Blog: Worlds Beyond Earth

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Robots as Spaceships: Quadcopters

In the last decade or so, consumer robotics has acquired an all star: the Quadcopter. We look at why Quadcopters are different from helicopters, and how we represent that in a spaceships system.

One of the big worries that some people have with cheap, civilian drones is the possibility that someone will load them with explosives or add a pistol (or a larger firearm), and kill someone. Those rules should work for bomb-drones, if anyone wants them in their game. I kind of wonder how well the recoil rules work for a shooter that's in mid-air, though.

EDIT: More accurately, a shooter with the low mass of a drone, in mid-air.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

One of the big worries that some people have with cheap, civilian drones is the possibility that someone will load them with explosives or add a pistol (or a larger firearm), and kill someone. Those rules should work for bomb-drones, if anyone wants them in their game. I kind of wonder how well the recoil rules work for a shooter that's in mid-air, though.

EDIT: More accurately, a shooter with the low mass of a drone, in mid-air.

I've got a buddy in the army who works on the program to shoot down missiles, shells, and other incoming projectiles. He says that drones are among the hardest things to hit with the system, and they're specifically worried about dropped grenades at the time we talked about things (a year or two ago).


You've got a good point about the recoil rules. The recoil stat is about more than just recoil, but its certainly included. Perhaps increasing the recoil stat by one or two in those cases would represent it?

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I've got a buddy in the army who works on the program to shoot down missiles, shells, and other incoming projectiles. He says that drones are among the hardest things to hit with the system, and they're specifically worried about dropped grenades at the time we talked about things (a year or two ago).


You've got a good point about the recoil rules. The recoil stat is about more than just recoil, but its certainly included. Perhaps increasing the recoil stat by one or two in those cases would represent it?

Maybe. I'm vaguely thinking that 'what percentage the loaded drone's mass is of the mass of an average human' is pretty important, but I'm not sure how to work that out in GURPS terms, much less how to turn it into a game-appropriate chart (id est, granular enough to be useful, but not so much as to be annoying).

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

He says that drones are among the hardest things to hit with the system, and they're specifically worried about dropped grenades at the time we talked about things (a year or two ago).

Why's that? Low IR sig? Low altitude?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Maybe. I'm vaguely thinking that 'what percentage the loaded drone's mass is of the mass of an average human' is pretty important, but I'm not sure how to work that out in GURPS terms, much less how to turn it into a game-appropriate chart (id est, granular enough to be useful, but not so much as to be annoying).

Maybe something with Size modifiers by weight? +1 recoil for each size category below SM+0 you are? Though there is both the weight aspect and the aerial aspect.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Why's that? Low IR sig? Low altitude?

He said it was size and density. Apparently they'd get really close and miss, or the projectiles would pass harmlessly through the drone. I know I made your guesses initially, and he didn't deny they were a problem, but he emphasized the "small target" aspect.

[ericthered]

Robots as Spaceships: Fliers


Finishing up our look at spaceship's more planetary propulsion systems is flying. This turned out to be a lot more useful for vehicle building than I expected. I don't expect to make many blimp robots or jet-powered ones, but I'm fairly sure I'll be returning to this article any time I want to build a flying vehicle with spaceships. I hope you find it useful as well.

[ericthered]

Robots as Spaceships: Common Chassis


Where I build a bunch of not-quite finished robots. These pieces do form a nice reference framework for what is fast, what is slow, and what is "normal". Do you need to quickly build a robot or vehicle? the basic pieces are here.

[ericthered]

How Big is My Medieval City?


How big across is your city? How long will it take for your heroes to reach the city walls? I had this come up in a play by post game, and I found a paper on the subject of Medieval City areas compared to population. I did some math and turned the data into a table with useful values.

[Daigoro]

Have you seen the S. John Ross article about that topic?
https://gamingballistic.com/2018/11/...y-s-john-ross/

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Have you seen the S. John Ross article about that topic?
https://gamingballistic.com/2018/11/...y-s-john-ross/

No, this is the first time I've seen it. Its a useful little document!


The densities listed there are higher than what I found in the article , but its nice to have another point of comparison. The equation in the article gives 110 hectares for a 10,000 population city, while demographics made easy gives 67.



There is a lot of other good information in there. Often the hardest part of world-building and verisimilitude in games is finding the information.