Brainstorming spaceship design

[Sven Norén]

Here are some ideas cribbed from another thread:

I'd treat Starship combat the same as normal combat.

Starships have locations, AP and HP. They have weapons that do damage. They have forcefields that absorb damage.

Sure, there are extra things to think about. You might be able to do Precise Attacks and target particular subsystems (Drives/Weapons/Life Support) you might even have to have rules for what happens if the hull in penetrated, with air leaks and so on. You'd certainly have rules on the number of charges a weapon has, recharge rates, batteries, how much power a ship has and how much can be fed into shields/weapons.

But, when it comes down to it, you have someone with 60% Pilot Starship, someone with 55% Starship Blaster, a Blaster doing 1D10 damage and a Starship with 6 point Hull and 10 HP in every location. The opponent can't dodge a Blaster but can dodge a Quantum Torpedo using his Pilot Starship. Some Starships might have modifiers, one might be Manouverable and give +20% to Pilot Starship for dodges, another might be Tough and have extra APs, another might have resealable skin or whatever.

Anything a lot more complicated than that is going way too far, in my opinion.

You can give them stats like STR and so forth, too, like in the armies in 'Warlords of Alexandria', or ship 'personalities' like in 'Serenity'. Loads of ideas to get started, anyway.

I think you are right. But one thing you forgot IMO: sensors. To "see" another ship or not is a matter of life and death in some space opera settings. This could be modelled like spot hidden skill or on the resistance table. (eg. sensor power 23 vs. ECM 20 or so)

It's easily covered by having a Sensors skill and resolving against a Stealth skill using whatever method is best.

...

Ship design is more complicated. I'd treat ships as PCs, whether they are alive/intelligent or not. So, give ships SIZ, CON, INT (?), DEX, POW (?). I'm not sure if they need STR or CHA, but they might be useful, STR might indicate how much cargo a ship can carry.

...

AP/HP might be called Hull Quality/Spaceworthiness, but you'd need something like this. Weapons, propulsion systems, power sources, battery stores, cargo holds, shuttlecraft and so on need to be included as well, so you'd need some way of limiting the number of things you can include in a ship, possibly based on SIZ.

soltakss is right, for the most part vechile combat can be handled like PC combat. Just cut & paste the "flavor enhancers" you need to fit the setting.

BRP actually does that through Superworld. Many superworld powers are built in a manner similar to Chanpions. While a laser blast, Ki Strike, Disintergrator beam, and magentic rail gun are all differernt, the most important game effect are the range, skill% and damage. Much like a RQ hatchet and shortsword are fairly similar in a functional aspect in BRP.

I think the reason why we don't have any rules for statships is just that Chaosium has never released a successful Sci-Fi RPG. Ringworld and FutureWorld were barely blips on the RPG radar. It isn't that Spaceships are tougher to work out than Magic or Superpowers.

I think the best way to handle it, and along the lines of how BRP is being organized, would be to work out a basic Hull/HP, MOVE, weapons, skill based system along sotakss idea (and workable along with the old sailing ship rules), and the work up some SPOT RULES for types fo SF settings. Stuff like different methods of FTL propulsion and all that could be in the SPOT RULES.

Come to think of it, the superpower rules could probably handle spaceships. Just limit the powers availably by the setting. For instance, Star Trek gets teleportation, energy weapons, and forcie fields.

BRP does need some decent SCi-Fi stuff it is is going to attempt to cover the genre, and definitely needs some sort of spaceship rules to do so (hey, they put a spaceship on the cover, right?).

STR is engines. High STR and low SIZ makes for an agile ship that has a good chance to dodge incoming missiles or feint enemy artillerists, the reverse - less so.

INT could be the 'intelligence' of the shipboard computers (how advanced they are), while POW could be the robustness of those systems. HP would represent physical damage, and POW Pts./MP could be used for Electronics damage (computers, sensors, etc).

Electronic Warfare or Sensor tech (or even shield systems) could be the 'Magic System' of starship combat.

[Trifletraxor]

http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/brp-wiki/255-spaceship-design.html

Started an article in the wiki. We can discuss it here, and improve it there. I think the ideas are very good!

SGL.

[Atgxtg]

*SIGH*

Now I started working on a spaceship combat system....

Baed on the stuff above, and the info I can gleam from the Preview pages, how does this look for a start.

Ship Stats

STR= FORCE or THRUST of ship's engines. Used to determine how fast the ship goes.

