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+--- Thread: Ship Designer (/showthread.php?tid=57)
Ship Designer - tdewitt274 - 08-17-2017
Hello All,
I know there are a few out there, but I'm in the process of making an online ship designer. Mostly as a exercise in web design skills that will eventually lead to another project I have in mind.
I have a good start on the process, but wanted to make sure I have all the rules for reference. Would anyone be able to point me to any books I may be leaving out?
- Silent Death: The Next Millennium
- Warhounds
- Kashmere Commonwealth
- Operation Drydock: Volume II
- Space Junk
- Sigurd Archdiocese
- Hostile Takeover
- ASP Technocracy
- Yoka Shan
- Q'raj Void Protectorate
- House Colos
Todd
RE: Ship Designer - Karpav1 - 08-17-2017
Oh cool. I'm not sure what's in Drydock II -it's the only one I don't have (yet), but if the slot and point costs for house specific technologies isn't in there, here is where it can be found:
- 7216 Sigurd Archdiocese-- Gauss Tech
- 7219 Space Junk-- Satellite & Outpost templates, Mine Laying Equipment
- 7221 Hostile Takeover-- Plexar Gun Tech
- 7222 ASP Technocracy-- Entropic Accelerator, C-Torps, Parasite torps, Graviton Cannon, Quantum Thrust Engines, BioLink Pilot Interface/Targeting System
- 7223 Yoka Shan-- Plasma Missiles, Plasma Shell Cannon, Plasma Defense System
- 7224 Q'raj Void Protectorate-- Proton Arc Tech
- 7227 House Colos-- Maxim Laser Tech
RE: Ship Designer - tdewitt274 - 08-17-2017
Karpav, thanks for the breakout! I'm mostly looking for the core construction rules, but this is quite helpful for ensuring I catch all the fancy new weapons!
From what I'm seeing, Drydock II either introduces or updates Data Sphere Wardrones. I'm not sure where they were first introduced, but I'll take a look at your listing to see if there was anything not broken out.
Thanks again!
Todd
RE: Ship Designer - Boywundyrx - 08-17-2017
As I recall the Kashmere Commonwealth design rules have a lot of errata, you won't be able to use it straight out of the book. Early this year I had to dive back into them to create a variant of a ship I'd designed a few years ago and I went insane trying to figure it all out and what I'd done the first time.
Really look forward to what you can come up with though, ship design in SD is fun!
RE: Ship Designer - tdewitt274 - 08-17-2017
Yeah, sadly the old Metal-Express website had a lot of that before it went down.
Happily, there's the Internet Wayback Machine.
RE: Ship Designer - tdewitt274 - 08-18-2017
OK, a little teaser of what's to come. It's pretty ugly at the moment, but I want to get all the functionality working before I add the chrome.
Silent Death Ship Designer
I have the templates and some basic data populating. Everything seems to be working correctly. I have yet to wade through the tables to ensure that I have all the values correct. I've only been tinkering with Warhounds. Everything else is only from SD:TNM.
BPV and TPV are the same at this point. I plan on allowing crew to be added to modify for the TPV.
Choose the Ship Template and then the Tonnage. This will populate the other selection boxes as well as Slots allotment, Crew allotment, and Hit Boxes.
I have only tested this against the SD:TNM Ship Design example.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
[url=http://todddewitt.com/silent_death/ShipDisplay.htm][/url]
RE: Ship Designer - Karpav1 - 08-19-2017
(08-18-2017, 11:54 PM)tdewitt274 Wrote: Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
I tinkered around with it last night Todd. I had to go find another designer just so I could compare it to something since it has been a long time since I'd designed ships- 'Silent Death: Millennium Ship Builder' was the first one that came up in the search.
Looks like a good start. Keep design quirks in mind- any ship I'm likely to create in the next year would probably be an existing design captured ship suffering from poor mechanical reliability, but reinforced while repairing damage/replacing mounts and slapping some extra armor on the hull in a Luches/Morgan's Raiders fashion.
