"Maker" questions
- Thread starter MCEvans
- Start date
Yep there's a VehicleMaker.
It designs Civil Vehicles (Cars, vans trucks etc), Military vehicles (Tanks, Carriers and other vehicles), Watercraft (boats, ships, subs and sailing boats), Flyers (Fighters, bombers, utility craft etc.)
Everything comes in wheeled, tracked, lifter, grav, ACV, flapper, winged, rotor flavors.
You can use it to design craft capable of achieving orbit and functioning out to 10D but for M-Drive Smallcraft you use the ship builder.
You can make your designs as basic or as complicated as you want. Weapons are designed with GunMaker and sensors and fittings come from a combination of ThingMaker and ACS (the ship Maker).
I think for a Merc unit you might find VehicleMaker useful for designing "Families" of vehicles; same hull and options, different weapon fits.
It designs Civil Vehicles (Cars, vans trucks etc), Military vehicles (Tanks, Carriers and other vehicles), Watercraft (boats, ships, subs and sailing boats), Flyers (Fighters, bombers, utility craft etc.)
Everything comes in wheeled, tracked, lifter, grav, ACV, flapper, winged, rotor flavors.
You can use it to design craft capable of achieving orbit and functioning out to 10D but for M-Drive Smallcraft you use the ship builder.
You can make your designs as basic or as complicated as you want. Weapons are designed with GunMaker and sensors and fittings come from a combination of ThingMaker and ACS (the ship Maker).
I think for a Merc unit you might find VehicleMaker useful for designing "Families" of vehicles; same hull and options, different weapon fits.
I like this as right now most are a weird mix of vehicles found online & 101 so a "family" of vehicles would be great.
Thanks
Basically you choose a "chassis" type eg. Tank, it comes with an AV of its own, then choose the Motive type eg. tracks or grav etc. Then you can add Stage effects to make it more or less advanced, modify the size between Very Light and Very Heavy to affect volume, speed and AV. Then there's a page of options to add affecting various aspects of the design.
What you get at the end of this process is a Vehicle Descriptor and a Vehicle Extension detailing the following:
Longname: Bulk - Motive - Mission - Type - User - TL
Vx: Tons - Speed - Load - Stage - Environment - Endurance - QREBS - Options
Load is the dedicated cargo area but can be modified with a weapons mount to carry weapons. This is all the information you need to use the vehicle in play.
Now at this point its up to you as the designer to have a look at what you built and apply a bit of imagination to decide things like: Yours Wheeled Carrier is a 6x6 or 8x8 or that the weapons mount is manned and the volume contains the gunner. In other words all the cosmetic stuff that doesn't directly affect game play is up to the designer.
You can go a stage further and come up with detailed background for your vehicle with some color about how it fits into your campaign.
About Families of Vehicles
One of the good things about GunMaker and VehicleMaker is that the weapon mounts are very non descriptive. There are no Turrets and Small Turrets with the difficult to follow rules about volume from FF&S2. When you install a weapon mount you decide what its actual form is.
GunMaker details different types of mount under Portability p253 relating them to the Mass of the weapon. This is useful for detailing your vehicle.
If you design basic APC in VehicleMaker that will be a wheeled or Tracked carrier. Carriers come with a weapons mount pre installed. No weapon is installed. When you come to designing your family of vehicles you might install an Assault Cannon in one so that the Weapons mount could be a Turret and a Heavy grenade launcher in another and imagine it to be a mortar, so the weapons mount becomes a roof hatch through which the "mortar" fires. With a bit of work in ThingMaker you could mount earth moving equipment and cranes either to a weapons mount or in Load space.
What you get at the end of this process is a Vehicle Descriptor and a Vehicle Extension detailing the following:
Longname: Bulk - Motive - Mission - Type - User - TL
Vx: Tons - Speed - Load - Stage - Environment - Endurance - QREBS - Options
Load is the dedicated cargo area but can be modified with a weapons mount to carry weapons. This is all the information you need to use the vehicle in play.
Now at this point its up to you as the designer to have a look at what you built and apply a bit of imagination to decide things like: Yours Wheeled Carrier is a 6x6 or 8x8 or that the weapons mount is manned and the volume contains the gunner. In other words all the cosmetic stuff that doesn't directly affect game play is up to the designer.
You can go a stage further and come up with detailed background for your vehicle with some color about how it fits into your campaign.
About Families of Vehicles
One of the good things about GunMaker and VehicleMaker is that the weapon mounts are very non descriptive. There are no Turrets and Small Turrets with the difficult to follow rules about volume from FF&S2. When you install a weapon mount you decide what its actual form is.
GunMaker details different types of mount under Portability p253 relating them to the Mass of the weapon. This is useful for detailing your vehicle.
If you design basic APC in VehicleMaker that will be a wheeled or Tracked carrier. Carriers come with a weapons mount pre installed. No weapon is installed. When you come to designing your family of vehicles you might install an Assault Cannon in one so that the Weapons mount could be a Turret and a Heavy grenade launcher in another and imagine it to be a mortar, so the weapons mount becomes a roof hatch through which the "mortar" fires. With a bit of work in ThingMaker you could mount earth moving equipment and cranes either to a weapons mount or in Load space.
