[Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Andreas

It depends on if you want a game which presents a plausible future scenario. If you want something like Star Wars, then sure, go ahead and make human aiming skill relevant for laser weapons in space.
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No, I want a game. That's problematic when every job that a PC would be doing would be automated.

[Michael Thayne]

It's worth noting that just because wrecking a planet is stupid doesn't mean no one will do it. There's a science-fiction story I will leave unnamed to avoid spoiling anyone where terrorists hit Earth with an asteroid thinking afterwards they'll be free to create a utopia in space free from Earth's tyranny. This does not work out as planned and it turns out their leader was just an egomaniacal lunatic, but egomaniacal lunatics exist in the real world. There's also mutually assured destruction logic to take into account.

OTOH even if there are strong incentives to wreck planets and actually landing troops on planets is extraordinarily costly, militaries might still choose to land troops for some of the same reasons real-world militaries are willing to suffer through bloody urban warfare rather than just nuking the city. In a sci-fi setting you can invent additional reasons in the form of MacGuffins that glassing the planet's surface would risk destroying.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No, I want a game. That's problematic when every job that a PC would be doing would be automated.

You need far more than programs with superhuman aiming skills for that to be the case. There are after all plenty of jobs for humans in real life.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Such examples are never perfect- don't be a pedant. Would you care to cite a single example of a modern fortress that triumphed against a mobile opponent in a nontrivial way? I can't think of one. Every one that I think of ends up like Eben Emael or Sevastopol.

Indeed let us not be 'pedantic' when contesting vast, all-encompassing principles of war.

The Maginot Line isn't bad for 'what successful fortification mostly looks like'. The enemy takes a look at it and decides they don't want to fight there.

Or, hey, Sevastopol, which was invested for almost a year after the mobile forces in the area collapsed before a massive combined-arms assault was able to reduce it - hardly a price the Axis was eager to be paying.

I'm tempted to claim Eben Emael, forcing the German attack to gamble their war plan on an experimental surprise attack. Granted that worked, but the Nazis were rolling very hot that year. It's not like those sorts of gambits weren't common against the pre-modern fortresses you seem to admit were useful.

But if we must have a case where the attackers do commit to an assault on a fortified position and fail to take it, how about Nà Sản?

Originally Posted by Andreas

Having picked up a hundred dollar bill from the ground doesn't mean that it is no longer worth your time to pick up a one dollar bill. For the same reasons it can make perfect sense to attack the planet for its resources.

The resources in the rest of the star system might be far greater than those in the planet, but they are still finite and the cost of that " time-on-target kinetic barrage" is most likely smaller than what you could eventually extract from that planet.

Only if surface-to-space launching is very, very cheap. If you hit it as hard as I proposed there's nothing of value there except a bunch of re-purposable matter, sitting in a deep gravity well with unfriendly environmental conditions.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

That's a perfectly valid tech assumption at TL10. The universe becomes a much flatter and closer place. (Of course, it also makes it easier to build gigantic, expansive, open-air space habitats.)

Luke

If you use realistic radiation rules (specifically the default Gurps ones) then space habitats outside a protective magnetosphere become rather less attractive. At least at TL 10. At TL11 they have DNA Repair nano that solves that problem but before that it's still a pretty big deal.

Even if you build a SM+15 habitat you can't just ignore cosmic rays at TL10. The maximum PF v. cosmic rays would be 72 (Spaceships 5) and everyone would still have to roll v. Radiation Sickness after c. 14 years. Even that's only if they spend that time in a (Core) Habitat system and they don't do silly things like build Open Spaces around that Habitat system. Open Spaces don't add to PF.

At TL10 (default) I'm still interested in planets.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If you use realistic radiation rules (specifically the default Gurps ones) then space habitats outside a protective magnetosphere become rather less attractive.

Constructing a protective magnetosphere for large habitats is relatively practical (mass requirements for magnetic shielding are linear in radius, so they scale down very poorly, but for truly large habitats they're pretty appealing).

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If you use realistic radiation rules (specifically the default Gurps ones) then space habitats outside a protective magnetosphere become rather less attractive. At least at TL 10. At TL11 they have DNA Repair nano that solves that problem but before that it's still a pretty big deal.

Even if you build a SM+15 habitat you can't just ignore cosmic rays at TL10. The maximum PF v. cosmic rays would be 72 (Spaceships 5) and everyone would still have to roll v. Radiation Sickness after c. 14 years. Even that's only if they spend that time in a (Core) Habitat system and they don't do silly things like build Open Spaces around that Habitat system. Open Spaces don't add to PF.

At TL10 (default) I'm still interested in planets.

The long-term effects of cosmic ray exposure are not known for certain, but my understanding is that the big concern is cancer, not anything like the radiation sickness caused by large but brief doses of radiation. GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout actually has a suggested system for modeling this: all characters roll at HT+2 to avoid getting a "potentially lethal" cancer at some point in their lives, and ever 200 rads lifetime radiation dose gives -1 to this roll.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No, I want a game. That's problematic when every job that a PC would be doing would be automated.

AI does not mean Automated. Well, it does, but I'm talking about higher-end sapient AIs. I don't know if you never played as an AI, but I love to play as one. Transhuman Space: Wild Justice is just one example of a player group with AIs. Two of the PCs are physical beings, and the other two are AIs that are carried by them. It still works, and it's a bit neater than if we just had 4 humans hanging out.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

The long-term effects of cosmic ray exposure are not known for certain, but my understanding is that the big concern is cancer, not anything like the radiation sickness caused by large but brief doses of radiation. GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout actually has a suggested system for modeling this: all characters roll at HT+2 to avoid getting a "potentially lethal" cancer at some point in their lives, and ever 200 rads lifetime radiation dose gives -1 to this roll.

I think that's somewhat unproven? While it seems very plausible that sustained low dose cumulative exposure is not the same as acute dosing, it's hard to get an experimental data set.

[AlexanderHowl]

I have never been much of a fan of SAI characters, they generally become immortal munchkins, though they make annoying villains. Especially at TL10, SAI characters can buy a plethora of robotic bodies as Signature Gear and have LAI characters manage their bodies when they are not occupying them. It is always fun when PCs think they have destroyed a SAI and then discover that it was yet again another LAI.

In general though, digital intelligences and biological intelligences will always get into contests over resources if they both have a drive to expand. Since the default digital intelligences of GURPS require less resources than the default biological intelligences, biological intelligences will find themselves rapidly outnumbered and the digital intelligences will inevitably try to annihilate them in order to make room for more digital intelligences. Of course, if digital intelligences cannot reproduce, then they can live peacefully within the society of biological intelligences.

In the case of digital intelligences versus biological intelligences at TL10, the biological intelligences have an advantage because the average person can have IQ 14 through eugenics genetic engineering and brain tissue grafts. The advantage on the battlefield though is that AIs are easily replaceable, meaning that their industrial capacity must be annihilated. Software without hardware is useless.