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Old 03-27-2016, 05:21 PM   #117
Icelander
 
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Default Flashlights

Does anyone know what models and brands the TL7 tactical flashlights on p. HT52 represent?

The Kel-Lite First Generation SKL flashlight with 2 D-cell batteries is statted in GURPS Tactical Shooting p. 59 (in the write-up of the High Standard Model 10 shotgun, which could mount such a light). The stats are an exact match for High-Tech's TL7 'Small Tactical Light', except it has a 15-yard beam instead of a 25-yard beam. This is most likely because the flashlight was designed and made around 1970.

Presumably, the more powerful High-Tech 'Small Tactical Flashlight' represents improved Kel-Lite flashlights and/or models that came on the market in the late 70s from new manufacturers like Streamlight, Mag Instruments (Mag-Lite) and Laser Products Corporation (SureFire).

I'm having a hell of a time using Google to find the weight or performance of the original models of these manufacturers, given how many they advertise these days. And some of them even have the gall to name current models the same as their first offerings, with 'original' or 'classic' appended! But these might be (and usually are) a lot brighter, lighter and longer-lasting. It's like they are deliberately mocking me!

I found this list of late 70s/early 80s police flashlights, but for some of these, I don't even know which are brand or model names and which are manufacturers: Kel-Lite, Bianchi B-Lite, Stud-Lite, Greenwood Uniforms, Pro-Light, Code-4, Grendelite, Cold Steel Brute, Enforcer, Gemlite, Smoke-Cutter, Spec-Lite, Phaser-Lite, Mag Vari-Beam, LA Screw, GT Price, Brinkmann, Legend, Tru-Grit, Mag-Lite, Nordic, Streamlight, Camo-Lite, Bright Star and Ray-o-Vac Police.

I'm looking to pick a model and manufacturer that is close to the stats of the TL7 'Small Tactical Light' and 'Large Tactical Light', so the NPCs aren't carrying a nameless piece of equipment if some player wants to know about it.

It's okay if I have to note that it has a sligtly different weight, a marginally shorter or longer beam range or a different number of batteries (and thus more or less endurance), as long as whoever knows something about these brands can tell me what these differences are.

I can figure out that the new lights from SureFire, Streamlight and Mag-Lite, among others, that were regarded as top-of-the-line and revolutionary in 1982-1984, were probably the first TL8 tactical lights. For full nerd effect, one might represent some of these 80s lights with stats better than TL7 ones, but worse than current TL8 ones, say by allowing the lighter weights, but knocking a little time of the endurance or even not allowing the darkness penalty within the beam to get to -1 (instead of the TL7 standard -2) until the technology is more mature.

I can't find anything that might be the TL7 'Large Tactical Light'. Not saying that those didn't exist, but my Google-fu has been weak at discovering any models that would fit that were made before the big Mag-Lites that debuted in 1979. Maybe that's the TL7 'Large Tactical Light', a 4-cell D light from Mag-Lite or a similar manufacturer. I'm not sure how right that feels, however, given that large and robust flashlights were certainly made during TL7, even if they were much inferior to the 80s police lights.

I'd feel pretty comfortable with having the effects of modern high-lux, high-efficiency LED or otherwise improved tactical lights be at a relative +1 over the early police flashlights of the 80s. What candlepower/lumen/lux comparisons I can find, even if those numbers are often jiggered madly by marketers, indicate that there was an awesome difference in illumation power between an 80s vintage tactical light and a 2010s one.

Maybe a lot of economical and commonly used flashlights after WWII and until the late 70s still counted as TL6 beams for the purposes of the combat bonus on p. 19 of GURPS Tactical Shooting, simply with better battery life and some other features that still counted as a TL improvement. TL7 beams widely available in reasonably compact and affordable flashlights would then be the birth of the modern tactical flashlight and TL8 beams in those tiny little weapon-mounted lights is what we have in the last 15 years or so, with extremely efficient LED lights. This seems like a reasonable interpretation to me.

Edit: Man, setting a game in the 1980s really brings home how much technology in all kinds of different fields has marched on. I know it's difficult to draw a line and say: 'We are now at a new tech level' when you are living it, but we really have to consider if TL8 might not be ending / have ended. The changes to the world, as a typical GURPS character interacts with it through technology, are at least as great between 1980 to 2010 as they were between 1940-1980.

For all intents and purposes, movies, books and games set in the 80s are period pieces, just as much as WWII ones or a Victorian one. The world is different, the gear used to do a lot of common jobs is radically different, how adventurers go about adventuring is different, etc. The past is a different country and it's rarely as obvious as when one examines the world pre- connectivity revolution and post it.
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Last edited by Icelander; 03-27-2016 at 05:51 PM.
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