Quote from: O'BorgThree 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.

 O'Borg is quite correct.

 If a thread is started by one person but 6 to 7 people comment on it and do  responses...then I only need to read 7 of those 8 people to get an idea  of what the thread is about.  Plus folks have put the OP's comments in quote boxes.

 But yeah he is on my IL.
 The other day  I was thinking the word  Twit applied  , one letter different works just as well.

This "level of Detail" I might get accused of when writing up characters these days. Check some of the other threrads and see what I mean.

- Ed C.

Calculus?  Engineers?  FUCK BUT SOME PEOPLE NEED TO SUE THEIR MATH TEACHERS.

Inquisitor needs a calculator because you have to divide by 5?

Rolemaster needs a calculator because you have to divide by 5 and add a list of numbers?

Chivalry and Sorcery needs a calculator, I don't know why, adding double digit numbers I guess.

Now GURPS vehicles does need a calculator if you want more than one or two significant digits in your cube roots (I know I do), but it certainly doesn't involve any calculus.  I think Fire Fusion and Steel might have.  Interpolation might be elementary calculus, I'm not sure, I doubt it though.  I've never taken calculus but I didn't need a sidebar to tell me how to derive intermediary points on a chart.

WHAT DO THEY TEACH THEM IN THESE FUCKING SCHOOLS ANYHOW?

David J,
 At our store we have a copy of the GURPS Vehicle builder that was meant for GURPS 3/e  - its still sitting on the shelf. (actually it may be a replacement for one we sold)

 Even though I am running 4th edition - do you think it might be a useful purchase? I admit I'm not the greatest with math at times.  The GCA has made character design "Fun" , would the vehicle builder also have that effect ?

- Ed C.

Quote from: David JohansenWHAT DO THEY TEACH THEM IN THESE FUCKING SCHOOLS ANYHOW?

Mostly sex from what I hear.

Regardless: I am a math head, really I am. I do hard shit in my head pretty much instinctively. That doesn't mean I want to spend four hours fiddling with seat belt costs per part per seat when designing a vehicle for use in a game.  I've played with Fire Fusion & Steel, I've done Guns, Guns, Guns...

But that was when I was a lonely geek with nothing but time on my hands. Now I just want to fucking game, not do 'homework'.  I want useful, not exacting. I don't have TIME or ENERGY for exacting. And it has FUCK ALL to do with how hard math is or is not.  Hell, for all the bitching, Gurps character creation typically only includes basic addition and subtraction.... that is totalling up point costs. Guess what, Buckwheat, it ain't about the math, it's the workload. The man hours. The time it takes to do all that shit that is better spent rolling dice and kicking ass in the imaginary world of your run of the mill RPG world.

And I say that as a diehard GURPS fan.

Spikey ,
 You can play in my GURPS game any time.
 I like a player that knows his math better than I do.  I also keep a few "stock" characters hand on my GCA that only need minor "tweaks" to be usable as player characters.  These "tweaks" take less than 15 minutes or so before a game - then we're ready to go.

Actually had to use that option twice in the past 2 years.

- E.W.C.

In a RPG detail is really needed, much more than in a wargame because it rpgs you're going to see players trying to scavange the powerplant from that grav tank to repair their damaged starship with, or even bolt that grav tank's cannon onto a piece of heavy construction equipment tto make an improvised war machine. Knowing how much juice a powerplant puts out, what it runs on and weighs, etc. is important to role playing games where unimaginable things happen all the time.

Quote from: Dominus NoxIn a RPG detail is really needed, much more than in a wargame. . .

You were speaking of mechanical detail in your first post. Niow you're talking about purely descriptive detail. There is a difference. My first post herein addressed your first query.

In wargames mechanical detail is an absolute necessity as it's a given that tracking tabletop movement/troop formation/reaction/morale reaction/etc are fundamental parts of game play and, thus, must be detailed mechanically.

This is not true of RPGs. Heck, it wan't true of most RPGs until this century rolled around. The most notable exception would be the vehicle-centric RPG/wargame hybrids that I mentioned earlier (e.g., Mechwarrior, Heavy Gear, etc).

All of that said, actual descriptive detail has always been an important part of RPGs and I treasure it very much. The thing is, simply being descriptive doesn't require mechanical backing (if it did, you'd need to be a mathmetician to read a novel).

Koltar: Sadly, Ohio is way the heck off my beat.

