On Sun Mar 26 18:58:24 CST 2006, I wrote; >On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 14:42:21 +0200 (MEST), "Onno Meyer" ><Onno.Meyer at gmx.de> wrote:
>> This is a weekly posting with GURPS vehicles (and the like) to the >>GURPSnet mailing list. I grant the permission for all non-commercial >>redistribution of my work, but I would like to know if you put it on >>a website or the like. With a slight delay, old vehicles appear >>at http://omeyer.gmxhome.de/GURPSnet_files/summary.html >> Onno Meyer, 2006-03-26 >> >>ArcoTech Police Cart v1.0 (GURPS Traveller TL9) >> Copyright 2006 by Onno Meyer <snip> >Something that has always bothered my about your arcology designs; >vehicles used exclusively in indoor corridors are excellent candidates for >electric contact power systems (p.V87). Backup batteries are a good idea >for emergencies or going to otherwise inaccessable areas, but for normal >operation a contact pole touching a power strip in the ceiling should be >perfectly safe. In this case, a 37.5-kW contact power system would mass >37.5 lbs., take up 1.5 cf (including short term access space) and cost >Cr300. If you like, I could run this and the other ArcoTech designs >through GVB to add contact power and post the results. What do you think? Having received no replies to this post, I went ahead anyway and used GVB to create v1.1 variants of Onno's ArcoTech designs with the following modifications: * Removed all but one rE-cell. This will take over for the power contact system if the power grid goes down, the vehicle must travel outside grid supplied areas or high speed travel makes using contact power unsafe. Since each rE-cell costs Cr2,000, this reduces the vehicle's cost considerably. * Added an electric contact power system (p.V87) equal to the maximum capacity of the wheeled drivetrain. Power requirements for other systems while the vehicle is in motion will be met by the rE-cell. Note: Unless the vehicle is traveling at maximum speed, the drivetrain will only be drawing a fraction of the contact's capacity ((V/Vmax) squared), leaving plenty of "juice" to power auxilary systems and recharge the battery. * All vehicles except for the bus had two crew stations listed. Since ground vehicles seldom have two sets of operating controls, I changed one of these to a normal passenger seat. Even if this "passenger" is crew, it is very unlikely they will be doing their job from their seat while the vehicle is in motion. (Q for Onno: is there any particular reason why the seats on the maintenance cart are *not* exposed?) * The emergency vehicles (ambulance, fire engine, police cart) all had medium-range (1,000 mile) radios with scramblers. These would be of little use in an arcology; not only is the "city" unlikely to sprawl that far, but the interior walls would seriously interfere with the signal. I replaced these with scrambled short-range cell phones. I was going to add a transponder and GPS to each vehicle for tracking and navigation purposes, but I realized that cell phones could serve both functions. ("Hey chief, I'm lost!" "Let me check ... you're on level 34, you doofus! The fire's on level 43." "Doh!") * On the fire engine, I reduced the ranges of the searchlight and thermograph to 0.1 mile (should be enough for internal work, and exceeds the max range of the watercannon by 41 yards), upped the magnification on the LLTV to 8x (closeups of a burning structure can reveal valuable information), attached them all to the watercannon for targeting purposes and put the whole package on a universal mount for full range of motion. This added 1 cf to the open mount, but made it a much more effective firefighting weapon. That's all for now. If anyone is interested in my modifications let me know, and I'll see what I can do about sending you my GVB files (or the text output from them). I'd post them here, but I'd need Onno's permission first. -- Dalton "who's eagerly waiting for Vehicles 4e to come out" Spence _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
