Updated Vehicle Handbook in the works

[phavoc]

Squish.
High Guard is pretty clear (p.16):
Artificial Gravity uses similar technology but can only be used to generate internal gravity and does not serve as
a substitute for the G-compensation provided by a manoeuvre drive.
I'm stretching it so you can buy grav plates to add up to 2g, and inertial compensators up to 2g, so if you take the turn belly first (easier for a flying machine than one on the ground), you can lower the g-forces by as much as 4. But:
"Squish goes the Vargr..."
( A popular nursery rhyme from Gashikan. Sung to the tune of 'Pop goes the weasel')

So.... how can you generate a artificial grav field without also creating a gravity sump within the same field? Not trying to split hairs here, but you are literally creating an artificial field that acts exactly like a planetary field has. And our planet generates it's own compensation field for the speeds its travelling in orbit. One difference is that the speed <> acceleration, so that's one issue that's sidestepped.

The field inside the ship is independent of the universe outside of the field, so as long as you don't exceed the field strength you should, as I see it at least, feel no effects of the acceleration. But once you exceed it then the question is - does it fail completely or do you just feel the excessive forces? So would the occupants feel 6Gs of effect if your ship was accelerating at 6Gs and your field only had 5G strength, or would you only feel 2Gs of effect?

 

[Geir]

So.... how can you generate a artificial grav field without also creating a gravity sump within the same field? Not trying to split hairs here, but you are literally creating an artificial field that acts exactly like a planetary field has. And our planet generates it's own compensation field for the speeds its travelling in orbit. One difference is that the speed <> acceleration, so that's one issue that's sidestepped.

The field inside the ship is independent of the universe outside of the field, so as long as you don't exceed the field strength you should, as I see it at least, feel no effects of the acceleration. But once you exceed it then the question is - does it fail completely or do you just feel the excessive forces? So would the occupants feel 6Gs of effect if your ship was accelerating at 6Gs and your field only had 5G strength, or would you only feel 2Gs of effect?

Compensating direct acceleration is separate discussion. In High Guard its specific to the r-drive, so it's clearly not compensated.

The acceleration I was originally referencing in my chunk of new VHB text about is from the turn itself, which has nothing to do with the propulsion method and that's not going to be directly compensated no matter what drive, from a propeller engine to a g-drive, is pushing it.

 

[tytalan]

Something came to mind 2300 AD Vehicles of the Frontier has modifications for using the Vehicle Handbook to design your own vehicles. Are you going to have anything to take these changes in account for those that play 2300 AD

 

[Geir]

Every day I work on this another random thought pops into my head. I'm trying to do a vehicle a day as I work through the second edit pass. Was about to make a TL5 fighter will all sorts of features, each of which reduces range when... auxiliary fuel tanks, that's what I have to add. Put them on hard points instead of bombs if you need the range... duh. Every day, another duh.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Every day I work on this another random thought pops into my head. I'm trying to do a vehicle a day as I work through the second edit pass. Was about to make a TL5 fighter will all sorts of features, each of which reduces range when... auxiliary fuel tanks, that's what I have to add. Put them on hard points instead of bombs if you need the range... duh. Every day, another duh.

At least you thought of it before it went to print. lol

 

[tytalan]

Geir thank you for your hard work and letting the Gearheads take this part of the game away from the rest of us.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Every day I work on this another random thought pops into my head. I'm trying to do a vehicle a day as I work through the second edit pass. Was about to make a TL5 fighter will all sorts of features, each of which reduces range when... auxiliary fuel tanks, that's what I have to add. Put them on hard points instead of bombs if you need the range... duh. Every day, another duh.

So, wait -- are Vehicles tracking fuel usage now instead of some silly hidden assumption about 'sufficient fuel is automatically built into the chassis'? Wonderful!

'Drop tanks' were completely (and nonsensically) unnecessary in the previous book.

 

[MasterGwydion]

So, wait -- are Vehicles tracking fuel usage now instead of some silly hidden assumption about 'sufficient fuel is automatically built into the chassis'? Wonderful!

'Drop tanks' were completely (and nonsensically) unnecessary in the previous book.

Running out of gas in dangerous territory is awesome adventure material!

 

[Geir]

So, wait -- are Vehicles tracking fuel usage now instead of some silly hidden assumption about 'sufficient fuel is automatically built into the chassis'? Wonderful!

'Drop tanks' were completely (and nonsensically) unnecessary in the previous book.

