Vehicles and Spaceships

[trechriron]

The vehicle stats I actually use during a campaign are the vehicle's dimensions,

the passenger and cargo capacity, the type and range of sensors and weapons,

the presence of any special equipment ("the ATV has a winch", etc.), the fuel

requirements, the performance (range and speed), and the cost.

Any system which enables me to determine these stats, preferably in a simple,

"low math" and modular way (so I can design and add my own modules for the

setting specific stuff), and which provides me with some example vehicles to

compare my own designs to, would be most welcome.

+1

Thanks for all the info and opinions. Lets see if I can put this all together and see if I can come up with something that should cover most of what people want. Fee free to let me know if I missed something.

...

Does that look good?

yes! Need play-testers? :-D

[rust]

I just looked up how Ringworld treated vehicles, their stat block there includes:

Mass

Volume / Dimensions

Speed

Maximum Acceleration

Energy Used

Power Supply

Applicable Skill

Cost

Armor

Hit Points

Hit Locations

plus a short text which describes those things like passenger and cargo capacity,

special features and equipment, and thelike.

[Atgxtg]

yes! Need play-testers? :-D

Yeah. Or at least a few differernt points of view for determing just where the "too complex" line is.

I7ve actually have most of the above in various states of readiness, and a few other things that could be adapted to BRP. For example, I have a vechile design system that I wrote up for an entirrly differernt RPG (one that is fairly rules-lite and not very "crunchy") but it could be adpated to work for BRP by swapping out game terms. It can handle anything from sailing ships to futurstic spaceships, and might make a good "lite" vehickle design system for BRP. You wouln't get as much gradulations between vehicles as you might with a more complex method, but the final design would be just as usuable in BRP terms s one donme using more complex methods.

P.S. Once we are testing out any conversion, modfication and design rules, any playtesters could also help by statting up more vehicles. I7ve got several hundred vehciles mostly statted up on spreadhseets, but there are obviously areas that I failed to cover with enough examples. Just ask (or blame) rust about SWATH ships.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Atgxtg

[trechriron]

Yeah. Or at least a few differernt points of view for determing just where the "too complex" line is.

...

This frankly sounds perfect. I would love to help. PM when you're ready, pitch me some stuff and I will kick the tires on it and pitch in!

[Atgxtg]

How would people feel about my adjusting a few of the "official" values in the BRP core book?

The reason why is because it looks like some of the stats were made realtive to other vehicles of the same type, and they don't hold up well when dealing wit vehicles of another type. For example, a horse has a better acceleration than a rocket!

I'd like to rate everything on the same scale. That way a battleship won't be able to keep up with an 18-wheeler, nor a will a car out accelerate a bomber.

The changes would consist of:

1) Cutting most of the Water Vehicle MOV rates to about 2/3rd or 1/2..

2) Making 1 ACC equal 1 meter per second per second, and rate all vehicles on that scale. That way, 1G of acceleration would be ACC 10. It would make it much easier to stat up real vehicles that way, not to mention not so real spacecraft. A ship with 4G acceleration would have an ACC of 40.

3) Tweaking Rated Speeds a little to reflect the revised ACC ratings. (Range bands in chases might need to be tweaked a bit, too, but that is more the case of high tech weaponry being effective at a greater distance than the small arms used in car chases). In fact, I could see just using a 1/10th "speed scale" for high ACC vehicles in a chase.

Edited June 28, 2011 by Atgxtg

[trechriron]

I think that would be ideal. If you can make a solid vehicle supplement, people can choose to use the relative "constructed" values in your supplement or just eyeball stuff from the Gold Book as they desire. Personally, I would use the stats from this supplement, especially if I can design my own vehicles.

[pansophy]

How would people feel about my adjusting a few of the "official" values in the BRP core book?

I would love to have a consistant system, so changing the BGB stats should not be an issue. I think it's clear that these statistics are not to be used when characters and vehicles are involved in a scene, but the system should be able to handle a chase between a horse, a car and a helicopter.

