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Old 11-05-2017, 06:39 PM   #31
warellis
 
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Default Re: GURPS Lucifer-5?

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There's no direct path from the tech boosts in energy and propulsion to materials sciences and you don't see even vaguely effective body armor in our timeline til late TL7. You'd need something from Martian bio-tech or something else found on Venus to boost their body armor technology.

Either would be possible but Martian bioplastic would be not reproducible on Earth for a significant period of time. Venus could produce extremely strong "spider silk" that could be made into the material Gurps sometimes calls "Arachnoweave".

I had already pegged Venus as the source for "veetex" the unimaginatively named "Venusian latex" that the setting would use to produce the equivalent of TL9 Skin suits from UT. Those would be needed for the large number of spacesuits used in constructing the many projects that are canonical across the Solar System.

Indirect links tot he tech boosts could be seen in use of energy hungry metals production for aluminum and then titanium. Those could be used to replace all the steel I put in my sample rocket but would not be likely to revolutionize body armor.
What kind of capabilities do the Martians have in your version of Lucifer-5? And do you think some type of atomic energy weapon would become standard here, much like in say Tales of the Solar Patrol?
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Old 11-05-2017, 06:40 PM   #32
dcarson
 
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Since they didn't have the saving weight really matters from aircraft and rocket design they may have never invested in the light weight material design. So no strong Al alloys, no strong light plastics etc.
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Old 11-05-2017, 07:13 PM   #33
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A Mars with an Earth normal atmosphere could support very large flying creatures and very large flying objects. A lot of their aircraft would be incapable of flying on the Earth because of a different ratio of atmospheric pressure to gravity. That would explain why Martians would just land and walk than depend on aircraft.
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Old 11-06-2017, 03:55 AM   #34
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Default Re: GURPS Lucifer-5?

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Neat. Did you play a demo in that particular worldline?
Oh yes. "The Gargoyles on the Channel Bridge". The Infinity pre-insertion briefing flavour text in the book was basically the set-up scene for that scenario, and a couple of characters from the book appeared as NPCs. The PCs got dropped in to investigate a possible out-time incursion, chased around between London and Dover, got into a fight or two... The best run culminated in them crashing a (rented) airship into the Channel Bridge. (And the most opportunistic team came back with a bunch of Charles Dickens autographs. Possible disciplinary questions there.) It's an entertaining timeline that players can understand fairly easily while being significantly divergent. "Georgian gentlemen being competitive with dieselpunk tech."

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Also since you're here, do you know what is meant by "holy flame" here in this bit from Azoth-7?
Not the foggiest idea. Nothing to do with me.

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Considering the effects astronium & petrinium have had on technology, is there any tech you think Lucifer-5 might be deficient on considering what they have available?
Any setting with runaway tech in one area (in this case, high-energy engineering and stuff that goes boom in general) may well logically be deficient in many others; it probably won't have had time to undergo our world's sort of progress areas, and the best scientific minds may well have been distracted by the cool sh*t. I tend to assume that steampunk and Raygun Gothic timelines have utterly horrific, quasi-Victorian medicine, just for a start -- unless they have gross superscience "healing rays".
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Old 11-06-2017, 10:58 AM   #35
Fred Brackin
 
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the most opportunistic team came back with a bunch of Charles Dickens autographs. Possible disciplinary questions there.
Probably not. That's just barely beyond the "bottles of hooch and knives" level of souvenirs that Infinity is too busy to notice. Going by vignettes and flavor text, Infinity agents are such cowboys that the bosses should be happy when they don't smuggle back armed fighting vehicles.

Time Tours tourists no doubt bring back lots of autographs. I wouldn't expect Homeline to have much of an exploitable market in autographs.
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Old 11-06-2017, 11:11 AM   #36
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Any setting with runaway tech in one area (in this case, high-energy engineering and stuff that goes boom in general) may well logically be deficient in many others; it probably won't have had time to undergo our world's sort of progress areas, and the best scientific minds may well have been distracted by the cool sh*t. I tend to assume that steampunk and Raygun Gothic timelines have utterly horrific, quasi-Victorian medicine, just for a start -- unless they have gross superscience "healing rays".
I love the idea of the superscience Lucifer-5 still having nineteenth century medicine. All those atomic torch ships and rayguns are going to create some injuries, and it would be a shocking flip to then have the doctors be Victorian hacks.

In general, I think the rest of Lucifer-5, those who live on the ground on Earth, would still be stuck in turn-of-the-century technology. All the high-flying superscience wouldn't reach the people of German-administered Russia or colonial Africa.

