In need of informational source

[Reithan]

I'm building a sci-fi game with a cyberpunk 'feel' (I think the proper term, as far as The Big Model goes would be Color...but I'm still hazy on the whole Big Model thing...) to it and need information on classifications on vehicles, specifically aircraft, and theoretically, spacecraft.

I've heard, in the past, things like:

Military/Civilian
Fixed Wing/Swing Wing/Rotary
LTA/?
Jet/Turbine/Prop/Rotor/etc

And I'd like to know, is there anywhere I could possibly go to get a rundown on how present day pilots breakdown aircraft into different categories/classifications?

I've tried Google and other search engines, but gotten unsatisfactory results.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I take it you're not familiar with Wikipedia? Check it out.

[Reithan]

I had seen that link, but it sounded like an inherently different categorization that what a professional pilot referenced on my forums.

So, you may want to give that some thought.  Having a proficiency in "Airplane" doesn't say much.  I'll lay it out as it occurs in reality, and then I will leave it to you to draw conclusions and structure your rules.

1. Single Engine Land - enables you to fly simple, single engine propeller aircraft
2. Complex Aircraft Rating - allows you to operate constant-speed props and retractible landing gears
3. Instrument Rating - allows you to navigate an aircraft around the world and execute precision landing approaches using only instrumentation
4. Multi Engine Land - now you can fly a plane with two or more propeller engines
5. Commercial License - charge money to fly
6. ATP - Airline Transport Pilot

Once you get into any aircraft that has turbine engines, whether it be a business jet, a 747, or an A-10 Warthog, you have to get what is called a type-rating.  This trains you in the operation of that specific aircraft.  This can get really cumbersome within a role-playing game, so it could probably be streamlined into categories like: Specialization - business jets; Spec - airliners; Spec - military fighter jets.

Hope that helps.  Swing for the fences!

This seems to reference some professional or technical division that I simply haven't been able to find a good reference to...or else I'm imagining it. :P

[Josh Roby]

Reithan, how some professional organization structures its training and certification process is almost entirely irrelevant to your game design unless it's about people in that professional organization.

Think of how you want your game to play when it involves aircraft.  When the PCs run onto an airfield, do you want them to be picking which one they're capable of flying, or assigned a plane by some authority figure, always flying their tried-and-true familiar craft, or despairing because there's nothing on the airfield that they can fly?

Cause in a Bond game, there's one applicable skill and that's Flying All Aircraft Anywhere.  Nobody ever complains that they don't know how to pilot this particular aircraft in a Bond movie.  They hop in the pilot seat and go.  On the other hand if you were doing a WWII Flyboy game, you'd have some differentiation, but it would be best expressed by modifiers and familiarity rather than "I can't fly this plane."  And if you were doing a gritty black ops sort of game, then it would boil down to a very specific list of what a given character can and can't fly.  See the difference?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Chill, Joshua. The problem is that when doing a setting-heavy Cyberpunk game you're expected as the sourcebook writer to come up with all this stuff so the players don't need to. If the game is, indeed, about flying machines and other technology (as is reasonable to assume when it's a Cyberpunk game), it is not a bad idea to provide the basics for the players (the GM, really) so they can hitch their fiction on the exciting possibilities of aircraft. Many of the best scifi games I've seen have been little else than a surface discussion of different technological ideas and their use for "cool" scenes. Sense of wonder is a big part of going with a scifi setting in the first place, and real-world facts are good short-cut to get believable and interesting detail. It doesn't even need to have anything to do with something as crass as character skill ratings, there's plenty of other ways to include different flying machines in the game.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I believe Reithan when he says that he needs to know more about this stuff, to decide whether he's going to use it if nothing else.

Reithan: have you scoured the web for piloting schools or similar? The quote you posted seems to concern itself with the structure of real-world pilot teaching, so it seems that the logical bet is to familiarize yourself with any material available on pilot training. If the different flying machines and their required certifications are discussed anywhere, it'll be in that context. It should also be quite possible to find books on the topic at the library, if the net doesn't go to enough detail.

[joepub]

These are some of the places I would search/post to if I was looking for that kind of information:

-Model Plane Communities. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/index.php
Although their familiarity is with models, not real planes... They often are buffs on planes, and could probably help a bit.

-The library. Start in the kid's section (not kidding) with some "How do they work: Jets and Planes" type books, and jump to the sleek, coffeetable-esque "Jets" book when you've got that baseline knowledge.

-Books/websites/TV show series like "How Does it Work?" "How do they make it?" etc. Those aren't necessarily real titles, but you know what I mean, right?

