500 or 750 ton range, "half-sizes" which are not fully supported by the system as yet.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

No, linear measurements of the vessels came from referencing movie assets and their real world scales.

Things like cargo space, cost, G's of thrust, toughness of armor, etc were all just thought up based on apocryphal data. For example, speeds of vessels were often extrapolated by authors of various sources by timing the speed of a ship moving across the frame in the movie. But such measurements almost invariably fail to take into account things like frame rate, focal length, and post production fiddling. In fact, a LOT of reference points for all of that other data was based on the verifiable physical size of the vessels. So it is the reference point.

When it comes to Star Wars vessels, there is only one verifiable measurement: size. Even that has been fudged from time to time when authors eye-balled size, but the fact that such errors were eventually corrected by referencing the movie assets is proof that it is the only real quantifiable factor.

After size, all other comparisons are moot because the data is either in no way veritably defined in the front end, or impossible to achieve within the system. Even if such canonical data is "true," it would be impossible to get, say, the 3,500 Gs of thrust (as expressed for many ships in many of those "official" sources) in GURPS Spaceships.

Tl;dr: Discussions of whether GURPS Spaceships uses mass or linear measurements are ultimately pointless because the mass can simply be the result of the linear reference as expressed in the GURPS system. The results will not interfere with any other established data because the established data is fundamentally flawed.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I think I agree. And, taking into account the 50%-75% of size for saucer shaped vessels (mentioned earlier in the thread) it fits that more closely than +7.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I quote Spaceships p.9 "Length is only an approximation. Feel free to vary it."

Loaded mass is given as hard numbers and it is necessary for these to be taken firmly for the Delta-V calculations to work. No stats actually depend on length. Spaceships actually tends to ignore SM as calculated in Characters.

The rile of mass is the Spaceships is really not a matter of opinion.

However, I intend to let this drop. I only spoke up to try and clear up misinformation. Everyone should be clear by now about the way the Spaceships rules actually work. Don't take my word for it. Read the rules.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Fred has been contributing to GURPS as a playtester for a very long time, and this is why. He reads the rules. He knows the rules, and understands the rules. If Fred makes a post it's a good idea to read it and listen.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Actually Eric Smith's Spaceships worksheet does an excellent job handling half sizes if you really did want to go for SM +7.5.

As an aside, the Falcon probably has a +1 or so handling bonus as well given that it is viable in combat with fighters.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I've never gotten that to work properly in OpenOffice, sadly.

Oh, I agree, it should have a Hnd and Move score enabling it to handle with fighters, but those should be the result of all the after-market tinkering Lando, Han, and prior owners of the ship have put into it, not the "stock" YT-1300 stats....

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Indeed! I would model a stock YT-1300 as handling like a freighter, but also leave it very open to improvements by the owner. It probably has something like a +2 to Engineering skill for modifications at a minimum.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Don't forget that if the ship has an engine room that adds another control station, so an SM+7 ship with an engine room would have 4 control stations. We could see from The Empire Strikes Back that the Falcon could be repaired from the inside so a Spaceships design would probably devote space for an engine room.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Yeah, but that control station wouldn't be on the bridge; more likely it'd be a station in the engine room itself.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

That's not really a requirement of the Spaceships system.

In regards to the SM+7/SM+8 debate, the Falcon doesn't seem to dedicate much of its hull to cargo; I could see it having only 2 Cargo modules (for 100 tons of cargo at SM+8) rather than the six or seven that'd be required at SM+7. The Falcon, instead, dedicates a lot of space to quarters, guns, and engines.

Still, I'd actually try statting up the Falcon and see what gets closer to what we see on the screen.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Drawing deckplans for Spaceships designs is up to the GM but I would not be overly literal about the contents of one Spaceships "module" being all together in the ship. Modules are more units of accounting than physical units of construction.

For example, the armament plan of the Falcon is probably something like one Secondary Battery with two lasers (Improved UV or something like that) plus one missile launcher. Yet the lasers are on opposite sides of the hull and the concussion missiles are up front between the "forks".

Or that might be the stock YT-1300 anyway but the point is that there can be parts of any given module in separated parts of the ship. so the workstation of the Engine Room could be on the bridge even if the tool boxes, spare parts and the access panels are..... sort of in one of the corridors I think. I certainly don't recall a single chair and computer monitor anywhere on the official deckplans.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

When running my KOTOR campaign I went with SM +7 for the Ebon Hawk. (The "This is not Milennium Falcon- Honestly!", lookalike from Knights of the Old Republic games).

