Travellers Needed! High Guard Updates

[Terry Mixon]

You could reach a compromise, in that it requires one full hull point to be counted as a spacecraft.

So, 2.5 tons for a standard hull. I'm not sure why the compromise is needed, though.

What purpose does a 2.5-ton minimum serve that is any different than a 5-ton minimum? Ot a 1-ton minimum? Or a fractional ton minimum? Any hit is going to FUBAR all of them. I say dump the artificial minimum and just let small hulls be super fragile, like they are.

 

[Condottiere]

Anything below one hull point would need to be a vehicle chassis, adapted for outer space.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Anything below one hull point would need to be a vehicle chassis, adapted for outer space.

While I see your intent, I think I'll disagree on general principles. One could as easily say that all vessels, of whatever size, have a minimum of 1 hull point. In fact, I think that is a good idea.

I present a spacecraft use built with the High Guard rules except for the size minimum.

 

[Terry Mixon]

This lifepod does away with the also nonsensical (in my opinion) 1 power point minimum rule to make an emergency life pod that is just under 1 ton because of the rounding up of docking bay size to the next ton. Another rule that needs to be deep sixed.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I can build a vehicular weather satellite and escape pod. It doesn't change my opinion, though. They should be valid spacecraft builds.

Even so, I’ll build vehicle versions until the rules do change.

 

[Condottiere]

I used to build rocket sleds with actual high burn thrusters, at, I think, two tonnes.

But, when you get lemons, you squeeze them into other drinks.

I think, structural integrity would be the issue, since, arguably, a twenty kilogramme dogfight missile could be considered a spacecraft.

 

[Technetium 98]

So, 2.5 tons for a standard hull...

christopher something-or-other griffen i swear on my honour as spreadsheet-man if you let non-integer ship sizes into this book i will come to your house and piss on your toothbrush

 

[Sigtrygg]

Remove the restriction saying small craft must be 5 tons. I made life pods that are less than a ton at smallest, and there isn’t a need to restrict the size. There will only be some limited uses for them, but they are valid.

I made the small life pod less than a ton so the docking bay for it wasn’t rounded up to the next full ton if the life pod was a ton. Just have the docking bay be an additional 10% and let that be what it is. If it fits, it sits.

I agree that at this size it is more akin to a vehicle - but that would require consistency and scaling between HG and Veh...

 

[Sigtrygg]

So, 2.5 tons for a standard hull. I'm not sure why the compromise is needed, though.

What purpose does a 2.5-ton minimum serve that is any different than a 5-ton minimum? Ot a 1-ton minimum? Or a fractional ton minimum? Any hit is going to FUBAR all of them. I say dump the artificial minimum and just let small hulls be super fragile, like they are.

Once again I am agreeing that anything smaller than 2.5 tons be designed as a Vehicle...

but I also agree with you that minimum sizes often have no justification other than as rules meta.

If I want to build small craft using millitons (mT _D ) as my base units then I can with one milliton being one thousandth of a displacement ton or 14dm³

Just noticed - 5 mT _D is the size of an average human...

 

[Condottiere]

To be fair, other species could be smaller.

Or, it's a computer controlled probe.

But, within the confines of what might be possible in the current set of design rules, I do think that vehicles, and robots, can be space proofed and space mobile.

Put a rocket pack on a spacesuit (while in orbit), and it becomes a space vehicle.

 

[Terry Mixon]

To be fair, other species could be smaller.

Or, it's a computer controlled probe.

But, within the confines of what might be possible in the current set of design rules, I do think that vehicles, and robots, can be space proofed and space mobile.

Put a rocket pack on a spacesuit (while in orbit), and it becomes a space vehicle.

Robots top out at 1 ton. Vehicles don’t seem to have an upper limit but the rules for movement in space aren’t there. High Guard bottoms out at 5 tons and the rules for moving in space are needed at smaller sizes. The quantifies where I was running into issues though I was having issues putting it into words. Thank you all for helping me see the problem more clearly.

Robot rules need to allow for larger robots, really. Vehicles need clear space space thrust rules to be used from ships as parasite vehicles to fill the smaller than 5 ton niche.

@paltrysum and @Geir, this latter part needs to make it into The
Vehicle Handbook Update 2026 so we can have vehicles moving at space speed with clear rules. Robots, too, as robotic missiles are a thing. I suppose that means we need Vehicle rules first high thrust or something in words translating the vehicle speeds for grav vehicles to Thrust numbers.

Do vehicle grav drives operate outside of 1D or 10D? Clarification on that is needed. If not, that means rules are needed for making ships under 5 tones or vehicles that can work in space away from a planet as needed.