Quote from: Simlasa;628352There was a GURPS Space Opera book? Somehow I missed that... or do you mean GURPS Lensman or Tales of the Solar Patrol?

GURPS Space is very good too, just to flesh things out.

There was a GURPS Space Opera Combat System that first appeared in GURPS Lensman and then in Compendium II for third edition.  It's a fun little system that has a nice tactical feel without actually needing a map or miniatures.

Quote from: JeremyR;627472There really needs to be a Car Wars in space.

In that it was pretty easy to make your cars and they more or less made sense.

And since the system had RVs and later semis, it should scale up at last to the small freighter level, if not huge ships.

Didn't starfleet battles do car wars in space

Quote from: Spike;628059Rather than quote and post a dozen times, I'll try again to consolidate:

Pundit: I like the Traveller combat rules, being, like the rest of the system, functional and easy, and I think the design system isn't any deeper than it needs to be.  I just found it has flaws that make it harder for me to accept than need be.

David: Don't have the vehicles book, but as I noted, I do like the Silent Death ship creation, though I do miss the non-combat elements of design for obvious reasons.

Amacris: I used to have Mekton-Z, pretty much all of the R.Talsorian games actually (including Teenagers from Outer Space!), but that was many years ago, and I don't trust my memory to make any judgements on the design system (which I did use for robots..). I could, on a semi-related note, cover the vehicle system from Heavy Gear, etc, which could also cover space craft, but didn't.

mcbobbo&phillip: I never was fond enough of the WEG starwars to try the D6 system, so I can't really say how their spaceships would fare against my terribly rigid standards, sorry.

Blackhand: I actually have the PDF files for Renegade Legion. I'm not terribly fond of reading PDFs, but I did somewhat regret missing this game during its heyday (though I do recall seeing the books for sale, they always had a problem of not giving me a good 'entry point'. With the PDFs I still had to work through four of them to find my 'starting point', as I recall...)

gliechman:  True enough. I could have mentioned Heroes, which is not terribly dissimilar from a lot of games I didn't mention, and some I did (Serenity, say?).  I don't actually mind such rules, they are fully functional and useful, but they don't scratch that itch.

You know what you want, you have the engineering chops.

Sounds like you should build your own ship design system.

Make it modular to play with traveller, d20 or a %d game like RM.
The design stuff should be the same across the different systems it's just the stats that need covering

Quote from: Spike;627453Recently I've been mucking about with my Mongoose Traveller quite a bit,...

I did not read it all.  If you design you own ship, rather than use the pre-built ones, then of course you can build a small tough ship to cause some alarm for much larger pre-built ships.

I just use Mongoose Traveller for all my RPG settings.  Sci-fi or otherwise.

Quote from: Spike;628059Rather than quote and post a dozen times, I'll try again to consolidate:

Pundit: I like the Traveller combat rules, being, like the rest of the system, functional and easy, and I think the design system isn't any deeper than it needs to be.  I just found it has flaws that make it harder for me to accept than need be.

No, sorry, Traveller is explicitly one of the games I'm thinking of when I say "too complicated".  For me, pretty much anything that involves point-buy or construction is too complicated, when it comes to starships... and unfortunately, that's how almost every sci-fi RPG does it.

I usually just ignore those rules and wing it.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Spike;627453Cars don't have 'bodies' because of aerodynamics (that came later), but because humans (and presumably sophont aliens) like covering shit up, hiding the guts.  

Car bodies are meant to protect the engine and more delicate machinery from the elements as well as aerodynamic concerns. I don't think people will put wings on spaceships because they like wings, but they will need to cover up a bit to protect against radiation surges, solar flares, micrometeorites etc, basically the same reason as cars.

External heat radiators are a key thing for starships so wing looking things are probably going to be there.  Structural strength and surface area both matter and a wing is a pretty good compromise.

I have two design systems, both are simpler than GURPS or Traveller but one is more detailed and fiddly and concerned with physical realities.