Basically when trying to fit in the modules the sizes fitted a lot better into a SM +7. A SM +8 would have have made the thing way too spacy.

You can see the result in:
https://hups.kivinen.iki.fi/k2009:ebon_hawk

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

It seems to me that since the space inside is pressurized and accessible from the crew section, that the cargo space is actually steerage cargo (5 tons per cabin sacrificed).

Since reconfiguring between types of habitat modules is easier than switching to another type of module entirely, this seems consistent with the EU lore that YT-series ships are easy to reconfigure.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

The listing for steerage cargo specifies that it is pressurized, which certainly seems a case of exceptio probat regulam, but Cargo Hold systems are later implied to be pressurized and accessible to the rest of the ship as well:

"If the spacecraft hull is breached or a cargo bay door is opened, the entire spacecraft is affected." - SS p42.

If that is the case, what exactly you get from steerage cargo, aside from the vaguely defined "climate control" and the ability to carry "livestock and delicate goods," suggesting life support capacity. Do note that, if Cargo Hold is not pressurized, "delicate goods" means "virtually anything except ceramics and things very carefully designed to survive vacuum".

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Plumbing might be what you get extra in steerage cargo. Water ingoing and waste outgoing. Not much reason to have these in regular cargo.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Makes sense. I'd expect a big cargo hold to have facilities, as well, but it would be quickly overwhelmed if crammed full of people or livestock. Think about how bad it would get if a bunch of refugees were housed long-term in a warehouse designed to handle a half dozen employees for eight hours a day.

The "delicate goods" note might just mean that the steerage cargo can be assumed to be small lockers and such, and once a cargo space gets big enough for forklifts and shipping containers, a bottle of vintage cognac should be stored a little more carefully.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I would expect a standard cargo module to be a big empty space. The cargo it would carry would be preloaded containers, pallets of goods or large items (like cars & farm machinery). The steerage cargo space having extra life support / living facilities &/or smaller spaces for "delicate" cargos not to be "bounced around" in transit.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I just got access to Disney+ for Christmas and have been watching 1 episode per day of The Mandalorian. I was trying to hold out for watching all the current eps before I got into "Gurps:The Mandalorian" but then this old thread with a lot of stuff about ship sizes pops up.

I've been looking at the Mandalorian's ship and we get to see enough of it close up that I suspect there's a full-size mock up.

From thsoe looks I'd estimate it as being the size of medium-largish helicopter and not quite as large as a CH-47

"Chinook"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook#Specifications_(CH-47F)

Maybe 80% of that size. It's definitely smaller than a RW Space Shuttle (100 tons).

Anyway, the CH-47 has a maximum take-off weight of 25 tons which puts it in Spaceships SM+5.

I did a rough design for the Mandalorian's ship and it comes in okay at SM+5. You can't have a regular Habitat module but you could have one in as an oversized system and there is at least a toilet and I'm sure you could ahng a couple of hammocks somewhere.

The reat was quite simple. It appears to be a pretty simple vehicle. 3-6 armors (Light Alloy because it sure looks like aluminum to me), a Control room, a Medium battery of weapons, a power plant, 2 reactionless thrusters plus 2 FTL(Hyperdrives) for neatness and you've got room left over for cargo and possible multiple layers of not very good armor.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

This isn't going to be very helpful, but the BEST answer to this question is likely "whatever size you want it to be." Because SW is such an incredibly over-the-top cinematic setting that trying to shoehorn anything about it into defined measurements is just an exercise in futility.

It isn't often that I give that answer to such questions, but in a case like this I feel that it is appropriate, because of the setting. Plot is far more important than what hull size the Falcon can be shoehorned into, for this one. And if you want four seats in the cockpit, ok, there are four seats in the cockpit.

I absolutely love playing around with Spaceships, but that's my answer on this one.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Absolutely unhelpful.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Well, I did call it.

But I actually was trying to help. In short, my advice is to stop obsessing about it, because there is no remotely correct answer. And whether the ship that Han tools around in is SM+7 or SM+8 doesn't matter. Pick one. (Or work out how to do SM+7.5, since the most popular data seem to support that.) Move on. Especially since everyone is going to produce conflicting information to support their own opinion, since there is so much uncoordinated fanon out there.