CON= DURABILITY of the ship and the redundancy of ship systems.

SIZ= THe overall volume and MASS of the ship

INT= Computer systems, autopilot and A.I. rating. Think in terms of speed and qaulity.

POW= THe auxilary reseve POWER of the ship. Ship can spend POW points to boost an ability for the sort term (boost shields, increased Speed, etc).

DEX= Agility and Nimblesness of the craft. No so much how fast it moves (that is determined by STR and SIZ), but how fast it turns and maneuvers.

APP= The aesthetics, and luxury of the ship. Useful for price and morale purposes (as in the crew are happier if they have a pleasant ship with a buch of conforts rather than living in a grey box).

EDU= Databanks. How much information the ships computers can store. Think in terms of serves and hard drives.

HULL POINTS=Amount of damage a ship can withstand. Equal to (CON+SIZ)/2

ARMOR POINTS=Aps the ships hull can withstand before taking damage. Say start with a default of CON/5, but can buy up.

DEX SR= Used for maneuvering

INT SR= replaces SIZ SR for weapon uses. Basically how fast the computer can track targets, etc.

MOVE- How fast the ship moves in combat. Based on relationship between STR and SIZ. High STR good, high SIZ bad.

FTL MOVE- How fast the ship moves at superluminal velocities.

SHIP SKILLS

Ships will have skill category modifiers (or whatewver the new BRP term is) like Characters. These add to cetrtain skills of the ooperators, so not all ships will handle alike.

Communication- adds to use of Ships radios, holocoms, etc. Also used for ships enterainment facilities.

Physical- Used for Maeuvers, adds to Piloting rolls.

Combat- Adds to shiboard weapon shystems rolls, and other types or targeting, such as with tractors.

Mental-Adds to use of Computer skills and many Scienece or other skills that could be aided by the use of a computer (big plus)

Perception-Added to the use of Sensors.

Manipulation-Used for things like waldos, placing mines, etc.

How does that look so far?

[Atgxtg]

Started going through MAgic World to try and get POW and ship systems stuff.

For instance Deflector Shields can be the same as a Protection spell, and Countermeasures could be the same as Countermagic.

Considering the nature of ship combat. It looks like most Resistance rolls to "cast a spell" (engage in electronic warfare) on a target should probably be made using INT rather than POW, with POW simply being the battery used to power the effects. An option would use INT vs. INT, but allowing POW to be spent to boost an effect. Like using raw POW to burn through enemy countermeasures/magic.

A ship can only use an amount of abilties equal to half its INT rating, representing the CPU resources needed to work the effects.

Some effects could be limited, for instance a ship with a 12 INT might have Teleport 1 representing something like personal tranporters.

Scale- Can probably use some sort of scale factor for translating effects to PC scale.So a SIZ 3 ship might be SIZE 45 or 60 in character scale (I need to see the BRP SIZ chart before I can figure what ratio) with corresponding mass, hit points, etc. That would allow a SIZ 13 character to fit in a SIZE 3 ship, and said SIZ3 ship to have a kit ore Hull/Hit Points..

[Trifletraxor]

Power Points can be used to power the shield (aka protection/damage resistance) and energy weapons (aka disruption & other damage "spells"). Battery capacity in other words.

Using POW would burn out some of the power grids, but give a greater boost short-term.

SIZ should limit both the cargo and the crew. Weapon systems, engines and battery systems can all have SIZ requirements. So f.ex. a SIZ 1 ship can carry and offer life support for one man, but no weapons or cargo, etc.

SGL.

[Jarulf]

A minimum amount of POW could be required to use a certain systems.

e.g., A Sirling-Whatson Shield generator Mk III would require POW 15. A Mk IV might require POW 20.

[soltakss]

I'd limit the number of external devices to SIZ, the old hard-point (?) in Traveller.

POW gives the recharge capacity of generators etc, but I'd allow batteries to store PPs (Power Points). Guns, Shields, Warp/Jump Engines, teleport devices, life support etc would all use PPs. This means that your tactics are determined in part by the amount of power you had available. So, perhaps, each gun would use a number of PPs, depending on its damage, basic ship functions might use a set number of points per hour, shields could run at 1/hour or Shield rating / 10 per hour, or something similar. You could even say that some types of shield use extra PPs to absorb big hits. Movement would take PPs depending on the SIZ of the ship, INterstellar travel would be similar, but depending on the mode of travel might be single jumps, costs per hour or whatever.

