GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet

[The Rampant Gamer]

Am I the only one who gets a directory/folder out of unzipping the OOO version of the spreadsheet? Is it just my Mac being overzealous? It's like it unpacks the ODS file into a directory...

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by The Rampant Gamer

Am I the only one who gets a directory/folder out of unzipping the OOO version of the spreadsheet? Is it just my Mac being overzealous? It's like it unpacks the ODS file into a directory...

I get the same with the .zip file, but the .7z works fine.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by The Rampant Gamer

Am I the only one who gets a directory/folder out of unzipping the OOO version of the spreadsheet? Is it just my Mac being overzealous? It's like it unpacks the ODS file into a directory...

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

I get the same with the .zip file, but the .7z works fine.

ODS file are really just renamed ZIP files containing a bunch of XML data file inside. So really what you have is a collection of XML files inside a ZIP file inside a ZIP file. If your unzipping program is being overzealous it might be recognizing the ODS file as having the header of a ZIP file so it decides to continue to decompress that as well. The real answer here is to either change setting in your unzipping program or find a better program.

[The Rampant Gamer]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

ODS file are really just renamed ZIP files containing a bunch of XML data file inside. So really what you have is a collection of XML files inside a ZIP file inside a ZIP file. If your unzipping program is being overzealous it might be recognizing the ODS file as having the header of a ZIP file so it decides to continue to decompress that as well. The real answer here is to either change setting in your unzipping program or find a better program.

I figured that must be the case - but unfortunately, I'm not sure it's a program that I added, but rather the default, built in uncompress tool that comes with Mac OS X 10.6. I'll see about getting a 7z program instead, as that'll likey be better behaved.

Also, a note - the Excel 2007 version is far from successful in Excel 2011 for Mac - slow and riddled with macro execution errors. I blame this version of Excel. I always wind up using the ODS instead.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by The Rampant Gamer

Also, a note - the Excel 2007 version is far from successful in Excel 2011 for Mac - slow and riddled with macro execution errors. I blame this version of Excel. I always wind up using the ODS instead.

That's too bad. I write the sheet in Excel 2000, saving in Excel 97-2003 format (which is the old standard). I then update and test it in Excel 2007 (which I do, basically, by opening the sheet in Excel 2007 then Saving as Excel 2007 format). If it's breaking down in Excel 2011 (Mac or otherwise) it's definitely a case of Microsoft not ensuring backwards compatibility.

You might try opening the Excel 2000 version in Excel 2011, that may work a little better assuming MS maintained compatibility. At any rate, because of the Macros the Excel version is functionally superior to the OpenOffice version because of it's ability to Save/Load ships into the Save Sheets and to Load ships from another spreadsheet. I don't know when, or if, I'll attempt create similar Macros for OpenOffice.

I'm currently in the process of importing all the ships from the books; I've got about 100 done and 150 to go - the reason for this is two-fold; first it's nice to have the ships available to quickly load (at least in Excel). Second, and probably more importantly, I keep finding errors because of the varied designs as I input them. I've also found more than a few cases of the book being wrong (and am beginning to regret not keeping a log of errata; I especially love the designs that either omit a core section or double-load one of the other sections).

[davester65]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Version 2.00 Beta 20

-Many minor bug fixes
-Added intermediate SM's. A ship of intermediate SM has twice the mass of the previous SM ship, but is treated as the next higher SM for purposes of being targeted or detected. So a SM+8.5 ship has a Loaded Weight of 2,000 tons (twice that of a SM+8 ship) but is considered SM+9 for purposes of attack and detection. All other statistics are extrapolated from the existing systems.

That's a great addition! Thanks, it'll give me a lot more flexibility. Personally, I'd love to see rules for SM+3 (WW2 fighter) sized ships, but I don't know how viable that is.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by davester65

That's a great addition! Thanks, it'll give me a lot more flexibility. Personally, I'd love to see rules for SM+3 (WW2 fighter) sized ships, but I don't know how viable that is.

I've worked on these a bit (all the way down to SM+1, really), and they're relatively viable. You just need to change a few things around so they work properly. Never did get around to writing up the rules for 'em, though:/

[The Rampant Gamer]

Originally Posted by Langy

I've worked on these a bit (all the way down to SM+1, really), and they're relatively viable. You just need to change a few things around so they work properly. Never did get around to writing up the rules for 'em, though:/

Understandably you'd not be able to do much with Habitats at those sizes, but honestly, that's realistic. Are there other components (other than scaled down weapons) that need to have rules written for them to define what happens at SM+3 and lower? If we can have convincing SM+1 and even +0 "ships" we could be on our way to statting up missiles themselves as separate ships that we keep in a special hangar...

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by The Rampant Gamer

Understandably you'd not be able to do much with Habitats at those sizes, but honestly, that's realistic. Are there other components (other than scaled down weapons) that need to have rules written for them to define what happens at SM+3 and lower? If we can have convincing SM+1 and even +0 "ships" we could be on our way to statting up missiles themselves as separate ships that we keep in a special hangar...

Damage and DR would need to switch from decade scale to normal, but that's not a big deal. More challenging would be the Control Room, for which the computer and sensors will continue to scale down, but the crew station will not. For very small craft a single crew or passenger seat will exceed 1 system slot. I suppose one way to handle this is to make a "Control System", which is basically a Control Room without the seat, and scales normally with the craft, then add stations as (pricier) Passenger Seats. An SM+4 Passenger Seat system carries a single occupant, so a single SM+3 seat would take up 3 slots, and an SM+2 one takes up half the craft. They could probably be made more compact, at the cost of comfort and life support. An SM+1 seat might even be external, making the vehicle a motorcycle or similar.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by The Rampant Gamer

Understandably you'd not be able to do much with Habitats at those sizes, but honestly, that's realistic. Are there other components (other than scaled down weapons) that need to have rules written for them to define what happens at SM+3 and lower? If we can have convincing SM+1 and even +0 "ships" we could be on our way to statting up missiles themselves as separate ships that we keep in a special hangar...

SM+4 Habitats are already 0.1 slots; at SM+3 they'd be 0.03 slots, far too small to do anything. A 1/2 habitat module would take up 17 out of 20 ship system slots.

Weapons would scale alright. We already have stats for guns down to 2cm and beams down to 3kJ, even though the only way to hit those sizes is to use Rapid Fire and VRF weapons. So if you assume that no VRF isn't available we don't fall below that floor; even with VRF we usually don't hit the floor on many weapon types.

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Damage and DR would need to switch from decade scale to normal, but that's not a big deal.

To go below SM+3, yeah probably. At SM+3 you might be able to get away with keeping the decade-Scale damage and dDR, but choices of weapons and armor are artificially limited because values drop below the decade-Scale resolution.

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

More challenging would be the Control Room, for which the computer and sensors will continue to scale down, but the crew station will not.

This. Actually, there's only so far the computer and sensors can scale down and still be useful. A SM+3 ship would be 3 tons; each system is 300lbs, which you can easily fit a basic seat and person into (without the fancy things like G-cushions and life support).

The real problem is that Spaceships was designed to scale from SM+5 to SM+15. It scaled to SM+4 pretty well; it scales above SM+15 alright (although stats for really large ships get funky). I'm just not sure that it can go much smaller.