OTOH, if I were modeling the Discovery I'd have to get into the weeds a bit. Possibly even for the 2300AD ships, or the Sulaco. But not the Millenium Falcon. That's like arguing about how to model Gandalf's staff.

Actually the BEST advice I could give would be not to try and convert SW perfectly. Instead, develop a setting inspired by it, with GURPS mechanisms and designed to your liking, rather than trying to shoehorn stuff in that doesn't work well. Like the Psi-Wars setting, which is excellent for what it is (I'm just not a fan of space fantasy, including SW). But I do understand why people want to convert their favorite settings.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Excellent advice. You should take it and let other people discuss the matter if it interests them.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

I was trying to help the OP overcome his mental block and move on with his setting, not indulge your mental masturbation. And my interaction would have ended with one post if you hadn't decided to get snarky, so your little attempt to put me in my place was sort of counterproductive there, huh?

OTOH I really appreciate your help in the discussion about superscience reactors and drives, so I guess that sort of balances out. :)

My apologies to the OP for this unpleasant sidetrack.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

OP posted this thread 4 years ago, and last posted on this site 2 years ago. I'm pretty sure he doesn't mind.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

When I saw the thread title, my first thought was "Oh, I should find that old thread where I pointed out the Falcon fell under the rule for stubby shapes having less length than their SM might suggest." This is that "old thread."

I will warn anyone converting "canonical" numbers from fiction into game mechanics: science fiction writers usually do not know how numbers work. Things like ships apparently made out of balsa wood or the borders of alien empires being inside the orbit of Neptune.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Before I offended acrosome with my interest in the subject I was posting observations based on my viewing of the props as compared to human beings i.e. the size of the Mandalorian's ship compared to humans walking down it's cargo ramp or standing next to it.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

The limitations and biases of the medium greatly effect which numbers on which things are dependable and reliable. As the milenium falcon is a prop that appears multiple times in multiple places and needs to look consistent with humans standing next to it, I'd trust the length, width, height, and shape to be consistent, and you can extrapolate from there.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

For what it's worth, SM+7 gives you a ship about as capable as Traveller's Type-S scout. A lot of a Traveller ship tends to be filled up with liquid hydrogen, and thus they often don't mass nearly as much as their size would suggest.

This leads into my recommendation for the OP - do not use the size of ships in other systems or non-game settings as more than a rough guide. Use their capabilities. Falcon can carry a few people, a few cubic metres of hidden cargo, and (presumably, as we never see it doing so) some more normal cargo - say a room full (about 50-100 cubic metres, and thus around 25 tons). It goes very fast in normal and FTL travel, has decent defences for a souped-up freighter, and what seems like a fairly heavy armament. That could be SM+7, but might be SM+8 because of the number of very heavy (in Spaceships) systems the high performance requires (though Star Wars ships seem to use screens, not armour, and are probably TL11^, which helps with that).

There's a Falcon look-alike in one of the Spaceships books, as I recall.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

True enough. It's just that there's this divide between at least two camps of roleplayers.

One wants to use any and all game stats as relative measures v. other game entities with no connection to RW objects. I once had a fellow with a Traveller background tell me that an X-Wing was like a 100 dTon ship.

Then there's another camp (possibly quite a small one) that makes connecctions between things and figures out things they imply. If you tell me that 1 whatever is 500 sq. ft. for purposes of drawing deckplans then that has firm implications for the ship's exterior as well as its' interior.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

Yeah, the problem with not hewing to measures is that size is itself a gaming-relevant property. Or at least it has a lot of potential to be. A game might find that the outside dimensions and inside 'sets' never need to cross over. Some media get away with that certainly. But it's a bit risky. With the Falcon, players may have pretty firm ideas of what kinds of spaces it can fit into (since it did a lot of fitting into spaces across multiple films) and be disturbed if you give them a 'falcon' that badly mismatches that.

Re: [Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...
 

That is part of its 'capabilities', so you'd take that into consideration when picking a size. The fun comes when some capabilities require a quite small ship and others a rather larger one, but the source material doesn't think that and therefore players who want to hew closely to the source material are likely to get twitchy about using Extradimensional Interface systems to reconcile the differences.