03-26-2018, 10:23 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Spaceships: Is Defensive ECM worthwhile on big ships?
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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03-26-2018, 11:56 PM | #12 | |
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Join Date: Mar 2018
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Re: Spaceships: Is Defensive ECM worthwhile on big ships?
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One thing I thought was weird was how cheap huge battleships are. I know GURPS $ are less debased than USD, but IIRC most cutting edge stealth bombers, fighter/bombers and cruisers like the Zumwalt cost $1 billion to multiple billions each. I can build a SM +12 spaceship with superheavy hardened armor, spinal laser, missile tubes and dozens of huge rail cannons for about the same price in GURPS (2-4 billion). That not only is vastly more firepower than anything built by any army in the history of the world but it's also as large as the largest naval ships ever built - which didn't have to be built in space. Seems a bit low to me, even accounting for better technology. I mean is it at all plausible that in 2040 one can build a nuclear powered space cruiser that dwarfs the Japanese superheavy battleships for the same cost as a modern airplane? I don't think you could even build a WW2 Japanese superheavy battleship in the ocean for that price today. Even as an abstract unit it doesn't work: the USP in High-Tech (a gun I bought) is at $770. That's a reasonable price for a new one, I purchased one for $550. So the price of small arms is basically correct to modern day bucks, but the price for spaceships is ridiculously cheap. You can buy a TL8 NASA style space plane for a few millions! The Endeavour shuttle cost $1.7 billion. Even accounting for government inefficiency that seems on the order of silly. Either that or pricing is wildly inconsistent between books. Last edited by VonKatzen; 03-27-2018 at 12:09 AM. |
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03-27-2018, 12:11 AM | #13 | ||
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Spaceships: Is Defensive ECM worthwhile on big ships?
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03-27-2018, 02:54 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Spaceships: Is Defensive ECM worthwhile on big ships?
One thing to note is that large ships are a bit more survivable than small ones when facing ships of similar size, because HP, armour/screens, and beam damage scale up roughly evenly, but KE damage scales up much more slowly (and nukes/AM warheads scale only very slightly with launching ship size).
Also, as TL goes up, spaceships become increasingly fragile. Hit Points don't change with TL, and even without super-science weapon penetration outpaces armour improvements (unless the GM also adds hardening in as something only available at higher TLs). A big-ship battle at TL9 will be quite different from a small-ship fight at TL12, even with just beams.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
03-27-2018, 03:20 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: Spaceships: Is Defensive ECM worthwhile on big ships?
Unless you have superscience, sure. There are some tricks and edge cases, but when your smallest nuclear warhead does 4d×1,000… and 10MT, which at TL10 fits in a 40cm missile tube, does 8d×100 even with a proximity detonation… nothing material is going to hang around for long.
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03-27-2018, 06:46 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: Spaceships: Is Defensive ECM worthwhile on big ships?
NASA wasn't mass producing spaceplanes. GURPS spaceships assumes mass production for its figures. Prototypes and limited runs might jack it up by x1000.
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