Starship construction question

[tomodachi7]

Hello everyone, his is my frist post on the Forge. I am working on a FREE RPG set in the far future. I am trying to make the rules governing starship construction. Has anyone designed starship construction rules. Could someone point me in the direction please! I am having a hard time with it. I just start reading this forum so I Have yet to find any rules on starships.


               Watashi wa Tomodachi7 desu.

[clehrich]

Hi, Tomodachi7, and welcome to the Forge!

It's not free, but you might check out the Ships Book supplement of http://www.auroragames.com" target="blank">Aurora.  It's got a tremendous amount of detail about ships and their design, and is intended to be scientifically workable.  I did a lot of the editing and proofreading on the book, and there's a lot of material about what starships are, how they ought to work, and so forth.

But what sort of game are you designing?  I mean, do you want quick sketches with a lot of color, or do you want intricate detail and lots of background?  What's the game all about?

[Thomas Tamblyn]

Could you be a bit more specific?  What is your game about?  What sort of spaceships do you want to design?  WHy are they important enough to warrant their own system?

Having said that, here's some directions to head.

Probably the most complete and realistic (and most complicated) system for designing spaceships (or any other vehicle for that matter) is GURPS vehicles ( http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/vehicles) and it has an incredible amount of support on the internet.

Big Eyes Small Mouth handles vehicles based solely on WHAT they can do not WHy they can do it and does it reasonably simply at the expense of crunchy techy detail ( http://www.guardiansorder.com/besm)

Finally, FUDGE (and this ones free) handles vehicles in the same way as characters, by giving them certain attributes and ranking them just like you would a player character.  ( http://www.fudgerpg.com)

With regards provem systems, I think those are three pretty diverse approaches.

[tomodachi7]

Well the game that I am working on is centered around a space junkyard. So will all those ship parts eveywhere I want the players to slowly rebuild a ship as they play the game. One goals is to go out and look for parts. Now there is so much more to do than just look for parts all of the time. I want the players to have some say in which way the story unfolds.

Now I have only just started this project so I do not have anything to show you right now. Let me look at the links that have been given and see what I can come up with.

Please feel free to chime in if you have any ideas or thoughts.

Thank for your time.

                         Tomodachi7
                    Dozo yoroshiku

[anonymouse]

Heh! I recently (as in, past couple of days) had a thought along similar lines, except exploring more of a steampunk angle rather than future sci-fi.

Will be interested in seeing what kind of system you come up with. =)

[clehrich]

Okay, I think I get this.  You want going out and finding parts, as well as putting them together, to be a focal part of the game.  Consequently, following Mike's Rant #1 Principle, you want a very detailed system for that.  Hmm.

One thought that comes to me is that you might look at Ars Magica a bit.  There you went out and got vis, these bits of raw magical power that could be used for spells.  It came in 15 types, of varying rarity.  Then you had this very complicated Laboratory system for building things, designing spells, studying, and so forth.

By analogy, you could have a Yard system, involving all the crunchy techno bits of putting things together, fixing up old junk, designing new modifications, copying designs from photos and blueprints, and so forth.  

This would put a lot of actual play emphasis on the junkyard itself, but the characters would do their adventures in the wild and seedy world of going and getting stuff.  For example, you could have an adventure where the crew go off to salvage bits from an old derelict; unfortunately, when they start warming parts of it so they can work, they wake up the cryo-stasis inhabitants....  Or you go meet this shady guy who says he's got some genuine mint-condition Martian Particle Cannon power-supplies, which you happen to know can also be used to upgrade your secondary engine's lateral thrust bearings; thing is, he's got a price on his head with the people he stole these from, and they're likely to waste you if they realize you've got them now....  And so on.

Sounds fun.  Take a look at Ars Magica's lab system.  Anyone else know of a design and construction system that's fun to play, not just to use when designing characters and such?

[tomodachi7]

Well I have nothing in the from of system rules yet. But I have been doing some man gone mad brainstorming and I have come up with this.

Please tell me what you think..

The Junkyard
  Station 135 was a logistics service depot for the Yamato Shipyards until the great war ended. With the shipyards closed down life at Station 135 has been dull at best. Most of the people that made the Yamato shipyards one of the best in the galaxy have left for greener pastures leaving only a handful of people to run the station.

  A Junkyard has replaced the old industry of ship building. With the war over there was a large number warships that were no longer needed so the powers that be put away most of their toy into 5 big junkyards that were out of the way or hard to get to. Time pasted and the junk came from all over. The government sold three of the junkyards for cash to private companies. Now the junk bizz was good for the station it brought much needed money and people to the station. Some ships were given a new life after all the guns and armor was removed. Most how ever are striped for parts and then melted out for scrap.
  The players live on the station. They start their adventure working in the scrap pits all day striping ships of their useable parts. It's a job they hate. The players know that there is something better than that waiting for them. But what could be better than sweating over cutting torch trying to dislodge a power relay that is hopelessly fused to the power conduit. Then by chance or fate they get their shot that something better. Their boss comes to them one day he tells the players that his oldest son went deep into the junkyard to see what they could find and he has been gone for three days now witch is too long. He asks the players to go in there and bring his boy home. For your services he is willing to work out some kind of deal for the players to get their hands on a used ship hull that has already been striped down.

Now I will sit back and eat icecream and hopefully think about how I am going to put this project together...


                                         tomodachi7

                           P.S. steampunk   !!! Nice angle !!!

