Determining TL

[scc]

So a campaign setup in the Solar Starfire and the changes I want to make to it are giving me ideas for an RPG campaign.

The problem is the TL, as Starfire is a starship based wargame we don't get much of a look at the technology in play, but as you can't build very good robotics units I'm guessing that AI technology isn't very advanced, so I'm thinking no more then TL 10. A related thorny problem is figuring out if starship weapons can be miniaturized, because man-portable Primaries mean armor is nearly useless.

A worse problem is Unusual Lifeforms, how do you figure out stats for a race that lives on planets like Pluto, an airless version of Mars or Mercury? (Starfire doesn't use the same planet types as GURPS Space, mainly for balance reason)

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by scc

A worse problem is Unusual Lifeforms, how do you figure out stats for a race that lives on planets like Pluto, an airless version of Mars or Mercury? (Starfire doesn't use the same planet types as GURPS Space, mainly for balance reason)

Loved that game, though I played a much earlier edition and my memory may be off.
If I recall correctly its a super science setting.
Reactionless drives, force fields, grav tech, including gravity beams, and I think Star Gates for the main method of travel along with one race having a flicker drive.
As for the races, GURPS Template Toolkit 2: Races covers you.

[Anthony]

An obvious place to look is the Starfire novels . I won't say they're especially good novels, but given that Weber was also one of the designers of first edition Starfire, it should give a sense of how he was visualizing the setting.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Loved that game, though I played a much earlier edition and my memory may be off.
If I recall correctly its a super science setting.
Reactionless drives, force fields, grav tech, including gravity beams, and I think Star Gates for the main method of travel along with one race having a flicker drive.
As for the races, GURPS Template Toolkit 2: Races covers you.

Warp Points for star travel, and those are 100% natural. As for GURPS Template Toolkit 2: Races I didn't think that expanded the coverage Space as on species design.

Originally Posted by Anthony

An obvious place to look is the Starfire novels . I won't say they're especially good novels, but given that Weber was also one of the designers of first edition Starfire, it should give a sense of how he was visualizing the setting.

Given that this NOT based on the books, using them as guides is somewhat questionable, and even if I did that it wouldn't really help as we see so little that isn't fleet actions, and what we do see tells as very little. We know they have a lot of cliche sci-fi super-science but very little of anything substantial, mainly because the memes it embodies mean that any changes can't exist (Which gives me at least something, it's either Retro-Tech or Safe-Tech)

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by scc

Warp Points for star travel, and those are 100% natural. As for GURPS Template Toolkit 2: Races I didn't think that expanded the coverage Space as on species design.

It covers the various habitats and the traits to live in them.
Also effects on mass and HP.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by scc

Given that this NOT based on the books, using them as guides is somewhat questionable, and even if I did that it wouldn't really help as we see so little that isn't fleet actions, and what we do see tells as very little. We know they have a lot of cliche sci-fi super-science but very little of anything substantial, mainly because the memes it embodies mean that any changes can't exist (Which gives me at least something, it's either Retro-Tech or Safe-Tech)

One of the novels has a fair bit of ground action, and my recollection is that there aren't anything like primaries as small arms, and possibly no lasers, just high-end projectile weapons and very fast rockets (which use little starship drives but seem to have actual momentum).

[maximara]

Originally Posted by scc

So a campaign setup in the Solar Starfire and the changes I want to make to it are giving me ideas for an RPG campaign.

The problem is the TL, as Starfire is a starship based wargame we don't get much of a look at the technology in play, but as you can't build very good robotics units I'm guessing that AI technology isn't very advanced, so I'm thinking no more then TL 10. A related thorny problem is figuring out if starship weapons can be miniaturized, because man-portable Primaries mean armor is nearly useless.

The state of one technology doesn't tell you much (if anything) about the over all TL. Dune for example doesn't have much in the way of AI technology but that is a cultural not a technological issue.

Besides superscience royally hoses the GURPS TL scale and anything involving space battles as a general rule has superscience.

IMHO the best way to figure out a TL is to ignore all the superscience stuff and look at where the non superscience equipment falls and see if you have a cluster around one or two TLs and go with that.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by scc

A related thorny problem is figuring out if starship weapons can be miniaturized, because man-portable Primaries mean armor is nearly useless.

In my extensive but outdated experience, Starfire primaries don't make shields and armor obsolete on spaceships, so I don't know why man-portable primaries would make personal armor useless.

Just eyeballing it here, but if your standard military long-arm is an Ultratech TL10 Laser Rifle (from UT p 116) doing 6d(2) burn with RoF 10, a primary beam rifle could be represented by the Ultratech TL11^ Graviton Rifle (UT p129) doing 3d(inf) cr with RoF 1. The primary beam rifle hurts pretty bad if you can hit the target, but you only get one shot, while the laser rifle is more useful for suppression, property damage, and injuring moderately armor targets. The laser is absolutely better than the primary beam against DR 22 or less, and competitive through DR 38 or so.

Aside from that note, most of Starfire seems to fit comfortably in GURPS TL9 to TL10: lasers, missiles, fusion and anti-matter reactors, etc. Tractor/pressor beams, force beams, and primary beams are TL11^ in GURPS terms, but superscience TLs are fairly advisory so that wouldn't worry me. Unless Solar Starfire has changed the tech trees dramatically, ship-mounted X-ray lasers are produced by detonating heavily shielded nuclear weapons inside the ship, which is not how GURPS TL11 X-Ray lasers are produced, so that again points to TL10 not TL11.

[David Johnston2]

It's been a long time since I played Starfire and I have no idea how or if Solar Starfire changed things. But I'd concentrate on figuring out what the ships weapons work out to in Spaceships and base the numerical TL on the currently available weapons. It would presumably be a safetech setting so nanotechnology would be restricted even if the TL is high enough for it and the computer TL would be restricted enough to keep humans from obsolescence. Biotech would be oriented toward extending human lifespan and not much else.

[Daigoro]

If it's an existing setting, what's to stop you ignoring TL and just choosing which equipment is available?

IOW: Just say the TL is TL(Starfire).