Ship Name: The Badger
Mass (Loaded: 10,000 tons (10,000,000 kg))
Mass (Empty: 7,000 tons (7,000,000 kg))
Hexes: 20,000 (6,000 Hx is cargo space)
Total Volume: 15,000 m^3
Size Value: 27 (26 when empty)[this is the value I think I have wrong]
Loaded mass penalty: -40 (-38 empty)

Power Plant
Post Atomic Era (Late): 38
Power Plant Size: 2,000 Hx
Power Plant Strength: 66
Not air breathing: -3
Fusion modifier: 10
125x fuel efficiency: -21 (625 hours worth of fuel)
Total Modifier: 90 (30d+0)
(Fuel tank: 1,000 Hx for 2,500 additional hours of fuel)

Acceleration
Halved Power Plant: 45
10,000 ton vehicle: -40
Modifier total: 5 m/s^2 (1d+2) (Just over .5 g fully loaded)
Power plant: 1,500 m^3 (1,000 tons)

Per the conversions in Stuff! this would be a sphere of:
(27-3)/3 = 8 meters
(per formula for a sphere, this should be 30.6 meters)

Or a cube of:
(27/3)-1 = 8 meters on a side
(per formula for a cube, this should be 24.6 meters per side)

Or for the standard ship dimensions of 1x1x4:
(27/3)+1 = 10 meters
2.5 x 2.5 x 10
(should be roughly 9.5 x 9.5 x 38)

Obviously I'm off somehow on the size modifier. Until I understand that, I'll stop for now.

You base the size modifier on the longest dimension (not the total volume) for items of fairly regular shape. Since it looks like you are making it 38 meters long, that would be a size of about -9.

Ah. Didn't realize that (obviously.)

Still...for a 10k ton ship, doesn't 10x10x38 seem kind of small? That's three times the mass of a Naval Destroyer, and half the mass of a Cruiser.

Wait a second. If the size is actually 9, then doesn't that (per the conversions in the introduction) translate to a ship size of:

Sphere: 2 meters diameter
Cube: 2 meters per side
rectangle: 1x1x4 meters

For those formulas to work, the size would have to be:

Sphere: Size 93
(93-3)/3=30 meters diameter

Cube: Size 93
(93/3)-1=30 meters per side

rectangle: size 93
(93/3)+1=32 meters long for 8x8x32 meters

Of course, also per the introduction, a ship that is a cube 34 meters per side would contain 500,000 Hexagons, which is 2.5 times larger than what I had calculated.

I think I have a major disconnect somewhere...

Size for targeting purposes is based on longest dimension, not volume. Your ship has a -9 to the difficulty to be hit based on its length. You could probably adjust this if it were a head-on or tail-on shot.

Also, the intro says a cube 34 meters on a side is 50,000 hexagons, not 500,000 hexagons.

Oops. I should turn on my desk lamp before reading...

Ah, okay. I wasn't really looking at targeting. Actually, I think the only reason I needed it was to calculate the size for the ship's controls.

So...how do I find the Size Value for the ship if I wanted to use the conversion feature in the introduction? How do I arrive at a size value of 93 so that I end up with a 34 m sphere, for instance?

Does everything else look correct, so far?

Okay. Your vehicle is 14,000 hexes of non-cargo space, which is a size level of +26. Using the control space rules on page 3.44, a civilian ship needs a size level of this minus 15, or a size level of +11 in controls, or 90 hexes worth.

A 34 meter sphere is about 20,500 cubic meters or 27,500 hexes. That would be size level of about 28. Subtract 3 to get 25, divide by 3 to get 8. A size level of 8 has a value of 32 meters, which is as close as the chart can get to your original diameter of 34 meters.

You are taking volume and turning it to a size level, subtract 3, divide by 3, then take the resulting size level and turning it back into meters of diameter.

Okay, I see where I went wrong. In the Intro it says:

"Diameter of a sphere (meters): (size-3)/3"

So, (28-3)/3=8. From above I assumed that was 8 meters. I think the wording should probably have been:

"Diameter of a sphere (size level): (size-3)/3"

Then when I got 8, I would have known to look at the universal chart to convert it to 32 meters.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks.

And that's why I love this forum for the EABA v2 playtest. We get these bugs out of the way ahead of time...