[Spaceships 7] Top Decks?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

I tend to use the Top Deck to make surface ships and helicarriers rather than spaceships.

A Top Deck Hangar module could be used to make one of the "arms" of the SDF-1 from Macross, which was a conventional carrier that was linked to it post-launch. (I can't remember the name of that ship; the other "arm", the Daedalus as I recall, was a submersible carrier design.)

I think the aircraft carrier was the Prometheus and the Daedalus was a ground mecha carrier. It had this "storm the beaches" front ramp that you see in the "Daedalus Attack" maneuver.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by ericthered

The two are not mutally [sic] exclusive.

Fascinating, but I'm not sure what your point is, unless you're saying that one is based upon the other. My point is that it might be easier to use the Tech and Toys IV method rather than the Spaceships method, thus avoiding the angst about exactly what top decks are supposed to do for you. Obviously this isn't a great option if, for instance, the OP expects the facility to attack or be attacked by spaceships and needs to play that out.

[Donny Brook]

What is Tech and Toys?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

What is Tech and Toys?

A Pyramid issue title.

[DaltonS]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

What is Tech and Toys?

They are issues of Pyramid magazine, specifically #3/12, #3/37, #3/51 and #3/96, the last of which I unfortunately don't have. Sadly, W23 won't accept my Virtual Visa Debit card, so I have to get prepaid gift cards to buy anything there. :( (Fixed income, so I don't dare get real credit cards.) I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and decide how much I want to buy.

Back on topic, what I really wanted to know about Top Decks were the gameable limits of them. This would mean the surface area and the load factor. I do realize that auxiliary craft wouldn't be stored there, but they might be parked or launched from there. GURPS 3E Vehicles had specific rules for this, but I can't figure out how to translate them to 4E Spaceships.

Dalton “feeling a bit poor at the moment” Spence

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by DaltonS

This would mean the surface area and the load factor.

Spaceships cares only about total mass, and is by design indifferent to volume and shape. Space is big and there's no air. As you've discovered, this is less than ideal when people want to use that system to create things for fluid environments or that support themselves in gravity fields.

The ship SM will give you a rough idea of the length of your deck, though that still leaves a bit of a fudge for width. Still, divide the average volume by the deck length, and then divide that by 3 or 4 (cylinders or square prisms), and you're in the ballpark for the right width down the entire ship.

Weight supported on the deck is more of a fudge. The feature is free, not consuming any of your support structures, so there's not a lot of internal buttressing to support a huge amount of weight. As has been pointed out, ships like aircraft carriers aren't intended to carry a lot of weight on their deck, compared to their own size. (The maximum air wing on a Nimitiz class, about double its usual complement, would weigh about 2% of the rest of the ship, though the air wing is likely constrained by factors other than deck area and weight.) Intentional design for the purpose would allow the deck to carry the full cargo capacity of the ship (see container ships, which might have a loaded tonnage three times that of their empty tonnage, or IOW 66% of the mass is in cargo). So I'd suggest just declaring that the deck can support the contents of selected other systems that actually contain stuff, like hangars and cargo bays.

If you're applying the Spaceship rules to buildings, then you might also introduce a new system that's just additional structural overhead -- "wasted" space for thicker walls, more columns, arches, etc. This might be useful to represent buildings like artillery fortifications and their casemated interior under those walls with the cannon. You might also want to charge such a system to ships with extreme designs -- all cargo bays but supposedly also all on the deck.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The ship SM will give you a rough idea of the length of your deck, .

Within a factor of 4 anyway. Approximately. As noted, Spaceships doesn't really care about this sort of thing.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DaltonS

Sadly, W23 won't accept my Virtual Visa Debit card, so I have to get prepaid gift cards to buy anything there. :( (Fixed income, so I don't dare get real credit cards.) I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and decide how much I want to buy.

I previously had issues getting W23 to accept my Discover card, but the workaround I used was to go through Paypal, which allowed me to add the card and simply used it as a payment option. You may be able to do something similar with your debit card.

Originally Posted by DaltonS

Back on topic, what I really wanted to know about Top Decks were the gameable limits of them. This would mean the surface area and the load factor. I do realize that auxiliary craft wouldn't be stored there, but they might be parked or launched from there. GURPS 3E Vehicles had specific rules for this, but I can't figure out how to translate them to 4E Spaceships.

Top decks aren't something I've messed with in my Vehicles->Spaceships conversion, unfortunately, but I'd say a top deck should be able to have any dimensions up to the actual length and width of your ship. The easiest way to decide that is to just use the SM guidelines; if you want more precision, use the guidelines from the Designer's Notes to create deck plans. Sea-going vessels will typically have a conning tower somewhere that cuts down on the actual top deck space, but spaceships don't need such.

[sir_pudding]

Since this is an underground base, isn't the size of the "deck" only really limited by the surrounding terrain? Similarly it should be able to "hold" any cargo, vehicle, or whatever that is less dense then Martian regolithic concrete.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Since this is an underground base, isn't the size of the "deck" only really limited by the surrounding terrain? Similarly it should be able to "hold" any cargo, vehicle, or whatever that is less dense then Martian regolithic concrete.

Not really. Most roofs aren't made to support that kind of weight. If you try to land a helicopter on my house I suspect my roof won't take the weight. And even if it can, there is some weight that will collapse it: it is indeed about weight, not just about density.

Though I suppose you can pave over sections of the surrounding area that aren't directly on top of the building. You don't get those for "free" though, like you arguably do with the top of a building built as a spaceship.