Ok, confession time. In addition to cross lightings and lynchings, I like gurps vehicles, the third edition one.

Yes, its a pain to be a vehicle in it, but by god when you're done you know damn near everything you could ever need to know about the vehicle you've designed. Mass, power output in kilowatts, available space, the weight, size and power consumption of sub assemblies, fuel endurance, cost, how many men it can carry/support, everything.

The level of detail in gurps vehicles was really complete, and with it your cplyers could even scavenge parts, power sources, fuel, ammo, etc.

Well, having read thru my used copy of UT4e, I was initially pleased to see that there were some UT vehicles.

Then I saw the "stats" fo them and was crushed. I mean the stats were very, very limited and vague in the extreme.

Subassemblies? Fuhgeddabouddit! Weapon arcs? Ha!

Even traveller 4, a disaster by most reckonings, had far more detailed vehicles in it.

MAybe they think some people like a near total lack of detail, but I'm worried that this doesn't look good for gurps gearheads.


Anyway, how much detail do you want in vehicles, equipment, weapons, etc, in your systems? Do you like a level equal to gurps vehicles or do you want the barest notes like armor, hp, turn radius, weight and the weapons caries, but not the arcs or mount details?

What vehicle/construction systems do you like and why? What level of detail do they posess?

I like the ship design in Serenity, especially the "what went wrong" table.

Basically you make your ship with the normal character creation rules, they give advice on using stats from civil war era ships and some of the terminolgy is changed/altered to better fit but at the end of the day the ship becomes another member of the party.

I find the Mekton Zeta Advanced Technical Manual to be my perfect level of vehicle detail. I'll just sit around and build hardsuits and sub-orbital fighter-bombers and the tele-operated drones for the Porcupine Remote Assault Suit all day.

When I'm not engaging in over-ambitious conversion projects, of course.

Back when I still played Cyberpunk 2020, I was designing a sourcebook for CP style street racing, sort of Fast & the Furious meets Car Wars. It was insanely crunchy, but you could feed in real world vehicle data and the performance stats coming out the far end were accurate to a percent or two to actual road test results.

I liked GURPS vehicles 3e to a point.  However it had the annoying and niggling problem of being unable to simulate the effects of a great many sf vehicles such as the ships from Mote In God's eye that had fuel dependant engines capable of accelrating at 3g for hours on end.

Also, GURPS Vehicles had weird effects on small vehicles because they went with base weight + weight per kilowatt (or whatever) instead of having a rule to reflect reduced efficiencies in smaller engines etc.

I'm sorry Mr. Pulver, you're brilliant, you really are but I'm holding a quarter pound Cox 0.5 one cylinder gas engine in my hand and it breaks your masterpiece vehicle design system like a twig.

I love detail, but listing a price for seatbelts?  C'mon, let's not be silly, you shouldn't even be adding up the price of the parts to find the total price.  It just doesn't work that way.

I dare you to find an item that actually costs what the sum of its parts do.

But yes, I think this rant illustrates that I am indeed a detail freak and GURPS Vehicles never quite went far enough for me.

I like a lower amount of detail, largely because I just don't want to spend the time statting out every little thing.

I do admit, however, to having had a good time tweaking my character's SMG in a Shadowrun 3rd game.  The only downside to it was not munchkining the system.  When there are lots of nifty little options I tend to look to what's most efficient, which spoils a bit of the fun.

When I was a teenager, I was a real "gearhead" with TRAVELLER - used to make all sorts of ship designs with the old High Guard design system.

 As I got older....I switched to other game systems, first to the FASA version  STAR TREK RPG, then to 1st edition GURPS.  With the FASA TREK game , I did a few ship designs  - but that level of design never appealed to me as much as it had when I was a teenager.

 Think I've done an almost complete transition in gaming style as a GM. I worry more about the plots, story and characters  (especially characters and NPCs) than about the machines they use.  Vehicles and machines just get the characters into the story - so I just worry about the numbers that might impact combat or the plot . OR I put up a question on a gaming forum and someone else who is more into match appears these days happily willing to work out the numbers. (see a bunch of old threads on the SJG forums fall of 2005  about Marcucci vs. I.M.S.  Margaret Thatcher  to see what I mean )


 Now I put that same level of  detail into making characters and NPCs. The GCA (Gurps Character Assistant) has become my favorite tool before a game session. It almost makes "math" fun.

- Ed C.

I like using Tri-Stat BESM to build my spaceships!

What, all vehicles? Sure. It's my favorite system to do so in.

