More granular Spaceships

[dataweaver]

Fair enough. Again though, I suspect that those who'd be interested in this approach would rather have Vehicle Design System instead of a patch (however useful) for Spaceships. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'd actually restrict S to ±5% as a final optional fine-tuning step, applying S to all Linear progressions, double that to any Area progressions, and triple that to all Volume progressions.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Fair enough. Again though, I suspect that those who'd be interested in this approach would rather have Vehicle Design System instead of a patch (however useful) for Spaceships. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'd actually restrict S to ±5% as a final optional fine-tuning step, applying S to all Linear progressions, double that to any Area progressions, and triple that to all Volume progressions.

See "Math, GURPS, and its Reputation for Complexity" as to why Spaceships doesn't have this.

Even around a decade ago when I proposed SPACESHIPS, the powers-that-be were very leery. They didn't want a design system at all.

I convinced them that a book of pre-designed ships wouldn't fit most people's settings, as GURPS had no default Space setting at the time. So I came up with a simple system that was based directly on SM -- this was the most complex system that would pass muster.

[dataweaver]

You'll note that I haven't submitted this as a Pyramid article; I'm well aware that even this much added math and complexity is more than Steve Jackson Games is willing to officially endorse. And that's after I've jumped through hoops to keep it as simple as possible to use.

But there are cases where Spaceships simply doesn't give enough resolution; and for those who want the added resolution, this provides it with as little additional muss and fuss as possible.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

You'll note that I haven't submitted this as a Pyramid article; I'm well aware that even this much added math and complexity is more than Steve Jackson Games is willing to officially endorse. And that's after I've jumped through hoops to keep it as simple as possible to use.

But there are cases where Spaceships simply doesn't give enough resolution; and for those who want the added resolution, this provides it with as little additional muss and fuss as possible.

Sure! I think your approach is perfectly valid, and if I believed for a minute that SJ Games would publish it, I'd certainly submit a volume of an advanced spaceship designs that covered this, and also my own rules for a number of things relating to ship density and how that should affect armor and size.

[dataweaver]

Well, you did get something like that published in your “Alternative Spaceships” article (Pyramid 3/34), which I've extracted and appended to my copy of Spaceships for ease of reference.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Well, you did get something like that published in your “Alternative Spaceships” article (Pyramid 3/34), which I've extracted and appended to my copy of Spaceships for ease of reference.

I worked out a few more bits since then, but it would have been nice to make that part of the actual series.

[RyanW]

An aside: Does the phrase "more granular" properly refer to being fine grained or course grained? Because I've always considered "granular" to mean "made up of discrete chucks rather than continuous" which would mean something is more granular when it is less continuous (i.e. has fewer, bigger chunks). So making fractional SM would reduce the granularity.

[Balor Patch]

Originally Posted by RyanW

An aside: Does the phrase "more granular" properly refer to being fine grained or course grained? Because I've always considered "granular" to mean "made up of discrete chucks rather than continuous" which would mean something is more granular when it is less continuous (i.e. has fewer, bigger chunks). So making fractional SM would reduce the granularity.

More granular has more, hence finer, grains.