01-07-2022, 11:55 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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For your concern about why you don't run SF games, let me let you in on a dirty secret: spaceships are scenery. Actual stats only matter if they're actually used in combat, and spaceship combat systems are generally terrible and to be avoided (the most fun RPG-ish space combat system I've used was a board game called Battlestations). |
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01-07-2022, 12:15 PM | #12 | |||
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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Handle is a character from the Star*Drive setting (a.k.a. d20 Future), not my real name. |
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01-07-2022, 12:40 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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I suspect spaceship combat systems being terrible is a bit fundamental, though, because in the end space is a kind of boring tactical environment. |
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01-07-2022, 01:01 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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There's no superscience artificial gravity in Star Frontiers, so decks are arranged vertically, and there's only a sense of gravity when the ship is accelerating or decelerating (it turns around to decelerate). Except for the imaginary FTL method, the setting tries to stick to fairly hard science-fiction. Here's a sample spaceship built using the system. Constructed at a Class I Center. Hull Size: 3 (150,000 credits) Length: 50 m Diameter: 8 m Hatches: 1 Engine Mounts: 2 ADF (acceleration deceleration factor): 3 MR (maneuver rating): 3 Engine Size: A Engine Type: Atomic Number of Engines: 2 (400,000 cr) Atomic Fuel Pellets: 3 (30,000 cr) Standard Crew: 6 Life Support Equipment: 5 kg (500 cr) Backup Life Support Equipment: 5 kg (500 cr) Astrogation Equipment: Basic (15,000 cr) Videocomm Radio: 2 m^3 (1,000 cr) Videocomm Screen: 0.5 m^3 Subspace Radio: 3 m^3 (20,000 cr) Intercom Panel: 1 m^3 (50 cr) Intercom Speaker/Mic (3): 1.5 m^3 (30 cr) Radar Unit: 5 m^3 (10,000 cr) Portholes: 5 (250 cr) Camera System: 10 m^3 (25,000 cr) Escape Pods (3): 40 m^3 (90,000 cr) Laser Battery: (3,000 cr) Reflective Hull: (1,500 cr) Interior Hull Size: 1 Computer Control Panel: (100 cr) Computer Level: 3 (20 kg) Total Computer Program Function Points: 64 PROGRAMS: Drive: Level 4, 32 Function Points (32,000 cr) Life Support: Level 1, 2 Function Points (2,000 cr) Backup Life Support: Level 1, 2 Function Points (2,000 cr) Astrogation: Level 4, 24 Function Points (24,000 cr) Laser Battery: Level 1, 4 Function Points (4,000 cr) Alarm: Level 2, 2 Function Points (2,000 cr) Damage Control: Level 2, 4 Function Points (4,000 cr) Star Frontiers and Knight Hawks are available in PDF form at DriveThruRPG.com. Last edited by Stormcrow; 01-07-2022 at 01:09 PM. |
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01-07-2022, 01:20 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
Ooh, that reminds me: the Albedo Ship Sourcebook is also excellent. It has similar assumptions (no artificial grav, etc.), a fairly well thought out FTL system, and harder science and engineering than most.
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01-07-2022, 01:25 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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At least that explains why the ships blow up so often. The "ion" engines consume a quantity of hydrogen that is described by its' cost but not its' mass. So it's not what I call even "fairly hard science".
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Fred Brackin |
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01-07-2022, 02:03 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
Trying to participate on these forums is like trying to argue with a swarm of Vermicious Knids.
All right, it tries to stick to things that were generally considered to be fairly hard science in the source materials from which it took them, and which at its publication date in the 1980s could be presented to a lay audience as continuing to be plausible. Do you also want to dismiss that, or have I gotten close enough to Officially Approved Definitions? |
01-07-2022, 02:06 PM | #18 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
It all depends on what hard SF means to you. In general any spaceship design system that lets you do much of anything interesting is going to involve a fair amount of dubious physics.
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01-07-2022, 05:27 PM | #19 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
One thing I should clarify—the hardest problem of good space combat rules is probably coming up with sensible rules for kinetic attacks. Ones that actually do things like take relative velocity into account.
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Handle is a character from the Star*Drive setting (a.k.a. d20 Future), not my real name. |
01-07-2022, 05:38 PM | #20 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
Reading about this more, it seems like Traveller has a long history of not paying that much attention to missiles and even having missiles only come in a single size. So probably not what I'm looking for.
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Handle is a character from the Star*Drive setting (a.k.a. d20 Future), not my real name. |
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