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as a side note to the time thing; just make sure that time is a constant variable no matter what speed your moving at. The whole ship time vs normal time from the very begining of the SFB books doesn't really work since the crew would be dead within about a week or two from old age. I realize SFB and GPD aren't the same thing but the more abstract parts are supposed to work, right?

Warp 1 is supposed to be light speed right? ~300,000 km/s give or take some rounding. Problem. That's speed 30 in SFB which is supposed to me like warp 3 was it? The basic problem is we have a fixed distance map and distance traveled in one time unit. But the time doesn't workto match up.

Now is SFB this really doesn't matter at all since it's not relevent in the slightest to the players (aside from writting a story). But it does matter in GPD since GPD is story driven.

Broken down:

1 time unit = 1 turn in SFB.
Max distance traveled in 1 time unit is 320,000 km
Lenght of 1 time unit = 1 second ( I think; forget if it's 1 second or 1/32 of a second. I'm going with 1 second for this post since I can't find the book at the moment)

Problems:

Crew experiances 1 minute of time. (Big big big problem. 60:1 time rate)

C = 300,000 km/s

Given that you can only move 320,000 km in one turn, combat is technicly almost all sublight when it's supposed to be warp.

So basicly, one of the constants needs to be fudged to make it work in a story sense.

Ooooor..... you could take the happier route and skip time altogether and just take the "Because" route :D

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 11:48 am: Edit

If you're talking about Einsteinian time dialation, then don't worry about it.

GPD4 page 160 is all you need to worry about. Distance divided by Speed gives you your travel time. And the travel time is the same inside the shuttle (or ship, or whatever) as it is outside, in the real galaxy.

Anything else is too complicated to worry about in a role-playing game.

By Daniel Knudtson Thompson (Brezgonne) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 12:34 pm: Edit

nope. Not time dialation. I'm talking about the listed time scale in the front of the SFB rule book (Section A or B I think) making things a pain for GPD.

Though time dialation may be where that comes from.

The problem I was trying to point out was that time wasn't a constant and could case a major problem for a story based system like GPD.

Time in SFB had real time and ship time. Somewhere in Section B it listed what the 1 turn was in SFB. It also listed what the crew experianced. They were drasticly different numbers.

As long as GPD doesn't have to do the same thing I think things are fine. But if we have to adhere to the time scale listed in SFB, then we have a major problem.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 12:57 pm: Edit

No, you don't have to use the SFB timescale in GPD. Don't even try. They are two different games.

SFB is internally consistant. So is GPD. But applying a rule in SFB to GPD (or vice-versa) may not always work -- and you just found one example.

Just use GPD4 page 160 and ignore that other game.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 01:27 pm: Edit

Gary. SFB isn't internally consistent regarding time - just look at planetary assaults. It's a game, so we just don't think about it too hard; for RPGs, however, it can be a problem.

By Simon J Waldock (Simonwaldock) on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 07:34 pm: Edit

On page 186 of GURPS 4e PD, a civilian shuttlecraft is stated to have a range between refuelling of 500 parsecs. Is this correct? It seems a little far to have a shuttle being able to cross a F&E hex without refuelling.

By Terence Sean Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 09:52 pm: Edit

In F&E, fighters can react about twice that far, (assuming they fly into the next hex and back) but they are probably using warp booster packs which increase their range and speed significantly. So I guess it's not out of order to have a shuttle fly half that far. Take a bloody long time though, life support might be more of a limitation than fuel.

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 10:27 pm: Edit

I'd think boredom, cabin fever, and mental deterioration would be bigger factors. Though in F&E they can also react that far even without packs, or rather, before packs become available.

By Simon J Waldock (Simonwaldock) on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 07:17 am: Edit

I quite agree that life support would be a major problem and mental deterioration too. I was just surprised that a shuttle would have that much range.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 11:13 am: Edit

Well, one can do with a shuttle what they did with pannel trucks in the sixties and seventies... a little home on wheels... er , warp engines.

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 07:20 pm: Edit

If the shuttle's rockin' don't come a Hit and Runnin'?

By Simon J Waldock (Simonwaldock) on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 07:14 am: Edit

I know that ADB can't use any 'literary elements' from Star Trek but would the aqua-shuttle from The Animated Series episode 'The Ambergris Element' be a useful vehicle to include?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 11:00 am: Edit

I've always assumed that SFU admin shuttles would be subsurface capable considering the stresses they are designed for. If you can take them 10,000 Km into a gas giant, why not a few hundred feet of water? The regular docking proceedure would work for docking to a submerged ship in lieu of landing in a shuttle bay.

I would like to see a scneario about an assault on an underwater ground base. I've got many ideas.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 11:23 am: Edit

Loren answered it.

By Dale Lloyd Fields (Dylkha) on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 04:24 pm: Edit

Of course I can't let this go by without referencing the Futurama episode where their spaceship gets dragged underwater

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Good Lord! That's over 5000 atmospheres of pressure!
Fry: How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Well, it was built for space travel, so anywhere between zero and one.

By Simon J Waldock (Simonwaldock) on Friday, February 12, 2010 - 06:51 am: Edit

D'oh!