Actually, it would be a little like Britannica-6, with amazing upper-end science that doesn't filter down to everyone else (which undoubtedly fuels a resentment that Centrum and Infinity wouldn't see coming, so fixated are they on the space forces of this world).
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Old 11-06-2017, 11:50 AM   #37
Fred Brackin
 
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I love the idea of the superscience Lucifer-5 still having nineteenth century medicine. All those atomic torch ships and rayguns are going to create some injuries, .
Lucifer-5 doesn't have rayguns (yet). They still have to be created by Mad Science. I would nominate Flamers from UT. They're sort of the reverse of the torch drives. Instead of thrust with only token amounts of heat and light you get the beams of concentrated heat without being better rocket engines than weapons.

A likely predecessor would be an "astronium torch" which would be like one of the plasma torches in UT. Cinematically large ones could be used to carve tunnels into all those inhabited asteroids and airless moons.

There's no reason for medical tech to be any worse than 1908 level and that's late enough for the Victorian paradigm to be almost totally broken. They'd have antiseptic medicine, surgery with decent anesthetics and x-rays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeli...0.E2.80.931899

......hits the high spots. Most of what you might think of as "Victorian medicine" does not survive the end of Gurps TL5. Indeed, medicine may be the best reason to draw the starting line of the next TL at 1880.
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Old 11-06-2017, 12:06 PM   #38
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Then you get transportation advancements though some of those may be going into rocket engines at the expense of internal combustion. Given the way the hot reactionless thruster has to work for other purposes in this setting what I would anticipate sub-sonic "battlewagons" like an HMS Dreadnought that flew with much gushing of flame out of its' underside.

Creation of these would pre-empt tank development very thoroughly and troopship equivalents would probably greatly shorten the infantry battlefield. something like a heavily armored Huey (with a big Flash Gordon-like aesthetic) might result.

I really can't se anyone who has access to such a vehicle ever being very interested in tracked or wheeled combat vehicles for any environment.
On the other hand, the super-science elements are pretty rare. In the same way that we don't ride helicopters to work, you probably don't replace all war vehicles with hover tanks.

Actually, without world war 1, a lot of military technology that looks obvious to us is a matter of great debate to them. World war one overturned centuries of military thought, and it did so very painfully. You may not so much get tanks as armored cars. You are unlikely to get the idea of suppressing fire either.

Flying battleships will be awesome, and should certainly be included though. They're just going to be insanely expensive.


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To sell the smaller caliber is mostly a knowledge that the possible range of infantry engagements was shrinking. That would be very forward-thinking. In 1908 the full-power .30 caliber rifle was the longest range fully portable weapons system the infantry had. Indeed, it may not have been clear that artillery wasn't going to be towed into position by mule teams.
To be fair, World war 2 artillery was towed into position by mule teams much of the time, and world war 1 artillery was almost exclusively drawn be beasts of burden after it got off of trains.

I think its awesome to embrace the bad combat assumptions these people have.
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Old 11-06-2017, 12:45 PM   #39
warellis
 
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On the other hand, the super-science elements are pretty rare. In the same way that we don't ride helicopters to work, you probably don't replace all war vehicles with hover tanks.

Actually, without world war 1, a lot of military technology that looks obvious to us is a matter of great debate to them. World war one overturned centuries of military thought, and it did so very painfully. You may not so much get tanks as armored cars. You are unlikely to get the idea of suppressing fire either.

Flying battleships will be awesome, and should certainly be included though. They're just going to be insanely expensive.
So most armored vehicles might be more like armored cars/light, light tanks armed with maybe a 20mm cannon at most and more like just several machine guns?
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To be fair, World war 2 artillery was towed into position by mule teams much of the time, and world war 1 artillery was almost exclusively drawn be beasts of burden after it got off of trains.

I think its awesome to embrace the bad combat assumptions these people have.
I wonder how those nations with advanced and massive industrial capacities, like the United States especially, would benefit from all this. Because in WW2, the US was the only nation to pretty much have everything mechanized. Other countries, like Germany, often relied on animals for moving stuff around.
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Old 11-06-2017, 11:07 PM   #40
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I wonder how those nations with advanced and massive industrial capacities, like the United States especially, would benefit from all this. Because in WW2, the US was the only nation to pretty much have everything mechanized. Other countries, like Germany, often relied on animals for moving stuff around.
The US actually had several warplans pre WW II. We went with the all mechanized one but there were several others ranging to the level that Germany and Russia had with horse-drawn artillery and troops that marched from the railhead to the front instead of riding in trucks. That would have had about three times the number of divisions but moved a lot slower.
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