Ships would have skill bonuses, as specified, but also semi-intelligent ships would have skills of their own. So, a ship might have Blaster 50% and be able to engage in combat itself, but a Weapons Officer might have Blaster 75% and take control in combat situations.

You'd probably need some guidelines on SIZ to show what SIZ certain types of ships would have. Off the top of my head, and completely arbitrarily:

Escape POD: SIZ 1

1-man Fighter: SIZ 10

2-man Fighter: SIZ 15

Shuttlecraft/Runabout: SIZ 25

Small Merchantship: SIZ 40

Small Cruiser: SIZ 50

Medium Cruiser: SIZ 70

Large Cruiser: SIZ 100

Battlestar: SIZ 200

Death Star: SIZ 300

That way, you could design your ship and refer to the standard templates for comparison.

STR - Use this for propulsion, by all means, but this would probably be normal propulsion, not Warp Speed/Hyperspeed/Jump/Interstellar-Drive.

I know this is BRP not RQ, but there are good rules for ship design in the Mongoose books, Pirates has a couple of good ideas.

[soltakss]

Scale- Can probably use some sort of scale factor for translating effects to PC scale.So a SIZ 3 ship might be SIZE 45 or 60 in character scale (I need to see the BRP SIZ chart before I can figure what ratio) with corresponding mass, hit points, etc. That would allow a SIZ 13 character to fit in a SIZE 3 ship, and said SIZ3 ship to have a kit ore Hull/Hit Points..

I wouldn't go down that far into detail. As long as people aren't being silly, I don't think you need to relate character SIZ to ship SIZ. By all means have a recommended capacity and a maximum capacity, after all if you fit too many people in a ship, the life support systems become overloaded.

[Atgxtg]

I wouldn't go down that far into detail. As long as people aren't being silly, I don't think you need to relate character SIZ to ship SIZ. By all means have a recommended capacity and a maximum capacity, after all if you fit too many people in a ship, the life support systems become overloaded.

Some sort of relationship is nice for the smaller ships. So that way characters armed with energy weapons can have combat against fighters. The rules, such as they are, could also be used to handle ground vehicles. A scaling method would also allow for Supers to be able to interact with such craft.

I have been working on a method of giving ships SPACES, based on SIZ that can be spent for components, crew quarters, cargo spaces, shuttle bays, etc). Just need to see the BRP SIZ table so I can work out the relationship.

I've got a relationship for RQ3, but not sure if they are going to use the same formula.

I was thinking of keeping the values in ship scale a bit smaller. Like a Medium Cruiser would be say SIZ 10-13. That way we can keep things in about the same range as PCs. . Most of the BRP stats work in relation to each other (at least the way I'm imagining it), so keeping SIZ low allows us to keep all the other stats centered around 10. Smaller values would also allow us to use ship scale weapons that do 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, etc for damage instead of needing handfuls of dice. Plus, all the swiped Magic spells like Shields/Protection are easier towork if they are in that scale.

Basically I'm thinking that the hull's APs and Shield (Protection Spell) would keep ships from being destroyed easily.

[Atgxtg]

I'd limit the number of external devices to SIZ, the old hard-point (?) in Traveller.

I started on a method of giciving ship's SPACES based on SIZ. Currently it is based on the old RQ3 progression of +8 SIZ = double the size/mass, but will adapt to BRP's SIZ formula when I see it.

POW gives the recharge capacity of generators etc, but I'd allow batteries to store PPs (Power Points). Guns, Shields, Warp/Jump Engines, teleport devices, life support etc would all use PPs. This means that your tactics are determined in part by the amount of power you had available. So, perhaps, each gun would use a number of PPs, depending on its damage, basic ship functions might use a set number of points per hour, shields could run at 1/hour or Shield rating / 10 per hour, or something similar. You could even say that some types of shield use extra PPs to absorb big hits. Movement would take PPs depending on the SIZ of the ship, INterstellar travel would be similar, but depending on the mode of travel might be single jumps, costs per hour or whatever.

Nice Idea, but I was thinking of a simplier apporach to reduce bookeeping. Otherwise PP will endu p being used like RQ3 Fatigue Points, and most people don't like those.

What I was thinking of was going with the idea that ship can generate enough power to operate all it's systems, and PP are just the auxiliary batteries that get used in emergencies (such as combat).

POW would represent the generators ability to restore PPS while running the rest of the ship. Perhaps we could work up a minPOW requirement based on the number of systems, and allow for combat damage to affect ship stats. So a ship that runs below the min POW would suffer in performance.

