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Originally Posted by Zane
The CORPS VDS (Vehicle Design System) claims to be capable of designing vehicles for just about any system. I just picked up a used copy cheap, even though it looks more complicated than I want to deal with.
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Zane, I got VDS. Yeah you can write up just about any sort of vehicle with it. Good news is that the results will be pretty close to real world results, at least as close as you can get in an RPG. I once brought the thing into work along with a copy of a sports car magazine and using the real world data and the real world Coefficient of drag, was able to estimate the top speed on every car I tired to within 2 kph of the actual value.
What I would recommend in VDS's sister system Stuff! It is a lot simpler. You can work up stats for a vehicle in a lot less time, and Stuff! has rules for designing weapons, gadgets (anything other than a weapon or a vehicle), creatures, and even civilizations. All for around $13 in pdf format.
All in a make it in 5 minutes approach. And there are optional rules that add more detail if you want it. Stuff! also has some rules for designing FTL drives and antigravity devices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zane
Personally for starship design, I would like to take a page from the old FASA wargames, specifically Battletech and the Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator design systems. Have lists, buy a hull from a list, buy a powerplant to put in it from a list, add engines from a list, etc., etc. One guess as to what I played a lot of in the 80's!  Of course as much as I like this system, I'm thinking of going more towards a modular approach (think lego's) for a Sci-Fi game I might do. No real hulls, just clip the various components together. For example, take an engine module, add fuel tanks around it, then a cargo module in front of the engine, followed by a crew module, and finally control module. Each module has its own environmental control systems, each is self contained. |
That sort of the approach I was thinking too. Did you ever see the old Universe RPG or the CODA version of Star Trek? You get a hull and it has a certain number of spaces that you fill up with components.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zane
I think someone mentioned writing up starships like you would characters. I believe this is how it is done in the D20 modern system. I also think it makes a lot of sense, just use the same basic combat rules. However, I think that you need a way for crew members to effect how the ship performs. For example, a skilled gunner will increase the likely hood of hitting enemy ships, a skilled pilot will decrease the likely hood you'll get hit. Using such a system needs a way to differentiate between scales. A laser carried by a person might kill another person, but not scratch a starship. A starship laser on the other hand is likely to vaporize a person, and damage another starship.
Zane
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D20 actually does it a bit differernt. Not STR, CON, DEX for ships, More like a monster writeup without the stats. And then you plug in the pilot and crew.
For BRP I would assume that gunners and such would use their own skill to hit, with perhaps a modifer for the ship's tactical/targeting system. A gunner could take careful aim like a character, too.
Differentiating scales is easy. For instance, in my example above if we divided the starfighter's stats by 6, it would be at x6 scale. That means that it would do (1d10+1)x6 damage to a PC, or the original 6d10+6 for the energy cannon.
For really big guns (ships main phasers, turbolasers, etc) we could just keep the multiplier, rather than rolling a ton of dice. While 2d6x10 doesn't have the bell curve of 20D6, there are few PCs who would be alive to notice the difference.