Does Size matter?

[Polaris]

Greetings,

In designing starships, does size matter? Meaning, how do I as a GM or a player know what size a ship has to be in order to hold all the systems that I want it to have?? I have FREd, Star Hero and Terran Empire, and have been unable to find this information. If there are no restrictions, could someone make a very small ship (to get the OCV advantages) and put a large amount of systems on it (to get the firepower)?? Other than the GM going through each ship and making a "is this reasonable" judgment, is there some guidance that can be provided as to what size a ship needs to be in order to have X amount of systems??

Thanks!
Polaris

[Captain Obvious]

I would imagine that the Hero powers-that-be have left this wide open for good reason. Once you set standards that X power takes up Y amount of space, you've started degrading the "Hero can do anything" argument.

Of course, in most campaigns, there should be standards like this, for just the reasons you've outlined. If your campaign is supposed to involve fleets of capital ships battering away at each other, you don't want someone designing a fighter-sized planet buster.

This basically boils down to GM fiat. My suggestion is to keep all new ships similar in ability to what is already published in TE (if that's the basis for your campaign). Anything with a significant advantage over published ships (ie a larger main gun, or tougher defenses) should take a big hit somewhere else. As technology advances, you could allow ships to increase their firepower, speed, defense, etc without taking a penalty elsewhere, but this should be a rather slow process.

[Talon]

There's no formal rule, no. I believe Star Hero or Terran Empire has a few loose guidelines.

So no, there's nothing to stop you from putting dreadnought-level weaponry in a phone-booth size ship, other than GM discretion. If I were GM, I would point to the Terran Empire and Spacer's Toolkit ships as examples; and if the campaign were heavy on ship design, I'd come up with some more detailed guidelines on my own.

[Monolith]

IIRC, TUV states that about half the size of a vehicle is taken up by "equipment." That leaves about half the space for passengers and cargo. I think that is probably as formal a rule as you will ever get based on equipment size and volume. As a GM you will just have to decide if it is possible to put a larger weapon or other system into the ship, and how much passenger/cargo space will be lost because of it. Having "encumbrance" information on all the equipment would have been helpful though. I guess that would have been a little too Star Fleet for the game.

[Michael Hopcroft]

On the other hand, there is nothing preventing a craft the size of a jet fighter from carrying a weapon that can vaporize planets. You might not want to do it that way, but it's entirely possible.

[Snarf]

I would just set up a different size calculation rule for each tech level and campaign setting.

[Ron]

Fortunely, HERO rules doesn't cover size specifics, but rather the capabilities of a vehicle. Size will very dependent of the kind of technology available. Early 20th Century flying machines would include airplanes, rather small but with a reasonable cargo, and zeppelins, very big and a with a relatively small cargo. In classic Star Trek, only very big ships could travel between stars, whereas in Star Wars FTL fighters were common. Do whatever seems reasonable in your setting.

[Nightshade]

As already stated, there is no specific rules about size or weight of objects other than armor in any of the HERO books. This does indeed mean that you can mount a howitzer on a Kawasaki Ninja according to the rules. However, a combination of Star HERO and the Ultimate Vehicle does provide a framework to help.

The first thing to do is to figure out the base size of an object. Let's take for example a computer. We can define a computer's size by the number of active points or programs it has. I would think that the number of programs is more convenient, so let's use that for this example. Let's say a base computer uses up 1/8th of a hex per program. That would mean that a computer with 8 programs takes up 1 hex. We would then assign this base computer a technology level from Star HERO. Then as the technology level increases, the computer gets smaller (as well as faster, smarter, etc.).

Apply the same logic to the rest of the primary systems you are talking about for your campaign (weapons, engines, power sources, etc.). This way, you can get ships that have better tech engines, but lower tech weapons (like freighters) vs. ships that have high tech weapons, but low tech armor/shields (pirates, for example). It also makes it fun to mix and match, if you are into that sort of thing.

My suggestion is if you want to get into that level of detail for ship building, make a list of the products available on the market, along with cost, size, tech level, and the appropriate HERO stats, and as the campaign goes along, add technology to it. That could be the basis for some of the adventures, a side plot, or just something to make things more interesting.

The amount of space available for things in general are discussed pretty well in the TUV, so you can then get a better feel for what is in the capability of the vehicle.

I hope that helps some. It looks like a lot of work, but it really isn't too bad. Once you get a couple of them done, you'll get the feel of it pretty fast.

Nightshade

[Polaris]

Thanks a ton Nightshade!

Polaris

[Brett]

You may just want to look at the size chart and the sample weapons and make your own guidelines.

For example, you may decide that the Space Combat Laser on SH 196 costing 105 points is about the right size for a size 10 space ship. Therefore, the biggest weapon a average ship can have is about 10 times its size in real points.

This might be the ships primary weapon, and you may permit only one or two of these for use on similar sized enemy ships and several weaker weapons for defense against smaller ships.

[Polaris]

What would people think of this idea:

1. To determine the 'basic' size of a system, take the Active Points and divide by a system factor (engines would be factor 7, weapons would be factor 10 or 15, and so on... the idea here is that the same amount of power could take more space depending upon the type of system... with engines being the largest).

2. Empires can invest in "minitiarization" technology. Each level of this technology reduces the size the system requires. This would enable empires to invest in the ability to make fighters that could have vastly better engines and weapon systems than other empires.

This is kinda taking some of the ideas here and coming up with something off the top of my head. Any thoughts??

Polaris

[Outsider]

That would be the way to do it, IMO, but I would go with real point cost instead of active point cost, I think. With weapons, for example, this would give a significant size advantage to things like limited arc weapons, single shot weapons, and so on.

On the crew space front, you could go with the straight 'half the space is available for the crew/cargo' rule, or you could get more specific, requring (say) a quarter hex per crew duty station, which would only allow short duration ship operations (up to 24-48 hours?) plus maybe a hex or two more to allow indefinite ship operations. Assuming human sized crew. Ships where one can swap off who is at what crew station without having to get out might required to devote 10% of its overall space to passageways and such. Ones with the ability to conduct systems repairs without an EVA might be required to devote another 10% of their overall space to additional accessway and such that allow them to get to all the ships systems from the inside.