I just don't want to track Energy Allocation to the same degree as, say, Star Fleet Battles. I'd rather not have to track PP for life support, and just put stuff like that on hit location or critical tables (both of which could be optional)

Ships would have skill bonuses, as specified, but also semi-intelligent ships would have skills of their own. So, a ship might have Blaster 50% and be able to engage in combat itself, but a Weapons Officer might have Blaster 75% and take control in combat situations.

I like this. Here are three possible ways we could do it (or possibly some sort of combination of all three):

1)We could base the rating on the number of spaces allocated to the AI Gunner, say 5% per SPACE used.

2)We could use the Ship's INT (A.I.) based IDEA % as the total amount of percentiles that can be broken up and used as skill points. So a ship that multi tasks (autopilot and gunner) wouldn't be as effective at either.

3) Spend PP to put "Beamsharp" or some such on that weapon. And yeah, we'd need a better name that beamsharp, probably call it "weapon targeting system" or some such.

You'd probably need some guidelines on SIZ to show what SIZ certain types of ships would have. Off the top of my head, and completely arbitrarily:

Escape POD: SIZ 1

1-man Fighter: SIZ 10

2-man Fighter: SIZ 15

Shuttlecraft/Runabout: SIZ 25

Small Merchantship: SIZ 40

Small Cruiser: SIZ 50

Medium Cruiser: SIZ 70

Large Cruiser: SIZ 100

Battlestar: SIZ 200

Death Star: SIZ 300

That way, you could design your ship and refer to the standard templates for comparison.

Agreed. I started working on something like this, but built on a differernt scale to keep the math and bookeeping down.

STR - Use this for propulsion, by all means, but this would probably be normal propulsion, not Warp Speed/Hyperspeed/Jump/Interstellar-Drive.

Agreed. FTL travel would be set up as an add on, with some sort of FTL Drive with it's own STR score. Exact details would vary based on type of FTL travel permitted in the campaign. THat way we could use BRP for Star Trek, Star Wars, B5 and what not without being stuck with a partiuclar method of FTL.

I know this is BRP not RQ, but there are good rules for ship design in the Mongoose books, Pirates has a couple of good ideas.

Are they very differernt than the ship rules in RQ3/Stormbinger? By all means if there is anything interesting in there mention it. You might be the only one on the BRP forum who owns Pirates!

I've been thinking of looking at Decipher's Spaceships book for Star Trek, and BTRC's Stuff! book. Both have very simple design rules.

[Atgxtg]

I was wondering. For BRP Spaceships, do we want to move ships on a battleboard like with characters, or use a more abstract system, where we just track range bands, and ships have a list of maneuvers they can perform?

Both options have advantages.

The first would be more BRPish, but the second would allow for a lot of neat tactics and maneuvers [close, turn about, evasive maneuvering, strafing run,etc.,etc] and would greatly simplify space movement and range calculations ("Okay, I'm 2 zones away from the alien cruiser, that's short range for the particle accelerators and medium range for the main overkill cannon.").

[frogspawner]

There's an old, interesting and very simple game of spaceship combat called Warp War (see Warp War | BoardGameGeek), which incorporated ship design. If you're going to create a system, you could do worse than making it compatible with that.

[Atgxtg]

There's an old, interesting and very simple game of spaceship combat called Warp War (see Warp War | BoardGameGeek), which incorporated ship design. If you're going to create a system, you could do worse than making it compatible with that.

What are Warp War's good bits? There are quite a few simple space combat games out there. What War War have to offer that makes it you first choice for our BRP homebrew? Not disagreeing with you, just curious about Warp War.

BTW, How do you look at a .gbx file? I wanted to look over the game and DL'd it, but don't know how to read it. :confused:

[soltakss]

What are Warp War's good bits? There are quite a few simple space combat games out there. What War War have to offer that makes it you first choice for our BRP homebrew? Not disagreeing with you, just curious about Warp War.

BTW, How do you look at a .gbx file? I wanted to look over the game and DL'd it, but don't know how to read it. :confused:

.gbx files are Game Boxes from Cyberboard. Go to the Cyberboard website CyberBoard or the download site CyberBoardfor an excellent program to model board games. I draw all my maps in Cyberboard now.

[soltakss]

I was wondering. For BRP Spaceships, do we want to move ships on a battleboard like with characters, or use a more abstract system, where we just track range bands, and ships have a list of maneuvers they can perform?

