Spaceship Damage

[Hecaton]

So I'm playing in a GURPS Space/Spaceships-focused game, and all of us involved are fairly new to GURPS. Am I reading the damage values of spaceship weapons correctly? A sm +9 ship's spinal weapon, at a 24 cm caliber, does 6d x 60 damage, with a minimum x 10 multiplier due to velocity if it's a grav weapon. So with an expected value of 21 off 6d6, we're talking 12600 average decade damage per hit - and a sm +9 ship has like 100 decade hp. Is this accurate? Am I tripping?

[Kalminos]

the default method of spaceships combat is 'eggshells with hammers'. There's a few rules that help if you really want a slugfest, but I think it's intended that a SM+X ship will one-shot another SM+X with a spinal mount under the default ruleset.

There's a rule I really liked from an unpublished book, but I'll refrain from mentioning its details in the open because I don't want to deal with bad mojo.

[Clockwork_Virus]

You'll want to look at the errata for Spaceships. For a 24cm gun, the base dDamage is 6dx6. With a 10 mps shot from a grav gun, this would give you an average dDamage of 6dx60, or 1260.

Yes, this is still incredibly lethal, even after taking TL11 armor and force screens into account. You'll want to invest in methods of neutralizing ballistic attacks, such as point-defense.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Clockwork_Virus

Yes, this is still incredibly lethal, even after taking TL11 armor and force screens into account. You'll want to invest in methods of neutralizing ballistic attacks, such as point-defense.

Or frying your enemies with long range energy weapons before any ballistic attack can get to you. There wasn't a lot done with guns, even electromagnetic or grav during the playesting because their effective range is so limited.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Or frying your enemies with long range energy weapons before any ballistic attack can get to you. There wasn't a lot done with guns, even electromagnetic or grav during the playesting because their effective range is so limited.

Of course, missiles make for a different story.

[GodBeastX]

Keep in mind, if you use Grav weapons (Super science) they will do crap like that. They are just as overpowered in Ultratech. You are sending a projectile out at unrealistic hyper-velocities.

[Skarg]

Hmm. Sounds like it might do well to add a hit-location and "blowthrough" mechanic, so a 24cm projectile carved a hole through a ship, but doesn't make the entire ship necessarily explode in a Hollywood gasoline fireball.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Hmm. Sounds like it might do well to add a hit-location and "blowthrough" mechanic, so a 24cm projectile carved a hole through a ship, but doesn't make the entire ship necessarily explode in a Hollywood gasoline fireball.

Destroyed spaceships don't do that, unless they're smashed to shrapnel at -10xHP or blown up by a volatile system exploding.

Hit locations are built right in.

Blowthrough isn't, and it might be appropriate.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Destroyed spaceships don't do that, unless they're smashed to shrapnel at -10xHP or blown up by a volatile system exploding.

Hit locations are built right in.

Blowthrough isn't, and it might be appropriate.

No blowthrough. It's extremely difficult to come up with scenarios where kinetic weapons don't explode on impact (like meteors) rather than remain solid.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Of course, missiles make for a different story.

Warp missiles maybe and just possibly super missiles at 500G. Standard missiles (5Gs in the mapped system) take significant amounts of travel time to cross energy weapon range.

At TL10 at least you may be able to armor enough to survive UV laser fire long enough for your missiles to hit but it's not very practical to try that against particle beams.

At TL11 X-ray lasers have the range of UV and the damage of particle beams and even adding Force screens may not be enough.