Lava Ship Design Changes

This week I sat down to design a couple ships using the last week’s design process. As I did, a few omissions and needed changes made themselves apparent, so I’m going to need to rework some things.

Non-linear modules

The main problems are the non-linear modules: cargo and passenger. While they work well on smaller ships, once you get to the size 240 (d12 × d20) ship, the system breaks down. This is because when I first wrote the system I had Fudge in mind, so everything was rated in a 7-tiered fashion. It was thought that you wouldn’t have more than seven of a given module type (except as backups). This means that seven passenger modules and seven cargo modules gives your ship the maximum passenger and cargo capability while using only 14 modules.

The fix is easy: I just need to change those to linear modules. Then you’ll need more than seven.

Re-working the Map

Issue #2 (or #3 if you count passengers and cargo as two different issues) is that I’ve decided to rework the map, which in turn changes the way that range works.

Instead of each hex representing a portion of a day’s travel, one hex now equals the distance a speed 100 ship could travel in one day.¹ Thus a speed 50 ship will take two days per hex, while a speed 10 ship will take 10 days per hex. I imagine the average ship will have a speed of 14 – 25 meaning 4 – 7 days per hex.

Simplifying Fuel

Finally, I’m going to change fuel to be the number of hexes that a module will provide fuel for. It was essentially that already, but it took more math to get there.

Next Week & The Future

These changes are easy, but time consuming. I hope to have them done next week. However, I’m working my other job on Wednesday, and both days next weekend. We’ll see.

After the changes are posted, the next post or two will be a walk-through of two ship designs: a smuggler’s “rum-runner,” and a coastal patrol boat. Once those are posted, I’ll post a mock combat between them.

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1. A speed 100 ship is impossible. Seeing that speed is “the percent of modules that are speed modules,” a speed 100 ship would be all speed modules, and not have any fuel to get anywhere.↩