If you use a battleboard, you need to make it 3D and that's a pain, you need multiple 2D grids and hexboards don't really work in 3D.

The first would be more BRPish, but the second would allow for a lot of neat tactics and maneuvers [close, turn about, evasive maneuvering, strafing run,etc.,etc] and would greatly simplify space movement and range calculations ("Okay, I'm 2 zones away from the alien cruiser, that's short range for the particle accelerators and medium range for the main overkill cannon.").

I'd go for the second, unless you want the "Well, you try and use your Forward Blasters but you are just out of range and they fizzle out" approach. For energy weapons, range is pretty irrelevant anyway, I'd give them damage that reduces with range as the beams become unfocussed.

If you're the kind of person who uses hexboards in combat then hexboards will be useful for spaceship combat.

[soltakss]

Some sort of relationship is nice for the smaller ships. So that way characters armed with energy weapons can have combat against fighters. The rules, such as they are, could also be used to handle ground vehicles. A scaling method would also allow for Supers to be able to interact with such craft.

I have been working on a method of giving ships SPACES, based on SIZ that can be spent for components, crew quarters, cargo spaces, shuttle bays, etc). Just need to see the BRP SIZ table so I can work out the relationship.

I've got a relationship for RQ3, but not sure if they are going to use the same formula.

The way I've always handled this is to give weapons a scale and leave the rest as they are.

So, normal weapons have a scale of 1, truck-mounted weapons have a scale of 2, tank-mounted weapons have a scale of 3, small cruiser weapons have a scale of 4 and so on.

That means that a soldier shooting a truck with a Plasma Rifle would normally do 2D10 damage, but the relative rating is 1/2 so it does (2D10) / 2. A small cruiser firing at a truck from orbit using a Heavy Blaster (1D10) has a relative rating of 4/2 and would do 1D10x2 damage.

Actually, 4 for a small cruiser is too small. I'd set the scales depending on what damage you think they'd do in relative terms. If you think that a Heavy Cruiser would knock out a truck without effort, then give it a rating of 20. Of course, it would be difficult to shoot a single truck from orbit.

These would need a bit of working to see what the relative ratings should be.

[frogspawner]

What are Warp War's good bits?

It's the only one I know! OK, the main virtue is it's SO simple you can bolt on other complications you might want and still end up with something fairly easy. It's boardless and diceless, outcomes being based on comparing speeds/tactics/weapons selections. It's pencil-and-paper - so what the Cyberboard is for, I don't know... (perhaps an unnecessary campaign star-map).

[soltakss]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soltakss

I'd limit the number of external devices to SIZ, the old hard-point (?) in Traveller.

I started on a method of giciving ship's SPACES based on SIZ. Currently it is based on the old RQ3 progression of +8 SIZ = double the size/mass, but will adapt to BRP's SIZ formula when I see it.

I wouldn't necessarily be too slavish about +8 SIZ doubles mass. If you have super-massive ships then you have to work out mass, engine thrust and so on. I'd keep things relative and rough.

Nice Idea, but I was thinking of a simplier apporach to reduce bookeeping. Otherwise PP will endu p being used like RQ3 Fatigue Points, and most people don't like those.

Well, yes and no. If you have power drain through equipment use then you need to track it. You either have enough power to do something or you don't.

What I was thinking of was going with the idea that ship can generate enough power to operate all it's systems, and PP are just the auxiliary batteries that get used in emergencies (such as combat).

Perhaps, but how would you model a situation where the generators are dead and you only have enough Life Support for 4 hours (Standard Star Trek Episode Number ???)? That's why I think you need some kind of power requirement for Life Support, it causes you to make life or death choices. Do I cut the power to Life Support so that I can charge the batteries enough to make a Hyper-Jump even though it means some of our crew members could die?

POW would represent the generators ability to restore PPS while running the rest of the ship. Perhaps we could work up a minPOW requirement based on the number of systems, and allow for combat damage to affect ship stats. So a ship that runs below the min POW would suffer in performance.

That makes sense as well.

I think we'd need to hack out some rules, then build some spaceships and see how the rules go. You know, almost like a playtest

I just don't want to track Energy Allocation to the same degree as, say, Star Fleet Battles. I'd rather not have to track PP for life support, and just put stuff like that on hit location or critical tables (both of which could be optional)

I've never played Star Fleet Battles, but it sounds like the kind of thing you might need to do. That's how Star Trek always did it, anyway. Star Wars doesn't really track power but does track system damage.

