Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

That's why we're waiting for GURPS VDS, which will be able to model oddball designs like the Space Shuttle

Other than visually similar Buran, the STS is unlike any other space vehicle ever designed. Even the Buran wasn't anything like the STS since it was lifted on a carrier rocket which had all the propulsive motors and the orbiter simply had the equivalent of the OMSs to boost it the rest of the way.

What I'm saying is is that saying Spaceships is broken because it can't design the Space Shuttle, a one shot technological dead end that should have been shelved as too dangerous, too complex and too expensive in the mid-1970s, is ridiculous. (Ever wonder why Buran only flew unmanned once?)

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

For the record, Spaceships is able to build the Orbiter part of the shuttle with no problems. It's the external fuel tanks that are the hard part of the shuttle system, and I'm slowly working my way through that.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

I have no doubt about that part. Though since Spaceship goes by mass, and the SRB/ET stack I'm sure masses more than the Orbiter I'd simply bend the rules saying the Upper Stage's (Orbiter) motors use the lower stage's fuel and outright break the rule saying an Upper Stage can't use its motors.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

<shrug> Spaceships was never intended to be a comprehensive, cover everything design system for heavy-duty simulationist roleplaying purposes.

It's a _simple_ and simplified system for light-duty use in roleplaying and wargaming. There are a _lot_ of things it doesn't do and it breaks when you try and stretch it too far.

Just personally, I'd either avoid mixed TL designs or ignore the realism problems they could cause. Constant PP or variable PP, you get problems either way.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

Really? What problems do you get with constant PP? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

Static energy production tech?

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

It's not particularly static - the various power plants tend to increase in lifetime, and Fusion reactors go from 2 power points up to 4 power points (from regular Fusion to Super Fusion). But yeah, I can definitely see how you could argue that power plants should increase in efficiency as TL increases. Would be an easy fix, too.

Other than that, I see no problems with the static power point system - unlike with a changing power point system, which has many problems and just plain doesn't make sense.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

<shrug> Then what about the static nature of power input into weapons and other systems?

If Super Fusion generates twice as much as regular fusion why don't the people who invented that make Super Laser systems to exploit that extra power? Why do they keep building weapon systems to the same input specs used 3 TLs ago?

With a full featured system like Ve2 you do get to exploit higher power output.

If you try and use Spaceships for comprehensive simulationism it starts breaking. It's a deliberately arbitrary and abstract system for the sake of simplicity.

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

Because they can't?

I don't know if that makes sense, but it's certainly not inconceivable that you can't scale up your energy weapons' power consumption per ton. Ultratech appears to think more or less that, unless you prefer to believe that Grasers dump phenomenal amounts of heat and are a stupid design decision.

You could assert that all GURPS 4e UT products are pure gameyness with little respect for plausible physics, but I need to see a better case before I'll believe they did that.
Arbitrary and abstract are different! If they threw out the reality rather than hiding it behind abstraction, why did they bother with what I infer are plausible rocket statistics?

Re: GURPS Spaceships Power Plants
 

The energy capacity of UT Power cells is _mostly_ undefined. However, on p. 19 under Exploding Power cells you will see that if Power cells do explode or can even cab be made to explode under certain circumstances they become more dangerous at higher TLs.

Also, on p.88 under the demolitions section we see that plasma explosives (which should conceptually be like an exploding power cell) are twice as efficient at TL12 as they were at TL11.

Finally, back to p.19 there's the section on cross-TL use of power cells where using a lower TL cell in a higher TL device can leave the higher tL one functioning at reduced power while putting a higher TL cell in a lower TL device can be dangerous.

None of this would apply if a power cell was a power cell was a power cell across different TLs. At most you'd have warning about incompatible adapters, but that'd be by manufacturer and not TL.

So yeah, I assume that a TL12 Graser that gets the same number of shots from a given power cell size as TL11 Xaser is in fact using more energy, basically twice as much.

What I assume about waste heat is no more than "it's manageable at that TL". Waste heat is usually something that Goes Away as part of the process of producing gameable abstractions.