[Ultra/Fantasy-Tech] 40 Foot Mad Science Robot... What to Give It?

[Phantasm]

As the topic indicates, I'm building (the stats for) a 40 foot tall giant robot, a product of 1970s Mad Science. (As a placeholder, I'm calling it "The Red Scare, the finest Soviet Super-Weapon that 1977 has to offer.") The idea is to kick off my Marvel Reboot superhero game (set in 1987 to 2007-ish, so prior to the Fantastic Four and Dr. Strange gaining their powers, and Prof X opening the Xavier Institute) with the PCs responding to a giant robot wreaking havoc over in Times Square.

However, as this is a robot designed at the end of the '70s and deployed in the late 1980s (by those that stole it from a surplus warehouse), what kinds of Mad Science! should I equip it with?

The prospective party at present appears to consist of a ST 220/DR 170/IT:DR 4 brick, a spellcaster with a focus on "explodimancy", a "Tony Stark on a budget" gadgeteer (basically, IQ 15+ but Wealth of merely Comfortable or less), and a super-normal scrapper. Not sure what weapons the scrapper will be equipped with yet. I'm trying not to TPK the party right off the bat. . . . .

[Kelly Pedersen]

First, to get it out of the way: if you don't know exactly what to get someone, a gift card to someplace you know they shop at is probably a good choice.


Okay, bad jokes out of the way, to the meat of your question. Are you looking for equipment from already-published GURPS books as suggestions? If you are, what kind of DR and overall resistance to damage do the characters have, and is it regularly expected to penetrate that?

If, on the other hand, you're looking for more generic ideas, with the thought of providing stats yourself later, here are some suggestions in that vein:

• Heat rays are pretty classic, I'd say. Build it more as a cone attack that does increasing damage to everything in the beam, starting with fatigue damage (from heatstroke), followed by standard burning damage, and eventually corrosion damage, as it burns/melts armor.
• Similarly, cold rays are staples. Similar damage progression, except that instead of corrosion, I'd have it be a Binding effect, as it traps you in ice.
• For extra fun, combine the two! Let it do extra damage if it can zap someone with one type of ray, then the other, from "heat shock". Have people killed or inanimate objects destroyed this way actually explode, with fragmentation damage.
• A lightning gun is usually fun, particularly if it arcs from target to target a lot.
• A "sonic gun" that weaponizes very loud sound can be a lot of fun. Probably won't do much actual damage to people, but can deafen them, and objects struck tend to shatter explosively - more fragmentation damage!
• A "vortex projector" that unleashes very powerful blasts of air. Horizontal tornadoes, more or less. Not much damage, again, but very high knockback, pushing people around and keeping them at bay.

[Phantasm]

Kind of a mixture of the two: published gear if it's available, though generic ideas for later are good. Those are all fun ideas, Kelly, so I'll keep them in mind. :)

So far, the brick is ST 32/220 with DR 170 and IT:DR /4. Everyone else is probably going to wear kevlar or aramid fiber uniforms, possibly over titanium composite chest pieces, so DR 12 to DR 35 for uniforms, assuming my math is correct. (I'm still working on figuring out stats for armored uniforms.) Not sure what the gadgeteer will be wearing yet; he doesn't have the facilities to fast-fab Iron Man style suits; Iron Monger style suits may be viable, but doesn't quite seem like the char's style yet.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

what kinds of Mad Science! should I equip it with?

