Johannes replied to me: > > The more complicated the FTL and power setup, the more likely > > it seems to me that you'd put it into the main ship. If it is > > such a fragile thing, should you couple and un-couple it all > > the time? > > > > The premise was additionally, that FTL drives break down at unpredictable > times (convenient for game terms, roll against a fixed malfunction number > for every use) and reparing them requires highly specialized workshops, > that are only available at important core worlds. > > Whatever an FTL module exactly contains (power being part of it is a > possibility, but not a requirement for the concept) it should be small, > compared to the ship it can move.
You would also need a requirement that the FTL drive or part of it is mounted on the hull, but not the entire hull -- if it is all inside, you have a ship with a few plug-in modules in the engine room, and if it has to cover the hull, like the jump grids of some Traveller editions, you can't swap it. > So for timecritical or other priority transports, the solution would be to > carry a few spares. Important ports, that are still not important enough > for their own FTL workshop, will store spares. The look and feel of that starts to differ markedly from Eric's initial concept. > Coming up with new such rules is IMO in the spirit of the system. Vehicle > rules are a basis for making vehicles that fit your background. Sure. Part of the reason why I'm writing these ships is to illustrate points about game rules and game balance in some off-list debates -- the power cells, power plants, drives and hull for next week's vehicle (a TL15 fast courier) show what happens when stardrives stop improving too soon :-) Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