Quote from: Dominus NoxAnyway, how much detail do you want in vehicles, equipment, weapons, etc, in your systems? Do you like a level equal to gurps vehicles or do you want the barest notes like armor, hp, turn radius, weight and the weapons caries, but not the arcs or mount details?

What vehicle/construction systems do you like and why? What level of detail do they posess?

Well, I like the Savage Worlds sytem, just because it is concise and simple, but especially because it uses the same rules for all vehicles (and the same system for using them as the rest of the game).

For me it depends on what I am running or playing.  Cyberpunk games with a heavy focus on combat and vehicle use need some detail.  But a Vampire game revolving around the politics element does not.

I used to love the Car Wars game, constantly building and rebuilding vehicles trying to squeeze out every thing I could for an advantage.

Ah well....

Quote from: KoltarWhen I was a teenager, I was a real "gearhead" with TRAVELLER - used to make all sorts of ship designs with the old High Guard design system.

 As I got older....I switched to other game systems, first to the FASA version  STAR TREK RPG, then to 1st edition GURPS.  With the FASA TREK game , I did a few ship designs  - but that level of design never appealed to me as much as it had when I was a teenager.

 Think I've done an almost complete transition in gaming style as a GM. I worry more about the plots, story and characters  (especially characters and NPCs) than about the machines they use.  Vehicles and machines just get the characters into the story - so I just worry about the numbers that might impact combat or the plot . OR I put up a question on a gaming forum and someone else who is more into match appears these days happily willing to work out the numbers. (see a bunch of old threads on the SJG forums fall of 2005  about Marcucci vs. I.M.S.  Margaret Thatcher  to see what I mean )


 Now I put that same level of  detail into making characters and NPCs. The GCA (Gurps Character Assistant) has become my favorite tool before a game session. It almost makes "math" fun.

- Ed C.

Jeezus, for someone who claims to have me on their IL and therefore can't read my posts you sure darken my threads a lot.

Kind of dumb, replying to threads when you can't, supposedly, even read them.

Quote from: Dominus NoxAnyway, how much detail do you want in vehicles, equipment, weapons, etc, in your systems?

In systems where vehicles aren't the primary focus of the game (e.g., most RPGs), I like as little mechanical detail as possible. I treat vehicles in such games as movie directors and writers treat them (i.e., as scenery).

In systems where vehicles are the primary focus of the game (e.g., Robotech, Heavy Gear, etc), I like robust mechanics to represent them in actual play -- not crazy calculus-driven stuff, mind you, but at least some workable miniature combat rules.

Quote from: Dominus NoxJeezus, for someone who claims to have me on their IL and therefore can't read my posts you sure darken my threads a lot.

Kind of dumb, replying to threads when you can't, supposedly, even read them.

Three things :

• You're a twat.
• He might just have been responding to other people in the thread without reading your post.
• You're a twat.

Now I realise that points 1 and 3 are identical, but I really felt the statement needed the extra emphasis.

Here is my take: Most of us are not engineers. Those of us who happen to be engineers probably don't want to 'work' while playing a game.  Even those freaks who are engineers who LIKE doing games that reflect their job are not working on a significantly high tech level than the rest of us.

Ergo: I no longer have the desire or energy to play with every fiddly bit of engineering gobblygook a designer can plug into a game. I'd rather be, you know, gaming.


In other words: Yes, I am painfully aware that firefly has about as much logic and internal consistency as Calvinball.  Yet, oddly, as long as I chose not to wince at every bit of foolishness that Joss Whedon feels compelled to stick in there I can enjoy it just fine, and even pimp it out to non-fans as an entertaining show/diversion.  Just like I can enjoy a good game of Calvinball.


Its a bad sign when the tech/logic of Farscape seems absolutely HARD compared to what goes on in Firefly/Serenity.


EDIT:::: 4: You're a Twat.

Quote from: SpikeHere is my take: Most of us are not engineers. Those of us who happen to be engineers probably don't want to 'work' while playing a game.  Even those freaks who are engineers who LIKE doing games that reflect their job are not working on a significantly high tech level than the rest of us.

Ergo: I no longer have the desire or energy to play with every fiddly bit of engineering gobblygook a designer can plug into a game. I'd rather be, you know, gaming.

I agree. But I'm a 100 octane petrolhead
With the system I was building, the crunch was in the background at vehicle generation stage. Actual play would be using some real world factors like top speed and accelleration (which is a stone cold b'stard to calculate, btw) and some abstract stats like handling and grip.