Nox: Again, I don't need to know the exact output of a tank fusion engine vs. some sort of unobtanium starship engine to handle hair brained jury rigging schemes.  Jury rigging moves at the speed of plot, if you will.  

I've on occasion had times where the players came up with some fantastic scheme and I have turned to the rules all set to provide the 'official word' that they had succeeded... only to discover that there was no way, by the rules, they could ever succeed with what they had.   Like a fool I will announce same, watch everyone's faces fall, their enjoyment crushed and realize that it is not the fault of the players or the game, but that I, as the GM, must occasionally use 'handwavium' and my ability to apply my own judgement rather than cold rules.  Sheer density of rules can make these sitiuations MORE common, not less. I'd rather have more abstraction for vehicles and salvaging, and I have found it in a variety of places.  Abstraction gives me the wiggle room for more enjoyable play.

Quote from: KoltarDavid J,
 At our store we have a copy of the GURPS Vehicle builder that was meant for GURPS 3/e  - its still sitting on the shelf. (actually it may be a replacement for one we sold)

 Even though I am running 4th edition - do you think it might be a useful purchase? I admit I'm not the greatest with math at times.  The GCA has made character design "Fun" , would the vehicle builder also have that effect ?

- Ed C.

The problem with GURPS Vehicles isn't the math it's the anal retentive focus on details that don't really add anything useful from a game perspective.  Those who've seen Galactic Adventures will know that I think it's pretty futile to try differentiating power plant and fuel types.  Seriously, they'll use the appropriate power plant for a system of the size they're building and the difference between two fuel types is generally counterbalanced by the weight of the storage system.

Would I use the software?  Yeah, probably if I had it, I use GURPS Character Assistant pretty heavily for pregenerated characters.  I prefer to make characters with the book and a pencil, but people can read a printout better than my handwriting.

Nope, focus is on the bare minimum detail for in play. I do like some sort of consistent process or system applied for some semblance of difference between different equipment.

Ideal overall design system BESM or Dream Pod 9's VCS (free version here) for use with Silhouette. The Mecha d20 SRD is pretty good too, being pretty much BESM's Own Big Mecha on 11 for d20. All are effects based design systems as opposed to trying to model some sort of fictional reality. The BESM systems were designed mostly by David Pulver so he's not *just* GURPS Vehicles level detail.

Nods to CT book 2 & the presentation and writing in TNE's FFS. I also appreciate FFS's unrealized attempt at allowing for multiple technology assumptions and settings.

Never gotten into GURPS Vehicles and mixing Imperial and Metric in the same design system tends to make my brain hurt for Modern-Science Fiction gaming. Gun design is for gun bunnies and most games don't differ enough to warrent much design work or detail. In general most "reality" based systems don't hold up to reality as much as they claim to (if gearhead arguments and tweaking are any indication) and for me are too much work and detail for little added gain when in play.

Oh and wargames can have much more overall levels of detail. See "monster wargames" and the ones where you have to track every barrel of oil, roll of toilet paper and such for an entire theater level campaign. :raise:

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?

See, I don't like GURPS Vehicles for the reasons you do. All of those figures...volume, space, kilowatts, horsepower...might as well be arbitrary numbers. There's just enough real world math that goes into it to make the numbers seem right (also called a Goldilocks number), but it's not a solid enough basis. If it's going to be an abstraction it might as well be...an abstraction.

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

SilCore. Vehicles are comprised of an armor rating, size rating, manueverability score, movement modes, some weapons, and some perks and flaws and that's it. That's all I really need anyway. My theory is that if I'm going to modify or ignore things like volume, space, etc. the system might as well too. Otherwise, my next favorite is Mekton Zeta Plus because while it has subassemblies and space and weight and all that fun stuff...it allows me to ignore them when I want to.

Quote from: Dominus NoxIn a RPG detail is really needed, much more than in a wargame because it rpgs you're going to see players trying to scavange the powerplant from that grav tank to repair their damaged starship with, or even bolt that grav tank's cannon onto a piece of heavy construction equipment tto make an improvised war machine. Knowing how much juice a powerplant puts out, what it runs on and weighs, etc. is important to role playing games where unimaginable things happen all the time.

You don't need a detailed vehicle design system for that, you just need enough information and internal consistency in the game world itself. All a vehicle design system needs to do is represent the vehicle in whatever mechanical terms it needs. Everything else is just fluff.