> Dear List, > > I was wondering how "biological spaceships" look like as a 3E Vehicles > design, and to a lesser degree as a 4E Spaceship. > > The rules in Spaceships, vol. 7, boil down to "select design switches > which match the look and feel." For nuts and bolts, I need 3E, and as > you know how I love those nuts. So my first idea was to grab Bio-Tech. > On p. 107, Bio-Tech refers me to Vehicles, and then goes on with a > character point system on pp. 107-110. > > I would like to write a mixed tech/bio design along the lines of B5 > Vorlon or Shadow ship, or Hamilton's Night's Dawn books. Ships with > significant biological components, but also technical parts, and a > halfway normal passenger/cargo capacity. > > VE18 has the biomochanical option for structure, and armor could be > bioplas. BIO107 suggests bioconverters as well, but their fuel/food > use seems prohibitive -- with reactionless thrusters, a decent ship > should have around 0.1-0.5 kW per pound of ship, so food will last > only for a few hours. > > So what can be done beyond a biological hull and armor? Any thoughts? > > Regards, > Onno
[McE] I used psi for the sensors and comms, teke to explain flight, and innate attack for the built in weapons. Teke also covers the shields, ESP covers the cloaking device. Cybernetics allow for amplification of the innate abilities, and for armour, payload and some weapons and systems. On the control side, I made the ship consensus a synthesis of the stack of neural nodes operating the colloidal and cybernetic systems. In short: an organic AI. After this kludge I gave up using the ship building rules and built the ships with the character rules. I would assume the technology of the powersource would be that off the biotech tech level, not the base tech level, if this is a synthetic ship. Alternatively, I would allow that the base creature develops the necessary power from its diet. [Peter Hamilton suggested that superconducting cables run thru a gas giant's strong magnetic field supplied enough power for organic space stations. Perhaps that's the approach?] N _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
