[Spaceships] Hull size of Falcon...

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

[i] So now there are all kinds of numbers with the Lucasarts imprimateur on them.

.

My 100 tons of cargo numbers came from the WEG D6 Star Wars game and Lucasarts signed off on that o. I think they were used in official SW deckplan books before that.

No one wants to hear it but working from linear measurements will give you bad numbers. Spaceships is not based on linear measurements.

[GoblynByte]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

My 100 tons of cargo numbers came from the WEG D6 Star Wars game and Lucasarts signed off on that o. I think they were used in official SW deckplan books before that.

The numbers still have no real basis in anything other than "that sounds about right." Lucas signing off on it means next to nothing regarding the feasibility of the "realism" surrounding the established numbers.

No one wants to hear it but working from linear measurements will give you bad numbers. Spaceships is not based on linear measurements.

I seriously doubt that anyone is tied up enough in it to have a desire to hear it or not. The linear measurements are good enough in this situation.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

My 100 tons of cargo numbers came from the WEG D6 Star Wars game and Lucasarts signed off on that o. I think they were used in official SW deckplan books before that.

No one wants to hear it but working from linear measurements will give you bad numbers. Spaceships is not based on linear measurements.

Last time I checked, which was many years and several change of policy ago, the WEG materials had a low level of cannonicity (so people writing the tie-in novels and video games did not have to read up on them, although some did anyways). But there are other numbers which have been published since then and had official status until the sale to Disney and the most recent change in cannon policy.

If I were running a SW game, I would not worry about what the IP owners think is and is not cannon. But there are plenty of numbers which are not apocryphal, pulled out of thin air, or based on technobabel in the scripts (whether you think Curtis Saxton and co. pulled them out of anything solid is another question, but they sure put a lot of work into the pulling).

[GoblynByte]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Star Wars
That was true 15 years ago, but then Curtis Saxton, the physicist and Star Wars fundamentalist, got the rights to publish the cannonical books on vehicles in the prequels. So now there are all kinds of numbers with the Lucasarts imprimateur on them.

I don't disagree that they did a lot of work on the subject. And they are interesting numbers. But they are, in the end, fuzzy interpretations based on tenuous logic built on observations extrapolated from the artistic rendering of a distinctly non-scientific genre. In other words, people took an author's haphazard recreation of the whimsical science of Flash Gordon and attempted to apply real-world physics by making half-baked observations of on-screen performance and dialogue. The only thing evident from Lucas stamping such data with his approval is that he ultimately doesn't care about the science of it all. And why should he?

In any case, getting such numbers to match up in an RPG that (for the most part) works off a more literal extrapolation of reality is an effort in futility. Thus it is easier for me to take the only true observable data (physical size) and extrapolate my own conclusions on other aspects on my own. Since it is unlikely this will produce any contradictions from what we observe in the movies, I feel this is an acceptable route.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by GoblynByte

The numbers still have no real basis in anything other than "that sounds about right.".

Those is true of the "official" numbers people are using for linear measurement. Those come of the same deckplans.

Even if you based your numbers off the full-size sets you might have to choose between which one. To take an example from a different series the internal sets for the TOS shuttecraft are 30% larger than the external mock-ups.

So there are no numbers based in "reality". Privileging the linear measurements isn't all that reasonable. Spaceships however _is_ a mass-based system. Maas numbers (eve if they are estimates) should always be used before linear measurements.

[Polydamas]

Are there any alternatives to the Spaceships rules for GURPS 4e right now? IMHO any set of vehicles rules which starts from our physics is not the best fit for the setting ... near-C rocks, questions about distances and acceleration and vectors and masses, "what happens if I fire a missile like the one which just blew up that asteroid at the scavenger camp?" and so on are just not in genre.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by GoblynByte

Considering the size (38 yards long) and wide/flat dimensions, what size hull do you think would be most appropriate for the Millennium Falcon? 7 seems too small, but 8 seems to big. What do you think?

I'd definitely go with 8. You do need a bit of cargo capacity after all.

[Phantasm]

Honestly, this is one of those deals where I want a bit wider granularity in Spaceships. SM +7 is 300 tons, SM +8 is 1000 tons; I'd expect the Falcon to be in the 500 or 750 ton range, "half-sizes" which are not fully supported by the system as yet.

[GoblynByte]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Those is true of the "official" numbers people are using for linear measurement. Those come of the same deckplans.

So there are no numbers based in "reality".

No, linear measurements of the vessels came from referencing movie assets and their real world scales.

Things like cargo space, cost, G's of thrust, toughness of armor, etc were all just thought up based on apocryphal data. For example, speeds of vessels were often extrapolated by authors of various sources by timing the speed of a ship moving across the frame in the movie. But such measurements almost invariably fail to take into account things like frame rate, focal length, and post production fiddling. In fact, a LOT of reference points for all of that other data was based on the verifiable physical size of the vessels. So it is the reference point.

When it comes to Star Wars vessels, there is only one verifiable measurement: size. Even that has been fudged from time to time when authors eye-balled size, but the fact that such errors were eventually corrected by referencing the movie assets is proof that it is the only real quantifiable factor.

Privileging the linear measurements isn't all that reasonable. Spaceships however _is_ a mass-based system. Maas numbers (eve if they are estimates) should always be used before linear measurements.

After size, all other comparisons are moot because the data is either in no way veritably defined in the front end, or impossible to achieve within the system. Even if such canonical data is "true," it would be impossible to get, say, the 3,500 Gs of thrust (as expressed for many ships in many of those "official" sources) in GURPS Spaceships.

Tl;dr: Discussions of whether GURPS Spaceships uses mass or linear measurements are ultimately pointless because the mass can simply be the result of the linear reference as expressed in the GURPS system. The results will not interfere with any other established data because the established data is fundamentally flawed.

[GoblynByte]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I'd definitely go with 8. You do need a bit of cargo capacity after all.

I think I agree. And, taking into account the 50%-75% of size for saucer shaped vessels (mentioned earlier in the thread) it fits that more closely than +7.