Well, there was and is Range so it was always there. Out of Range, out of gas. No detail on how you got gas (besides the monthly maintenance fee), but if there is no gas station in sight or you only flew over half the ocean... you got a problem, and then you may need a way to extend Range. It was already hidden in there in the old book. Using the fuel capacity changes as written in the previous book is the default for the new book. But if you look at the fuel capacity customisation on page 46 of the old book, you can derive the actual fuel tankage assumptions behind them.

Equations are getting kicked to little blue boxes so as to not disrupt the flow, or kicked to the back of the bus book.
And so are the clever things you can also do with the build rules and combat 'enhancements' (or at least I think they're clever things). All the cool kids are in back of the bus (yes, that's what I get for going to school in the 70s, not the 50s)

But if you want to play with more advanced rules for better control of the knobs:

It turns out that 20% of the vehicle, or 40% of the 'Space that isn't there' (STIT?) is fuel. If I did the math right. It seems to hold up, though.

So, if you want to change Range by adding or subtracting fuel Spaces directly (Sorry, still no fractional Spaces) then you can determine the percentage + or - fuel using the formula:

Range (+/-)% = 2.5 x Fuel Space allocation changed / Total Vehicle Spaces.

From that, another blue box off to the side of auxiliary fuel tanks option gives you:

Range (+)% = 2.5 x Auxiliary Fuel Spaces / (Total Vehicle Spaces + Auxiliary Fuel Spaces)

(and no we are not going to play with numbers like when you drop the tanks or whether empty tanks matter - they're things on hardpoints that aren't intended to be bombs (unless something goes really, really, wrong - but that's role playing, not rules...)

 

[MasterGwydion]

Well, there was and is Range so it was always there. Out of Range, out of gas. No detail on how you got gas (besides the monthly maintenance fee), but if there is no gas station in sight or you only flew over half the ocean... you got a problem, and then you may need a way to extend Range. It was already hidden in there in the old book. Using the fuel capacity changes as written in the previous book is the default for the new book. But if you look at the fuel capacity customisation on page 46 of the old book, you can derive the actual fuel tankage assumptions behind them.

Equations are getting kicked to little blue boxes so as to not disrupt the flow, or kicked to the back of the bus book.
And so are the clever things you can also do with the build rules and combat 'enhancements' (or at least I think they're clever things). All the cool kids are in back of the bus (yes, that's what I get for going to school in the 70s, not the 50s)

But if you want to play with more advanced rules for better control of the knobs:

It turns out that 20% of the vehicle, or 40% of the 'Space that isn't there' (STIT?) is fuel. If I did the math right. It seems to hold up, though.

So, if you want to change Range by adding or subtracting fuel Spaces directly (Sorry, still no fractional Spaces) then you can determine the percentage + or - fuel using the formula:

Range (+/-)% = 2.5 x Fuel Space allocation changed / Total Vehicle Spaces.

From that, another blue box off to the side of auxiliary fuel tanks option gives you:

Range (+)% = 2.5 x Auxiliary Fuel Spaces / (Total Vehicle Spaces + Auxiliary Fuel Spaces)

(and no we are not going to play with numbers like when you drop the tanks or whether empty tanks matter - they're things on hardpoints that aren't intended to be bombs (unless something goes really, really, wrong - but that's role playing, not rules...)

Weren't the drop tanks on the F-14 droppable in flight?

 

[J. L. Brown]

Well, there was and is Range so it was always there. Out of Range, out of gas. No detail on how you got gas (besides the monthly maintenance fee), but if there is no gas station in sight or you only flew over half the ocean... you got a problem, and then you may need a way to extend Range. It was already hidden in there in the old book. Using the fuel capacity changes as written in the previous book is the default for the new book. But if you look at the fuel capacity customisation on page 46 of the old book, you can derive the actual fuel tankage assumptions behind them.

Equations are getting kicked to little blue boxes so as to not disrupt the flow, or kicked to the back of the bus book.
And so are the clever things you can also do with the build rules and combat 'enhancements' (or at least I think they're clever things). All the cool kids are in back of the bus (yes, that's what I get for going to school in the 70s, not the 50s)

But if you want to play with more advanced rules for better control of the knobs:

It turns out that 20% of the vehicle, or 40% of the 'Space that isn't there' (STIT?) is fuel. If I did the math right. It seems to hold up, though.So, if you want to change Range by adding or subtracting fuel Spaces directly (Sorry, still no fractional Spaces) then you can determine the percentage + or - fuel using the formula:

Range (+/-)% = 2.5 x Fuel Space allocation changed / Total Vehicle Spaces.