-Cheap, serial fiction about flyboys. Bad writers often fill books with their topic knowledge as a replacement for good prose. (I'm dead serious on this one. It is fact.) I know that when I want to find out more on police procedural, I buy a dimestore hardboiled mystery and turn to page 200.

...Don't worry about factual accuracy, since you are designing for a setting that isn't modern day or historical. (Thus the reccomendation for pulp novels.)
Just pick information that sounds probable and cool, and use it!
If you were doing a historical WWII game, factchecking would be critical. As cyberpunk, there's more artistic license.

[Certified]

If you are looking for interesting stuff about planes, hovercraft and spaceships for a Cyberpunk setting I would recommend reading Cyberpunk 2020 and the supplement I forget the title it's either Near Orbit or Deep Space. I'm not saying plagiarize but since you are working in the genre it doesn't hurt to look at those who came before you and from what I remember they did a pretty convincing job of making their Sci-Fi sound plausible and even explained some f the modern day stuff.

[joepub]

Also, have you heard of The Cyberpunk Project?

It's a project that uploads classic cyberpunk literature onto the internet for free reading.
Totally good for getting into genre. Johnny Mnemonic and Neuromancer are on there, for example. So is the story "cyberpunk".

[Call Me Curly]

http://www.airforce.com/

--Curly

[Reithan]

Wow, that generated more response(s) than I thought it would.

It's not so much a 'setting-heavy' cyberpunk game. Like, take Shadowrun, for instance. Shadowrun goes through and delinates all the major corporations, history, etc, etc, etc.

My game just gives a rundown of the socio-economic structures, basic "how's life?" explainations and a TOUCH of history here and there for color.

So, it's not a 'setting-heavy' issue, it's more about 3 simple  things.

1. Skills. My skills system involves a structure along the lines of:

[Basic Skill] -> [Primary Area of Expertise] -> [OPTIONAL Specialty]

So, when I'm giving examples of the "Drive/Pilot" basic skill's "Primary Areas of Expertise", I'd like to have a few good examples to use, that (hopefully) make sense from a technical level.

2. Gear list. As the writer of the sourcebook, I'm supposed to come up with a stats and names for lots of gear and vehicles and stuff. It would be nice to know the classifications, so that I can (try to) cover all my bases, and maybe even have a good shot at coming up with good category names.

3. Background for 'ME'. Through writing the sourcebook, rules, stats of different vehicles, some fiction to accompany the rules...it's nice to have a clue what you're talking about. If I wanna write stats for air vehicles, it might be nice to have a clue as to some (if not all) of the different types, what they're capable of. Not to mention, from a fiction standpoint, it'd be nice to come up with authentic-sounding dialogue for pilot-types.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I'd suggest that the vehicle types should match the skills system.

[Reithan]

In a way, that's exactly what I meant in point #1.

The Primary skill for such things would be "Drive/Pilot"

Then, the "Primary Expertise" would be a category of vehicle, so...I'm looking for categories of aircraft to base THAT off of.

[joepub]

In that case, hands down check out books about jets in the children's section of the library.
...And that is in no way meant mockingly. Seriously, kids books targetted for the 12-16 range about mechanical stuff are often SUPER informative.

At least... from my perspective (no tech expertise whatsoever) they are.

[Reithan]

Well, I understand why you'd say that, it would give a nice, simply-broken-down categorization, I bet.

However, being that this IS Sci-Fi.Cyberpunk...Scifipunk, if you will, I was hoping for something just a touch more technical than that'll probably provide. Although, actually stopping by a library's not a bad idea...kind of an overlooked option in today's world of google, wikipedia and the internet in general. :/

[dindenver]

Hi!
  OK, well, I am guessing that in your game, you need to purchase these skills some how. So, the real question, to me anyways, becomes how many subskills of pilot do you want to have? Then pick a cateory system that matches that design choice.
  Seriously, there is more than one way to skin a cat. So the real question is, how hard/easy do you want it to be for players to devlop characters that are really good at different kinds of aircraft? Unfortunately, unless you use a system that has a very simple character generation, it really is a numbers game. If you divide the Pilot skill into two subskills like Military/Commercial, it will be easy to make chars that are an ace pilot. But, if you divide pilot into say Rotor, fixed wing single engine, fixed wing multi-engine, Jet, unpowered, space, etc. then it becomes increasingly harder to make a competent pilot in a system like that. I think once you determine a number of subskills that fits your design, then finding a categorization system with that many elements will be  snap.
  Good luck man!