[gurps] [VEHICLE] of the week 680 ? Hybrid Starfighter

[Roger Burton West]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 05:02:01PM -0600, Eric Funk wrote:
>>>Try to imagine a rowboat-sized "fighter boat" against real warships
>
>>And many more possibilities.  However, you might have a point about
>>starfighters in particular fictions.  They're not often well thought
>>out.

An awful lot of starfighter fiction turns out to be "USN/USMC in space".
Which I suppose is fine if that's what you want; the _Wing Commander_
games were vaguely fun, and I liked "Space: Above and Beyond". But it
does all tend to fall apart when you question the underlying
assumptions.

>It depends whether you want "boat vs boat" or "plane vs. boat".

If it's the latter, you need some sort of weirdness to replicate the
differential manoeuvreability. One setting I was working on had a
pseudo-inertial drive with power consumption rising as the fifth power
of vehicle mass... which made one-man starfighters practicable.

R