Converting Twilight 2000 for use with GURPS 4e

[hal]

For those who may be interested, all of the Twilight 2000 series books can be purchased for a mere $35 plus shipping and handling in PDF format.

That can be found here...

http://www.farfuture.net/FFE-CDROMs.html

That shows all of the available PDF's for TRAVELLER, as well as T2K material. Note too that you can get both the original version of T2K as well as the newer version.

Just thought you'd like knowing. :)

Hal

[Z09SS]

Originally Posted by hal

For those who may be interested, all of the Twilight 2000 series books can be purchased for a mere $35 plus shipping and handling in PDF format.

That can be found here...

http://www.farfuture.net/FFE-CDROMs.html

That shows all of the available PDF's for TRAVELLER, as well as T2K material. Note too that you can get both the original version of T2K as well as the newer version.

Just thought you'd like knowing. :)

Hal

I included a link to the TW2000 stuff at the end of my pdf too!

[Z09SS]

A bit of a designer note:

How much DR does an Outer Tactical Vest have?

How much DR should the vest itself have? SAPI plate? ESAPI plate?

The OTV plus SAPI is supposed to be proof against 7.62x51mm ball at essentially muzzle velocity and it must take three of these hits.

7.62x51mm at that velocity is 7d pi. Which is 7-42 points of damage, so a DR of 42 stops it dead every time. A DR of 24.5 stops it on average.

The vest is DR 12/5*. The split DR uses the higher value agains pi or cut attacks, lower against all other types like cr or imp. The asterisk means it's flexible armor and subject to the blunt trauma rules.

12 is not enough to stop most 7d pi attacks, but it's not supposed to.

The SAPI plate is DR 23. This combines with the 12 to give a DR of 35 against rifle fire. The SAPI plate is also ablative armor, and loses 1 point of DR for every 3 hits it receives, regardless of if the damage penetrates.

DR 35 is going to stop nearly all 7d attacks! But it won't last forever.

Next, the ESAPI plate is supposed to be proof against .30-06 Armor Piercing, 7d+1(2) pi-. The same penetration criteria stands for acceptance and most places say its more effective against normal penetration too.

So I gave it a DR of 35 but made it hardened level 1 armor. This gives a total of DR 47 against pi or cut attacks! It's still ablative as the SAPI plate.

The 8-43 range of the .30-06 AP normally gets an armor divisor of 2. That would halve our DR 47 to just 23. What hardened armor does is eliminate the same number divisor steps as levels (the steps are 100, 10, 5, 3, 2). In this case, the DR 35 of the ESAPI stops 35 and the underlying vest 6, so 41. So, nearly any .30-06 AP shot is blocked by this combination. Again, not forever.

If it stopped there, it'd be fine.

.50 BMG does 7dx2 pi+. That's 14-84 points of damage running, on average, to 49. On average, a .50 ball round barely penetrates an OTV and ESAPI combination. Notice that it readily penetrates the plate though! This appears to be believable based on a couple of YouTube videos shooting similar Level III and Level IV armor plates with a Barrett!

.50 BMG AP does 7dx2(2) pi. This drops the OTV+SAPI DR to 17 and nearly any hit breezes right on through. The OTV+ESAPI still gets 41. On average, 8 will still get through. Again, this kind of result is borne out by a couple of YouTube videos.

It's scary, sometimes, how plausible GURPS numbers are compared to a reality check.

[hal]

I don't know if anyone would be interested in this forum site for T2K stuff...

Juhlin forum: http://forum.juhlin.com/

I started working on a database compilation using THE GREENHILL MILITARY SMALL ARMS DATA BOOK by Ian Hogg copyright 1999. Between the weapon weights, lengths, etc - and the cartridges used, muzzle velocity etc - it should be relatively simple to convert the information into damage ratings for the gun. Would be interesting to see if I could duplicate all of the entries in the small arms books from T2K but in GURPS Stats. Obviously, it would be a LONG project, might never get completed. But a few lines of data typed into an excel spreadsheet over time will eventually add up. Some of the weapon systems listed have dates associated with them.

The GREENHILL MILITARY SMALL ARMS DATA BOOK can be had from Amazon.com for a reasonably low price. Multiple hands working on the project would make it complete faster. ;)

More importantly however, is the fact that these small arms are classified by nationality. Clearly, any weapons introduced post 1999 are not going to be in the book (possibly even those in use in 1999 might not be present). But it is a starting point. If you don't have access to Douglas Cole's spreadsheet for calculating damages, I suggest you email him privately and ask him nicely for it. It seems to do a reasonable job handling weapon damages.

[Z09SS]

I have Mr Cole's sheet and use it often!

Somewhere I managed to get all of one of Hogg's books done up in 3e stats.

That was a slog.

At one time I was going to do conversions of all the modules too, but everytime I get close to done with the main book, SJ comes out with a new edition!

This is the first time I got finished without even a rumor of a new GURPS in the pipe. Which is good because 5th edition games seem to be very VERY bad. Just look at Traveller and Hero for examples.

My rule of thumb about inclusion was that it had to be near the end of its development by 1997 in the real world, that it would have progressed faster if defense spending had remained high and how much my players would whine if I didn't include it.

That's why I have armor introduced early and the G11 is still present.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Z09SS

I have Mr Cole's sheet and use it often!

Somewhere I managed to get all of one of Hogg's books done up in 3e stats.

That was a slog.

At one time I was going to do conversions of all the modules too, but everytime I get close to done with the main book, SJ comes out with a new edition!

This is the first time I got finished without even a rumor of a new GURPS in the pipe. Which is good because 5th edition games seem to be very VERY bad. Just look at Traveller and Hero for examples.

My rule of thumb about inclusion was that it had to be near the end of its development by 1997 in the real world, that it would have progressed faster if defense spending had remained high and how much my players would whine if I didn't include it.

That's why I have armor introduced early and the G11 is still present.

Sounds like you've been having fun then. :)

[safisher]

I downloaded the file. It's incredible. Thanks for this, and being faithful to the original. I have many fond memories of T2K games in high school. Excellent work.

[Erling]

That's a great job. Didn't you consider using Armor as Dice rules? That would spare you from using Hardened modifier for armor. It can be quite time consuming when you need to calculate basic damage, then subtract DR from basic damage, then check the penetration of Hardened plate, then, if penetration occured, apply AD to soft armor, then subtract halved DR from the remainder of basic damage...

Thus, DR 51 becomes 14d+2, and .30-06 WON'T penetrate it even with Armor Divisor (2), which turns it into DR 7d+1 (equals .30-06 basic damage).

[Z09SS]

I did not consider armor as dice. I didn't even know how that worked until just the other day and I still haven't made up my mind about the concept yet.

For the most part I tried to keep it stock GURPS 4e. Way back in the early 3e days I'd made all the weapons stats from scratch because High Tech 1e had not been written yet.

Once there were published stats, I stuck to my creations and it was a constant battle with new players about using my stats over the official ones. Eventually I wore down and gave in. At least using the published stats I could say, "don't like them, complain to Steve!"

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Z09SS

I did not consider armor as dice. I didn't even know how that worked until just the other day and I still haven't made up my mind about the concept yet.

For reference:

http://gamingballistic.com/?s=armor+as+dice