d20 Future Starship Spreadsheet

[Johnny Angel]

In their Starship Construction Manual, RPG Objects sort of gives the raspberry to the idea that you might need a spreadsheet to design a starship, but even with their straightforward and robust system, there is still a fair bit of calculation and record keeping, not to mention numerous easily forgotten adjustments necessary for each change. If you'd rather do that business by hand, more flower to you. I instead chose to design a spreadsheet at the risk of getting the business from Charles Rice. Behold, my crude web site:

http://www.ashmead.net/~angel/Star*Forge/d20 Starships.html

This was designed with my d20 Star*Drive game in mind, so there's an ad hoc setting to add a stardrive to your ship. Otherwise it should be sufficiently generic and in compliance with d20 Future rules and the Blood and Space 2 system for designing hulls and weapons. This sheet doesn't support the Invention Point system, but it does adjust between market prices and homebrew prices, which I believe convert nicely to Invention Points and Craft DCs. See Blood & Space 2: Starship Construction Manual and Blood & Circuits for the details on that.

I still have it mind to lamprey my own ad hoc d20 conversion onto somebody's Alternity Warships spreadsheet, as I had attempted earlier. Espceially given that d20 Future hit points match Alternity Durability point for the same ship class, I suspect that there is an Alternity core underneath the d20 Future starship system, but I don't suppose Wizards will be putting out a more elaborate version any time soon. But as whiz-bang neato as I think Warships is, I suspect most people will not want to learn the details of the Warships system just to create a ship to run in d20 Future. But it the long run I'd like to see some of the richness of Warships somehow hammered into d20 Future starship combat.

As for the current spreadsheet, I humbly submit to any feedback or corrections at stardrive@ashmead.net.

Speaking of Star*Drive, you may also wish to check out my d20 Star*Drive character generator:

http://www.ashmead.net/~angel/Star*Forge/Star Forge.html

 

[Aussiegamer]

Ironcleaver released a excel spreadsheet for d20 future space craft. It is at d20projects for everyone to get if they want it.

 

[Johnny Angel]

I'm not seeing where you'd get the Excel sheet, though I did manage to find Ironcleaver's .pdf datasheet, which is very interesting. I do think he's probably missing a bet if he is trying to reverse engineer d20 Future starships without reference to Warships, but the results are impressive nonetheless.

If you have a link for the spreadsheet in question, I'd love to get a look at it.

 

[Azgulor]

But as whiz-bang neato as I think Warships is, I suspect most people will not want to learn the details of the Warships system just to create a ship to run in d20 Future. But it the long run I'd like to see some of the richness of Warships somehow hammered into d20 Future starship combat.

http://www.ashmead.net/~angel/Star*Forge/Star Forge.html

Actually, I want just that. I like the Warships supplement and have been less than satisfied with d20 Future's take on starships even with the B&S: Construction Manual. So any info/experiences you can share would be of interest to me. I have the Warships supplement, but it never saw use in play as my Alternity campaign died shortly after its release.

Thanks,

Azgulor

 

[Aussiegamer]

I'm not seeing where you'd get the Excel sheet, though I did manage to find Ironcleaver's .pdf datasheet, which is very interesting. I do think he's probably missing a bet if he is trying to reverse engineer d20 Future starships without reference to Warships, but the results are impressive nonetheless.

If you have a link for the spreadsheet in question, I'd love to get a look at it.

It was an excel sheet but he changed it, sorry I forgot about that.

I don't see what the problem is about him showing all the rules for d20 future for spaceships, why does he need to reverse engineer using this warships rules?

 

[Johnny Angel]

Azgulor wrote:

Actually, I want just that. I like the Warships supplement and have been less than satisfied with d20 Future's take on starships even with the B&S: Construction Manual. So any info/experiences you can share would be of interest to me.

