Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 09-10-2011, 04:29 PM   #21
Mailanka
 
Mailanka's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Default Re: GURPS Ultra-Tech: Square Root of Destruction

Quote:
Originally Posted by vierasmarius View Post
Don't most of the "tactical" Affliction weapons fire 1-3 yd cones? Perhaps that spreads out the energy enough to reduce the potency.
You'd think so, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Single-target afflictions, like electro-lasers and Mind Disruptors, have the same problem, as do weapons that are similar in power to the tactical weapons, but have a smaller radius (the long-range Mind Ripper, noting that mind-rippers are basically half the penalty of similar affliction weapons). I personally suspect that the area of effect has no real bearing on the power of the weapon, and is more of a side-effect (as in, powerful projectors naturally have a larger AoE in addition to higher penalties). That is, you couldn't design a weapon with a larger radius for a smaller penalty of visa versa or, if you can, David Pulver simply didn't do so.

Let me note, however, that there's a lack of data here. With the damaging beam weapons, you have everything from several models of pistols to several models of cannons. With the affliction weapons, you typically have a pistol, a holdout, a rifle, and a tactical, and maybe one or two other things (like an underbarrel thing here, or a carbine there), so there's less variation for me to compare.
__________________
My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars.
Mailanka is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-10-2011, 05:20 PM   #22
jacobmuller
 
jacobmuller's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Not in your time zone:D
Default Re: GURPS Ultra-Tech: Square Root of Destruction

Did you notice the range?
I put the weights for Spaceship and UT weapons through a spreadsheet and the weight-damage ratio worked okay, ie it matched up with UT.
Problem came when I tried to do range. The weapons from Spaceships have range in thousands of miles but the weapons in UT are in yards. The numerals matched up as well as the damage values, just, the range in UT would need to be in miles, eg an IR holdout laser with a range of 70/200 miles.
__________________
"Sanity is a bourgeois meme." Exegeek
PS sorry I'm a Parthian shootist: shiftwork + out of country = not here when you are:/
It's all in the reflexes
jacobmuller is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-10-2011, 06:55 PM   #23
vierasmarius
 
vierasmarius's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Oregon
Default Re: GURPS Ultra-Tech: Square Root of Destruction

Quote:
Originally Posted by jacobmuller View Post
Did you notice the range?
I put the weights for Spaceship and UT weapons through a spreadsheet and the weight-damage ratio worked okay, ie it matched up with UT.
Problem came when I tried to do range. The weapons from Spaceships have range in thousands of miles but the weapons in UT are in yards. The numerals matched up as well as the damage values, just, the range in UT would need to be in miles, eg an IR holdout laser with a range of 70/200 miles.
I remember in 3rd edition, most energy weapons had a sizable range multiplier when fired in vacuum. Of course, that was only x10 to x100, rather than x1760...
vierasmarius is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-10-2011, 07:18 PM   #24
Humabout
 
Humabout's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Default Re: GURPS Ultra-Tech: Square Root of Destruction

Quote:
Originally Posted by vierasmarius View Post
I remember in 3rd edition, most energy weapons had a sizable range multiplier when fired in vacuum. Of course, that was only x10 to x100, rather than x1760...
That could just be a matter of switching units to something more appropriate rather than by a set multiplier. IT's probably easier to do that than to recalculate all of those tables.
__________________
Buy My Stuff!

Free Stuff:
Dungeon Action!
Totem Spirits

My Blog: Above the Flatline.
Humabout is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-11-2011, 12:19 PM   #25
cmdicely
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Default Re: GURPS Ultra-Tech: Square Root of Destruction

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post
Pyramid #34: Alternate GURPS includes a fantastic article on converting GURPS Spaceships into a sort of GURPS Vehicles replacement. Additionally, he added a new set of charts for converting Spaceship's energy weapons from the "cube root based" numbers of standard GURPS with "square root based" numbers, thus increasing the damage of high powered weapons and more closely matching the progression of projectile weapons.

