GURPS Spaceships, upscaling sizes

Fred Brackin · 06-17-2024, 01:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phantasm

"Radar repaired, sir. We're picking up the outline of a Winnebago."

Sorry (not sorry; never apologize for Spaceballs)... But that's about the right size, given most RVs can run SM +4 (the really small ones with a single bed over the driver compartment) to +6 (larger bus-sized Class B/E* (depending on locale) types).

* In South Carolina where I am, the Class B and Class E cover the same weight class, more than 26,000 pounds/13 tons gross weight,.

Sorry,,this may be one of those things that I need to not sound condesceding about but in Spacewships terms SM+6 needs to be (at least round up to) 100 tons. 313 tons is already roundign up substantially to sM+5 (60,000 lbs or 30 tons).

I _know_ the chart in Characters has SM+6 being from over 15 yards up to 20 yards and if not using Spaceships you can have that SM+6 bus but unfortunately Spaceships takes the same technical term ("SM+") and uses it for a completely different meaning.

Spaceships SMs are entirely mass-based. They have to be to make the Delta-V calculations work out right (for what's already a loose-ish defintion of "right").

<shrug>Maybe your 26,000 lb SM+6 space-going RV. is bigger on the inside than the outside. It would need to be for each system devoted to cargo to carry 10,000 lbs or 5 tons.

I hope this hasn't come off as condescending. It really is unforunate that Spaceships has taken a term from the Basic set and changed its' meaning when used in Spaceships. As a playtester for Spaceships I can only plead that I overlooked this. My use of the Basic SM for vehicles had been quite casual. Now that I think of it Ve2 assigned an SM to finished vehicle desings but I never checked if that was completely compatible with the Basic set "longest dimension" method. It would have been quite difficult to come up with a hard and fast longest dimension in any even partly mass-based system (Ve2 tracked both mass and volume though volume was more sketchy being determined by assuming a standard density for various types of components..