So: yes, please do it If you send me a rough edit, I will try to stat up some 2300AD Spacecraft, so it would be a good test for it - especially as one can compare them to the original GDW stats.

[Atgxtg]

I7ll try to have something avlaible for mass consumption/playtest, soon. My main obstacles are coming up with approximations that are reasonable accurate over a wide range of examples, and hold up for real world designs.. Then trying to boil that down to one formula that works for everything. And keeping it simple. And on top of that, I'm trying to break this into three different design methods. A crucny one that uses real world values like kilowatts, metric tons, and kilonetwons; a point build methiod where you buy STR, Handling and so forth like Superpowers; and a even simplier method where you buy what you want, but don't have to do the math. Plus another method where you build any vehicle on 20 points. And keeping all the results compatible. That is, you should be able to build the same vehicle in all the systems and get the same game stats. So a car that has a 204kW engine, STR 78, and thathas a MOV 288 in one method should work out with approximately the same values no matter what method is used.

So I haven't forgetten all you volunteers.

I should have the latest version of the real world vehicle write up guidelines done, soon. That is sort of seperate from the design rules, since you don't start with a blank slate, and 120kph is 120kph no matter what design method you use.

Scii-Fi settings tend to be a big pain, since each setting alters the laws of phyisics in it's own way. So each seting needs to modfiy the rules a little.

[Atgxtg]

Okay, I need some play testers to test out ONE formula for me. It is for aircraft. What I need is for someone to put the weight and wing area of several aircraft into a spreadsheet to see if the calculated values are reasonably close to the actual values. If the values are close, it will allow me to work out performance data on aircraft without needing data on wings.

Note that I don't expect anyone to use a function like this when designing aircraft for the game. In fact, that is the whole point of this test. If it works, I can replace a LOT of aerodynamics mathematics with SIZ/3.

I got the spreadhseet, I just want someone to save me some time by plugging in some data.

[pansophy]

Okay, I need some play testers to test out ONE formula for me. It is for aircraft.

Book me in! And let's go!

[Harvey Walters]

Okay, I need some play testers to test out ONE formula for me. It is for aircraft. What I need is for someone to put the weight and wing area of several aircraft into a spreadsheet to see if the calculated values are reasonably close to the actual values.

I'd be glad to help. Most (o.k. all) of the data I could provide would be from military aircraft, though.

Michael

[Atgxtg]

Thanks folks. PM me an email address and I'll send you the spreadsheet.

Any aircraft are aprreciated. Military or otherwise. From what I've read, the progression between weight and wing loading applies to all aircraft, and only varies by 30% either way. So if it hold true I can give aircraft wings "behind the scenese" and save those who use this system the trouble.

[Atgxtg]

Thanks to the testers for providing me with the data. It about trippled the number of examples Ihad, and so gave me a better idea of how accrate 8or not) the formula was.

[Atgxtg]

Okay, some of the playtesters have given me an idea.

In the real world, designers have some graphs and tavbles that they can use to get approximate vales for vehicle peromance. For example, you cross reference a ship's tonnage, shape and desired speed on a graph, to get a approximate engine value in horsepower. The answers are not 100% accurate, but they are ususallyin the right ballpark.

Such table aren7t much use withmost RPGs, though, since most RPGs make up thier own performace formulas, and these often depart greatly from reality. But, since I'm basing my performace formula on the real speed/drag fomula,the grapsh could be used as a tool to help with designs in BRP.

But, and this is the good bit, since I tie game terms like SIZ, MOV and STR to real world terms like tonnage, area, kilometers per hour, and kilowatts, I could make one of those graphs that uses BRP terms.

That would allow us to design vehicles and get fairly accurate numbers without using any math.

[DCAnsell]

If you are still looking for playtesters or other help on this, please count me in.

[Atgxtg]

If you are still looking for playtesters or other help on this, please count me in.

Sure, I can always use more help.

But, be warned, some of the stuff I am asking people to do is dull drudgery, like data entry, I'm trying to test things using real wolrd vechiles. That way I can see how well the numbers work out, and it means we get a larger secletion of per-statted vehicles.