Hi folks: With recent news regarding G:Space 4e devastating my hopes that G: Prime Directive 4e will have guidelines for Star Trek starhip building in GURPS form, I'm revisiting my effort to construct my own system. I've attempted this in the past several times using Space 3e, only to realize that it's a large undertaking, resulting in me stopping, and hoping that somebody else will do it, notably a game company like SJGames, or whatever the name of the company that does Prime Directive...
Additionally, I'm more interested in ST:TNG era starships and later than I am TOS. OK, call me a false Trekkie-- I liked TNG better. But I want a system that will cover ST:Enterprise through ST:Nemesis and even a little beyond. Anyway, the first problem you run into is the warp drive and power plant and hull size. In 3eR, you had to throw out the TLs, because in order to use G:Space 3e, you were working with effectively TL14 powerplants and TL11 technology elsewhere. And huge hull sizes overpowered Space 3e. That's still a big problem now, but the implementation of dtons in Interstellar Wars and ctons as in Prime Directive 3e has given me leave to change scales of building to accomodate Star Trek-sized ships and that actually helps a lot. OK, I'll get to the point. I'm trying to be sort of true to Star Trek canon, and GURPS laws at the same time. Star Trek canon has warp factors roughly exponentially proportionate with actual velocity. In addition, power requirements increase exponentially PER "warp thrust factor" equivalent (the cochrane), resulting in 10^6 increase in power requirements to increase velocity from the 200c neighborhood to the 5000c neighborhood (which occurs from Enterprise NX-01 to Enterprise 1701-E). When other systems advances utilize power more linearly, there is effective disjunction in terms of a starship design system, especially the type of balance that G:Space 3e attempted to impose with their system. One solution is to increase power demands in all systems roughly geometrically. But does that work for weapons and computers and life support and such? Maybe weapons and deflector shields, but if anything, impulse drive should get more efficient, not less, as should other systems outside of military... And it's messy on the calculator. Also, ship sizes increase roughly by only one order of magnitude. Using very rough calculations from available reference materials, for example, Enterprise NCC-1701 is in the 30,000dton category. Enterprise 1701-D is in the 600,000 dton category. This is converting actual reported statistics for the ships (in meters) to volume (in cubic feet) by apportioning a volume modifier derived from geometry volume formulas for closest 3-D shape, and then converting to dtons. Actually, this parallels the velocity increase in multiples of c. But even "going linear" will see power requirements increase 400 times (20velocity * 20volume) for warp drive. Here's my tentative solution, and here's where I want some feedback from interested parties: Star Trek warp factors are kind of like the sound barrier. It's a big deal to break Mach 1, but Mach 1.1-1.9 aren't all that big a deal. Warp factors are literally like that in terms of energy. Per Star Trek canon, it requires more energy to break Warp 2, for example, than it does to get from Warp 2 to Warp 2.4-ish. According to the graphs in various Star Trek references, once you break Warp 5, for example, your ship ought to be able to get to Warp 5.5 thereafter if energy outputs mean anything. This is mitigated by the increasing energy requirements PER COCHRANE (WTF equivalent). And since I only have a graph to work from in my reference materials, I can't derive any equations to predict the "actuals". So I thought about making warp drive engines effective for a range of masses. For example, an Enterprise-D era 100cton warp drive nacelle can output a maximum of 5000 cochranes per time unit, *effective to form a warp envelope able to encompass a ship of between 500-1000ctons*. In other words, slapping this particular nacelle on any ship between 500-1000ctons will enable that ship to travel at 5000c, or roughly warp 9.9. From a warp physics standpoint, the engine simply won't work for ships outside this volume range. *Then* I'll make power consumpton of warp drive units linear with median size and velocity requirements, but far more energy efficient at higher effective TLs. Enough to normalize power consumption for ship design game balance with all the other systems (deflector shields will be a pain, since power usage logically increases proportionate to surface area, and how that will correlate with other system requirements I haven't figured out yet). Rationale: the effective mass range for a specific nacelle type (and I wouldn't list out all the available units, but rather provide a formula for available units and capabilities) in some ways brings in a threshold type effect on effective velocity. For gaming purposes, determining travel times and such will be accomplished with a table that translates warp factors to x*c (to the best of my ability given reference points provided by ST canon material). OK, why not make the whole damn thing linear? Linear cochrane production, linear power requirements, also proportionate with hull volume? With a fudge factor for TL differences in terms of energy consumption. That's an option, too. (I picked hull volume over mass because of the warp field concept-- although some ST theory talks about the warp field reducing the mass of the enclosed ship, most talk about warping space, and the various TV shows talk about straining to enclose a second ship with the original's warp envelope as a problem with size, not mass). Well, for one, ST technology is pretty cool. Too cool. Constraints on space for equipment on ships (e.g. I want to build a warp 9.999 warp ship-- I'll just take out the holodecks and put on massive engines) won't keep game balance. In Interstellar Wars, if you want a 6G M-Drive AND a Hanger Bay AND a boatload of weapons AND lots of armor and a J-Drive, it WON'T FIT. In Star Trek, it can. And I want to keep approximate space requirements consistent with ST canon. If the matter/anti-matter reactor on the deck plans for the Enterprise-D looks like it only takes up 5% of ship volume at best, including surrounding engineering decking/control panels, etc, then that's about how much I want it to take up in my ship building system. Roughly. Problem is, you can then build a supership. And I mean super relative even to Star Trek. By limiting available equipment, you can constrain ships to reasonable STrek parameters. I intend to provide a normal (Gaussian-like) distribution on all equipment and have overlap for different ship sizes. Users will still be able to optimize performance/energy utilization etc.., but it will be constrained. It'll be more "realistic". Is that preferable to M-Drives that don't change from TL9-11 in any way, shape or form (as in Interstellar Wars)? To me, it is. To you, well, I'm asking. Let me know what you think of the concept. I'll see how far I get. I ultimately hope to generate a PDF which describes the actual ShipBuilding System, tables of available equipment at different ST TL-equivalents, as well as system-by-system rationale for what I did in trying to merge ST canon with GURPS paradigm thinking. And, of course, examples! That's the real fun. -vk _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
