Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BlackJaw" data-source="post: 1535558" data-attributes="member: 888">Good to hear from you again.  I'm a lot like a some pet dog.  When people leave I sort of assume that I will never hear from them again (and will therefore be left to slow lonely death in an empty house) and when they show up again, I'm very happy to see you.  Don't worry, I won't lick your face.  OR: Hey! Nice to see you again!"Class systems" were not to my taste when some one brought them up a long time ago (back when I arged for a slot/point buy type system).  It is onely recently that I decided to look at it again.Yah, it's just a reworking of the same basic concepts: that many ship stats are tied directly to number of hitdice which are in turn connected to the ship's size.  each hit dice represents some space in the vehicle devoted to a single feature, or part of a larger feature.  It's a nice idea but it's proved hard to work out.  The biggest problems come from it being:1) Very complicated (so much so it became easy to make a vehicle that couldn't fly, or fly well, unless you had a deep understanding of the system... something we have but some one who downloads the book would see as a collection of odd math problems standing between them a vehicle).2) Needing a lot of seperate components to cover a multitude of possible or interesting options (I mean a lot because we are not focusing on a single collection of tech or magic levels).Still I pressed on with the concept of each hitpoint connecting to a single component (although some would need more) and it became harder.  We had a massive (unfinished) list of components... to make it more usable I started condensing... instead of a collection of various engines I was working on 1 or 2 engine stats that scaled and could be configued instead of a seperate component for each type.  I did the same with many weapon concepts... etc etc etc.  Well the result was that I started to see things as being less and less complicated.  Only a handful of very spicific systems need their own custom stats (sails, and zepplin blimps, force sheilds, etc) while most functions of a craft could be done using simple rules... and then it hit me: with everything all simplified, why not make most of hte basic functions classes, with one class being for the odd special systems?  Many of the things I was working on all of a sudden felt a lot like class features and I realized presenting the construction system as being a lot like a character creation would make it easier to use and understand for most people that knew D&D 3.0/3.5/etc at all.  It is that last feature (the ease of learning) that makes me such a big fan of this, although I have had other ideas as of late, and as this is the most important feature of the latter half of hte book, I'd love a lot of help to get it right.I've been asking for help with that.  I think some of my ideas on the topic swung wide into being TOO class/character like.  I think a blance is needed (between the older component and newer class ideas... call it presentations of nearly the same ideas.)I hate naming stuff sometimes.  A spicific name for everything like this will be needed eventualy, but for now, as long as we all know what we are talking about.I like this idea still too.I figure (these days) having an inteligent craft would require having a special "AI" feature in the ship (something needing a special component/level/"feat" devoted to it) That would come for "free" on some types of vehilces (like the living ship-aberation and undead types... all others are non-inteligent by default) although what having this does is sitll up for debate.  It would be easy to say that the ship has skill points based on hit dice, and a will save... etc.  The hard part here is to define what a living vehicle can do without a pilot?  can it fly on its own? use weapons on it's own?  what if the pilot and ship are not in agreement on how to fly or what to shoot at?  If it can fly itself, isn't it a vessel-creature instead of a vehicle?!  Yes this is a bit confusing... but something to be delt with after the core mechanics are nailed down a bit more.  As a final note on this topic, I figure adding an "on-board inteligence" to a vehilce would be mechancialy similar to sticking a ring of a sustinence on your co-pilot and then welding him into the co-pilot seat.  He would need his own saves, ability scores, skills, etc... just like a real character... only he is stuck in the ship, and in some ways his the ship... but you can still design ships without them.Ramming attacks involve piloting checks.  A ram weapon would allow you to be better at it (deal more damage, and take less yourself) but there is no attack roll in a ramming attack.Anyway: as far giving BAB with class levels... again this would be tied to only inteligent vehicles because "stupid" vehicles would never make attacks, their pilots and passengers would.Yah, I agree.  As long as we all know that the only save a ship needs that the pilot doesn't provide is Fort.  Will saves are for pilots (or living ships) and reflex is provided by the pilot (and the living ship would have to have one to pass along... although it might use Inteligence instead of dexterity?)  Again a lot of this is just what do we do about living ships?This is one of those things I was looking for feedback on, and thanks for the feedback!  Yah, I think I may have been extending the Character Class concept out TOO MUCH.  If we make it a bit closer to the component system we had before it is likly better.  That is to say you only get the benefits of the levels you take.  There are no free weapon slots, you much get them through taking weapon levels.  There are no free special-system slots, you get them only through taking the systems levels.  The one thing here to keep in mind is that you should be able to make any vehicle you design fly.  It should be inherent in the system that if you took nothign but weapon levels, you ship would fly with the "minimum speed and manuverability" for a vehicle (or a vehicle of its size) and if you want it faster, you must take ranks in other systems.  