[Spaceships] GURPS EVE, and related ideas . . .

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

The first time I stumbled upon this idea, I thought it almost ridiculous, but another GM pointed out that it can be done with a certain level of open-mindedness and changed concepts. Now, I'm not planning to do it anytime soon (I've got a totally different campaign to prepare!), but:

Has anyone considered a campaign where each PC has his/her/its own spaceship, and spaceships are so highly automated that they only need one pilot/captain? The base assumptions are that such captains are millionaires, and their jobs are highly profitable and highly demanding (so much that most pilots are essentially parahumans). Of course, most physical disadvantages will be irrelevant, and some traits will be essential.

Furthermore, the ability to change ships depending on mission/job demands adds variety to the game.

Thanks in advance to anybody willing to discuss the topic!

[thtraveller]

Transhuman Space has AI controlled ships and you can build large totally automated ships with Spaceships. So a ship with one crew member is perfectly acceptable. Indeed the crew member needs no capablity but to think and give orders.

Spaceships doesn't really model this for small ships, but just remove all but one bridge station and don't bother with Engineering and you have a legal craft. In a setting with near sapient AIs then the AIs can automate most of the crew positions with the human providing the orchestration.

The original Elite computer space game was single player fighter/trader ships.

Not sure how party play would work. Unless you were effectively a fighter squadron or like mecha? Ships are usually means to an end rather than an end in themselves.

[tshiggins]

Point of information - those who play Eve play the pod-pilots who command their ships cybernetically, but the ships, themselves, have crews. Only shuttles are single-person. Even interceptors are frigates, with small crews.

As for single-man ships, I have to ask about the goal of the campaign. If you exist to fly around and fight Berzerkers (Von Neumann killing machines), or something, that might be okay. What makes Eve fun is the interaction with the other *players*, whether that's cooperative or adversarial, and the game is designed to require group play to succeed in the larger sense.

So, why would the campaign require the existence of a small squadron of spacecraft, each commanded by a single pilot?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Point of information - those who play Eve play the pod-pilots who command their ships cybernetically, but the ships, themselves, have crews. Only shuttles are single-person. Even interceptors are frigates, with small crews.

As for single-man ships, I have to ask about the goal of the campaign. If you exist to fly around and fight Berzerkers (Von Neumann killing machines), or something, that might be okay. What makes Eve fun is the interaction with the other *players*, whether that's cooperative or adversarial, and the game is designed to require group play to succeed in the larger sense.

So, why would the campaign require the existence of a small squadron of spacecraft, each commanded by a single pilot?

1. I remember a piece of fluff that told how the new pod-tech allowed reducing the crew to one, because that one pilot could see from the ship's 'eyes', feel how engines work etc.

2. It's just a weird idea. IMO, it's not very different from an infomorph campaign where infomorphs jump between various 'shells (ship or humanoid or whatever).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Molokh

1. I remember a piece of fluff that told how the new pod-tech allowed reducing the crew to one, because that one pilot could see from the ship's 'eyes', feel how engines work etc.

Whether EVE Online's ships are crewed or not is hotly debated on CCP's forums. I personally don't care, except for thinking that it would expand the scope and complexity of the game, if ships were given Crew Slots that had to be filled with special Crew Modules, such as Regular Crew, Elite Crew, Enslaved Crew, Robotic Crew or Pirate Crew, each giving its own advantages and disadvantages, such as mutiny risk, bonuses, and how much pay they require.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

So, why would the campaign require the existence of a small squadron of spacecraft, each commanded by a single pilot?

Real reason precedent:
I mentioned that my next campaign (once COC either dies off or is finished) will be a space opera of sorts. Two players immediately started figuring how to build pilots with their personal ships. The third seemed half-ready to jump the bandwagon.

[tshiggins]

Wow, that was a long delay between responses. :)

As for characters with individual ships, I suppose that could work out. It certainly works okay in Eve. It makes an RPG campaign even more about ships and combat than character interaction, which is OK, I suppose.

