Ship design suggestion

[Stofsk]

If anyone knows their way around Excel, I reckon a good ship design spreadsheet would be ace for MgT.

I've spent hours flipping through the pages of my copies of the pocket rulebook and high guard, and it's annoying because a lot of the time the information isn't sequentially consolidated.

I'm not a Master of the Spreadsheet, but if anyone here is I throw the gauntlet down at your feet. Who here has the fortitude to attempt such a task?

(alternatively, who has any tips for ship design, of the 'how I work out my designs' variety?)

 

[rust]

My ability to create or work with spreadsheets is ... limited ...

However, I used the PDFs of the books and some "copy & paste" to
bring the ship design into a form that is easy to use for me, and that
also allowed me to insert some ideas taken from GURPS Traveller
Starships and some of my own "inventions".
It took me less than an hour, and since I do not have to design that
many ships for my setting and campaign, it is all I needed.

 

[GypsyComet]

Since I'm not doing MegaTraveller or FF&S designs anymore, a spreadsheet is not really needed except to easily keep track of the tonnage and cost totals.

A consolidated list of options and their source books would be nice. Not necessarily the nuts and bolts, just a list.

 

[BP]

I have 20+ years experience fixing spreadsheets... Spreadsheets are not the 'right' tool for the this job (nor most I've seen them put to) - but in the interest of availability and no better option for the non-programming public - I concede their usefulness

Recently fixed 18 months of someone's excel nightmare... - I'm not really interested in doing this right now - but I would throw the proverbial gauntlet right back at you Stofsk- with an offer to assist. If you can use the spreadsheet - then there is no reason you cannot set one up (except laziness).

Grab your Excel and the appropriate brew and have at it...

• The first thing is to enter the tables. I would split these into separate files (workbooks) - one for small craft and one for capital ships. (I would so save them in Excel 97 compatible format using save as).
• I would put the contents of each table in a separate worksheet (these are the tabs at the bottom of Excel such as Sheet1, Sheet2, etc). Right click on the tabs to insert new ones and to rename them.
• Name each sheet based on the table - but make the names short, preferably with no spaces - so we have Hull, Config, Armour, Drive, Power, etc. If you insist on longer names - drop the spaces and use caps
  (i.e. HullStructure).
• The layout of the tables in HG is rather sub-optimal - so fix it - for instance, the Hull & Structure table [p64] should have a column for Code [p62] - combining these tables. The Power Plant Table [p63] should be added to the unnamed table on the next page [p64] and there is no reason for the Turret Weapons column on that page (since they are all 'unlimited by power'), nor the Bay Weapons (# = rating per 1,000 tons), nor the Screens (= rating).
• Additionally, since you are using a computer and not a space limited piece of paper - combine some tables such as the ones based on tonnage and hull code [p62, p63, p65 - computer and screens]. (Properly done these should fit on a page actually).

Now many of the design rules in HG do not use tables, but rather equations and conditionals (if x then y else z) or often both (ex: Section Command Module = 0.005 x tons. (0.5% of ship tonnage); while Command Section Crew varies based on whether tonnage is > 200,000).
This requires the real work - and is not for the lazy - but is what excel does. So if you get the tables in, I will help you setup conditionals and equations. (Not to mention - just having the tables organized will help you).

On an important note - even if I did this I would not share unless approved by Mongoose. The open gaming license (what have you) probably covers these aspects, but I have not yet looked into them. If someone official was to answer this question then great! (I'm sure there are plenty of 'opinions' out there - but only Mongoose's would hold any weight IMHO).

 

[GypsyComet]

On an important note - even if I did this I would not share unless approved by Mongoose.

Which is why I always format mine to *just* handle the math. No (or very few) lookups that remove the need for the books and coincidentally can detach the design process from a knowledge of the components.

 

[lucasdigital]

I just spent this week knocking up a ship builder spreadsheet in Google Docs. Its crude, and probably needs further checking and bug fixing. I think it was well worth the effort, I can finally tinker and fine tune a design from the ground up, with each iteration taking seconds instead of big chunks of an hour.

I used the following worksheet arrangement:
inputs - all data entry requirements
master sheet - pulls in the entry requirements and performs calculations
table sheets - three sheets contain all the ship design tables
output - formats information into a copy of the ship stats sheet.

I've certainly learned a lot about using functions, though I'm probably using lots of kludges. I found the hardest part was dealing with variable elements such as the weapons.

sample sheet:
http://www.distantplaces.info/files/mgt_ship_test1.pdf