[Spaceships] Paying more for better system?

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Sorenant

All systems have same capacity. For example, you can't pay more for a better Control Room with higher Complexity, get some Jet Engine that costs 2x but is 1.5x better than an ordinary one, or pay premium to get better handling.

Some systems have improvements, some do not.

Take armor, for instance. Suppose you're in TL9 and you're deciding on armor for your ship. What do you choose? Easy, you say, advanced metallic laminate is the only armor available at TL9. Not so! That is just the latest form of armor available; the earlier forms are probably still going to be in use in older or less advanced ships. Consider the Star Flower-class tramp freighter on page 6 of GURPS Spaceships. It's TL11^, but it's got metallic laminate armor, which is TL8. You don't need the most advanced armor for a freighter; you go with something cheaper.

There are a bunch of systems that work this way. No, you can't improve your control room (it's just a room), but you CAN improve the communications and sensor array built into it.

The engine systems often have a list of options at the end of the text that let you improve them. For instance, a nuclear thermal rocket has an option to use water instead of hydrogen as fuel, to produce three times the thrust at a cost of one-third the delta-V.

So not every system has improvements available, but a lot of them do.