Have you ever actually used the rules for designing your own ships in any Sci-fi RPG?

If so, what's the weirdest thing you ever designed with any rules?

What was the goofiest?

I used "Star Strike" , which is space ship combat for Spacemaster.
It has a VERY detailed space ship design system.
I didn't design much that was weird or goofy though.

More recently I used the ship design rules that come with the "Stars without number" Scifi RPG.
I designed several space ships.
One of which was kind of odd. Not so much in the physical design itself, but in that a Powerful "Unbraked" AI controlled it.
In SWN, unbraked AI are pretty dangerous, as they sort of go "skynet" on humans.. .

It had been modded by it's previous owners so it was sort of braked, but it wasn't a very good job and kind of made the AI functional at a much lower level, but also unstable..
If at any stage that bodge job of braking it was broken, the crew would have had a powerful, unbraked and very angry AI on their hands which had access to all systems on the ship.

I remember using the rules for Star Frontiers and FASA's Star Trek. They were easy. Doing the same in Traveller and 2300AD were a pain. I only really remember the huge freakin warships I made for Star Trek, trying to outdo those dreadnoughts.

Isn't shipbuilding in Traveller (the original) a game unto itself?

I've used the starship construction rules in Mekton Empire and the Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator Starship Construction Manual 2nd edition.

With Mekton Empire I made a lot of ships based off stuff in Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato.  With Star Trek, I mostly made photon missile boats.

I made up a starship with Mekton Zeta Plus once which was supposed to have an AI in human form walking the halls, controlling it.  But the way I wrote it down, the first person who saw it just saw the "'oid" multiplier on one page and thought the entire ship turned into a girl, and since I didn't have Expanding Plasma anywhere, he thought I had created a 2 mile long starship that turned into a 10,000 foot tall girl.

I've made a lot of strange things with the StarCluster ship design tools, mostly testing them out to see just how strange I could make a ship. Probably the strangest was an "Ark", with cold sleep storage for animals, and an enormous nature park.

-clash

I guess this is also a chance to mention my homebrew starship game.  Some friends and I made just about every starship we could think of in that.

Someone made the smiley ship from Heavy Metal.  Mechanically, it wasn't very interesting.  It just had good movement and a few level 3 weapons (phasers).  But it had a lot of hull.

One guy made an Imperial Star Destroyer which he declared was pink and captained by a clown.  So it wasn't really an odd starship design, but it was certainly an odd player.

One of my favorites was a Klingon D-7 (old TV style) with hidden panels in the wings which would raise up and reveal a dozen photorp launchers.  

Between several of us, we designed most of the ships from Star Control.  One player had the Spathi Intruder in his official fleet.  He took particular glee whenever he could get behind an enemy flagship and use the B.U.T.T. missile.

Tramp Freighters from Westend d6 Star Wars (by M. Rein-Hagen too!) Does that count?

Yes.

First did that for Space Quest - I seem to recall designing a ship was more or less required to be able to play the game. I liked the 3D star maps that you generated in Space Quest. It beat the 2D maps most space games used.

Traveller - most of us know how that goes. High Guard was helpful for capital scale naval vessels.

FASA Star Trek. Our campaign was in between TOS and TNG so I made a fair number of ships (either new or upgrades) to flesh out the fleet. After a year or two of play our crew was promoted from a Scout Ship to the Saratoga, an experimental vessel with an AI central computer named SARA. (something Artificial Rationcinating Architecture).

WEG Star Wars - modified a fair number of tramp freighters and designed a fair number of capital and other ships though much of that was less system based and more just sticking numbers that seemed reasonable. Several of the game canon ships had numbers that didn't seem to make much sense so I changed a fair few of those as well.

Quote from: RPGPundit;831193Have you ever actually used the rules for designing your own ships in any Sci-fi RPG?

Yes.

Quote from: RPGPundit;831193If so, what's the weirdest thing you ever designed with any rules?

An Auxiliary Personnel Transport for Mongoose Traveller which is in an asteroid hull that can cannibalize its own hull to manufacture equipment for the personnel  it transports. I'm working on it now....

Quote from: RPGPundit;831193What was the goofiest?

 I keep converting some stuff from old TV shows to WEG Star Wars. A couple of examples are attached below.

I use the heck out of starship design systems.

The weirdest/goofiest stuff I've done wasn't for an RPG, but rather using the design sequences in the old Silent Death tabletop space combat game. I think I.C.E. might have had an RPG based on that setting at one time, I'm not sure....

I don't have those ship designs any more, but I think the weirdest thing I did was a dedicated "blockade runner" ship. Big engines, lots of defensive systems, and some serious weaponry facing aft. Anyone pursuing that ship had a bad day. It was called the Hail Mary. Basically useless for anything else, but unstoppable when it came to blockade running. (Seriously, nobody ever stopped that ship. )

The goofiest ship ever is the PCs' ship in my current Savage Worlds campaign: a decrepit old salvage vessel with the all too fitting name of Coprolite.

Never designed a "weird" ship, but the one I liked best was the Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV) for GURPS: Traveller - actually got that one in the book. 100t. no-jump, high maneuver ship used in high-traffic starports/systems for rescues, fire, medical emergencies, etc.

I like design systems and Fire Fusion and Steel and GURPS Vehicles are my favorites.  Spacemaster Privateers gets honorable mention for having more errors and errata than the 600 page entirety of Traveller V.  But I haven't really done any weird ships.  A garbage scow converted into a mercenary transport.  A free trader that's been gutted and up enginned and upgunned into a gunboat.  A colonial transport and assorted subcraft.

I have designed three different vehicle design systems for Galactic Adventures, Galaxies In Shadow, and Incandescent and I'm well on my way to a fourth.

Quote from: David Johansen;831317Spacemaster Privateers gets honorable mention for having more errors and errata than the 600 page entirety of Traveller V.

Lol at Privateers, I bought the books many years ago and WANTED to like it, but it was such a mess I just gave up on it.

Star Frontiers: Great system. One ship was an Explorer that we outfitted with alot of Masking Screens. These were water pumped onto the hull which froze. We turned the ship into a small comet to cost in past an enemy blockade.

Universe: Pretty nice system. Oddly straightforward for so convoluted a game. Created a well armed freezerliner and made a fair profit running a line between several populous systems. The passengers were all in steerage suspended animation pods.

Mekton Zeta Plus: The sheer versatility of the system meant you could make some pretty nice ships that did or did not turn into giant robots. One player made a ship that disguised itself as a skyscraper. And rented it out...