J. L. Brown
Emperor Mongoose
I think the current Vehicle Handbook is demonstrably not fit for purpose; which is precisely why an update is needed. The current Vehicle Handbook is the root cause of several things which seriously hamper compatibility and interoperability between Ships, Vehicles, and Robots. By far the biggest, most glaring fault is the supposed 'simplicity' -- since Vehicle Handbook refuses to track power, nothing that uses power can possibly ever be made compatible. That causes problems with Structures, too. And Robots.It is a problem if you scale directly, but it is fit for purpose: robots and battledress, or things that go inside a person-sized thing. [snip]
For a complete rewrite, it would need to be adjusted. Or would it? I can argue both ways and probably just confuse and annoy myself. But not the problem of the month. Need to make sure vehicles work and don't overpower or underpower spaceships.
Since much of the interior volume of a Vehicle is handwaved to 'simplify' design, there are clumsy 'customizations' which allow things like 'better fuel efficiency' or 'less fuel tankage' -- all of which can cause weird, TARDIS-like side-effects. Since this is handwave is done 'to account for the drivetrain' -- something that absolutely should be explicitly left to the choice of the vehicle-designer -- it creates problematic knock-on effects. One specific example is that a 'fusion power plant' can be added to a Vehicle; but it is in addition to the powerplant which is already included in the chassis. Just let the vehicle-designer choose what goes into their vehicle; High Guard (which, in an ideal world, would be compatible with the VHU) already does this.
I think it can be easily argued that animals can be Robot slot-scale (and smaller) as well as well as Vehicle space-scale (and larger!). I think this is a very strong argument in favor of consistent-scaling-factor; all that it would take is a few errata to Robots (which keep their very implausible 256 slots per dTon). 1 dTon x16 = 16 Vehicle 'spaces', x16 = 256 Robot 'slots'.If I do animals... I mean 'things that are alive*'... next, they won't have Slots... but they might have Size.
*Those who experience life?
All of the work gets easier and better with 1} a consistent scaling, and 2} allowing vehicle-designers to choose what goes into their Vehicles.