Replacing Starship Equipment & Systems

[CRMcNeill]

The D20 to D6 conversion of Wizards of the Coast's Starships of the Galaxy for Saga Edition Star Wars.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

Personally, I'd rather have extra Hull Armor have a weight cost, with Speed and Maneuverability penalties coming into play if you ever exceed your listed cargo capacity.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

Basically, my thinking at this point is that the ship's cargo capacity represents how much extra mass the ship can carry before it starts to affect performance, with the trade-off that a space transport needs to retain some usable cargo capacity...
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Ning Leihrec]

hadnt thought of that one. Wouldn't it make a difference if the added weight was coming from the exterior as opposed to the interior of the ship? As in the case of heavier armor?

[CRMcNeill]

[Venerath]

[CRMcNeill]

I'm a truck driver. I do this for a living. I almost never worry about volume, but weight governs almost everything I do. This is not to say that volume isn't a factor (it is), but respectfully, your statement is incorrect. The only time volume is a factor for trucks is when either the cargo is so light that the entire available volume of a box trailer can be filled with weight to spare, or the physical dimensions of the cargo exceed legal or physical restrictions (tunnels, bridges, etc.). I can't speak with authority on other forms of transportation, but weight is a major factor for aircraft as well, with volume only being a concern if you can't fit the cargo inside the aircraft.

Even if this were not the case, if WEG expresses cargo capacity in metric tons, not square or cubic meters, they are expressing cargo capacity as weight, not volume.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[KageRyu]

If I can find the notebook...
I had created a number of added ship items for fleshing out ships of the starfighter and tramp freighter classes for my Star Wars games, and later for my D6 Savage Universe games. I had a variety of Armor, maneuvering thrusters, engine variants, electronic and sensor suits, improved drones and remotes, fuel pods and boosters, I had worked out the cost and weight for the Corellian Quad-Gun turrets shown in several D6 books, Hull reinforcement, and also collected an index to various books that had or listed unique ship based items not included in either edition of GG6.

I do like having both 1st and 2nd editions of GG6 because there are some differences in equipment, and the first edition book does cover increasing the base hull code (which was left out of the 2nd edition for some reason).

I was also working on converting ideas and concepts from very mechanical based games I had played to a D6 system (such as Heavy Gear and Mekton II). Not sure how much of that got finished though as I have not seen or opened the notebook in question since about 2006.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Venerath]

Page 42 of tramp freighters

Passenger Conversion
To carry additional passengers, cargo hold space must be converted to passenger space. Cost: 400 credits per additional passenger capacity. Weight: 10 tons per person.

How does adding food, oxygen, and sleeping quarters for one person equate to 10 Tons? It doesn't (especially since this is required across the board regardless of the consumables for the ship).

Just like I said before. Weight has an impact, but moving a ship in space (with no resistance, purely mass) is entirely different from moving the same mass via the ground. Spaceships that fly in the atmosphere also make heavy use of repulsorlifts (anti gravity tech). When the Falcon takes off, it does so with its repulsor lift array, the sublight engines kick in after it has cleared the landing area and is on its way.

I am in no way discounting your experience for what you do, just pointing out that it is inconsistent with what these ships are trying to accomplish.
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"She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true."

[CRMcNeill]

So basically you are saying that even though WEG used metric tons (a universally accepted measurement of weight, not volume) for basically all their stats, but made one arbitrary ruling to allow for conversion of cargo space to passenger space, that one ruling automatically negates the laws of physics and makes metric ton a measurement of volume?
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Venerath]

Not at all. Most of their cargo modifications suffer the same issues.

Though I confess the physics makes me laugh. To suggest that any of the star wars ships comply with physics is beyond a stretch. The Kuat Drive Yards Space Master Medium Transport is a star fighter scale medium transport that is 80 meters long with 19,000 "metric tons" of capacity. The Zuraco medium freighter is 87.3 meters long and has a 200 metric ton capacity. Both are star fighter scale, with similar hull and shields, yet one of them nearly 100X the cargo capacity (very funny, since the Zuraco is showt to have more than one deck and the Space master only one). Do you really think one of them has an engine that is 100X more powerful to compensate for the difference in scale? Of course not. The Ghtroc Cargo Empress rocks out 50,000 tons at 110 meters, starfighter scale.

In the atmosphere the ship experiences resistance from the atmosphere along with gravity that must be overcome in addition to the mass of the object that is being moved. Your truck has to deal with those all the time in addition to resistance from where the rubber meets the road, wind, and other environmental conditions.
Starwars cheats with their "repulsor lift arrays" that are anti gravity devices so they can have very un-aerodynamic ships and speeders fly.

But once they hit space, much of that changes. There is no resistance from atmosphere, and there is no gravity outside the planets well. The maximum speed of the ship is not determined by how much it weighs....but by the speed of the propulsion system and available fuel. Constantly engaging the engine will cause something in space to go faster and faster, there is no resistance. That is physics. The Ghtroc freighter with a move of 3 can go just as fast in subspace as an Xwing with a move of 8, it just has to keep its engines on longer to than the Xwing, and if it has more consumables than the Xwing, theoretically it can achieve a greater speed than the X wing eventually, since it can burn its engines for longer.

Subspace movement is not a distance traveled. It cannot be a maximum speed. The only thing it really can be is the acceleration available to the ship while in a vacuum.

Maneuverability is a similar issue. In the atmosphere flaps, vanes, wing design, and engine speed all contribute to a vehicles maneuverability. In space the only thing that matters the amount of force the maneuvering jets put on the mass to allow it to change direction. That's it. Yet, a ship shaped like a brick with 1D in maneuverability often uses it in both the atmosphere and in space. Only a handful of ships actually make any distinction between the two.

Most pure "physics" discussions with star wars just don't work (and the same goes with most sci-fi games). The amount of energy required to allow the Space Master to lift 19,000 tons compared to the equally sized Zuraco's 200, especially when escaping a gravity well, is obscene in comparison. You could easily find dozens of similar comparison issues in no time at all. If it was truly a matter of weight, I could mount the Space Masters Engine on a Zuraco and fly 50X faster while in subspace.
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"She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true."

[CRMcNeill]

So, if the Starship Modification chapter is so riddled with flaws, why are you so willing to redefine metric tons as a measurement of volume based solely on the word of that same flawed chapter?
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[cheshire]

[CRMcNeill]