Designing a Group's Base

[SteveZilla]

I don't have my Ultimate Base unpacked yet, so I ask the collective brain.  When designing a base, how "tall" should each floor be?  I.e., do I need to leave "room" for the real-world stuff like trusses, I-beams, formed concrete slabs, air ducts, pipes, etc., etc.?  In 6e1, it just gives a total (exterior) volume that the base occupies, with no guideline on how to divide that up into floors (or even for a single-floor structure).

Thanks!

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

Why would it matter?  Is having five floors instead of six critical to the narrative and/or point balance of your campaign? 

[dsatow]

The interior volume should total the exterior volume unless there is a reason for the volumetric changes.  How tall a floor is matters only to the people using the room.  You might have a danger room 16m tall or maybe 32m to accommodate fliers. In general though, most people make floors about 3m tall or two game inches (10' to 13') in height.

[unclevlad]

If you figure 3m (vertical) per floor, that's 9' ceilings with a foot in between floors for wiring, ducting, etc.  That makes life simple.  2 meters is gonna be pretty much minimum;  your routine 6' tall male is pretty close to scraping the ceiling.  3 meter height is the next simple increment, and it's plenty so the "floor height" subsumes those things so you don't have to worry about it.

 

There is no guideline because the design's up to you.  The rules don't care;  all they care about is total size.

[SteveZilla]

I am attempting to "reverse engineer" the cost breakdowns for an existing, multi-floor base.  I don't have access to the book it is drawn from, and the GM has not supplied a cost breakdown - only said "you pay X for it".  I have no idea if X is accurate or not since the base has had some changes to it over the course of the campaign before my character joined.  Instead of pestering the GM to do the write up, I am using it as an opportunity to refresh my base construction rules knowledge.  Especially since I haven't done anything like this since 4th ed.

I had generally been presuming 3m per floor like unclevlad suggested, though at ~1 foot lost for building "realism" per floor, that makes for a 'loss' of 1.5m in height, or 2,385 cubic meters.  But with the size cost structure as it is, it turned out to be not much of an issue.  Also, the base is an... unusual shape, and the size I was estimating would be if it actually filled the entire volume (footprint area x highest point).

[unclevlad]

I just assign 3 meters per floor and don't care about how it's partitioned, unless I absolutely need full 10' ceilings.

Or, go to 4 meters, if you want extra-tall rooms.  Which isn't bad.  Base size 7 is 40x20x20 meters, so that'd be 5 full floors, each with 800 square meters   If you wanna be lazy, then go with the simple 5 x 5 meters for small rooms (individual bedroom), 5 x 10 for medium, and 10 x 10 for large.  Practice room isn't part of the base, it's part of the grounds, altho by the rules you'd increase the stats in that area.  IIRC that's cheap.  With 3 meters for most rooms, then maybe there's a practice area that's, say, 30 x 20 x 14 meters, that's still part of the base size.  That still leaves 2 full floors with 800 square meters per, probably a locker room/storage area at the base of the practice room that's 200 square meters, and an observation deck.  Or whatever.  

 

Point I'm getting at, you don't care about precise measurements.  I'm giving block sizes, and you just fill the big space with the blocks.  Sure, there's walls/floors/ceilings...but they're subsumed in the overall block size.  There's no point in trying to account for every inch of space utilization.

 

And note that size is CHEAP.  BODY and PD/ED are likely much higher;  heck, location can easily cost more.  That's before labs, skills, followers, etc.  So there's no reason to sweat the size aspects or the space utilitization within that size.