What system do you use to design starships?

[robject]

By request, a poll to see who uses what when designing starships. It's a fair question, to see if I'm right about High Guard still enjoying popularity (with this crowd, anyway).

I'm allowing multiple entries, but again, please restrict your choices to only those systems used in the past two years, and systems that you used to completely design a starship, rather than just use a piece of it I suppose.

Finally, this is restricted to using the published rules. House-rule variations are fine, but the ships have to recognizably be designed based essentially on one rule system.

Example: Your Frankensteinian mashup Death Sloop made up of 33% Book 2 and 33% FFS2 and 33% Cortex probably doesn't absolutely doesn't count.

 

[coliver988]

Having posted (hey, 1st response!) I use CT High Guard, but I am looking at Mongoose 2e. Was not impressed by 1e exactly but never really tried it a lot. But I like the USP - being a software person it was always fun to write code all the CT things. Never used the USPs much beyond the design phase though - just enough to let the players know not to mess with things!

 

[robject]

I never liked the CT HG USP, but figured it would nevertheless be popular, but it appears to be no more popular than the HG combat system.

I'd like to hear your impressions of MgT 2e. I used 1e basic for several designs, but that was before 2014.

Meanwhile... I have ported and designed over 100 T5 starships ("ACS") from 2011 or so to the present - some of them I designed twice or three times, as ACS went through its pre-published drafts.

And I've used Mongoose 2e to design a couple of basic ships, to validate the results.

 

[flykiller]

hg2 of course. comprehensive, simple, direct, to the point, fully applicable to all tech levels and all hull sizes. doesn't require bootcamps or mathematics degrees to implement.

with, of course, modifications. 1) convert those "computers" to sensor suites, a relevant and simple 1/1 conversion that works perfectly. 2) increase crew levels for larger ships. 1 engineer/100 dtons is a bit thin. 3) and a few other things.

 

[mike wightman]

There are a couple of options missing.

Brilliant Lances (much easier to use than FF&S)

and the one I use a lot GT:ISW

(should you include T2300 Star Cruiser in the mix too since I have used that a few times too )

 

[Shadowrunner]

I use Ships For Windows or High Guard.

 

[infojunky]

Your missing a High Guard up there, CT's 77 edition.

 

[aramis]

Your missing a High Guard up there, CT's 77 edition.

That's actually HG-79. It's barely just different enough to warrant an entry, IMO, but differs mostly in details; the overall process is nearly identical to HG-80.

 

[robject]

Brilliant Lances (much easier to use than FF&S)
and the one I use a lot GT:ISW

Both added.

Also expanded the CT HG entry to include 1st edition.

 

[SanDragon]

I had to dig through my stacks of stuff, but...

It looks like I was using The New Era's Fire, Fusion, and Steel to stuff stutterwarps into ship designs under MegaTraveller.

Mwuhahahahaahaa!!!

But that was earlier last year.

Now, I'm entertaining Psi-drives using the same references.

Please keep your wood for the stake, firewood, and torches separate, as well as your pitchforks.

Thank you for your cooperation.

 

[nobby-w]

With some house rules to get around issues with balance

High Guard is fairly straightforward but has some well known balance issues with smaller ships (most fighter and SDB designs, for example, will be incapable of hitting a ship of the same class in a dogfight).

I did some mods to HG to make combat less attritional for ships in the 300-5000 ton range, really to make it fit better with a 'small ships' setting.

Some examples were:

• Adding 2t and 3t laser barbettes which had a bonus to hit and penetrate - 2t laser barbettes got +1 to the factor of the battery and an additional -2 on the damage table; 3t barbettes got -3 to damage and +2 to the battery factor.
  
• Making certain bay weapons more powerful - particle accelerator bays, for example, get +3 to damage rolls instead of +6.
  
• Similarly, I pimped HE missiles with better damage (+3 instead of +6) but made missiles a lot more expensive and enforced rules about 3 shots before reloading the launcher.
  
• I also did a house rule allowing a 500+ ton hull to fit a single 50t bay weapon (typically a missile launcher) taking up 5 turret slots. This was largely to facilitate 700-1000t SDB designs that could pack a main armament capable of posing a threat to larger ships.
  
• I've also done a hybrid using Book 2 style computer rules (bonuses from individual applications) rather than +/- relative computer size. This substantially narrows the TL gap from the traditional factor of 3 budget differential per TL that you get from standard High Guard.

This improves warships in the 500-5,000 ton range for 'small ship' settings, where the armament of such ships in vanilla High Guard was somewhat underpowered. It was largely done for a TL11-12 fall-of-second-imperium setting; there were some larger ships in this setting but few polities in this setting would have the resources build a fleet of capital ships and keep it running.

At one point I did re-balanced versions of smaller factor spinal mounts to bring cruisers down into the 8000-15,000 ton range but I ended up not using them.

 

[Quint]

None of the above?

The closest would be Book 2, or basic Mongoose - but I use a version of the extrapolated drives that give you up to 10k dtonnage for a Z-drive combined with the multiple hull sections that come from the Mongoose High Guard.