[sIZ Table]

Agreed. I started working on something like this, but built on a differernt scale to keep the math and bookeeping down.

Whatever the scale is, it needs to be consistent and needs to look reasonable. Also, we need to be able to put together some sample spaceships from other games/films/TV series to see how they work. That way, if we need a ship like a Battlestar then we can get a template, if we need something like a Sun Hawk then we have those stats.

Has anyone got rules for Babylon 5/Star Trek/Star Wars ship stats? It doesn't really matter what the system is, things should be easy to convert as long as we have relative values.

Quote:

STR - Use this for propulsion, by all means, but this would probably be normal propulsion, not Warp Speed/Hyperspeed/Jump/Interstellar-Drive.

Agreed. FTL travel would be set up as an add on, with some sort of FTL Drive with it's own STR score. Exact details would vary based on type of FTL travel permitted in the campaign. THat way we could use BRP for Star Trek, Star Wars, B5 and what not without being stuck with a partiuclar method of FTL.

What kind of FTL/Interstellar travel do we have examples of?

Hyper-Jump - Jump between two points in normal space through Hyperspace, instant travel, limited range/aiming.

Hyper-Point - Opens up a Jump Point into Hyperspace and allows the ship to travel through Hyperspace faster than normal. This needs a Jump Point back to normal space. This has durational travel, with a cost for each jump and navigational skills, perhaps each ship has to be of a certain SIZ/Power to create a Hyper-Point. (Babylon 5)

Hyper-Gate - Fixed Hyper-Points that allow for travel between these fixed gates. This gives durational travel, but the ship doesn't need to create a Jump Point. (Babylon 5, Buck Rogers)

Warp Speed - Warps space and allows for Faster Than Light travel. Each Warp is a multiple, or perhaps a power of normal light speed. (As Star Trek)

Worm Hole - Opens up a worm hole between 2 points in normal space. Allows travel between the two ends of the worm hole. (Farscape, Star Trek Next Generation)

I'm sure I've forgotten many types.

Quote:

I know this is BRP not RQ, but there are good rules for ship design in the Mongoose books, Pirates has a couple of good ideas.

Are they very differernt than the ship rules in RQ3/Stormbinger? By all means if there is anything interesting in there mention it. You might be the only one on the BRP forum who owns Pirates!

You should all go out and get Pirates! Ya-har! It is really goodf and captures the feel of the setting. It's not very Mongoosey either.

Ship Design has templates for Barge, Barque, Brigantine, Canoe, Corvette, Fishing Boat, Fluyt, Frigate, Galleon, Indiaman, Raft, Rowboat, Schooner, Small Trader, Sloop, Snow and Warship.

Each ship has hull, Structure Points, Seaworthiness, Length, Draft, Capacity, Crew (Minimum/Average/Maximum), Speed, Weapons and Skill (Shiphandling/Boating).

Ship Qualities can be Agile, Battleshy, Clumsy, Cursed, Defiant, Distinctive, Fragile, Foul, Good, Ill, Lucky, Nimble, Reliable, Slow, Sluggish, Stealthy, Sturdy, ZSweet, Swift or Unreliable. Each one gives a bonus or penalty to certain skills/attributes. So, Fragile gives -1 Hull, but Foul gives +10% to all Crew Resilience Checks (+10% to CONx5% Rols in BRP).

Ships can have Modifications, such as Aft Guns, Bulwarks, Copper Bottom, Chase Guns, Full Repairs, Hidden Cargo Space, Lighten Hull, More Cannons, More Cargo Space, More Sail or Reinforced Hull. These changfe the characteristics of the ship.

Temporary Measure include Bail out the Bilges, Batten Down the Hatches, False Colours and Partial Repairs and each gives a temporary bonus or has a temporary effect.

There are rules for crew quality, crew numbers, random events, plunder, crew combat, ship to ship combat, sighting and chasing ships and more. It's all very modular and seems easy to use. I reckon it wouldn't take more than half an hour or so to come up with a workable ship using these rules.

That's the kind of thing I'd like to see in a BRP Spaceship design - modular and easy to use. Not very technical and modelling exactlky how a spaceship works (after all, we don't know how proper spaceships work).

I've been thinking of looking at Decipher's Spaceships book for Star Trek, and BTRC's Stuff! book. Both have very simple design rules.

Is it worth summarising them for those of us who don't have them?

