Does anyone else think that it's about time the vehicle construction
rules from DS2/SG2 received a re-vamp? It's something I've been thinking
about quite a lot recently. The biggest weakness in the current system, IMO,
is the required split into 5 size classes. Whenever I'm designing a vehicle,
it always seems that I have a few spare points left over (not too problematic)
or that the total is just 1 or 2 points over the capacity for the vehicle size
class. As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing to do in a new
construction system would be to abolish these, in favour of being able to
choose any capacity you like, but obviously this throws up problems in the
game since so much is based around size class. What do you guys think?
Something for Mr.Tuffley to
put in the re-release of DS2, when it happens?
> Matthew Smith wrote:
Check out the DS2 section of my site for the fractional vehicle size rules,
which should solve your problem.
> Matthew Smith wrote:
[...]
> As far as I'm concerned,
FWIW, the first edition of Dirtside had a construction system that, heavily
paraphrased, went like this: "look at the miniature of your vehicle, decide
what size it looks most like, decide what armour it should have, decide what
mobility type it looks most like, decide what weapons it looks like it has,
decide how many stands of troops it should contain, decide what other systems
it should have, here is the formula to determine points cost."
No capacity problems at all, it just went by what the miniature vehicle looked
like.
No, I'm not fully back on-line yet :-( This post is therefore an
illusion :-/
> Matthew Smith wrote:
> Does anyone else think that it's about time the vehicle construction
Yep. That work began quite some time ago, but I'm afraid that you'll
have to wait 'til DS3 or so before you see the results :-/
> The biggest weakness in the current system,
That's the most obvious weakness, but from a game-balance point of view
it's hardly the worst one. Several others compete for that position -
eg. that there's absolutely no reason whatever not to put the maximum possible
armour on your vehicle or use any FCS worse than "Superior" (as both armur and
Superior FCS are seriously underpriced), that
Stealth is heavily overpriced for all vehicles, etc :-/
> Whenever I'm designing a
Simple. Total up the capacity of the stuff inside the vehicle, divide by 5,
and round any fractions up.
> Something for Mr. Tuffley to put in the re-release of DS2, when it
If the DS2 vehicle design system is updated, and I certainly hope that
it will be, then the resulting game won't be a re-release of DS*2* any
more than FB2 was a "re-release" of More Thrust. It'll be a completely
new edition - ie., it'll be DS*3* :-/
Regards,