Atomic Lasers- whose radiation saps the energy of their targets, but has no lasting effect
Tundra Grenades- which explode as miniature ice tornadoes
Hymn of the Heroic Proletariat- loudspeakers blast Red Army Men's Choir singing which carries a psychotropic harmonic that converts the working class into combative allies

ETA: More prosaically, maybe a battery of miniature Katyusha-style rockets that can do a lot of damage, but are too slow to aim and too inaccurate to do anything except threaten civilians and damage property.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

So far, the brick is ST 32/220 with DR 170 and IT:DR /4. Everyone else is probably going to wear kevlar or aramid fiber uniforms, possibly over titanium composite chest pieces, so DR 12 to DR 35 for uniforms,

Okay, that's quite a large range between the highest and lowest, so I would suggest giving the robot multiple weapons, one or two big ones, with high damage (but probably not too much armor divisor) to threaten the tank (and possibly the gadgeteer, if she ends up managing some good armor), and several smaller ones to handle the squishier heroes. You can even justify this tactically - it clearly makes more sense to use the big weapon on the target that can't be damaged by the small stuff, rather than focusing it on targets it would be massive overkill against!

For the big weapon, I'd go for something like the Rainbow Gatling Laser (Ultra-Tech Revised, p. 117), or an Auto EMGL (Ultra-Tech Revised, p. 141 for description and p. 142 for stats) firing multi-spectral homing (Ultra-Tech Revised, p. 146) SEFOP (Ultra-Tech Revised, pp. 154-155) rounds. The laser produces damage that will slightly penetrate the tank's DR on average, while the grenade launcher will reliably get more through, but thanks to the tank's IT:DR, won't hurt too bad.

For the smaller weapons, first a caveat: I'd suggest that you steer away from high Acc, high RoF weapons. Unless a character has truly amazing Dodge scores, getting hit with such weapons suck. If you've calibrated them to be only getting a few points through on a hit, but find you're hitting with 5 or 6 shots at a time, you can quickly find your characters getting whittled away.
That said, some suggestions (which assume DR in the 20-24 range, the average of what you mentioned): for beam weapons, the Assault Laser (Ultra-Tech Revised, p. 115 for description and p. 116 for stats), while for guns, you could use the Storm Carbine (Ultra-Tech Revised, p. 136 for description, p. 137 for stats) or the Gauss PDW or Gauss Pistol (Ultra-Tech Revised, p. 141 for description, p. 142 for stats, for both).

[mr beer]

It should have an heroic Soviet hammer limb to use as a melee attack. I would have a sickle limb as well or even some kind of sickle gun if I'm feeling particularly silly.

[johndallman]

It's 40 feet tall. Give it an extending arm and a giant sickle to swing horizontally about 5' off the ground, to attack groups of people who are fool enough to stay close to it.

[Ottriman]

The sickle could even be superfine or vibro for extra penetration (if you want of course).

[weby]

If you want to go non super science but scary:
Flame throwers are always good. They work well against anyone but the brick.

For more super science:
Another classic is a big bore it can use to bore though ground slowly and to attack the PCs with. It can have cinematically good penetration multiplier so even the brick being hit will take damage though the DR 170.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

one or two big ones, with high damage (but probably not too much armor divisor) to threaten the tank

Wouldn't it be safer for the non-tanks to lower the damage and give the weapon some Armor Divisor? If you throw 48d6 at the tank (to give the gun a 50-50 chance of doing some damage), then you're expecting to slap the other PCs with 130 points over their DR, which is just about -9x HT in one hit.

AD 5 takes the tank's DR 170 down to 34, while taking the 35's down to 7. So a 10d6 attack rates to hurt the tank half the time, while only doing 28 points of damage to the squishies. Not good, but making one HT check is better than making nine...

AD 10 makes the DRs 17 / 3, so 5d6 hurts the tank a little, but will probably only take the squishies below 0.

Narratively, there's also some bonus plausibility in the bad guys only using the anti-armor weapons against the armored guy rather than individual infantry. Sure, it's really to avoid killing the non-bricks, but it also kind of makes sense. You don't fire 57mm AT guns at soldiers (unless you've just got nothing better to do with it).

(Of course, the BFG howitzer is probably a more useful weapon for destroying cities, able to blow up civilians and buildings much better than an AT gun. It's not like a mad supervillain wouldn't want one. But perhaps we can presume the designer mounted the anti-armor weapon in expectation of having to fight off some National Guard tanks.)