GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet

[DaltonS]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

This was my attempt to design something like the Modular Cutter from GURPS Traveller. Many of the questions you asked would depend on how, exactly, the ship is designed, but normally a module would be designed to fit a specific ship or a specific universe (such as Traveller) might have a standardized module size that all modules would conform to. How the performance, the Modular Cutter itself doesn't get any real performance benefits from not having the module installed because the module serves as part of the structural reinforcement; without a module in place it can't accelerate any faster as it would risk breaking it's back in such a maneuver.

That's what I thought. (Glad it wasn't from some Pyramid article I'd missed.) I think a rational supposition would be performance might increase if a Large or Front Standard Module was detached from a single forward facing surface, but not if a Center Standard Module was deployed due to the structural concerns of connecting front and rear sections.

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Performance may increase, but it may not as there may be inherant limits to the systems or the ship's design. I wouldn't change dDR; the shape of the ship isn't changing, neither is the thickness of the armor. There's no reason dDR would change.

Ah, but I was talking about Force Screens, not armour. I suppose this would depend on whether the screen was spherical or conformal and the ship's general shape; if the overall length of the ship was reduced, a spherical screen could apply its energy to a smaller surface area thus increasing dDR, while if the screen was conformal, it would depend on the ratio of exposed surface areas with/without the module.

Dalton “who had his own ideas, but wanted to check yours first” Spence