I have dumped an Excel sheet of some notes into a web page:
http://www.ashmead.net/~angel/Star*Forge/d20WarshipsNotes.htm

Basically, it looks like you can easily convert from Warships to d20 Future at least for hull and armor. Weapons are a bit of an issue, because they don't translate in any way, much less neatly in the way that hull and armor seem to. But if you don't assign any Warships weapon that doesn't appear in the d20 Future book, you don't have to convert. So, that takes care of the majority of the boxes in the d20 Future Starships table:

Type: Same as Warships 'Toughness' except that 'small' changes to 'Ultralight.'
Subtype: Same as Warships' hull type.

Assign a PC or NPC as pilot --
Initiative Modifier: Pilot's dex bonus, plus any bonus you want to assign for the aggregate of the several scanners. I have an idea how to decide that.
Pilot's Class Bonus: Based on your Pilot.
Pilot's Dex Modifier: Based on your Pilot.

Assign a Gunner and you get --
Gunner's Attack Bonus:

Then you need the Hull Size --
Size: For Ultralight, same as d20 stat for a ship with the same name in Warships. The Warships Cutter is probably roughly equivalent to the d20 Future Courier -- Gargantuan.

Once you have size, you can derive --
Defense: Take the modifiers from size and add pilot bonuses.
Flat-footed Defense: Take Defense and subtract the pilot's dex.
Autopilot Defense: Take the d20 Future autopilot mod based on size (d20F 110) and add the size modifier to Defense.
Targeting system bonus: Based on ship size (d20F 110).
Grapple Modifier: Based on size (d20F 143).

Hardness: Take the average die roll of the High Impact rating of the Warships armor and multiply it by ten. See the link above with regard to how nicely that rule works out. You could also split it up -- do the same math for all three Warships armor stats and assign them to d20 Future damage types:
Low Impact -- Fire
High Impact -- Ballistic
Energy -- Energy

Hit Dice: Multiply the Warships Hull Points times ten to get hit points. Devide hit points by 20 to get Hit dice.

The measurements are still fairly arbitrary --
Length: The Warships system does not determine this, but there is at least this data -- 24 cubic meters of cargo space costs 1 hull point. If we assume about a cubic meter for the structure needed to support that space, it looks like a hull point comes to a convenient 25 m^3. This gives you a rough idea of the total dimensions of your ship. The sheet that Aussiegamer mentioned also gives some guidelines to go on:
http://members.cox.net/ironcleaver/Starship_Construction_1.pdf
Weight: Also not determined by the Warships rules, but the sheet I just cited has some guidelines.

Restriction: Take the highest restriction of the component parts.

The following are determined through the Warships design process:
Crew: You assign hull points to life support and berthing the number of people you need.
Passenger Capacity: Again, you buy this with hull points.
Cargo capacity: Bought with hull points in the Warships system.
Base Purchase DC: Look up the Warships price for the hull on the DC chart in d20F 145.

Now the tricky part --
Tactical Speed: You can base it just on engines, and adjust for armor, just like in d20 Future, but there ought to be a way to base it on the Warships tactical movement system. I did a quick and dirty conversion by adding the Acceleration stat to the maneuver stat to determine the number of squares you can move.

Aussiegamer wrote:

I don't see what the problem is about him showing all the rules for d20 future for spaceships, why does he need to reverse engineer using this warships rules?

Because it's clear that they started with Warships when they set about creating the d20 Future starships system. As I have observed in my notes linked above, d20 Future Hit points appear to be derivable from Warships hull points, and armor value seems also to be scalable from Warships to d20 Future. Much of the equipment has also been translated.

I'm just saying that if he's trying to reverse-engineer d20 Future starships, then Warships is a significant data point.

 

[Aussiegamer]

actually I thought they used a lot of the ideas from Alternity (A lot of the armour and weapons have the same names) as far as I can see, and used some pretty bad combat ideas from some where else.

 

[Roudi]

Just to point out, Warships IS Alternity material.

 

[Aussiegamer]

OK....nods knowingly.

Then they did use a lot of the warships then