Quote from: Votan;629292Somewhat, although you could not really design our own ships.  It was also the most insanely complicated thing I have ever played.

Power allocation was crazy in SFB.

Car Wars in space is closer to Mayday or Star Cruiser, for 2300AD although you could not design your own ships in Mayday. Maybe WarpWar qualifies, but combat was pretty simple in that microgame.

I’ve been enjoying the idea of my next science fiction game perhaps using Buck Rogers XXVc.  Now, before one jumps on the game for the way it was produced, rather than the game itself, consider that it was designed by Mike Pondsmith.  I find it to be a pretty good somewhat hard science fiction game.  Here are the full ship construction rules for this very out of print game.   It's a long excerpt, which I brought to this text format specifically for this post, but it will never see print again. So, a longer excerpt is fine in this case.  I find these construction rules to be pretty succinct.  The ship combat rules place the characters in the center of the game, rather than the ship.  

Mike, if you happen by here, thanks for the work on this one, which I imagine you wish turned out better handled by TSR.  If you have anything you would like to share about the game, it would be cool to hear them.

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SHIP CONSTRUCTION

Designing a rocket ship is a lot like designing a character; there are attributes, hit points, weapons, and armor to be determined and selected. But unlike character attributes, ship attributes are not determined by using dice. Instead, they are directly related to the tonnage of ship.



TONNAGE

The first thing you'll need to consider when building or buying a rocket cruiser is its tonnage. A common misconception is that because rockets are often called "ships," they must weigh as much as Earth-type watercraft (which can be upwards of 100,000 tons). In reality, a rocket ship is actually a rather sophisticated aircraft. With the exception of battlers, 25th-Century ships are capable of flying in atmosphere just like other aircraft (and even battlers need to visit the fringes of an atmosphere periodically), which requires that they be as light as possible.

Tonnage is expressed in multiples of 5 (a 32-ton ship, for example, is not possible). Table 30 gives standard tonnages for common ship types in the XXVc™ game.

Table 30: Standard Tonnages

Ship type: tonnage

Fighter: 10-20
Asterover: 20-30
Scout Cruiser: 20-50
Light Freighter: 30-50
Heavy Freighter: 55-80
Medium Cruiser: 55-200
Light Transport: 80-200
Heavy Transport: 205-350
Large Cruiser: 205-500
Space Liner: 500-800
Battler: 1000-5000



LENGTH AND WIDTH

The length of a rocket is determined by multiplying the tonnage by 2. Thus, a 50-ton rocket is 100 feet long.

The width of the rocket is determined by dividing the tonnage by 2 (rounding down). Our 50-ton, 100-foot long rocket is 25 feet thick.



CARGO

All 25th-Century rockets have some cargo space; even on the smallest ships, there's room for provisions and personal belongings of the crew members. Cargo space is measured in tons and is determined by dividing the overall tonnage of the ship by 2. For example, a ship weighing 30 tons can carry 15 tons of cargo. Cargo space can be traded for weaponry at a cost of 10 tons of cargo space per weapon, or vice versa. (Installing weapons is covered later in this chapter.)



SPEED AND MANEUVERABILITY

Speed is also a factor of tonnage. The more your ship weighs, the less quickly it will be able to accelerate and move, even with its larger engines. For a standard ship design, speed is rated from 1 to 5. Most of the time, speed is used in a combat situation to see who can outrun whom. It also comes into play when a ship is moving above the surface of a planet. (See the section on Space Travel later.)

Maneuverability is the equivalent of the ship's Dexterity, and is also based on the ship tonnage. Instead of being a single number, maneuverability is represented by two figures: a ship's Reaction Bonus (used to help determine who wins initiative, just as in character-vs.-character combat) and its AC Defense Bonus, which modifies the ship's basic Armor Class (see below). Table 31 contains the speed and maneuverability figures for standard ships of certain tonnages.