From that, another blue box off to the side of auxiliary fuel tanks option gives you:

Range (+)% = 2.5 x Auxiliary Fuel Spaces / (Total Vehicle Spaces + Auxiliary Fuel Spaces)

(and no we are not going to play with numbers like when you drop the tanks or whether empty tanks matter - they're things on hardpoints that aren't intended to be bombs (unless something goes really, really, wrong - but that's role playing, not rules...)

I'm not sure I follow the intended math here, a simple example would be helpful.

A 100 'Space' Vehicle has 20 'unallocatable spaces' worth of fuel; and that is 40& of the 'unallocatable spaces', so you kept the old '50% of all spaces are hidden from the designer' paradigm. That is disappointing; please tell me that at least we fixed the easily-errataed scaling issue.

A 100 'Space' vehicle, which converts 1 space from 'Fuel' to 'Allocated' goes: 1 space changed / 100 total spaces = 100% range / 2.5 == goes 40% as far? I think that I misunderstood.

What happens to a vehicle which reclaims all of the onboard fuel in order to use transmitted power? How many spaces do they end up with per dTon?

 

[MasterGwydion]

I'm not sure I follow the intended math here, a simple example would be helpful.

A 100 'Space' Vehicle has 20 'unallocatable spaces' worth of fuel; and that is 40& of the 'unallocatable spaces', so you kept the old '50% of all spaces are hidden from the designer' paradigm. That is disappointing; please tell me that at least we fixed the easily-errataed scaling issue.

A 100 'Space' vehicle, which converts 1 space from 'Fuel' to 'Allocated' goes: 1 space changed / 100 total spaces = 100% range / 2.5 == goes 40% as far? I think that I misunderstood.

What happens to a vehicle which reclaims all of the onboard fuel in order to use transmitted power? How many spaces do they end up with per dTon?

Subways

 

[Geir]

I'm not sure I follow the intended math here, a simple example would be helpful.

A 100 'Space' Vehicle has 20 'unallocatable spaces' worth of fuel; and that is 40& of the 'unallocatable spaces', so you kept the old '50% of all spaces are hidden from the designer' paradigm. That is disappointing; please tell me that at least we fixed the easily-errataed scaling issue.

Sorry. I am fairly certain I fixed the scaling issue if you mean being able to build tardises or turtles within turtles within Russian old lady dolls...

A 100 'Space' vehicle, which converts 1 space from 'Fuel' to 'Allocated' goes: 1 space changed / 100 total spaces = 100% range / 2.5 == goes 40% as far? I think that I misunderstood.

Sorry, I needed a parenthesis (which is odd, since I use them so much).



Adding one Space of fuel to a 100 Space vehicle would use up one internal Space and increase range by (1 x 2.5)/100 or 2.5% further.
It's exactly the same as using 10% of your Spaces to get a 25% improvement in range, just like the text says, I'm just adding the formula off to the side for someone who says:
But I only want to add 6 Spaces fuel capacity out of my 100, why can't I do that?
Answer: (6 x2.5) /100 = 15% Range added, so what was, say 1000 km, becomes 1150 km.

Again, optional, but even some of the vehicles in the back of the book do something similar... almost every one of those I look at seems to break or twist the build rules in some way. You might not like what comes out of what I'm doing, but it will at least be consistent within its own ruleset.

What happens to a vehicle which reclaims all of the onboard fuel in order to use transmitted power? How many spaces do they end up with per dTon?

If you're running off grid or beamed power, you get some spaces 'extra' and unlimited Range while you're on the grid, but it's built in with the assumption you have to spend some of the 'fuel' Space for a grid receiver, inverter, etc. But the most you could possibly get back is 40% more than you had before, if you just gutted out the fuel tank and turned it into a trailer parked in your back yard (extra bonus points if it's on cement blocks). Even if you gutted the entire vehicle out, you wouldn't necessarily get all of the STIT back, because a structure (or a literal box) is more space efficient for 'shipping tons' than something designed as a vehicle... unless it is literally a 'box truck' I suppose. A literal box will give you 4 Spaces to allocate to stuff in a box that takes one Shipping ton.

(great, now I need to go back to the spreadsheet and make sure I put up a guardrail to prevent giving back fuel spaces that weren't fuel spaces in the first place...)

 

[J. L. Brown]

Sorry. I am fairly certain I fixed the scaling issue if you mean being able to build tardises or turtles within turtles within Russian old lady dolls...

