Vector movement

I’ve decided to publish the design system for Intercept so people can start using their own ships in space combat. The design system is mostly done so one can start designing all the ships from the Traveller universe. Note however that my interpretation of tech level progression differ from the standard Traveller one, it also differs from GURPS Traveller tech level progression. The changes mostly affect the lower TLs in order to allow fission and fusion powered ships with semi-realistic capabilities and sensor signatures. If you want to play what-if scenarios from the Atomic Rocket site you can whip up some nuclear rockets with really shitty signatures and play dogfights in Earth orbit. Oh, there are no plasma or fusion guns in the design system for obvious reasons.

Once upon a time a long time ago I decided to get rid of the silly 1.5 squares used by Traveller deckplans back in the eighties. I treated them as being 1×1 m and 2.5 m high and as two deckplan squares equals one dTone my new dTon became 5 m3 which I built my original design system on. That system is long gone but in the new system you can choose if you want to build ships with dTons (displacement tons) and EP (energy points) or go with my m3 and MW ratings. The designs will perform, cost and behave the same regardless, it is just a matter of taste.

The design system consist of two excel worksheet; one for the data and one for your design. The Data.xls must be opened before the Ship.xls sheet is loaded so it can read data from Data.xls. The Ship.xls sheet can be named as you like to hold your Beowulf, Suleiman or Donosev etc. All values needed for Intercept space combat are calculated as are price, tonnage etc. The worksheets are protected so you cannot ruin anything by accident (and you can also not see how crappy I am at fiddling with Excel). The Ship.xls is already filled in with my take on how a Suleiman type S scout should be, best damned player ship if you ask me (Cassandra Monastera, Ulrika Loke and Gvoudzon concur).

If you download the Intercept bundle you get the rules, maps etc including the design system excel sheets.

This entry was posted on April 9, 2010 at 22:52 and is filed under Design system, Intercept. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.