Hi all: This one meanders, but hopefully provokes thought...
I just got around to looking at the link for G4e Space. It looks to me like Chapter 2 on Space Travel may have ship design built into it (otherwise, what's the point?). Here's hoping. In the meantime, G: Prime Directive for 4e states it does *not* have ship design stuff because it's waiting for G4e Space! (I have Prime Directive on order, so have not yet perused...) So I'm twiddling my thumbs... will I have to wait for G: Starfleet? Aagh! In the meantime, an addendum to my G4e Interstellar Wars Review as I read it more... I *do* like the world-building templates, and the templates for various PCs... I found an error in the Ship Building section-- according to the formulas provided, the smallest ship that can have a weapons turret is around 40dtons. Yet their 20dton assault craft example has a light turret, and if you follow the rules strictly, that's not legal. Also, I may have found a game-imbalancing item. I designed a TL11 heavy fighter. 20dtons. With TL11 armor materials, you get a high-performance heavy fighter (sAccel 6.0+Gs) armed with TL11 Beam Lasers (I don't know whether I get to put that in a light turret or not, but for now, not...), that sports a dDR of 50! In other words, it's pretty immune to all but the luckiest damage rolls from ships many times its size. Now I'm going to design a fighter carrier that can field about 100 of my heavy fighters or so, a spine meson weapon, and boom! Carve out a galactic empire! Seriously, it is disappointing in some respects that more variation in technology options weren't provided. I'm hoping G:Space 4e at least provides a braoder TL-tier for technology in ships options. Again, I recognize that more options just increases the ability for players to abuse the game (as I think I just did with my heavy fighter), but with TL-differences tighter in G4e, the differences in technology need to be tighter, too, without restricting number of options. The problem of scaling is an important one. TL11 armor does not grant that much more of an advantage at ships larger than 100dtons, but seems to at smaller displacements. I did just design a nice TL10 armed long-range merchant that I'm pleased with. I'm still debating tho-- a 68dton hanger-- to give flexibility in auxiliary craft-- standard complement 1x 30dton ship's boat and a speeder... OR, fixed space-- enabling me to house 2x 30dton ship's boats and a speeder in only 64dtons, but only those specific craft... I'm a big fan of FIREFLY. The Firefly RPG (I perused the book quickly at the store) lists SERENITY at 2400 tons. In an Interstellar Wars setting, that correlates to a *roughly* 400-600dton ship depending on TL... Most ships that size require a crew of 20-ish at TL10+. For a Free Trader campaign, it's tough therefore, having a ship and ship's crew in which the PCs play almost the entire crew (and saving the GM from having to roleplay 10 crew extras) unless the ship is 200dtons or less. I guess the players could always have *two* PCs each... Also, anyone get the sense from the FIREFLY show (I must have missed it)-- is there a FTL drive? If so, what is it? Warp, Jump, what? -vk -------------- Original message ---------------------- From: "Jonathan Lang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Chris J. Whitcomb wrote: > > Jonathan Lang wrote: > > > Don't count on it. Space 4e will have a lot of good stuff in it; but > > > rules for starship design will not be among them. > > > > Then where will they be? Vehicles 4th ed? > > No; Vehicle Design. Vehicles 4e is going to be more of a catalog of > vehicles, plus expanded rules for vehicle operation, etc. > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > As in zilch? How terribly disappointing. > > Maybe I *won't* buy it. > > Don't discount the first part of my statement. Space 4e _will_ have a > lot of good stuff in it; it will also have more pages in it than Space > 3e had. Go to http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/space and check out > the Excerpts to get an idea of what it will have. Chapters 4 and 5 > are analogous to Space 3e's Worlds and Civilizations chapters, but are > based on the system found in Traveller: First In. Chapter 6 provides > alien design rules that were inspired by the Ur-Species design rules > found in GURPS Uplift. Chapters 1, 7, 8, and 9 appear to cover > material found in the 3e edition. > > (Note that Chapters 2 and 3 aren't "gearhead" chapters; they're > discussions about how space travel and technology, respectively, > affect the campaign.) > > Am I 100% satisfied with every decision that they made concerning 4e > Space? No; I would have liked to have had some sort of starship > design in the book. But there's more than enough in there to make it > worth my time and money to get my hands on it. > > -- > Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
