GURPS Spaceships Series

[hackbarth]

Starship design and combat systems NOT based in the Vehicles and G:traveller systems.

So how it will be like? I'm curious (can't participate in the playtest: not a piramid subscriber, didn't find any simulationist gamers in my new town, and time constraints)

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

Starship design and combat systems NOT based in the Vehicles and G:traveller systems.

So how it will be like?

It is not an abstract system, but is faster than either VEHICLES, GURPS SPACE, or, for that matter, GDW's old HIGH GUARD. Of course, it also has far fewer options than VEHICLES (limiting ships to 10 basic hull sizes, for example). On the other hand, it has many, many component options. It is fairly quick to build vessels: a functional 100,000 ton battleship can be designed in about 2 minutes.

Unlike VEHICLES, the design rules are directly integrated into the combat system, which actually allows a greater degree of detail than SPACE at somewhat reduced complexity.

The combat system moves away from wargame style emulation and instead emphasizes individual character actions and team work.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

It is not an abstract system, but is faster than either VEHICLES, GURPS SPACE, or, for that matter, GDW's old HIGH GUARD. Of course, it also has far fewer options than VEHICLES (limiting ships to 10 basic hull sizes, for example). On the other hand, it has many, many component options. It is fairly quick to build vessels: a functional 100,000 ton battleship can be designed in about 2 minutes.

Unlike VEHICLES, the design rules are directly integrated into the combat system, which actually allows a greater degree of detail than SPACE at somewhat reduced complexity.

The combat system moves away from wargame style emulation and instead emphasizes individual character actions and team work.

And there was much rejoicing.

[dynaman]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

The combat system moves away from wargame style emulation and instead emphasizes individual character actions and team work.

How much hardware differentiation is there? My problem with character based, no hex, ship combat is that the resulting combats all felt the same, regardless of their being starfighters or battleships.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

It is fairly quick to build vessels: a functional 100,000 ton battleship can be designed in about 2 minutes.

Forgive my skepticism, but this hardly seems realistic for a "not abstract" system that can handle designs with "many, many component options", especially when it needs to accomodate all sorts of wacky superscience drives and shield generators and weapons and such. Can you speak to this?

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by dynaman

How much hardware differentiation is there? My problem with character based, no hex, ship combat is that the resulting combats all felt the same, regardless of their being starfighters or battleships.

Well, there are several types of hardware (e.g., 16 different weapon types). It's likely fairly different operating a one-man starfighter where you have to do everything else, vs. operating a multi-crew battleship from a command bridge where the captain is making one set of roles, the engineer another, the gunners are loading missiles, the damage control teams are racing about, and so on.

[RelFexive]

This sounds spiffy.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Xplo

Forgive my skepticism, but this hardly seems realistic for a "not abstract" system that can handle designs with "many, many component options", especially when it needs to accomodate all sorts of wacky superscience drives and shield generators and weapons and such. Can you speak to this?

It's not an abstract system (i.e., not based on character points, etc.) but it is a highly-simplified menu-based system that drastically streamlines many of the rules in other GURPS design systems. Uses standard hull sizes and adds a BIG menu of components - but choosing from the component menu is relatively fast. I guess it's sort of like CAR WARS, say. Of course, it's by no means a REPLACEMENT for VEHICLES or other complex systems, which is why SJ Games is developing both this AND the complex VDS. It's an alternative option for people who want faster design with far less overall detail. But since it's also a *dedicated* spaceship system, it can still be modestly comprehensive.

Time required: If you know exactly what you want, know the game system, don't care about budget, ignore the various optional rules and design switches, and you have good idea what you want, you can slap together a game-legal ship in a few minutes using pencil and paper without even a calculator. If you want to be careful of budget or aren't sure, you could spend hours on a ship design. My private testing suggests the system is maybe two orders of magnitude faster than VEHICLES; your milage may vary!

Otherwise, I won't go into specific details - the system may well end up revised after the playtest, or, of course, everyone outside SJG might hate it...

[hackbarth]

Thanks for the preview David, wasn't expecting a so good source!

Not-abstract is good. Highly-simplified and menu-based system doesn't spell out GURPS for me.

Seems like a departure from the GURPS method of simulationism. Not that the space opera combat system and the GURPS Space ship (better say fleet) combat system feel like GURPS too.

I _like_ simple, and if the system get it right this time no one will be happier. In my campaigns I used a custom made spaceship combat system or an adaptation of the d6 star wars vehicle combat system, simply because no space ship combat system released for GURPS felt like GURPS before. (didnt try THS space combat system, it seemed an improvement to me though).

Since I mentioned THS, the system will be applicable both to space-opera star-wars-like space battle and realistic free-fall THS like space battles?

[Been]

Without kicking off anything like the "are we their yet" questions that you get about VDS, how long will it take to develop the first spaceships book, and how often are you planning on publishing?

and perfectly happy if I just get a shoulder shrug, was just pondering