Ship vs vehicle cost

[Geir]

Sure, but even 60k is going to end up more expensive than an equivalent size spaceship. And the vehicle hasn't even purchased space environment ability at that point.

My thought was go the other way - heavy grav is 40k, so a light grav would drop to 20k.

That might not be unreasonable. But it would make them cheaper than a rotorcraft, so there would be knock-on effects.

 

[Nelphine]

I tried to discuss this in another thread about power generation. It was a spectacular fail.

My theory was that the system needs to be changed so that a power point is a power point is a power point. Does not matter where it comes from. Fusion power is supposed to be powerful. If it wasn't We wouldn't be fighting so hard to develop fusion power on Earth. Even in Traveller, Fusion+ was supposed to have changed the whole paradigm for civilizations that achieve that TL, allowing briefcase-sized fusion reactors. Each building with it's own power supply. Each car and truck with literally weeks or months of time between fuelings. Then the Vehicle Handbook comes out and ignores all of that. If a 1-ton TL-15 Fusion Plant puts out 20-power, then a 0.25-ton fusion plant should put out 5 power. It is a game, not a simulation. We need to keep it simple.

Right, but I'm using TL12 as the base not 15. Otherwise, I'm suggesting the same thing, it's just that the numbers suck, because 15 doesn't divide by 4 nicely.

So.. for 1 space, at TL12, you're getting 3.75 power. An M2 engine is 2% of your tonnage, so for 10 spaces, it should be 0.2 space, and isn't a horrible comparison to the current 1100kph listed in vehicle handbook.

So, we make the 'standard' engine/power for a 10 space grav vehicle use 1 space, 1100kph, and gives 3 power points (2 of which are used for the engine itself).

So then, that same standard engine is '10% of the vehicles spaces, to a minimum of 1 space, and gives power points equal to 10% of your spaces, to a minimum of 1 power point, to be used for things like weapons and special systems'.

 

[Nelphine]

That might not be unreasonable. But it would make them cheaper than a rotorcraft, so there would be knock-on effects.

Yeah, this is where my concerns are coming from. But.. if people are interested, i'd be happy to follow ALL the knock-on effects and see what we come up with.

 

[Geir]

Why not just separate out the components, just like in Robots and just like in HG? Why have a completely different system for Vehicles? It makes no sense. Then if you want to carry more weight, simply install a bigger motor.

The more thought I give to it, the more I would tend to agree... (maybe I should stop thinking)... what's the cost of a dump truck in relation to a pickup? (oddly not much different, which is the opposite effect, but a small dump truck is not as 'cool' (read markup) as a RAM.)

 

[Terry Mixon]

The vehicle handbook is being redone for a 2025 update and it could fix all of this and the power issues all in one fell swoop. Don't lose hope!

Maybe they'll redefine bandwidth as executable programming power and let us have our unlimited data storage at the same time.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The more thought I give to it, the more I would tend to agree... (maybe I should stop thinking)... what's the cost of a dump truck in relation to a pickup? (oddly not much different, which is the opposite effect, but a small dump truck is not as 'cool' (read markup) as a RAM.)

I bring it up because I know you have been peeking at the Vehicle Handbook and thinking about stuff like this.

 

[MasterGwydion]

If you have the exact same construction process for robots, vehicles, and spaceships, it will feel like a much easier system for people to learn.

 

[agentwigggles]

Well no, Traveller has had 4 editions where thats been a thing, and the only thing universally said, is they arent easy to learn.
Fire Fusion Steel, Gurps, Heros, and T5.
Gier idea of a FFS as a core with more abstracted sub books can work. Those can produce the more generic cookie cutter vehicles and weapons which this edition, in some matter, suffers from.
Like, its not fun having air/raft races because they're all the same vehicle. And there isnt enough mechanical complexity to make them different enough.
Though almost all the other time, I dont actually need that mechanical complexity.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Well no, Traveller has had 4 editions where thats been a thing, and the only thing universally said, is they arent easy to learn.
Fire Fusion Steel, Gurps, Heros, and T5.
Gier idea of a FFS as a core with more abstracted sub books can work. Those can produce the more generic cookie cutter vehicles and weapons which this edition, in some matter, suffers from.
Like, its not fun having air/raft races because they're all the same vehicle. And there isnt enough mechanical complexity to make them different enough.
Though almost all the other time, I dont actually need that mechanical complexity.

There is if you separate out the drive, power plant, and hull like with ship construction. Then if you want a faster air/raft, just add more engines. That was it stays simple and still gives you what you are looking for with being able to hotrod an air/raft

 

[Sigtrygg]

The conversion between spaces and displacement tons is just plain wrong.

The Vehicles book defines a space as the volume of a human seated at a workstation ~2 cubic metres.

A displacement ton according to the MgT CRB and HG is 14 cubic metres.

So I would set the conversion rate as

6 space = 1 displacement ton

Now to vehicle power plants.

Back in Striker days the minimum size for a vehicle power plant was... 1 cubic metre.
this is too big for a motor bike , so I would suggest power plants start at 0.1 spaces, with minimum sizes for the different types, outputs that increase with TL, scale efficiency, more fuel efficiency at higher TLs, and things like turbos for ICE.

 

[Condottiere]

Also, economies of scale.

 

[Sigtrygg]

That's what scale efficiency means.

