On Sat, 21 Jun 2014, Onno Meyer wrote:
I've been wondering about the Biomechanical Structure option in Vehicles (2nd
edition). GURPS 3E has an entire book on biotech, but that is based more on
character writeups, so I'll look at Vehicles and the Expansions.
VE18 says clearly that a vehicle with the Biomechanical option has a mix of
biological and mechanical components, but some components "feel right" for a
biomech vehicle -- power from bioconvertors, propulsion with legs, flexibody
or hydrojets, the biocomputer option from Robots. But what is a suitable air
propulsion system? Ornithopter wings sound good, but the power to weight
ratio is a problem if the vehicle has inefficient propulsion systems like
bioconvertors.
I always assumed that bioconvertors are meant to be realistic technology
that we don't have yet, and only make sense if space opera technology does
not exist. For anything else, they seem too underpowered.
That said, maybe you can get anywhere with a more reptile like metabolism.
You have a bioconverter and power cells, and use the bioconverter mainly
to fill the powercells and the powercells to actually power the vehicle.
Add a big food storage tank and you get something like a snake, that is
sluggish when it has just eaten something and now has to lie in the sun
for a long time, until it get fast and moveable again.
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