This removes the complicated concept of finding a balance between the right amount of power, engines, feul, lift, speed, etc...  You start out with a default balance and then can up any one of a few special features to meet your design goals by taking engine levels.Yes, if you have a larger vehicle, you will need to devote more levels to engines to get any benefit.  For smaller crafts it might be enough to devote 1-3 levels to engines to get a bit of an upgrade, but for something larger 1-3 levels in engines wouldn't change a thing.  The exact ratio is not figured yet, but essentialy, yes the old "you need to put more in to get more out" concept is still the best one I can come up with.  yes it will be  table too."precentage" mechanics are not commonly used in d20 and I'd like find another way rather then make that the system here.  This stems with keeping it with d20 "characteristics" as well as the fact that taking 33% of a number of HD that may be a prime number in the hundreads is rather ugly and involves a lot of rounding.The best way to deal with this (or at least the one most often used in the PHB for things like this) is a table.  Larger the craft the more fuel space is needed to get any more lenght of time out of the engines... just like with engines, and armor, and just about anything else that should scale.  I have not yet worked out how to best work with fuel issues because the type of fuel effects the setting.  Atomic/etc generators last a long time, while a petro-type tank on an aircraft or jet lasts hours or less... As for life support... ship size has less to do with it then number of people.  more components devoted to life support means more people can live on the vehilce.  larger vehicles tend to have more people on them, and thus need more components for life support.The issues here is that as I removed spicific components in favor for a single generic engine mechanic which is now just called "engine level" it made giving tech level less then possible.  I do agree that building one into a component system is a good idea (although the complicated one we had before was too complciated.  Tech/magic/Psionics or even tech/fantasy would be ok.  6 types of tech, various magic types, and psionic disciplines... that's far too much.  History Lesson: The componenent system is based of the Alternity ship system that I loved so much.  That system had a tech ratting for all the game's gear.  While the weapon's and armor chapeter covered stone age through mater-energy converstion tech 9, the chapters on vehicles had only a few components for tech 4? (50s-modern day tech) and most were for the same tech level of the inherent setting (Star Drive) with a few upgraded ones for the latter tech levels.  Their latter space ship guide book held pages of charts for the various tech levels of gear, and it was still modern tech through a bit of more advanced stuff.  Our project covers a larger time spand and includes a lot of fanatasy stuff of a handful of types (spelljammer-ish magic sailing ships vs steam-punk...etc) so to make a large enough selections of individual components (each having their own tech ratting) would not be easy, and it would be far to massive.Now one theory we tossed around (and you were one of the players in that game of toss) was that we would just put some basic things in the first release then then build collections of gear and sample ships and setting ideas by setting and release them seperatly.  (Comsmonomicon: Steam-punk accessory, etc).  I still like the idea of making a collection of add-ons by setting type, but I also think components would be too numerous and to easy replaced with simplified  guides (like the current Engine level instead of 20+ engines seperated by helicopter/jet/prop/etc.That said: your tech level is still not only valid but possible... but it needs tweaking a bit to fit.  >> Engine levels can not have tech levels outright... but what if we modifiy the mechanics a bit.  If your using a vehicle of the normal tech ratting for your setting then when you compare engine points in speed/etc to the Table, you just look at the listing for vehicles of your size, but if you use a more advanced tech (jet engines instead of prop planes) you can look at the listing for a vehicle one size smaller.  If your using out-dated tech you use the listing for one size larger (making you much slower and less manuverable).>> Weapons with seperate tech levels.  The "Cannon" mechanic that lets you build a weapon from scratch might need some work to tie tech level into it, but it could be done without much work. Maybe high tech weapons use larger damage dice while low tech ones use smaller ones?  All other weapons have seperate listings (ballistas, etc) so that works as you describe.>> Armor is a hard one for tech levels.  putting levels of armor on a vehicle just ups it's armor class (more levels are needed for larger vehicles).>> Special systems:  special systems have seperate listings and thus can generaly have seperate tech levels.Now I wouldn't generlay allow or recomend allowing tech of more then 1 level above "standard" tech for the setting, and lowering price for tech, as you said, would be done no lower then 2 ranks (maybe 1 again, as older tech would be generlay so outdated that it would cost a lot to make replacement or needed parts, etc.  As a film student at SFSU I learned that a lot of the budget went to get replacement parts for their old cameras/etc... and they were stuck doing that because they never had enough money on hand to start getting newer cameras (which cost a lot to buy but would cost less to get replacement parts for!)  Anyway, I do like this idea, and your right, that using one meathod or another could be fairly easily done to make this built into the system and thereby make it more flexible without making it more complicated then it needs to be.Ok, works for me.Good to hear from you again!</blockquote>

Verification