Thinking about it some more, wheels are definitely more reasonable than skids, but skids are much cooler :-)
* Take a 50,000-cf/10,000-sf vehicle. It will have 2,500-cf/1,200-cf skids, since the massive motive subassembly rule from VXi4 is only for wheels and tracks, not for skids. * Contact area is 120 sf, so the sandjammer could be 9 tons for extremely low GP, 54 tons for very low GP, and 108 tons for low GP. Extremely low GP is out of the question, but perhaps it could 100 tons fully loaded, 50 tons lightly loaded. * Masts give a minimum body size, and the formula can be reversed to give a maximum mast height: 147 sf. From the size, one could take two masts, or perhaps three slightly smaller ones. Call it 100', 110', 90'. * Average mast height is 100', and a full rig has 15,000 sf sails. VXi9 would allow an extended full rig, but since the design didn't push the mast height to the limit, it doesn't extend the spars, either. The thrust is 6,000 lbs. per wind level. * Light wind would give 33 mph at 50 tons load and 23 mph at 100 tons load. That is on roads or salt flats. Going into ordinary off-road terrain, it becomes 16 mph light and 8 mph heavy. The old Vehicles rules don't separate static and kinetic friction, so I would take the latter figure with a big grain of salt as far as realism goes, but it is in the rules as written if I got it right. * A fresh breeze gives 73 mph light and 52 mph heavy on roads, which becomes 37 mph light and 17 mph heavy in the dunes. Wow, that's impressive speed. Of course I have a rather light vehicle with a very large sail area. A ship would have -1 or -2 to wSR. What do you think? _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
