On 18/06/2014 16:55, Richard Aiken wrote:

> I've been corrupted by ship design systems - such as for Serenity (Cortex)
> and Savage Worlds - which treat ships like characters. You decide the stats
> and combat capabilities first, then estimate its actual physical parameters
> based upon those.

I've never been a great fan of those, ever since running across that in
Champions/Hero in the Big Blue Book days. It seems too arbitrary (yes, I
know all design rules are arbitrary) and arse about face. Also, not the
sort of thing you can leave in the hands of unsupervised players ("But
the rules don't say what size it has to be to fit a spinal meson gun!
They just say to do what seems right, and I think I totally should have
a Meson J on my space fighter.")

I have come to like fairly simple design system though, and currently
use GURPS Spaceships with some hacks to make it fit Traveller better,
and some for MTU.