Unfortunately, it does not look like it. A 1 dTon Starship scale weapon only takes up 4x the spaces, but still does 10x damage. Ditto for Starship scale armor.

Sorry, I needed a parenthesis (which is odd, since I use them so much).

View attachment 2631

Adding one Space of fuel to a 100 Space vehicle would use up one internal Space and increase range by (1 x 2.5)/100 or 2.5% further.
It's exactly the same as using 10% of your Spaces to get a 25% improvement in range, just like the text says, I'm just adding the formula off to the side for someone who says:
But I only want to add 6 Spaces fuel capacity out of my 100, why can't I do that?
Answer: (6 x2.5) /100 = 15% Range added, so what was, say 1000 km, becomes 1150 km.

Okay, the math is more rational now; I figured I was just not seeing all of it. Thanks for clearing that up!

Again, optional, but even some of the vehicles in the back of the book do something similar... almost every one of those I look at seems to break or twist the build rules in some way. You might not like what comes out of what I'm doing, but it will at least be consistent within its own ruleset.

If you're running off grid or beamed power, you get some spaces 'extra' and unlimited Range while you're on the grid, but it's built in with the assumption you have to spend some of the 'fuel' Space for a grid receiver, inverter, etc. But the most you could possibly get back is 40% more than you had before, if you just gutted out the fuel tank and turned it into a trailer parked in your back yard (extra bonus points if it's on cement blocks). Even if you gutted the entire vehicle out, you wouldn't necessarily get all of the STIT back, because a structure (or a literal box) is more space efficient for 'shipping tons' than something designed as a vehicle... unless it is literally a 'box truck' I suppose. A literal box will give you 4 Spaces to allocate to stuff in a box that takes one Shipping ton.

(great, now I need to go back to the spreadsheet and make sure I put up a guardrail to prevent giving back fuel spaces that weren't fuel spaces in the first place...)

You are correct; I'm not very happy. Consistent with stuff-that-was-already-wrong-and-needed-a-rewrite means the new stuff is broken before it ever hits the printer. Don't sweat it though; I already bought the Cepheus Vehicle Handbook, so I already have a system in hand which is an improvement on the old VH. I'm certain that it will be impossible to please everyone, and this time around I am in the 'not happy group' -- if I was happy, you'd be getting complaints from other people. Thank you for putting some work in.

 

[Geir]

So I did a little push on tech levels, making jets TL6 instead of 5. Otherwise a Sopwith Camel and a P-51 Mustang fit in the same range of TL4 pre-jet era and aren't separated by a TL at all, and that seems just plane (get it?) silly.
(Logic here being if you could do jets at TL5, you'd just skip the high performance prop stage and jump to jets)

This is the way I see TL transitions, especially as I'm checking my work on the weapons section:

TL2-3 Napoleonic Wars
TL3-4 Crimea and US Civil War Era
TL4-5 WW I
TL5-6 WW II
TL6-7 Vietnam (the US part of the war, not the French)

By this I mean you start the war with the lower TL and some plans and prototypes of the next, and you end the war with some production models of the higher TL, but not fully adopted until after.

Does this seem incorrect? I'm trying to put real differences in capabilities and I'm mentally falling back on wars as a tech pusher. Hopefully not the pusher from TL7-8, but maybe already underway with the wars of the 21st century. (You could argue that the TL6-7 was just as much a push from the Space Race and Cold War, so it doesn't have to be actual wars, just a high concentration of competition)

 

[Condottiere]

The Gloster Meteor could be a prototype.

 

[Limpin Legin]

You could argue that the TL6-7 was just as much a push from the Space Race and Cold War, so it doesn't have to be actual wars, just a high concentration of competition

Yes, and:
TL4-5 pushed away from telegram services and into telephone.
TL5-6 Completion of Electric Grid for domestic electricity supplies.
TL6-7 TV Journalism

Not these have much to do with vehicle technologies, perhaps.

 

[Geir]

The Gloster Meteor could be a prototype.

Yes, and it was so 'new' that they wouldn't let it fly over enemy lines for fear the Germans could learn from it.

Edit: I would actually call it production TL6. Prototypes were things they did in the 30s.

 

[Condottiere]

The Messerschmidt Two Hundred Sixty Two certainly acted like one.

Unless, engines are separate from the chassis.

 

[Geir]

The Messerschmidt Two Hundred Sixty Two certainly acted like one.

Unless, engines are separate from the chassis.

Well, perhaps they would have worked better if they hadn't used slave labor in the production lines...