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Old 07-08-2013, 12:57 AM   #1
Jachra
 
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Default [Robots] Conversion into 4e

GURPS Robots 4e Conversion
A friend of mine and I took some time to do a conversion of Robots. I was hopeful to do some stuff for vehicles as well, but he kind of gave me a frosty glare and I backed off.

We designed this as a replacement for the rules for building robots by character points found in Ultra Tech.
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Last edited by Jachra; 07-08-2013 at 12:37 PM.
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Old 07-08-2013, 09:07 AM   #2
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

A wise man once said, "it is better to ask forgiveness than permission." Well, maybe not so wise.

But I don't see why anyone would have a problem with asking for comments on it, as long as you're not just posting it for its own sake.
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Old 07-08-2013, 12:38 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

Yeah, looking for comments on it.
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Old 07-08-2013, 04:35 PM   #4
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

While I'm gonna need a bit to fully go over everything and let it settle in my brain meats I got to say that so for it's looking pretty good. Outside of a few typos (such as as having "A smart tool" written twice under dedicated AI) abut the only thing off I've seen so far is that your sheet is still using 3rd editions way of handling ST and HP.

For ST, 3rd treated it as liner, that is a ST 20 was twice as strong as a ST 10 but in 4th ST is quadratic which means that a ST of 20 is now four(!) times as strong as ST 10. This means that weight, cost and power would scale with the square of your robots ST.

Maybe refigure the chart so weight and what not is per pound of basic lift instead, ST would then be calculated as the square root of basic lift * 5.

Also while a machines HP was based on surface area in 3rd, HP for all things in 4th is figured by the cube root of the objects weight in pounds (at 1G) time a factor based on how structurally sound the object is, a 2 if it's soft and squishy like us, 4 if it's a complex machine or a mostly hollow tube or box of something hard like metal or wood and times 8 if it's just a solid lump of matter. Course this tends to short change machines somewhat since in all reality you have more options on how much you can reinforce one.

One way to handle this would be to take the robots unloaded weight, multiply it's weight by the frame strength modifier you want (that is times 0,25 if ultra light, 0.5 if light and so on) then take the cube root of that and multiply it by 2 if it's a flimsy robot (made out of softer plastics and the like) or 4 if it's made out of more impact resistant stuff.

Alright, that's all I got for now but I gotta say that I like the idea behind this; since it's gonna be god knows when till we get the 4th edition version of Vehicles we might as well make use of what we have for now.
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Old 07-08-2013, 06:33 PM   #5
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

Made the fix, rather quickly. Arm ST is now squared before you multiply the cost, and HP is now based off the robot's Empty Weight.

If anyone has an idea for how to expand these into Vehicle Rules, I'd love to lend a hand.
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Old 07-08-2013, 07:01 PM   #6
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

I'll also point out, while saying "amazing job, this might be a great quick fix for a THS cybershell design system" that you left a 1/2 point skill on the Skills chart. There are no 1/2 point skills in 4E.
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Old 07-08-2013, 07:07 PM   #7
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

Whoops. Fixed!
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Old 07-09-2013, 04:21 PM   #8
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

Don't worry, I missed that too heh. But this goes to show the value of this forum, there will always be some one who catches what you miss.

But anywho, it's looking good. Outside of the fact that I'd stick with the kilowatt system of 3rd on how to determine how many power cells are needed rather then the most abstracted version used in Ultra-Tech (though that's just a personal thing, as is-is fine as well) all I got is mostly just some follow ups on my suggestions from before.

In my fist post I forgot to mention that body ST would also need to be tweaked. For body ST your loaded weight/1000 doesn't really work since it discounts a robots motive power (and gives any robot under half a ton a body ST of less then 1) so I'd say that it should just be equal to it's HP like is in vanilla GURPS since without knowing how much motive power your robots drive system has there is no way to sett a ST range.

I also forgot to point out that for the motive systems weight, cost and power should also be based on amount of move squared since energy goes up with the square of velocity (yeah I know, there be a lot of squares and square roots in GURPS but for whatever reason reality seems to love them)

The Health formula also needs some tweaking now that you've changed the HP formula but that will take some crunching to do so for now I'd just change your formula to read (200*(Surface area*1.5*Frame Strength modifier)) rather then (200*HP) for now. In fact, I think that might work better then basing it off of HP.

Lastly frame strength modifiers could still be viable in the updated HP calculation, just have them modify the robots weight before being cube rooted rather then it's flat HP.

Oh and if you can, take a look at Pyramid #3-52 Low Tech II. It's got a sneak peak of David Pulver's updated armor rules.

Now for an update for Vehicles proper, I think that most of these updates could work for it. The biggest hurdles might be updating handling and whatnot to 4th edition (as for me I like the 3rd edition rules better so I wouldn't bother), the weapons creations rules would also need some updating as well but between Douglass Coles ballistic spread sheet and his Deadly Spring article, Pulvers energy weapon design rules in Pyramid (along with Lwcamp's laser house rules, they're really good)and the explosive rules in basic and high-tech a lot of this is covered already (about the only thing we don't know if how regular guns calculate minimum ST, Acc and Rcl but those could be gestimated based on existing weapon stats).
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Old 07-09-2013, 04:40 PM   #9
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Ryujin View Post
I also forgot to point out that for the motive systems weight, cost and power should also be based on amount of move squared since energy goes up with the square of velocity (yeah I know, there be a lot of squares and square roots in GURPS but for whatever reason reality seems to love them)
I might want a little help fiddling with this one. Just changing the calculation to (square of move) seems to get some really extreme results.

Arm ST is also really expensive at the lower levels, when it might not necessarily be called for, when I changed the pricing to (ST Squared).
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Last edited by Jachra; 07-09-2013 at 05:24 PM.
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Old 07-09-2013, 06:01 PM   #10
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Default Re: [Robots] 4e Conversion

Yeah, that they are. Sorry bout that.

To fix things divide motor/motive system weight by ten and cost by 100. For example a TL 9 arm motor should cost ST^2 time $3 and weight ST^2 time 0.015lbs rather then $300 and 0.15 lbs. That should give you better results, for example a TL 9 ST 10 arm now only costs $300 and weights 1.5lbs instead of $30000 and 15lbs.
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