Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

Unfortunately, you can't really go "dual-system" and still get nice, neat numbers. Even two measures that are close to each other - meters and yards - will wind up giving odd results under most circumstances.

Let's say we go through the books and change all references from yards to meters. If those were our only measurements, it would probably work well enough, but that's not the case. We scale all the way up to miles, light-seconds, and AUs. There's 1000 meters in a km, but 1600 for a mile, and 1760 (rounded up to 2000 in some places) yards. That's a pretty big fudge factor, but it gets worse. A light-second is just under 300,000 km, easily rounded to that, but 186,282-some miles, often rounded to 186,000, and even that isn't especially convenient to work with. In Spaceships, Pulver rounds an AU up to 100M miles, but it's already pretty darn close to 150M km.

So one measurement system has to be the "main" system in use, and unfortunately, the primary audience for SJG uses Imperial.

It's unfortunate, because it's extremely easy to convert metric between length an volume. Your mass in metric tons is (assuming an average density of 1) EQUAL TO the volume in kl. If you try to convert short tons to cubic feet (which most people can't think in anyway), you need some multiplication factor (which I'm not going to take the time to figure out what it is). Very handy with ships and cargo spaces and the like.

Like Seasong, I have discovered the value of measuring time solely in seconds (and ks, Ms, Gs); makes it INCREDIBLY EASY to figure out spacecraft velocities and travel distances when you do away with 60's and 24's, though to help others wrap their heads around it, I make 100-second minutes, 100-minute hours, 10-hour days, 10-day weeks (megaseconds), 4-week months, 10-month years... Makes counting time easier, and your gigasec-birthday is every 25 of these years, rather than 33 and some change.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

Yaaaay! So if the series does well enough, is there a chance of getting a POD bundled version? Once all of the pieces are out, combining them into a single book?

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

I'd be in favor of that, whether POD softback or "traditional" hardback.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

I would say the chances of each installment getting a POD edition are very high. Bundling them all together? I'm not going to say "never," because POD technology continues to change, making today's "complex" tomorrow's "push a button and go." However, I see many roadblocks which would make a bundle significantly less profitable than just keeping the individual softcovers in print.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

*Vehicles* sold very well.

I believe it would it have sold *exceptionally* well if it had been metric. GURPS books are often picked up by non-GURPS players. But there is a significant sized audience - primarily of Traveller-raised fans - that reject GURPS (and Vehicles) soley on the grounds that it is Imperial.

As is, GURPS likely lost market share to other companies that were willing to adapt to customer desires. A more flexible approach - for example, having the core design rules work in metric numbers (for easy calculation) with the final design output being converted into mph, knots, kph, etc. at the end - would have, I think, resulted in a significantly enhanced crossover market. It would have also also allowed brazilian, korean, japanese etc editions; instead, the imperial-heavy notations have so far defeated translation

(The reason for Vehicle Design being e23 and optional is primarily to remove complexity from the core rules.)

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

It doesn't matter. GDW achieved excellent sales to a US audience with a metric science fiction game in the 80s. It's been argued that GURPS is Imperial because US audiences don't get metric measurements. This makes little sense to me: the GDW sales figures for Traveller in the 80s suggest that mass gaming audiences happily accepted and understood metric.

Moreover, Traveller's fan base - one of the largest group of science fiction gamers that use gearhead rules like vehicle design systems - were conditioned for 10 years that metric = the true way in their favorite science fiction game. The number one reason I see on Traveller news groups for rejecting GURPS: "it's not metric." Some of that is fannish hyperbole, but the sentiment is repeated over and over.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

It could be worse: I vaguely recall one of the very earliest pre-drafts of vehicles measured everything in cubic inches.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

I guess you meant the other way round, David? :)

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

Probably. Unless I mean they're deliberately ornery.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Series
 

I prefer the term "cussed" :\ ;)