Hello Clint, 4E Spaceships is a modular design system, but the ships are not modular -- a control room, for instance, comes with sensors all over the hull, and one armor module will have a much lower volume than one cargo module. Normally, you can't just swap the modules in the field.
The same applied in the old GURPS Traveller rules, where each module came with a 'slice' of power plant and life support, and the designer had to total those slices to find out how much space the reactor got in the deck plans. For truly modular designs, you had to use the full Vehicles rules, and balance weight, volume and power at the same time. Spaceships 6, Mining and Industrial Spacecraft, has optional rules for modules which can be swapped, but the GM will still have to apply common sense, re the armor-vs-cargo example. If you are satisfied with the accuracy level of Spaceships for your games, you can use that, or just improvise with the knowledge that a modular system is $1,000 per ton of module and takes hours to days to switch, depending on the number of workers and heavy cranes. If you need to know much more, buy the book ... Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
