How to make space combat more survivable?

[weevis]

Just a note to underline and empathize with the original poster. I feel their pain. After reading the thread so far, it looks like the answer to the poster's question: are there "community best practices to mitigate this issue" is... NO.

There are a lot of suggestions here and they are quite different.

The SS books have printed rules that feel like they should be the answer to the OP's question -- I'm thinking of the "greater survivability" rules from SS 3. I assumed that turning these options on would be the result the OP is looking for -- but they don't seem to work so far for me at TL11.

I feel like I just got a new side job where I have to run space combats with different options turned on and off to see if I can come up with a less-lethal package of rules myself, but I'd love it if there were a clearer "best practice." In my attempted space combats one missile quickly ends the combat. I recently got one to go 3 turns though.

Example Combat Test
https://reqcon.game.blog/2019/07/10/...st-sun-dog-vs/

Contrary to some of the comments on this thread, just being at TL11 and having force screens available doesn't seem to do it.

I know that there are people on this table so familiar with GURPS rules they can look at damage tables and intuit how deadly something will be -- then make adjustments themselves -- but I am not one of those people.

I'm hoping this thread ends with a best practice because I want to use it myself! If you were to write the "greater survivability" section in SS 3 what would you put there? Or do you think those switches are the way to go?

I think a lot of people hoping to play GURPS in a sci-fi setting have the OP's problem.

[weevis]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

1) [removing the air] is actually of debatable value. Without air to slow it down shrapnel from impact sites flies at over a thousand feet per second and doesn't slow down. You'd need to have crew in space armor from UT at a minimum jsut to withstand those sorts of fragments but the space armor sees lower levels of threats if there's still atmosphere. Atmosphere also severely limits plasmas. Atmosphere's chief function besides breathing though is heat re-distibution. With no air al the equipennt inside needs hard-plumbed cooling systems in the walls and the crew need to be hooked into those too. The threat of atmosphere providing a way for concussive blast waves to travel can be dealt with more easily by pressure relief valves. Put your crews in armored space suits sure but don't bother draining off the atmosphere.

Fred this is great stuff -- is there anywhere I can read more about this? I recently tried to compile a list of bad things that happen when you evacuate the air from a spaceship. It's a routine move in film and TV (like The Expanse scene that was mentioned) and it just didn't sit right with me so I started looking into it. I am thinking about situation of TL11 freighters and whether they would be designed to be depressurized -- I think not. I mention it in this thread because I think it is a fun area for slightly-harder science ideas and role playing in the sci-fi genre that currently doesn't get a lot of play.

Table of Hard Vacuum Effects on Equipment
https://reqcon.game.blog/2019/05/27/...-on-equipment/

I basically trawled the Web and extrapolated from tidbits I found in random Scientific American articles and NASA reports but I'd love to think more about the plasma and pressure effects you mention. I've already been thinking about heat.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by weevis

Fred this is great stuff -- is there anywhere I can read more about this?t.

There was a long argument in the Travller forum here but I don't remember the title so it might not be findable.

The main thing about deprussirizing woudl be limiting concussive blast waves but after thought I believe the counter-measure for that would eba system of "blowout relief valves".

The air circulation system of a spaceship will already be quite complicated. That fuire-fighting measure of letting the air out of compartments to is just one compication. For concussion you're put a blow-out thing so that the blowout valve will always be the path of least resitance and that's the way the overpressures will go before they can penetrate the doors and bulkheads.

The verbiage might go "Get all crew in suits, close all bulkheads and pressure doors and arm the blowout relief system!".

Then if your spaceship won't hold air in its' control room sealing it enough to hold air is very likely to be one of your simplest repairs. I wouldn' try and build even military ships so they could try and conduct "normal" operations with the interipor in vacuum. Never freighters.