[Spaceships] High-End Spaceships

cosmicfish · 08-06-2014, 11:07 PM

One of the weaknesses in the way GURPS handles equipment (outside Weapon Quality and Gear as Characters) is that it has relatively few rules for either superior designs or subsequent improvements. If you look at WWII fighter aircraft, most exist within a very narrow design continuum, and yet some were clearly tremendous performers while others were all but deathtraps.

I would suggest one (or both) of two options:

1) Give them "match" equipment. There are tolerances in the manufacture of everything, and the more complicated a device is the more opportunities there are for some units to outperform others. Perhaps a small fraction of ships (the PC's) were assembled out of the "best" functioning components, resulting in small but significant performance increases in comparison to the remainder were just not as well matched.

2) By dint of superior maintenance or some measure of "tweaking", perhaps the players' ships have some post-manufacture superiority. Maintaining a ship at "peak" may simply be beyond what their rivals and opponents can manage. Alternately, perhaps they have some technical wizard who has done a Han Solo and modified their ships to a performance level not possible under factory specs.

Either way, it makes sense for said improvements to come with costs of some type - monetary, increased maintenance time, possible in-combat failure, or a dependence on unique assets (like your tech whiz).

08-06-2014, 11:07 PM	#10
cosmicfish Join Date: Mar 2010	Re: [Spaceships] High-End Spaceships One of the weaknesses in the way GURPS handles equipment (outside Weapon Quality and Gear as Characters) is that it has relatively few rules for either superior designs or subsequent improvements. If you look at WWII fighter aircraft, most exist within a very narrow design continuum, and yet some were clearly tremendous performers while others were all but deathtraps. I would suggest one (or both) of two options: 1) Give them "match" equipment. There are tolerances in the manufacture of everything, and the more complicated a device is the more opportunities there are for some units to outperform others. Perhaps a small fraction of ships (the PC's) were assembled out of the "best" functioning components, resulting in small but significant performance increases in comparison to the remainder were just not as well matched. 2) By dint of superior maintenance or some measure of "tweaking", perhaps the players' ships have some post-manufacture superiority. Maintaining a ship at "peak" may simply be beyond what their rivals and opponents can manage. Alternately, perhaps they have some technical wizard who has done a Han Solo and modified their ships to a performance level not possible under factory specs. Either way, it makes sense for said improvements to come with costs of some type - monetary, increased maintenance time, possible in-combat failure, or a dependence on unique assets (like your tech whiz).