While you can create fully-automated ships for your campaign (or anything else you like, for that matter; it's your campaign), in Eve that's not how it works. One piece of fiction in Eve's magazine, Eon, told how crewmen thought they had great jobs, because most of the time they got paid a lot of money to do fairly routine work.

Moreover, when the fecal matter hit the whirling blades, they didn't hesitate to bail out in an escape pod, as soon as the main defenses dropped. They didn't even wait for the secondary defenses to kick in. As soon as the combat started to go against their ships, the crewmen bailed. Once the ship blew up, the insurance company sent death benefits to their families, and the crewmen signed for the next trip -- sometimes even on a ship piloted by the same person.

Rinse and repeat.

That's because the crewmen don't matter. Not in the same way the pod-pilot does. To the cybernetically-enhanced transhuman floating in the tank, the crewmen have no more meaning than any other of the ship's replaceable parts. He doesn't know them, he doesn't care to know them, and his only concern regarding them is that, when he sends commands through his mindlinks, they efficiently carry out their tasks. They're just slots that need to be filled and, as long as the slots get filled, that's all he cares about.

Eve doesn't concern itself overly much with issues of morality. It is an exercise in naked self-interest, in which cooperation is good because it increases the probability of positive outcomes. Alliances can and do shift, frequently, and today's friends are tomorrow's targets.

Some groups do engage in ethical behavior (my group is one such), but that has as much to do with annoyance at griefers as much as a desire to make New Genesis space a better place for everybody.

Eve works well as a computer game, in which nobody has to care (particularly) about anybody else who plays. However, as the basis of a table-top RPG setup, it would have some issues, I think.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Wow, that was a long delay between responses. :)

As for characters with individual ships, I suppose that could work out. It certainly works okay in Eve. It makes an RPG campaign even more about ships and combat that character interaction, which is OK, I suppose.

I'm not so sure. A large portion of Eve is about diplomacy, social climbing, economics etc. I think even MMORPH giants such as WoW are no match to it in terms of noncombat complexity.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

While you can create fully-automated ships for your campaign (or anything else you like, for that matter; it's your campaign), in Eve that's not how it works. One piece of fiction in Eve's magazine, Eon, told how crewmen thought they had great jobs, because most of the time they got paid a lot of money to do fairly routine work.

Moreover, when the fecal matter hit the whirling blades, they didn't hesitate to bail out in an escape pod, as soon as the main defenses dropped. They didn't even wait for the secondary defenses to kick in. As soon as the combat started to go against their ships, the crewmen bailed. Once the ship blew up, the insurance company sent death benefits to their families, and the crewmen signed for the next trip -- sometimes even on a ship piloted by the same person.

Rinse and repeat.

I haven't seen that bit when I skimmed the introductory fluff.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

That's because the crewmen don't matter. Not in the same way the pod-pilot does. To the cybernetically-enhanced transhuman floating in the tank, the crewmen have no more meaning than any other of the ship's replaceable parts. He doesn't know them, he doesn't care to know them, and his only concern regarding them is that, when he sends commands through his mindlinks, they efficiently carry out their tasks. They're just slots that need to be filled and, as long as the slots get filled, that's all he cares about.

Well, that's part of what the players said about space opera games: that for a pilot, things such as 'Racial Template' are mostly a matter of æsthetics. Once I get to race-building, I'll definitely try to prevent such a thing. I don't want aliens (even human aliens!) to be men in funny suits and forhead makeup.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Eve doesn't concern itself overly much with issues of morality. It is an exercise in naked self-interest, in which cooperation is good because it increases the probability of positive outcomes. Alliances can and do shift, frequently, and today's friends are tomorrow's targets.

Some groups do engage in ethical behavior (my group is one such), but that has as much to do with annoyance at griefers as much as a desire to make New Genesis space a better place for everybody.

Eve works well as a computer game, in which nobody has to care (particularly) about anybody else who plays. However, as the basis of a table-top RPG setup, it would have some issues, I think.

That's an interesting consideration.