[Lance D. Allen]

Hi there,

You've got the makings for a good adventure there, but not necessarily a good game. For an actual roleplaying game, it's best to leave the actual story elements up to the individual game masters. Some things that *I* think are worth keeping for the game are the basic set-up. All the background history is good, and the fact that the players are employed there. What needs to go is the part about how the players get ahold of the ship hull. Let the game master and the players decide that for themselves, and they'll have the root for dozens of different stories from there. So perhaps you can restate it something like this:

"The players live on the station. They start their adventure working in the scrap pits all day striping ships of their useable parts. It's a job they hate. The players know that there is something better than that waiting for them. But what could be better than sweating over cutting torch trying to dislodge a power relay that is hopelessly fused to the power conduit? Then by chance or fate they get their shot that something better. They manage to get their hands on a used ship hull that has already been stripped down."

The how and why is left up to the GM and players, and the game has begun, ready for their adventures and misadventures.

[Thomas Tamblyn]

With respect Wolfen, I disgree.  If players and Gms really want a different intro they'll make one (GMs being what they are), but as it is it gives play a definite direction from the begining and frees up creative juices for actually messing around trying to fix the ship up, which looks like its supposed to be the focus of play.

The furthest I'd go is give a list of possible 'trigger events' that set the group up with a ship hull and give them an immediate goal, preventing play begining soemthing like "Errm, so you've got this hull. What do you do?"

But as is the original works great - it gives them a goal and a mentor/employer-type character for the Gm to prod them gently with until they've got themselves going in a particular direction.

Remember that there's very little set in stone by the original introduction, the son could have run off, been kidnapped, awakened mysterious hostile alien tech, happened on a base of smugglers or  eloped.  The boss might be have alterior motives - could be trying to set the PCs up as patsies or someone with a grudge is paying him to send them into dangerous territory or...

Etc.

[M. J. Young]

This sounds like a great Multiverser world; let me know how it goes.

One thought that comes to me is that you might look at Ars Magica a bit.

I thought I'd mention that Ars Magica 4th ed. core rules are currently available free from RPGNow as a PDF download (or they were a couple weeks ago, and the press release suggested that they would continue to be available free until AM5th comes out next year).

--M. J. Young

[tomodachi7]

Think that both wolfen and Thomas Tamblyn have some good points. I like when I get different points of view, it helps to keep me on the right path....

Now we with begin:    Ship Statistics
Ship Name
Manufacturer
Physical Dimensions
   Length
   Width
   Height
   Cubic Volume
   Mass
Speed
   Sub light
   Faster than Light
Crew
Hull Type
Power Plant
Armor
Engines
Armaments
Computer system
Navigation & Tracking systems
Communications systems
Life support systems

Well what other stats would a ship have?

This game needs fresh approach to ship building. I want to breakup ships by their components. Think of building blocks just a whole bigger. So we put the components together one piece at a time.
There two types of ship building.

One : Ship from scratch.
Since we are using components to build the ship from scratch we should build the ship from the inside out. So the last piece should be the hull, because we will not know the size of the ship until the very end of the construction process.

Two : Rebuild of an existing ship. (refit)
The hull size is already known, so we build the ship from the outside in.

So what do you think? I know that this still very rough but I hope that this gives us some kind framework to work with.

Remember that the components take the center stage in this ship construction system.
How does one define the ship components?

So here's a question What should the first component in our NEW ship be? Engines, Power Plant or the Computer.

[Mike Holmes]

First, I agree with Tomas, Lance, that this is plenty good enough for an entire game. The particular write up, I agree, is very specific, but the general setup is certainly enough for an entire game.

In fact, I think it needs to be defined a bit further. What happens when the players finally get the ship together? That's not accounted for at all.

Perhaps it shouldn't be. I'd like to see a game where the goal was to build a ship, and, when the characters finally succeeded, the game would be over. They zoom off to "live happily ever after". You get my drift.

In this case, the specifics of the ship don't matter much. The ship is just the representative of the theme of the game, which is "getting out of this hole". If that was the way you wanted to go, then that would have one whole set of concepts that would have to go into the ship rules.

OTOH, maybe that's too slim a concept for you. But it's the only compelling part that I can see so far. It's what I'd want to play this game about (and I am interested in the concept). Personally. If you want more to it, then you have to enumerate the part about what sort of stuff happens after the ship is built. Do the characters become a space salvage crew (they'd obviously have the skills for it)? Or what? If the answer is "anything" then I'd definitely wonder why you have to start in a space junkyard.

So, basically what I'm saying is that, until you have the scope of the game nailed down in its entirity, there's no way to give you even a hint of where to start. I could point you at the Traveller starship generation rules, but that might turn out to be wholly incorrect. The suggestion to use FUDGE above makes total sense for some ideas, and none at all for others.

Further, even if we do get you to give us a complete view of the game, you'll have to then do your homework. There are goingg to be many systems that will resemble what you're looking for, and you'll need to study them so that you can create your own system.

Becasue we can't make it for you. We can only send you off in the right direction, and help when you get stuck.

BTW, just as a bit of history, I made a game a long time ago that was called Vector that was very similar to what you have in that it was all about characters building their own space vehicles. Basically Car Wars in space, but with the addition of the characters being very involved in the building of the ships. If you can get to where I was wherin I had defined the sort of action that would occur post-design, it shuld be pretty cool, IMO. :-)

Mike