The most basic one is probably still too complex for the Pundit but you never know.  Assign ten hit location slots to rockets,  power plant, quarters, bays, fuel, ftl drive, shields, and weapons.  Slots can be subdivided.  The ship gets 1 g acceleration and 1 g hour of fuel for each rocket unit.  Armor can be multiplied by any factor but acceleration is divided by the same factor.  Life support, computers, crew stations and sensors are all assumed to be integrated parts of the ship's structure.  Hits are scaled relative to damage.  In Incandescent's case this is the cube root of volume, with damage scaling on the square root of weapon mass modified to reflect the weapon type.  But any scaling system that puts damage at a desired ratio to hits would work.

Hit location 1 is assumed to be the front of the ship and hit location 10 is assumed to be the back.  Hits to the front arc subtract 5 from rolls over 5 and hits to the back add 5 to rolls under 6.

Quote from: David Johansen;629033External heat radiators are a key thing for starships so wing looking things are probably going to be there.

I agree.

Also, good looks tend to be a selling point as long as the performance tradeoff is not too great: value judgements all around. Peacocks, sports cars -- space ships?

Finally, it's science fiction, no?

Quote from: RPGPundit;628721I usually just ignore those rules and wing it.

I usually ignore Striker (or other reference for other RPG) and wing it on the rare occasion when something like a rocket getting shot at a tank comes up. The starship rules in classic Traveller (from Book 2 to High Guard and Mayday) have seen more use in my games because more players found the fun worth the investment of time.

Quote from: David Johansen;629033The most basic one is probably still too complex for the Pundit but you never know.  Assign ten hit location slots to rockets,  power plant, quarters, bays, fuel, ftl drive, shields, and weapons.  Slots can be subdivided.  The ship gets 1 g acceleration and 1 g hour of fuel for each rocket unit.  Armor can be multiplied by any factor but acceleration is divided by the same factor.  Life support, computers, crew stations and sensors are all assumed to be integrated parts of the ship's structure.  Hits are scaled relative to damage.  In Incandescent's case this is the cube root of volume, with damage scaling on the square root of weapon mass modified to reflect the weapon type.  But any scaling system that puts damage at a desired ratio to hits would work.

Personally my preference is to have the rules to create ships but also have two hundred and thirty eight premade ship types with simple customisation options, particularly as regards weapons.

I find it amusing that the OP suggests he wishes to avoid a big wall of text, and then posts one.

Quote from: RPGPundit;628721No, sorry, Traveller is explicitly one of the games I'm thinking of when I say "too complicated".  For me, pretty much anything that involves point-buy or construction is too complicated, when it comes to starships... and unfortunately, that's how almost every sci-fi RPG does it.

I usually just ignore those rules and wing it.

RPGPundit

I don't really understand this position.

To me, taking the time to craft a ship using the design rules of the game is not that different from crafting a good physical location for an adventure or campaign. It is easier in science fiction than in fantasy because there are usually rules for ship design that integrate with space or personal combat and the skill system of the game, something which tends to be absent from fantasy games - thus causing GMs to 'wing it' in the creation of their physical settings.

A ship can also be an extra character in the game, not neccessarily as in an AI driven craft played as a PC, but as an integral part of the adventurer team. Examples are legion, from the Millenium Falcon to Space Battleship Yamato to the Enterprise to the Galactica to Macross/SDF-1. In this manner, the Players can care for the ship and be emotionally invested in its condition while playing, which I have found, increases the fun of playing a tabletop SFRPG.

Quote from: jeff37923;629270I don't really understand this position.

You must take into account Pundits limits, both his inability to deal with rules and his overwhelming desire to get everything his way.

Starship Construction rules run afoul of both vices- requiring a tiny amount of skill and knowledge on one hand, and limiting things to what the game considers reasonable on the other.

Quote from: jibbajibba;628371Didn't starfleet battles do car wars in space

Somewhat, although you could not really design our own ships.  It was also the most insanely complicated thing I have ever played.