I got a lot of fre stuff from Drivethrurpg, but haven't gone through them yet, some of them may have ship design rules.

[Trifletraxor]

It's the only one I know! OK, the main virtue is it's SO simple you can bolt on other complications you might want and still end up with something fairly easy. It's boardless and diceless, outcomes being based on comparing speeds/tactics/weapons selections. It's pencil-and-paper - so what the Cyberboard is for, I don't know... (perhaps an unnecessary campaign star-map).

Diceless? We need some way to add that back in though. Is it mainly a fleet against fleet game, or is it for one on ones too? The players will probably sit in only one spaceship, and would want to use some of their skills to influence the outcome.

SGL.

[Nightshade]

I wouldn't go down that far into detail. As long as people aren't being silly, I don't think you need to relate character SIZ to ship SIZ. By all means have a recommended capacity and a maximum capacity, after all if you fit too many people in a ship, the life support systems become overloaded.

I tend to think that there's a bit too many border conditions not to want to have something that addresses how ship size relates to human size (and perhaps more importantly, Strength). This is a game that's going to be handling superheroes and other potentially larger than life characters on occasions, so interacting with small ships may be a real issue; and you have to deal potentially with the in-between case of non-spacecraft vehicles to boot.

[soltakss]

I tend to think that there's a bit too many border conditions not to want to have something that addresses how ship size relates to human size (and perhaps more importantly, Strength). This is a game that's going to be handling superheroes and other potentially larger than life characters on occasions, so interacting with small ships may be a real issue; and you have to deal potentially with the in-between case of non-spacecraft vehicles to boot.

Generally, if you have rules for spaceship design, then you are focussing on the SciFi element of the game.

The rules may be generic, but other rules will be setting/genre specific and may well contradict rules in the BRP rulebook.

So, I wouldn't worry too much on how spaceship design affects a Supers game.

Also, I'd tend to split out aircraft design from spaceship design. Sure, have rules for aircraft and ships, but don't mix them with spaceship design.

[Nightshade]

Generally, if you have rules for spaceship design, then you are focussing on the SciFi element of the game.

The rules may be generic, but other rules will be setting/genre specific and may well contradict rules in the BRP rulebook.

So, I wouldn't worry too much on how spaceship design affects a Supers game.

Also, I'd tend to split out aircraft design from spaceship design. Sure, have rules for aircraft and ships, but don't mix them with spaceship design.

I still think that ignores too many potential border conditions; as I said, mecha interact with spacecraft all the time in the genres they're used in, and with small spacecraft simple issues of whether that large alien animal can grab the fighter craft when it enters atmosphere can come up. If you don't have any comparison value between human scale size and craft size, you're entirely on your own.

[Atgxtg]

.gbx files are Game Boxes from Cyberboard. Go to the Cyberboard website CyberBoard or the download site CyberBoardfor an excellent program to model board games. I draw all my maps in Cyberboard now.

Ah, thanks.:thumb:

[frogspawner]

Diceless? We need some way to add that back in though. Is it mainly a fleet against fleet game, or is it for one on ones too? The players will probably sit in only one spaceship, and would want to use some of their skills to influence the outcome.

Yes, diceless. Miss/Hit/Special/Crit is determined by cross-referencing secretly-selected tactics (attack/defend/retreat) and speed difference. If you're interested, see the rules here: WarpWar Rules

Rather like BRP/RQ itself, it's best for one-against-one, or up to about half-a-dozen a side. So the players could have a fighter each, or all-in-one, or whatever. IIRC, it's quite difficult to completely destroy ships - aiding character survivability!

As I said before, adding-in complications (like crew skill-rolls) should still end up with a fairly simple system, as it's so simple to start with.

I did a similar thing a few years ago when adding skill-rolls into an on-line 'EnGarde!' combat program - and that's a similarly diceless combat system.

[Atgxtg]

General Heads Up for Everyone:

Okay, before we get into the nuts and bolts any futher, I just want to make it clear that this is brainstoriming. I might express preferecnes, but, especially at this stage in the design process, any one take is as good as any onther. Left-to Right, Right to Left, whatever. So I'm mostly throw out a lot of options.

Just wanted to get that out there.

I wouldn't necessarily be too slavish about +8 SIZ doubles mass. If you have super-massive ships then you have to work out mass, engine thrust and so on. I'd keep things relative and rough.

