Mongoose damage to GURPS: Traveller

[joshualevy]

I'm converting parts of "Secrets of the Ancients" (the Mongoose freebie andventure) to run in my GURPS Traveller game. Basically, I'm planning on taking two or three of the segments and running them as one-offs. I used the BITS task conversion rules to quickly and easily convert the tasks, but have a question about the damage.

The Mongoose rules often say things like "if X happens the ship takes 3d6 of danage", and I have no way to map that into GURPS spaceship rules.

They also say things like "if X happens the character takes 1d damage". My understanding is that Mongoose is same as Classic in that people have basically 2d x 3 hit points, so basically GURPS damage is half of Mongoose damage.

But I'm stumped on the spaceship damage conversion.

Thanks for any help.

Joshua
Campaign's blog spot: http://travellinghawk.blogspot.com/ (not much there)

[ak_aramis]

Very roughly, The primary data points:

In MGT

Joe Normal (Atts all 7) takes 21 points to kill
Max Buff (Atts all 15) takes 45 to kill
Granny Minnie (Atts all 1) takes 3 to kill

Note that stats at 1 are not crippling... seriously inconvenient, but not crippling. I'm listing MGT 1 as GURPS 6, tho'...

GURPS,

Joe Normal (ST/HT 10) takes 20-60 points to kill (to -HT for first HT roll to save or die; then to -5xHT, for autodeath)
Max Buff (ST/HT 20) takes 40-120 to kill
Granny Minnie (ST/HT 6) takes 12-36 to kill

Splitting the differences...

Joe Normal (ST/HT 10) takes 40 points to kill
Max Buff (ST/HT 20) takes 80 to kill
Granny Minnie (ST/HT 6) takes 18 to kill

Roughly, and I do mean very roughly, GURPS Damage capacity is about twice Traveller damage.

However, most weapons run about the same damage in both systems... so you can pretty safely presume either the same amount, or double, without being too far off.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by joshualevy

But I'm stumped on the spaceship damage conversion.

Thanks for any help.

Stop worrying about it. It's not like they painstakingly calculated the ship damage in the first place. Just go ahead and roll 3 dice of damage to the ship.

[d_ns]

In Mongoose Traveller, core book, lasers do 1d6 and 2d6 damage, and a turret-sized particle beam does 3d6 (plus a crew hit, so radiation effects and the like). The larger bay-sized particle beam does 6d6. Does that help at all?

ETA: Just checked Interstellar Wars: They say that Beam Lasers (2d6 in Mongoose) do 6d(5) to 8d(5), Pulse Lasers (the 1d6 units in Mongoose) do 3-5 dice. There are no particle beams at the same scales as the two I mentioned above.

I have very nearly every Mongoose Traveller book in my possession if you need any other help with translation. Drop me a private message or ask here.

[apoc527]

Let's say I'm using GURPS Spaceships. What do you think are reasonable conversions for MGT's turret and barbette particle beams?

[The Rampant Gamer]

Coming at it from the 3rd Edition GURPS: Traveller Starships rules, there's only one particle accelerator that fits in a turret - the 1.4GJ Particle Accelerator Weapon. It is rated at a half-damage range of 5200, max 15,600, for 6dx550 damage (remembering that they didn't use dDR and dDamage in 3rd edition - read that as 6dx55 in Spaceships terminology)

So you can either determine the best fit to approach 1.4GJ of particle beam, or you can find the particle beam that most closely approaches 6dx55.

As for the barbette, well, in MgT that's what, an extra die of damage, so call it 33% more powerful? That'd be 1.8GJ or maybe 6dx70. That said, G:T 3rd edition doesn't have them, and the lightest, earliest small bay particle accelerator only does 5dx800 (again, normal damage) so is pretty close to a third again as powerful as the turret weapon. That's at TL9, though. By TL 11 you're looking at 14 GJ for the small bay and 47GJ for the large, with damages at 6dx1200 and 1800 respectively, and ranges out to 90,900.

Turning to Spaceships - a 1GJ Particle Beam does 4dx5 burn rad sur (5) - which is significantly less damage than the particle accelerator from G:T, but maybe that's okay, based on what you decide to do with the laser weapons? If so, I'd probably want to kick the barbette up a little, but maybe not all the way to 3GJ, with 3dx10 burn rad sur(5) but maybe that's an acceptable power increase?

Using Spaceships, I'm not sure there's a valid way to represent the slight difference between the two weapons all that terribly well. In Classic Traveller, wasn't the idea that a barbette wasn't more powerful, but instead just bulkier, and available at an earlier TL? Maybe that's the way to approach this as well, with the "barbette" being when you have to gang together three Ship's systems to put a single major battery from an SM larger than the ship you're after... but no, that'd make the barbette 15% of your ship, and that's excessive...

Wow... you've got me! What do you think you'll do?

[apoc527]

For now, I won't worry too much about it. When and if this TNE game becomes a reality, then I'll probably decide based on if I use G: Spaceships or the ISW ship design system. I'm leaning towards Spaceships for the sheer number of options, but I agree that the ships are somewhat compressed between SM+7 and SM+15. Of course, I'm not sure if that's all that big a deal to me. (Pulver suggests using SM+7 for a 100 ton scout, by the way.)

[The Rampant Gamer]

Originally Posted by apoc527

For now, I won't worry too much about it. When and if this TNE game becomes a reality, then I'll probably decide based on if I use G: Spaceships or the ISW ship design system. I'm leaning towards Spaceships for the sheer number of options, but I agree that the ships are somewhat compressed between SM+7 and SM+15. Of course, I'm not sure if that's all that big a deal to me. (Pulver suggests using SM+7 for a 100 ton scout, by the way.)

I guess I just like fiddly. :) It's a selling point to me that ISW uses formulas where possible, and I can reverse-engineer some of the tables. So I can say "I'd like a 37 ton ship's boat" or a "225 ton merchant ship" and figure it out.

[Earther]

Joshua,

How did it go? I'll be getting my Secret of the Ancients book soon and using it in GURPS 4e. I'll look on your blog.