Table 31: Speed and Maneuverability

Tonnage 5- 15; Speed: 5, Reaction Bonus: -2, AC Defense Bonus: -4
Tonnage 20- 45; Speed: 4, Reaction Bonus: -1, AC Defense Bonus: -2
Tonnage 50-100; Speed: 3, Reaction Bonus: 0, AC Defense Bonus: 0
Tonnage 105-200; Speed: 2, Reaction Bonus: 0, AC Defense Bonus: +1
Tonnage 205-500; Speed: 1, Reaction Bonus: +1, AC Defense Bonus: +2
Tonnage 505 and up; Speed: 1, Reaction Bonus: +2, AC Defense Bonus: +3 or more  



HIT POINTS

Ships have hit points just as characters and creatures do, but instead of being an overall figure, these points are allocated to each of a ship's six major sections. These six sections, and the hit points that each section has, are as follows:

1) Hull: Hit points equal to ship's tonnage X 4.
2) Sensors/Commo: Tonnage x 1.
3) Controls: Tonnage x 1.
4) Life Support: Tonnage x 2.
5) Fuel System: Tonnage x 3.
6) Engine: Tonnage x 3.

For example, a 30-ton ship would have the following hit points in each of its sections:

Hull 30 x 4 = 120
Sensors/Commo 30 x 1 = 30
Controls 30 x 1 = 30
Life Support 30 x 2 = 60
Fuel 30 x 3 = 90
Engine 30 x 3 = 90

In ship vs. ship combat, every hit on a vessel causes damage to one of its sections. If the hit point total of a section is reduced to 0, it is unable to function. (For more information, see the chapter on Space Combat.)



ARMOR CLASS

As with characters, Armor Class defines the quality of a ship's basic protection: the strength of its hull, whether it has electronic jamming devices, and other special defensive features. There are four basic Armor Class ratings:

AC 8, or Civilian armor, is used on most nonmilitary ships, including transports, freighters, asterovers, and some cruisers.
AC 6, or Military armor, can be placed on any type of ship and is standard for fighters.
AC 4, or Maximum Military armor, is usually found only on cruisers of 100 tons or more.
AC 0, or Battler Class armor, is found only on battlers.



WEAPONS

The last step in constructing a ship is to add weapons. Each ship gets a maximum number of weapon spaces equal to its tonnage divided by 10 (rounded down). Some weapons that can be installed on ships will take up more than one weapon space. (See Table 32, in the following section on Buying a Ship, for more information on weapon costs and weapon spaces.)

(Table 32: Ship Replacement Parts

Part:  Cost (cr)
Sensor/Commo Unit: 4000-6000
Controls Unit: 3000-5000
Life Support Module: 7000-9000
Fuel System: 8000-10000
Nuclear Engine: 20000-40000

Weapons (and # of spaces required):
Beam Laser (1): 1000
Pumped Laser (2): 1500
Gyrocannon (1): 2000
Missile Mount (1): 2000
Ught Acceleration Gun (1): 2500
Heavy Missile Mount (2): 3000
Heavy Acceleration Gun (2): 5000
K-Cannon (5): 10000) [Buck Rogers XXVc: Character & Combat 79]



DESIGN YOUR OWN

Page 94 of this book contains a form that you can use to create ships of your own design, with spaces for all of the vessel's statistics plus an area for a few lines of description or other notes on what makes this ship special. Once you've filled out a form, you can use it during the play of an adventure the same way that you would use one of the Ship Data Cards in the game box.



VARIATIONS

In this section, we're trying to give you a general idea of the characteristics of 25th-Century rocket ships, but we can't possibly cover all the varieties of ships that can and do exist.

The statistics and tables in this section are meant as guidelines, not as limitations. For instance, when we say that a ship of 15 tons or less has a speed of 5, we're talking about a standard ship of that size.

When you design ships to populate your game universe, you can build in any sort of variety that seems reasonable.

Mike Pondsmith, Buck Rogers XXVc Science Fiction Roleplay Game: Characters & Combat 77-78 (TSR Inc. 1990).

I've always liked XXVc and felt it got a bad rap.

Quote from: gleichman;629273You 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.

I know that you think game rules are your only friends, dude, but you know that they can't actually "consider" anything "reasonable" or otherwise... they're not actually people.  Its sad that you relate to them rather than to, say, human interaction or physical reality, but I think its important that someone try to remind you that RPG rules aren't actually alive.


