Spreadsheets or ship building PC programs..

[Hyperkit]

Hi. I've seen mention of some spreadsheets here, plus of folk wanting to calculate the dimensions of ships - got the BITs book down, thanks for the tip. I have some Xcel spread sheets I got down the Gods know how long ago, but have no text file to tell me how to use em! it will calculate the details for you if you put in the raw dt of your ship then choose the hull hsape you want.

I use it only for calculating the 3 dimensions of my ships as I said cos I have no idea what else it can calculate, cos I dunno how to use it. I'm hoping someone here may know.

It's called Yacht.xls and is for a 200 dt yacht.

I also have the really great program Space Dock by Andrew Batishko, but it is a 1999 version. It helps you design ships modularly and then tests them for you. You can add on cargo and munitions, interior craft, weapon mounts and bays etc. Only I can't find his program now to see if there is an Update to it.

Can anyone help me, please? I use the programs to design ships for my novels, not to game play.

Thanks,

 

[themink]

so are you after
i) a program than can be fed an arbitary shape and will calculate it's volume (non-trivial - probably Commercial/student CAD packages are your best bet)
ii) a Program that will help you build a ship keeping within the design rules (hgs is brill - but Excell works fine as long as you understand the rules first)
iii) Something that will give you a rough idea of "how big" a given ship is (ie if you drive a jeep upto a scout ship - what is the relative scale - how long is a patrol cruiser front to back)

 

[themink]

I've read your question again - sounds like you are after a ship building program that you can give a set of "rules" to and it will keep you to design limits.

I would recommend gts (available from http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/utilities/ as "GURPS Traveller Ships")

One added feature of it is that you can build your own modules to go with whatever your book is (transporters - small spinal mounts - whatever) Which is handy if you don;t wish to be constrained by Canon.

 

[Hyperkit]

That's exactly what I'm after - sorry I didn't make it clearer. Many thanks for taking to trouble to respond.

 

[manley_t]

Is anyone working on a form or utility that will allow ship building using the T20 rules?

I've 'kinda' started but limited time means it's not going to be done any time soon (if at all).

What I started working on was an access DB that allowed you to build your ship by inputting data and selecting from pull-downs. You'd then have the option to save it to a text file.

But, so far I'm still working on the DB part of it.

If someone wants to beat me to it I won't complain

 

[bgv]

Tom Bont's GTS has been updated to GURPS Modular Vehicles, GMV, available at

http://webpages.charter.net/tombont/files/GURPS%20Modular%20Vehicles

I saw a reference to it in BITS's 101 Starships, but, oddly, there's no Web page, per se, just the program files, and I had to dig around a bit to find them.

101 Starships lists far more than 101 ship designs, all for GURPS Traveller. They're kind enough to distribute it for free, on the Freelance Traveller site.

http://come.to/FreelanceTraveller

Space Dock 1.0 is much easier to use -- it just uses the GT modular rules, while GTS and GMV, as far as I can tell, make more use of GURPS Vehicle rules, allowing more flexibility. Unfortunately, it looks like Space Dock isn't being maintained any longer, and it's buggy.

 

[tjoneslo]

Originally posted by Big Tim:
Is anyone working on a form or utility that will allow ship building using the T20 rules?

Andrew Moffatt-Vallance has built the High Guard Shipyard, which also works with T20. http://www.downport.com/amv/software/software.html

or see this topic in this forum:
http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=000153

 

[manley_t]

I'll work with the high-guard utility and see how it fares.

But, it'll be a cold day before I touch anything gurps...

 

[themink]

Originally posted by Big Tim:


But, it'll be a cold day before I touch anything gurps...

Just because a utility is useful for GURPS as well as other games doesn't mean that you should automatically ignore it.

If I wrote a shareware ship building program that allowed you to tell it which rules set you use and I unclude GT in the list, steve J would merrily put it up on his site. That wouldn;t mean the program had been contaminated by association.

Or maybe it does?

 

[AndreaV]

Originally posted by tjoneslo:
Andrew Moffatt-Vallance has built the High Guard Shipyard, which also works with T20. http://www.downport.com/amv/software/software.html

or see this topic in this forum:
http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to pic;f=4;t=000153

One word of warning. HGS 1.14 is still in beta stage. There *ARE* errors in the T20 program logic (with the power calculations), and the error trapping is not up to standard yet.

 

[manley_t]

I'm willing to use multi-function tools that have been designed to *also* work with GURPS, but when Steve Jackson came out with Gurps at first it really ticked me off. Not only did he 'lift' a lot of concepts from HERO, he admitted to it in his introduction -- but, he made them worse and not better.

I even played GURPS for a bit when it first came out; gamed with folks that did the pre-commercial release beta-testing, all of them devotees of the system.

So, I can say, my heartfelt distaste for the system is hard-won. Normally, I like SJ games and have a lot of respect for the man...he's a damn good business man, hell, just look at not only how much is out there, but how long it's been out there. It's just that GURPS is like this drug -- it's bad for you but those that get hooked swear by it's healing abilities........