Nigel replied to me: > > If a bioship is grown as an unit, but assembled from parts, would it > > make sense to give it e.g. one 1,017-ton thruster and one 983-ton > > thruster rather than two nicely matched 1,000-ton thrusters? > > [McE] It would make more sense to me to have as close to matched drives, > be > they 1000-ton or 1,017-ton. And be over the threshold required. And call > a > 983-ton drive 'not-ripe' yet.
Hello Nigel, my idea was to grow the drives at slightly different speeds, and to declare the entire bioship 'ripe' when their combined thrust matches the specs. Besides, that helps if you want a Spaceships variant ... > > And bioships grow in use, or there are different sizes from the same > > pattern, the number of similar organs would stay the same. If a 10-ton > > bioshuttle has two "magic" reactionless thrusters, the 100-ton bioship > > and the 1,000,000-ton biocruiser would also have two units, where > > metal ships might have two (interchangeable) thrusters for the shuttle, > > and a dozen separate units for the cruiser. > > [McE] if the engines are organic and intergral, but not transplants, yes. Increasing the number of drives would probably require structural changes as well. > > And I have this habit of adding lots of different and redundant parts > > to my vehicles -- not just neutrino communicators and gravity ripple > > coms, but also radios and laser communicators. Adding a radio to a > > high-tech starship is cheap, and it helps if the primitive locals > > don't have superscience, or if a technobabble field jams superscience > > signals. Would a bioship have fewer of those "marginal" additions? > > [McE] ...are they also organic? If so they could be said to be implanted > buds of stem cells, programmed at a later date to become bigger comms, or > more sensors > If they aint organic, but cybernetic - so to speak, then who cares? Just > install more. The rules don't make a difference between grown and implanted parts, mostly because there is so little biotech in VE to start with. If I added a metal superstructure to a biomech hull, then all parts in the superstructure could be assumed to be mechanical, while all or most body parts are organic. Also, leaving out most of the "small fry" would allow a small but noticeable performance increase in the "main" systems -- a higher scan rating, perhaps, or bigger force fields. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