Well, I've been tinkering with using either (STR/SIZ) or STR-SIZ to get a move rate. Since STR is measuring the thrust of the Engines and SIZ is the mass of the ship, and both are rated on the same scale , the who doubling thing won't factor into it. So a SIZ 10 ship with a STR 10 engine would move as fast as a SIZ 100 ship with a STR 100 engine.

THe whole +8 doubling thing would be for IF we give a ship a number of SPACES to put in shipboard systems. So a SIZ 18 ship would have twice as many SPACES as a SIZ 10 ship.

Well, yes and no. If you have power drain through equipment use then you need to track it. You either have enough power to do something or you don't.

Maybe. There is more than one way to skin a cat (sorry Badcat). One apporach is the marking off of Energy points each turn. But a less complicated method would be to assume that a ship was designed to produce enough energy to operate everything on board (that's how we design them today. No one has to turn off the coffee pot to work the radar). We have power drain through equipment use in the real world, yet in RPGs we rarely have to track things like how long a flashlight or MP3 player will run, of if the PC plugged into the wall is going to suffer a sudden blackout.

I was thing Power Point/Magic Points were simply reserve power that was used to boost or reinforce things, like in many Sci-Fi shows, while the POW attribute is the generators. So I was only tracking spare energy.

What I'm thinking is that we could simply assume that power isn't a problem, UNTIL the ship gets damaged and then suffer the effects of reduced power.

In some cases we could allow for "brownout conditions" Many devices will work at reduced capacity if given a reduced charge. That works great with Magic World type powers doing double duty as high tech weapons and shields. Lose some power and the shields get weakened. Or we could simply restrict the number of systems usable at one time.

For instance, what if the total number of "items" a ship could power at once was equal to it's POW attribute.? Damage tot he generators could reduce the POW score, and force the players to decide just what systems to turn off.

Perhaps, but how would you model a situation where the generators are dead and you only have enough Life Support for 4 hours (Standard Star Trek Episode Number ???)? That's why I think you need some kind of power requirement for Life Support, it causes you to make life or death choices. Do I cut the power to Life Support so that I can charge the batteries enough to make a Hyper-Jump even though it means some of our crew members could die?

Well, you could go with my POW option and say a POW 10 ship can spend 10 POW fa turn for free and cover both bases.

Or you could go with the way it is handled in Decipher's Star Trek RPG. Life Support is treated like hit points, and takes damage. In that game you can reroute power from one system to another, reducing one score to raise the other. Sort of like lowering CON to raise STR in BRP terms.

Or you could treat it as Life Support damage, give the shipa battery with a time limit, rather than in points, and force the payers into either repairing the generator or putting on their vacc suits while the run the engines.

Itn't it amazing how in SciFi no one even seems to use a Space Suit or the facilities of a life boat/escape pod when life support is on the fritz? :confused:

Don't they have safety regulations in the future? :eek:

I think we'd need to hack out some rules, then build some spaceships and see how the rules go. You know, almost like a playtest

I've started. Instead of putting it up here AFTER it's done, I opted to post some stuff first, see what the reaction is and try to see what direction most people seem to want to go in. I figure it was no sense writing something if I was the only one who liked it.

Plus this way I've got other people to shoulder the blame when other people STILL don't like it.

I've never played Star Fleet Battles, but it sounds like the kind of thing you might need to do. That's how Star Trek always did it, anyway. Star Wars doesn't really track power but does track system damage.

It's one way to do it. Most Star Trek RPGs have done it that way too. Basically a ship produces X amount of power and allocates it each turn amongst the various ship systems.

It does slow the game down, forces to track Energy expenditure in minute detail (and most people don"t like the Fatigue rules, and those are a lot simpler).

It isn't the only way to do it, and doesn't really fit Star Trek to well either. The only time power is ever a factor ion TV is when something has happened to the ship and it suddenly doesn't have enough to get by. Typically that means it has taken battle damage, or under some weird power draining effect.

Several RPGs don't track power, but simply track damage. Power outage could be such a damage (we could use adapt the BRP major woudnd chart if we wanted to).

Whatever the scale is, it needs to be consistent and needs to look reasonable. Also, we need to be able to put together some sample spaceships from other games/films/TV series to see how they work. That way, if we need a ship like a Battlestar then we can get a template, if we need something like a Sun Hawk then we have those stats.

Yup. And I got an idea on that, it's lower in the post.

Has anyone got rules for Babylon 5/Star Trek/Star Wars ship stats? It doesn't really matter what the system is, things should be easy to convert as long as we have relative values.