[Spaceships]Questions

[Figleaf23]

Hello,

I'm just delving into GURPS Spaceships for really the first time, despite having the book for many months. I don't have any of the later supplements yet, so maybe my questions are already answered in them, but here goes:

-How do you handle vessels whose symmetry is not linear (front, center, rear)? What about a craft shaped like a butterfly, let's say, where there are three sections but two basically identical and the orientation of travel is perpendicular to the arrangement of sections?

-What would be the consequence of allowing some sections to be more than 7 slots and others less, provided the basic envelope of total size is maintained?

[vierasmarius]

The "Front, Center, Rear" divisions are largely arbitrary and abstract, and shouldn't be considered to dictate the actual physical layout of the ship. Their purpose is mainly to guarantee that from whatever direction a ship is struck, there is an even number of ship systems potentially damaged. Similarly, the rules draw no distinction between the cross-section of the ship from different angles, instead just using the overall SM no matter what side is targetted. You could declare a ship to be larger from one direction, or to have more systems "visible", but it would need to be by GM fiat.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

-How do you handle vessels whose symmetry is not linear (front, center, rear)? What about a craft shaped like a butterfly, let's say, where there are three sections but two basically identical and the orientation of travel is perpendicular to the arrangement of sections?

You ignore that. The craft still has 6 or 7 front sections, 6 or 7 mid sections and 6 or 7 rear sections, totalling to 20 sections.

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

-What would be the consequence of allowing some sections to be more than 7 slots and others less, provided the basic envelope of total size is maintained?

The combat system needs to divide the craft into 6 hittable subsections per section. Core subsections cannot be hit, so they're highly valuable:

Traveller Universe "Hivers" always ut their command bridges in a core subsection, e.g. Or if you have an AM power plant, then you want that in a core susection. Or a crew area where crewers spend 18 hours a day in a core subsection, for the purpose of radiation sheltering.

The system is somewhat 1d6-centric, but the consequences of allowing one section to have 8 subsections while another only has 4 are not entirely clear to me. The smaller section, with only 4 sub-divisions, is more vulnerable because each subsection is more likely to get hit, if an enemy shoots at the smaller section. Likewise, the larger section with 8 subsections is better protected because each subsection will be hit less often.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

The "Front, Center, Rear" divisions are largely arbitrary and abstract, and shouldn't be considered to dictate the actual physical layout of the ship. Their purpose is mainly to guarantee that from whatever direction a ship is struck, there is an even number of ship systems potentially damaged. Similarly, the rules draw no distinction between the cross-section of the ship from different angles, instead just using the overall SM no matter what side is targetted. You could declare a ship to be larger from one direction, or to have more systems "visible", but it would need to be by GM fiat.

Likewise you could declare a very dense ship to be 1 SM smaller, e.g. a ship where most subsctions are armour with a density of 5 or 10 g/cm3 instead of crew inhabited with a density closer to 1.

That doesn't have to be GM fiat, but making an objective rule for it is non-trivial.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Likewise you could declare a very dense ship to be 1 SM smaller, e.g. a ship where most subsctions are armour with a density of 5 or 10 g/cm3 instead of crew inhabited with a density closer to 1.

That doesn't have to be GM fiat, but making an objective rule for it is non-trivial.

I believe guildelines for this were presented in a Pyramid article, likely the one on ground vehicles. Tanks especially needed this help.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Likewise you could declare a very dense ship to be 1 SM smaller, e.g. a ship where most subsctions are armour with a density of 5 or 10 g/cm3 instead of crew inhabited with a density closer to 1.

Good point, I'd forgotten about the Alternate Spaceships article from Pyramid 3/34. That wouldn't really help with a very diffuse craft (such as the OP's "butterfly") but it does let you build compact ships that make more efficient use of their armor systems.