Anyone ever come up with a spreadsheet for ship design?

[phavoc]

You can develop a program to do all this. You can't distribute it though.

So if an enterprising person created a speadsheet that had all the formulas in it, a person who got a copy of it could populate it with whatever text you wanted. Again, you should not distribute the spreadsheet with the text in it taken from the books.

But math and mathematical formulas don't fall under any copyright restriction.

 

[billclo]

Okay, given the licensing restrictions, I withdraw my original request. I don't think I want to get Mongoose into any legal hot water.

Having done several capital ships by hand now, I'm getting faster.

 

[BFalcon]

Well, when I have time, I'll see about going through and "desanitising" my spreadsheet by removing all the reference table data and then send a copy to Matt to see if it would be ok to distribute, on the understanding that the recipient fill in the tables themselves (the idea being that if they don't own a book, they don't get to use an item) and see if that washes...

The problem is, without doing that, mine automatically looks up the values in a table and then substitutes the appropriate value from the required column or row... but I don't have drop-down lists, so you'd need to type Compact Standard or Command into the Bridge entry, for example, in order to use them (so you'd need to know that they exist in the first place).

It all depends on the quantity of automation we're allowed to do - for example, is summing up the total aside from the cargo bay and then automatically assigning all the remaining tonnage to cargo, actually allowed, to cite the most simple example...

 

[phavoc]

Well, when I have time, I'll see about going through and "desanitising" my spreadsheet by removing all the reference table data and then send a copy to Matt to see if it would be ok to distribute, on the understanding that the recipient fill in the tables themselves (the idea being that if they don't own a book, they don't get to use an item) and see if that washes...

The problem is, without doing that, mine automatically looks up the values in a table and then substitutes the appropriate value from the required column or row... but I don't have drop-down lists, so you'd need to type Compact Standard or Command into the Bridge entry, for example, in order to use them (so you'd need to know that they exist in the first place).

It all depends on the quantity of automation we're allowed to do - for example, is summing up the total aside from the cargo bay and then automatically assigning all the remaining tonnage to cargo, actually allowed, to cite the most simple example...

Put a note(s) in the cells that hold the value, that would indicate what information the person would need to populate the cell with.

You can leave cell labels ("bridge" is not trademarkable, nor are any of the other descriptors. If you are unsure of some things, use "fuzzy dog guys" for Vargr, and "brainy empaths" for Zhodani, etc).

 

[BFalcon]

hehe I was planning to use "doggies" for Vargr anyhow... (must get out of that habit *before* playing Traveller or I'm gonna need a lot of characters...) :lol:

I've not started to adapt for different races yet - it was more a tool to aid me than a fully-automated creation tool... and the tables are pretty much self explanatory if you happen to have the rules in front of you...