The weapon tables/arcs seem like the main chunk of what's left to complete. I like how SD: MSB has the tick box for variable speed torps and changes the point values appropriately. Would be a good option to have in a box with options and modifiers to TPV as needed:
- Normal
- VS -Variable Speed
- SM -Super Maneuverable
- VSSM -Variable Speed Super Maneuverable
Pilot/Gunner values are a nice bonus, but I mainly only use that when filling out a campaign roster or a scenario planner. Same goes with alternate torpedo loads- I'd use that feature on a campaign roster mainly. I'm using crew allocation rules in my scenarios so all the skills needed cost a flat 5.5 each. A spreadsheet I made lets me drop ships on each side of the forces roster for a tally/comparison of points. I just input the BPV of the ship/number of gunners, and the number of that ship type to get the TPV for the element added to the roster.
Do you have plans to build the damage track from the data or format for printing?
It really made looking at options quick and easy, which kind of makes it easy to fall into the habit of min/maxing. On a tangent note, I think I'd like a system where design is done in the campaign with some kind of battle participation currency that doubles as research points. The aspects of the design are rolled up in front of the GM and out of the player's complete control. Something that drops the drive by a point as peak efficiency couldn't be obtained with the first design attempted. The introduction of bugs into designs making future refinements necessary before a design is ready to see service. Perhaps the chances for critical glitches tie logarithmically to a design area like drive or defensive value as the specs near the limits of current technology. A well-balanced design system is a must to start with, but without random chance throwing a wrench in the works when toying with the bleeding edge of spacecraft design, only the best designs emerge, hassle-free. Icarus just wasn't doing it right. That's why I don't mind the core ships not fitting within the design rules too much: the ship manufacturers struck gold innovating proprietary processes allowing them to set milestones. As has been pointed out- the DV/DR costs are the main thing to adjust for the new iteration. Getting deep in the weeds with these meta-design ideas though, so I'll get off the soapbox.
Karpav
RE: Ship Designer - tdewitt274 - 08-20-2017
(08-19-2017, 10:39 PM)Karpav1 Wrote: I tinkered around with it last night Todd. I had to go find another designer just so I could compare it to something since it has been a long time since I'd designed ships- 'Silent Death: Millennium Ship Builder' was the first one that came up in the search.
I actually didn't know this one existed. Looks like the designer and I had similar thoughts when working on these. I may snag a few ideas from him.
(08-19-2017, 10:39 PM)Karpav1 Wrote: Looks like a good start. Keep design quirks in mind
With going through and finding the weapons, I'm also looking at the Quirks. They're an interesting option, from a programming point of view. But I was planning on adding them.
(08-19-2017, 10:39 PM)Karpav1 Wrote: I like how SD: MSB has the tick box for variable speed torps and changes the point values appropriately. Would be a good option to have in a box with options and modifiers to TPV as needed:
I haven't really started on the Torps and Missiles yet. I've found almost all of the weapons and will give that a go first before working on these.
(08-19-2017, 10:39 PM)Karpav1 Wrote: Pilot/Gunner values are a nice bonus, but I mainly only use that when filling out a campaign roster or a scenario planner.
Yeah, they don't really belong in the ship display, unless you're printing it out. But, I wanted to have them there for that purpose.
(08-19-2017, 10:39 PM)Karpav1 Wrote: Do you have plans to build the damage track from the data or format for printing?
I have some old code that worked well up to the Warhounds. I'll be adding that once I get the majority of the other pieces hammered down.
(08-19-2017, 10:39 PM)Karpav1 Wrote: It really made looking at options quick and easy, which kind of makes it easy to fall into the habit of min/maxing. On a tangent note, I think I'd like a system where design is done in the campaign with some kind of battle participation currency that doubles as research points.
My thought on this process is to get the rules of ship design so that I can get to "Phase 2", which ties into another project that uses similar concepts to Silent Death's hex movement. So, if it's in the Ship Design rules, I'm happy to include it.
My goal of this project is:
- Ship Designer
- Storage of ships in a database (and SD:MSB link string is a good option)
- Turn Based Game Play with stored ships using SVG maps
- Real time Game Play with stored ships
- Storage of games for playback at a later time
Thanks for the input!
Todd
RE: Ship Designer - Stogie - 08-20-2017
Todd,
I can supply images for the damage track and weapons boxes. I have them created in CorelDraw and exported to JPG.
RE: Ship Designer - tdewitt274 - 08-21-2017
(08-20-2017, 11:10 PM)Stogie Wrote: Todd,
I can supply images for the damage track and weapons boxes. I have them created in CorelDraw and exported to JPG.
Sure, could you upload them? I'll likely convert them to SVG as it will fit the overall process better, but then I don't miss any
Thanks!