So... smallest ship is 100dton, the largest single-section ship is 10,000dton, the largest multi-section ship is 60,000dtons in six sections. Forerunner Tech can exceed these limits...

But... at the same time IMTU Collectors are the standard, with a Jump-1 fuel reserve for emergencies. Plus there are Warp and Hyperdrives available - and Fission, Fusion, and Anti-Matter plants (plus, as Forerunner tech, Zero Point Energy Modules). Plus, somewhere in there I have PsyDrives as well.

So I mix in some T5 as well.

EDIT: Oh, and I use Stutterwarp as the initial Warp Drive development - so I guess I use T2300 also.

D.

 

[CliffBates]

High Guard is fairly straightforward but has some fairly well known balance issues with smaller ships (most fighter and SDB designs, for example, will be incapable of hitting a ship of the same class in a dogfight).

I did some mods to HG to make combat less attritional for ships in the 300-5000 ton range, really to make it fit better with a 'small ships' setting.

Some examples were:

• Adding 2t and 3t laser barbettes which had a bonus to hit and penetrate - 2t laser barbettes got +1 to the factor of the battery and an additional -2 on the damage table; 3t barbettes got -3 to damage and +2 to the battery factor.
  
• Making certain bay weapons more powerful - particle accelerator bays, for example, get +3 to penetrate instead of +6.
  
• Similarly, I pimped HE missiles with better damage (+3 instead of +6) but made missiles a lot more expensive and enforced rules about 3 shots before reloading the launcher.
  
• I also did a house rule allowing a 500+ ton hull to fit a single 50t bay weapon (typically a missile launcher) taking up 5 turret slots. This was largely to facilitate 700-1000t SDB designs that could pack a main armament capable of posing a threat to larger ships.

This improves warships in the 500-5,000 ton range for 'small ship' settings. It was largely done for a TL11-12 fall-of-second-imperium setting; there were some larger ships in this setting but few polities in this setting would have the resources build a fleet of capital ships and keep it running.

At one point I did re-balanced versions of smaller factor spinal mounts to bring cruisers down into the 8000-15,000 ton range but I ended up not using them.

I never understood why you lost the same amount of hard points for a 100 ton vs 50 ton weapons bay. I think nobby-w is right here about having the hard points rule for 50 ton bays.

 

[tjoneslo]

If you're going to be picky enough to distinguish between HG-79 and HG-80, I'm going to complain you should have entries for GURPS Traveller, and GT:Starships, since the latter is a massive expansion on the former.

 

[mike wightman]

The poll doesn't. HG1, HG2 and T20 are all lumped together.

The two versions of HG that get separate entries are MgT HG1 and MgT HG2.

I consider GT ISW to be one of the best ship design systems (shame they never produced an update to go all the way to TL20) while GT Starships is one of the worst - but that's due to my dislike of the power slice idea. Saying that I do mine it for options for my CT, HG2 or GT:ISW designs.

 

[warwizard]

I actually use both FF&S but as I base my Displacement ton on the larger T4 standard and account for every cubic cm of hull material I chose to poll with the T4 group.

I've tried getting around the T5 1.0 ACS design system but it was a bit opaque as how to apply the various tech stages and QREBS effects to the things.
Does a -5 Burden make the Jump drive smaller or just seem smaller?

I guess I'll need to try again now that the T5 1.09 PDF is in my hands, really waiting though for the T5 version of FF&S.

 

[aramis]

The poll doesn't. HG1, HG2 and T20 are all lumped together.

The two versions of HG that get separate entries are MgT HG1 and MgT HG2.

And that's good, because MGT2 is a redesign from first principles... and not a revision of MGT1 HG.

 

[GypsyComet]

High Guard is fairly straightforward but has some well known balance issues with smaller ships (most fighter and SDB designs, for example, will be incapable of hitting a ship of the same class in a dogfight).

It is a fleet sim.

By request, a poll to see who uses what when designing starships.

While the last two years have been Mongoose dominated, I've used most of the list at one time or other, and will cheerfully pull components from editions other than the one I'm using as the process.

 

[nobby-w]

It is a fleet sim.
...

The same apples to a fleet of SDBs or a squadron of fighters. There are no rules covering massed attacks from this type of craft in vanilla HG, although someone did an article about combined fighter squadron attacks in the JTAS.

It's a significant balance issue with small, high agility ships. Unfortunately small ships of this type are exactly the sort of thing you tend to use for role playing so the hole sits right in the middle one of the main use cases.

 

[GypsyComet]

The same apples to a fleet of SDBs or a squadron of fighters. There are no rules covering massed attacks from this type of craft in vanilla HG, although someone did an article about combined fighter squadron attacks in the JTAS.

It's a significant balance issue with small, high agility ships. Unfortunately small ships of this type are exactly the sort of thing you tend to use for role playing so the hole sits right in the middle one of the main use cases.

You've rediscovered why so many use CT HG for building ships but so few use it to fight them. High Guard was the transition from a small ship universe to a big ship universe, and it is, perhaps inadvertently, centered in the light cruiser range mechanically.