Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
In general cinematic rockets behave as needed for the plot and do not have strange things like 'delta-V', but there's a wide range of cinematic rockets, so it really depends on what you're after.
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IDK. I feel like that can be a lazy way of looking at it. I think the impetus of keeping a ship in repair, cargo in the bay, and fuel in the tank can be a great source of drama and story threads, even in a cinematic game.
I don't know about how others feel, but personally as a player I get sort of irked if my GM simply declares something like "you're out of fuel" or "a part on your ship breaks" solely for the purpose of creating tension. Like, "no it didn't, I've been succeeding my Mechanics rolls and paying for replacement parts, nothing should be wrong with my ship."
When real, "fair" disaster strikes because of legitimate misfortune ("Aww man, those pirates rolled a crit and knocked out our life support") or
especially due to a lack of player forethought ("I thought we'd make it to port on the fuel we had but I forgot we were gonna make a detour to Hoban's Moon"), it feels more like a problem that
deserves to be taken seriously.
And for those reasons, I feel like maintaining some of the minutia of operating a spaceship can be important,
if that is the kind of game you want to play. Certain tweaks to realism may need to be made to make things like small, independent crews a viable part of the setting, but I don't think that necessitates a total hand-wavium of routine spaceship operations.
Jinumon
EDIT: Then again you
did say there's a wide range of cinematic rockets, so maybe this point goes without saying.