 

[Nelphine]

The conversion between spaces and displacement tons is just plain wrong.

The Vehicles book defines a space as the volume of a human seated at a workstation ~2 cubic metres.

A displacement ton according to the MgT CRB and HG is 14 cubic metres.

So I would set the conversion rate as

6 space = 1 displacement ton

Now to vehicle power plants.

Back in Striker days the minimum size for a vehicle power plant was... 1 cubic metre.
this is too big for a motor bike , so I would suggest power plants start at 0.1 spaces, with minimum sizes for the different types, outputs that increase with TL, scale efficiency, more fuel efficiency at higher TLs, and things like turbos for ICE.

Hum.. I initially objected due to acceleration benches only accommodating 4. But, since a vehicle can be a bike, there just isn't any .. stuff.. with the person. So it makes sense to have 6 to 1 for spaces to dton there.

But for heavy vehicles I feel like the acceleration bench makes sense again, and I'd want to match that.

So I think I'd go 6 to 1 for space to dton. Open frame vehicles get to use all of the spaces. Light vehicles have to 'spend' 1 space out of 6 on their structure, so can only fill 5 out of 6 spaces. Heavy vehicles have to spend 2 out of 6 on their structure, so can only fill 4 out of 6.

And then you'd need to redo costs across the board to account for that.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Now that is a good idea

next - the actual space taken by a person ay a workstation
cramped 0.5 space
ergonomic 0.5 space (costs more)
standard 1 space

passenger
0.5 spaces seated

 

[Sigtrygg]

Start with power plants and people and work up from there...

 

[Nelphine]

Right, and I'm pretty sure that's why the current vehicle handbook doesn't let you buy power plants/engines separately - they were too small, and ideally you don't want to build a game system that requires the use of fractions for a lot of use cases.

So, in my 6 to 1, but light vehicles use 1 out of 6 on structure, and heavy vehicles use 2 out of 6 on structure, I'd probably want to design it so that the engine/power plant is part of those 'used up' spaces.

So if we go back to an earlier post, where a heavy grav vehicle engine/power plant uses up 10% of the spaces in the vehicle, i'd say that works out pretty nicely. The goal was to use 1 out of 10 dtons; 10 dtons is 60 spaces; so it would be 6 spaces. The structure is using up 20 spaces. so 6 of those 20 spaces is the engine/power plant.

On a light vehicle, that still works - 10 out of 60 are structure, so 6 of those 10 spaces is the engine/power plant.

I think that's fine to carry on into other vehicle types.

Open frame would by default not have an engine/power plant, so would need to purchase it separately.

So this brings us back to engine/power plant being 'inherent' in the cost of the vehicle.

But since we know how many spaces the engine/power plant uses up, we can now assign costs so that people can make the engine or power bigger.

The numbers are still a mess (4.8 spaces generates 3 power at TL12 in this model, 2 of which get used by the engine if you don't buy extra power), but at least its something.

 

[Sigtrygg]

That's next on the list - fixing vehicle power.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Hum.. I initially objected due to acceleration benches only accommodating 4. But, since a vehicle can be a bike, there just isn't any .. stuff.. with the person. So it makes sense to have 6 to 1 for spaces to dton there.

But for heavy vehicles I feel like the acceleration bench makes sense again, and I'd want to match that.

So I think I'd go 6 to 1 for space to dton. Open frame vehicles get to use all of the spaces. Light vehicles have to 'spend' 1 space out of 6 on their structure, so can only fill 5 out of 6 spaces. Heavy vehicles have to spend 2 out of 6 on their structure, so can only fill 4 out of 6.

And then you'd need to redo costs across the board to account for that.

Now you have to go and change the Robot Handbook to match what you just created.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Right, and I'm pretty sure that's why the current vehicle handbook doesn't let you buy power plants/engines separately - they were too small, and ideally you don't want to build a game system that requires the use of fractions for a lot of use cases.

So, in my 6 to 1, but light vehicles use 1 out of 6 on structure, and heavy vehicles use 2 out of 6 on structure, I'd probably want to design it so that the engine/power plant is part of those 'used up' spaces.

So if we go back to an earlier post, where a heavy grav vehicle engine/power plant uses up 10% of the spaces in the vehicle, i'd say that works out pretty nicely. The goal was to use 1 out of 10 dtons; 10 dtons is 60 spaces; so it would be 6 spaces. The structure is using up 20 spaces. so 6 of those 20 spaces is the engine/power plant.

On a light vehicle, that still works - 10 out of 60 are structure, so 6 of those 10 spaces is the engine/power plant.

I think that's fine to carry on into other vehicle types.

Open frame would by default not have an engine/power plant, so would need to purchase it separately.

So this brings us back to engine/power plant being 'inherent' in the cost of the vehicle.

But since we know how many spaces the engine/power plant uses up, we can now assign costs so that people can make the engine or power bigger.

The numbers are still a mess (4.8 spaces generates 3 power at TL12 in this model, 2 of which get used by the engine if you don't buy extra power), but at least its something.

Why does "Not being a round number" make it a mess? None of the numbers in spaceship construction are round. They are full of decimal points and numbers following decimal points. Just avoid expressing anything in fractions. It makes the math harder.

 

[Condottiere]

Need a larger selection of seating.

The problem with space(s), is, that they could be configured differently.