Vehicles on/in other vehicles

[Bartman]

What is the proper way to cost out smaller vehicles (like shuttles) carried on larger vehicles? I'm rewriting a bunch of old vehicle designs I have and many have smaller vehicles attached. Do they just add together? Or does the sub vehicle get some sort of discount?

[BobGreenwade]

Cost out the Vehicles separately; Vehicles cannot buy each other. (I'd make an exception for sub-Vehicles that are completely dependent on host Vehicles, such as elevators or railed shuttles aboard large vessels, but officially even that isn't allowed.)

[JMHammer]

So, I buy a Star Trek-inspired Constitution-class starship for probably a zillion points. Then I need to pay maybe another hundred or so for a shuttle. If my starship has seven shuttles, that's a zillion plus seven-hundred.

On the other hand, if I buy the same Constitution-class starship (without shuttles) for a zillion points, can I get a second starship for five points?

As another example, what would be more useful to your ship: A second photon torpedo launcher (+5 points) or a second shuttlecraft (+100 points maybe)? I agree that having shuttles is nice, and certainly worth paying points for them, but are multiple shuttles really worth so much more than multiple big weapon mounts or other equipment?

Probably at some point, extra vehicles on a ship should be treated as extra equipment rather than additional vehicles that need to be purchased seperately.

Or all those weapons and other equipment should be purchased seperately, too.

Just one person's opinion...
John H

[Snarf]

I'm pretty sure you can buy extra vehicles for +5 points with GM permission, and they don't have to be the same, just equal or lesser value.

[BobGreenwade]

Originally posted by Snarf
I'm pretty sure you can buy extra vehicles for +5 points with GM permission, and they don't have to be the same, just equal or lesser value. This is correct. So the starship plus its seven shuttles don't cost 500 (starship) plus 700 (seven 100-point shuttles, they cust 500 plus 100 plus 15.

The starship doesn't buy the shuttles because the shuttles can be used separately from the starship itself. This is related to my reasons for making elevators and similar internal-only Vehicles an exception to this rule: whatever happens to the main Vehicle (hijacking, destruction, sales, whatever) always happens to them as well.

[Bartman]

Alright I'll buy that, it certainly seems reasonable.

OK so lets get a concrete example here. Lets suppose I have large Star Destroyer type thingy which we, for the purpose of this dicussion, will say is worth 10,000pts. On this we have 72 fighters 48 of which are 100pts, 12 are 150pts and 12 are 250pts. We also have 10 shuttles (90pts), 8 gunboats (450pts) and 8 landing craft (80pts).

So is the final cost:
10,035pts (10,000 + 35 (98 more vehicles),
10,485pts (10,000 + 450 + 35 (97 more), or
11,245pts (10,000 + 100 + 30 (47 more) + 150 + 20 (11 more) + 250 + 20 (11 more) + 450 +15 (7 more) + 90 + 20 (9 more) + 80 + 20 (9 more))?

In other words go I just get a doubling for every 5pts after the first 'master' vehicle, or a doubling for paying for one sub vehicle. Or if I have a number of smaller craft do I have to pay for the first copy of each type before I can invoke the 'double for 5pts' rule?

[BobGreenwade]

Each sub-Vehicle takes its own doublings (going by the examples in Terran Empire and Spacer's Toolkit. So with your example you'd have:

10,000 Star Destroyer
   100 Class 1 Fighter
    30 47 more Class 1 Fighters (total of 48)
   150 Class 2 Fighter
    20 11 more Class 2 Fighters (total of 12)
   250 Class 3 Fighter
    20 11 more Class 2 Fighters (total of 12)
    90 Shuttle
    20 9 more Shuttles (total of 10)
   450 Gunboat
    15 7 more Gunboats (total of 8)
    80 Landing Craft
    15 7 more Landing Craft (total of 8)

Total of All Vehicles: 11,130 points (by my math)

[Bartman]

Thanks Bob, that was precisely what I needed. As for the math, I really didn't check mine so you are most likely correct.

[JmOz]

My personal method might seem a little bit odd, but buy it as a Summon, recoverable charges, with the number that can be summoned representing how many can launch at one time and the charges representing how many are in the ship total

[Talon]

I think the Summon idea is a cool one.

Note that according to the FAQ, you could technically just pay for the 10,000 point starship, then for each +5 doubling get any 10,000 point (or less, presumably) vehicle. I prefer the TUV/SH method for clarity, but technically it's not required.

[Bartman]

Originally posted by JmOz
My personal method might seem a little bit odd, but buy it as a Summon, recoverable charges, with the number that can be summoned representing how many can launch at one time and the charges representing how many are in the ship total

Interesting. I'm actually using summoning with charges for missiles. For some reason I hadn't thought of it for fighters and shuttles.

It seems a bit funky somehow though. At what point would it be summoned? What about armed fighters that are captured and flown back into the ship ala ID4? I think summon in this case might cause more problems than it solves.

[PhilFleischmann]

This is a problem I've had with the +5 for twice as many rule. Why would you ever pay for something smaller when you could get an additional full-size one for 5 points? According to the rules, a hundred full-strength, big, honking, Star Destroyers costs 10035 points; but one Star destroyer plus 99 smaller, less powerful ships costs more.

The same problem kicks in with any other pice of equipment:

Ship A:
100 point main cannon
50 smaller cannon
15 seven more smaller cannons
165 Total points spent on cannons

Ship B:
100 point main cannon
20 fifteen more main cannons
120 Total points spent on cannons

Ship B has much more firepower but costs less!

I noticed many examples of this problem in TUV. There was one about the Life Support system for a ship (say 50 points, I don't remember exactly), and then a backup system that wasn't as good and only covered part of the ship (say 25 points). Why not just pay 5 points and get a backup system every bit as good as the first one?

I don't care what is printed in the books - More Points should get you More Power, Fewer Points should get you Less Power. You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. To me this is an inviolable rule of the HERO System, which overrides all examples to the contrary.

I have a partial solution to this problem, but I don't have time to tell you all about it right now.

Do any of you have solutions? I'd like to hear them.

[Snarf]

A duplicate still costs a lot of money in a heroic level game.

For games where I don't like the cheap duplicates, I've briefly considered turning spares into an advantage, so the cost will scale instead of being flat. Something like +1/4 for every 2x duplicates.

[Captain Obvious]

Originally posted by PhilFleischmann

I have a partial solution to this problem, but I don't have time to tell you all about it right now.


Do you have time to tell us yet?