I thought it would be nice to do the same with GURPS Ultra-Tech, but I quickly ran into the problem. Exactly where are the cube roots in GURPS, so we can extract them and replace them with square-root based damage numbers? It doesn't seem to be the value of the energy in joules, nor can you derive it directly from the damage itself because the numbers in the Pyramid article do a funny thing: Below a certain threshold, they actually get smaller than the cube-root numbers, which suggests we're looking at the fractions of some value (the cube root of a fraction is larger than the square root of a fraction).
Its actually very simple: its the energy, in hundreds of kJ. This can readily be seen as the table on p. 9 of Pyr#34 has the same damage values in both columns as the table on p. 67 of SS1 when the energy is 100kJ, greater values above that, and less values below that.

(Note that this is what you might call the "reference energy", which is not the same as the actual output for some weapons -- graviton beams [the only type this applies to in Spaceships 1], for instance, have a reference energy that is 1/10 the actual output energy.)
cmdicely is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-11-2011, 12:32 PM   #26
Humabout
 
Humabout's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Default Re: GURPS Ultra-Tech: Square Root of Destruction

So after a lot of number crunching, I've compiled two tables and a handful of formulas drawn from this thread and from the tables. Let me know what you think of these:

Acc = AccF x Configuration Factor
Range = RF x Dmg^2
Weight = (Dmg/BF)^3
Shots = Power Cells in AA / AA/S
ST = (5 x Weight)^(1/2) + K, K = 2 if the weapon is a Holdout Pistol, Pistol, or Heavy Pistol; otherwise, it equals 0.
Bulk is based on the weapon’s configuration.
Cost = Weight x CF

Code:
Beam Type			BF	RF	CF	AA/S	AccF
TL 9 Laser			1.5	41	1000	4.3	6
TL 10 Laser			3	20	1000	0.55	6
Rainbow Laser			3	60	1000	0.55	6
X-Ray Laser			3	1900	2000	0.55	6
Gamma Ray Laser			3	5100	3000	0.55	6
Electrolaser			2.7	10	1000	0.5	4
MAD				1	41	1000	3	6
Disruptor			2.5	10	470	1	6
Nerve Gun			2.6	2.5	2000	0.55	6
Sonic Nauseator			2.6	1	500	0.55	3
Sonic Stunner			2.6	3	500	0.55	3
Sonic Screamer			2.4	2	1000	0.55	3
Blaster				3	25	2000	1	5
Pulsar				6	6	2700	0.1	5
Flamer				3	2	500	0.55	3
TL 10 Plasma			5	2	2000	0.15	4
TL 11 Plasma			7.5	3	2000	0.06	4
Force Beamer			4	10	500	0.2	6
Graviton			1.5	8	2000	5	6
Disintegrator			60	0.5	5000	7	6
Ghost Particle			6	5	1000	0.07	5
Displacer			0.5	100*	1500	220**	6
* A displacer’s range is 100 x the radius of its area of effect.
** A displacer’s shots don’t make any sense; this figure is merely an average based on two samples.

Beam Type: The type of beam technology employed.
BF: The Beam Factor.
RF: The Range Factor.
CF: The Cost Factor.
AA/S: The number of AA cells required per shot.
AccF: The Acc of a pistol using this beam type.

Code:
Configuration		Factor	Bulk
Holdout			0.5		-1
Pistol			1		-2
Heavy Pistol		1		-2
Underbarrel		1		--
Survival/SMG		2		-3
Carbine			2		-3
Rifle			2		-4
Dinosaur/Heavy Rifle	2		-5
Cannon			3		-10
Semi-Portable		3		-8
[EDIT]
I found my formula for minimum ST for guns and launchers: ST = (5 x Weight)^(1/2) + (Moment of Velocity)/(5 x Weight). That gives the ST for a rifle. You'll have to multiply by 1.5 to get the ST requirement for a pistol.

[P.P.S]
Here's a spreadsheet that uses these tables and formulas to create UT guns of your choosing, based on the damage, RoF, and Shots. It is rough, but it's something. <Download Link>
__________________
Buy My Stuff!

Free Stuff:
Dungeon Action!
Totem Spirits

My Blog: Above the Flatline.

Last edited by Humabout; 09-12-2011 at 05:09 PM. Reason: Added link for
Humabout is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
guns, math, spaceship, ultra tech, ultra-tech, vehicles

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:38 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.