10-27-2011, 08:15 AM | #1 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
Greetings, all!
Let me begin by saying that GURPS Spaceships is a fascinating project/series, and I definitely like it, and haven't seen a playable alternative that is better (but Rogue Trader comes to mind, for the specific case of WH40K). I also pointed out some of its parts that I see as flawed or incomplete, and occasionally posted my ideas how to fix them. But I'm also curious what things other people see as murphies, and what fixes they see as viable (and which ones they do not see as possible to fix at all). Thanks in advance! |
10-27-2011, 08:52 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
I think the biggest and fatal fault is the way it uses standard GURPS rapid fire rules for attacks from batteries of weapons and for attacks spread over multiple seconds. This is particularly bad whenever missiles and point defense are involved. This has a few knock-on sub-murphies, but those would likely vanish in the process of getting rid of the core problem.
Spaceships combat has two-axis scalability (time and space). Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily conserve important features of combat over scale changes. Ignoring the time-scaling issues with weapons previously noted, there's a problem with Dodge. To be allowed to dodge under either combat system, your ship has to use a certain amount of thrust. How much is dependent not on any property of your ship or the attack to be dodged, but rather on the combat scale in use. I'd suggest simply setting a constant minimum delta-V that must be burned in a turn to allow a dodge, and allowing that to be burned whether or not it's sufficient for the ship to accelerate significantly at the combat scale. The economics of building spaceships, or of anything built by spaceships factory systems, are pretty much absurd. Occasionally outright physics-breaking, as in the refinery which can electrolyze water fast enough that it generates more fuel than a fuel cell powering it consumes. There are some smaller peculiarities: -What's the rate of fire of Spaceships weapons in regular GURPS combat? -Should any imperfect landing be catastrophic? A crash landing does 6dx3xHPx0.1, which averages 6.3xHP. Any other landing is non-damaging. -The description of Steerage Cargo calls into question what regular cargo space is. And by talking about carrying livestock, also the rules for life support capacity.
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10-27-2011, 08:58 AM | #3 | |||||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
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Seen it discussed, and think that a paragraph or two of GM rulings can fix it. Just stick to those rulings after posting them first. |
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10-27-2011, 09:03 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
Spaceships uses 2D "tactical" combat, and space is actually 3D, which breaks realism badly for pretty much everything tactical about Spaceships combat, particularly with more than two objects of interest on the map (combatant vessels plus any missiles, etc.)
There's no easy fix for this, unless you consider "adapt Spaceships tactical combat to 3D" to be easy (its fairly straightforward if you steal the 3D play aids and adapt a few rules from Ad Astra's Squadron Strike, which is pretty close to a 3D analog of the SS3 tactical system to start with.) |
10-27-2011, 09:13 AM | #5 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
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Also, I will repeat my question from the other thread: would you play Spaceships 3D if such a software aid were available? (Not just cmdicey, the question is addressed to everyone.) |
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10-27-2011, 09:24 AM | #6 | |||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
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It should be soluble along those lines (I and others have offered models), though it's a little more involved than that if you want it to be consistent. You can't just say a VRF weapon is RoF 5, because space combat shooting is based on at least 3 seconds of aim. Also, how you deal with this suggests things about how you should deal with the RoF problem. Quote:
Undoubtedly, but what should they be? There's a major weight penalty on Steerage Cargo, so it's got to do something.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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10-27-2011, 09:27 AM | #7 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
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OTOH, the SS3 requirement for a velocity change of 1 hex/turn does create this problem. Quote:
What you need to do is to adopt a constant number of G's of thrust and a constant time (like 1 minute, not number of turns, like 1 turn) over which it must be applied in order to qualify for dodge, allowing the time to be made up of a sequence of turns prior to the attack (including the turn of the attack) if the time is longer than the shortest turn scale. |
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10-27-2011, 09:56 AM | #8 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
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The larger one is that every maneuver other than the two drifts requires you to accelerate. And when I asked about Hold Course, which is the only maneuver that fails to specify how much you have to accelerate, I got back that it required an acceleration bonus as well. Quote:
I don't think you need to worry about the time-scale of the burn, because it will necessarily be shorter than the 20 second turn and possibly shorter than the 1-second turn.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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10-27-2011, 10:36 AM | #9 | |
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
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For example, if you need to dodge ten laser bolts over ten seconds, you need to expend x Delta-V. If you need to dodge one hundred laser bolts over one hundred seconds, you need to expend 10x Delta-V, because you need to dodge ten times the number of laser bolts spread over ten times the amount of time, same as if you were dodging each 10 laser bolt burst every ten seconds individually. This is not a Murphy's Rule. |
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10-27-2011, 10:50 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives
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The part where the acceleration you need to use is proportional to the distance scale over the square of the time scale, however, is.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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house rules, houserules, murphy's rules, spaceships |
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