RPGPundit

Quote from: jeff37923;629270I 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.

That's the thing: "crafting a physical location" is a lot easier when you actually just do it the organic way: you think up some terrain or  you draw a map. You don't go around using point-buy to try to build a physical environment (unless you're gleichman), because that would be retarded if you were anyone other than someone incapable of relating to reality on a level other than the mechanistic (what we could call gleichman-syndrome).

And yet, SF-rpgs constantly want you to jump from the standard way of designing setting components in RPGs to suddenly having point buy and hardpoints and heat synchs and tonnage and all this other bullshit; which I understand is there mainly as a relic-holdover from wargames, and of course some gamers like that part of it because it turns spaceship combat into a little wargame, which is fine if that's what you're looking for.

But if you're not, then its not really useful at all. And in many cases (when you're talking about licensed settings, mainly) I find it to be anti-emulative.

RPGPundit

I don't use starship construction rules from RPGs to build my ships.  I'll look over that chapter's rules once and then start eyeballing the size of my ship and what it will have compared to the example ships in the book.  I don't use a grid anymore on the deckplans.  Player characters are free to move about the cabin.

I pretty much referee a game in real time, so determining skill/combat rolls are very quick.  I don't use combat rounds or initiative.  Players know if their character's back is turned, so they can't just shoot someone that is behind them.  Players like to role-play struggling eachother for that alien artifact in the briefcase that a player is threatening to drop down the waste shute.  One player says his character is drawing his sword and wants to cut the other player characters had off (to get the briefcase).  They both roll and then (sometimes) damage gets rolled, too.  That's when the ship's medic gets involved, or not.

As fast as you read that last paragraph, that's how fast the action occured in my last session where sword damage did separate a hand from a ship's captain.  This is the ship they are on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46GKDNh2bz8

Are you considering taking your pen to a science fiction game Pundit?

The Buck construction treats ships pretty much like a type of simple henchmen in their generation.  The Buck universe is so ill defined that emulation becomes rather unattainable.  So, one must set it some place.  The Buck description is so spare that it seems oddly plausible.

I think a lot of players like a consistent way to build them for a setting.  It provides a feel for the setting, and there are special issues with those interested in science fiction.  The finer details of a setting become a lot more important.  It's a challenge to make them happy in this regard.

I do like it when the players are kept the focus of starship combat.  The Enterprise doesn't win the day because it is a nice ship, in a sense it is just a sword.  It is because of Kirk!  Well, his crew helped him a little too.  So, ya Pundit, the way you describe your requirements and how Shawn house-rules such things gel for me too.  Really, it just depends on the players.  Sometimes a more wargame approach is cool, sometimes not.

Mostly what I do is stay out of the players' way.  I'm just the ref.  So far, my players are not breaking rules.  They want to role-play.  They accquired a ship from a gambler that lost.  Went into jump space with the thing.  And discovered two frozen passengers onboard that are now pissed off that there is a new captain running things and that they won't be going to the planet they thought they were.

The players (6 players now) are going cabin fever in the thing now after two days of jump space together.  Lots of back-stabbing going on.  One player has already set the ship to explode if he doesn't get his way.  The other players don't know he did this yet.

Quote from: Kuroth;629795Are you considering taking your pen to a science fiction game Pundit?

Can't say that I am, for now. I'd have to get really inspired...

RPGPundit

Quote from: The Traveller;629213Personally 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.

Deep 7 did this for their 1PG games. They featured a vehicle creation system in the 1PG companion (which included rules for starships). Then in a supplement for Star Legion called Blastoff, featured various starship examples. Not as many as you list, but there is a decent array of examples for use in Star Legion games.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;629786I don't use starship construction rules from RPGs to build my ships.  I'll look over that chapter's rules once and then start eyeballing the size of my ship and what it will have compared to the example ships in the book.  I don't use a grid anymore on the deckplans.  Player characters are free to move about the cabin.

Yes, very this.  Why reinvent the wheel, unless it really, really matters?