How to Make Ultra-Tech Combat Exciting (TL10)?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

Limited information combat is not that hard to run in an RPG. That's what an impartial GM who runs NPCs as non-player characters rather than war game foes is there for.

Even absent conscious bias, figuring out who can see what, and then being careful to not let stuff they wouldn't know influence what your npcs do, is a significant amount of work.

[Rupert]

Use guns with high penetration modifiers and modest damage. For example, if your normal combatant uses a nanoweave tacsuit (DR30/15*) and you want the primary weapon to be a projectile weapon (and if the primary weapon is a laser, I doubt tacsuits will be the issue body armour), rather than an ETC assault carbine (9d pi damage - will penetrate the tacsuit for a small amount of damage most of the time, will sometimes turn the wearer into pink mist), consider a standard assault carbine firing AP ammo (6d pi-). It'll penetrate for about the same damage, but will swing less.

If your PCs are like mine and like hardsuits (DR75/45) and space combat helmets (60/45), rather than finding something with 15-20d of damage, finding something that does 5-7d with (3) penetration works better (assault carbine with APEP ammo, for example, or a gauss rifle). Beware large calibre weapons like gyrocs that do pi+ or pi++ damage, as they make any penetrating hit likely to be very serious. Gauss weapons and AP rounds are good because they tend to be pi-, so even highly penetrating attacks will often be less than lethal.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

* Use variant weapon rules, e.g., instead of 6d+2 (3) for a gauss rifle, change it to 2d+2 (10) (hypervelocity needles!) and make the weapon semi-auto with ROF 3 instead of full auto. Keep armor at 75/45 or whatever...

This is my standard route for "realistic...ish and survivable...ish." Folks are still using plausible weapons and hits are pretty survivable. Using the max damage on various target locations and blow-through rules can also help, especially if folks rarely target heads or vitals.

If you're willing to reduce realism further, allow armor to be hardened against ranged attack techs but allow at least one melee weapon to go through it like cheese. This pushes things to large ROF 1 (or even single shot, if you need an ~RPG) style ranged weapons and swashbuckling melee with force swords (or whatever).

[phayman53]

One other way you can slow down combat is to change armor values to be higher but to be semi-ablative. This would make targeting more difficult hit locations to get around armor or to get hits more time in order to lower the armor value until you can start wounding to a greater and greater degree. This will allow the less skilled combat PCs to get at least a few hits in.

[AlexanderHowl]

The problem is that there is no particular reason for Ultra-Tech weapons to do less damage than High-Tech weapons. A TL9 ETC Anti-Material Rifle, 15mmCL, equipped with APEP ammunition is dealing 22d+1 pi (3) damage with a range of 6,000 yards/27,000 yards (which is honestly better than any TL10 railgun). A TL9 sniper team (a flanker, a leader, a sniper, and a spotter) is probably capable of killing anything less armored than a main battle tank (as the average damage is 78 pi with a (3) damage penetration).

[sir_pudding]

Survivable Guns makes that 11d (4). Armor Revisited would have DR 154+ stopping this cold. Even DR 75 reduces it to 6d pi. If you use the body hits rule too, this is unlikely to be instantly fatal unless it hits vitals or similar.

Also ETC is a weird option, you don't have to allow it in your setting.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Even absent conscious bias, figuring out who can see what, and then being careful to not let stuff they wouldn't know influence what your npcs do, is a significant amount of work.

I suppose. I tend to not lean too much into the "make it a war game" since I usually run games where there are lot of allied NPCs hanging out with the PCs as well as with the enemy. So since "my guys" on on both sides, it tends to even out the bias...

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

I suppose. I tend to not lean too much into the "make it a war game" since I usually run games where there are lot of allied NPCs hanging out with the PCs as well as with the enemy. So since "my guys" on on both sides, it tends to even out the bias...

I don't think bias is the issue here, more like how do you physically do fog of war on the tabletop?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

I suppose. I tend to not lean too much into the "make it a war game" since I usually run games where there are lot of allied NPCs hanging out with the PCs as well as with the enemy. So since "my guys" on on both sides, it tends to even out the bias...

The issue isn't bias. The issue is:
How do I give players the right amount of information so they are making reasonable decisions based on what their characters know?
How do I dissociate my knowledge from what the NPCs know so they behave reasonably based on what they know, rather than what I know?

I've done stealth combat in GURPS, but only super-abstractly. I had everyone roll quick contests (per vs stealth), if both sides lost no contact occurred, if one side won they had a clear shot, if both sides won they had a mutual detection situation, and in either case it was assumed you got one shot and then people took cover and we went back to the stealth part.

[myrmidon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

What really slows down a fight, I think, is an environment that breaks it up. Once you're in a room it's going to wind up cleared fast one way or another, but if you need to enter the room first, and maybe don't know which room...

Originally Posted by exalted

If combat take place between people using interesting sensors to see each other you can do some fun things by jamming them or working with things that disrupt them. Might get a bit more careful when you have to open the visor and eyeball things. If people are using standard issue eyeball to see each other already fill up the battlespace with interesting chemicals, smokes, limiting nanotech might harm the posibilities here a bit but there are a lot of interesting things at TL 10 to fill the air with. The guy with the gun is a lot less intimidating when hot poisonous none-transparent gas fills the battlefield and hearing is the most powerful sense beyond a yard or three.

I liked these two: either starting the scenario before the battle so that they have to find the bad guys, or changing the environment (especially once combat starts) so that the PCs have to maneuver or have to adapt. It could be good to incorporate more stealth tech, as it's available and pretty cheap. A fog-of-war scenario does sound fun... maybe some cotton balls on the map? The most intense (and most loved) scenario I did was in a blacked-out spaceship with a monster hunting the PCs.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

There are, I find, two opposite workable approaches to this, and it depends on the structure of your adventures. If your stories are like a dungeon crawl with a series of mostly combat encounters that always involve all the players equally, then all characters need to have some competence and role in a fight. If your stories are more like a caper movie, where different characters are contributing to the mission in different areas, then having quick brutal fights is actually appropriate, it allows the combatant PCs to demonstrate how badass they are without stealing too much spotlight. Just make sure the other character's primary niches are equally represented in the adventure too!

I like to pretend that I make more caper scenarios where the strengths of each PC are used, but I don't think I'm good enough a GM to be able to do that. (I am slowly getting better, though). Matt Mercer from Critical Role has been a big inspiration for me; I just haven't been able to execute that style of play. Those are not my natural talents, so it comes with difficulty for me. And I have gotten feedback from the players that they all enjoy combat, so I'm trying to incorporate a bit more.

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

I think the question is that "what other skills do the under-used PCs have in place of pistol or rifle that you think SHOULD let them do well in a fight that aren't being used?"

* set things up as GM to encourage these skills get a workout before the combat (e.g., Stealth to get snipers into place). I'm afraid that most of my TL 10 fights when the party are smart tend to be brief and bloody as well, but the fight is usually the climax of the adventure, and often the PCs are happy if they've manipulated things so that the enemy don't even get to shoot...

...

* Set more fire fights in situations where ranged weapons are too indiscriminate

...

What is the typical PC weapon/armor load out in one of your fast firefights?

Thank you for the reminder to look at other skills. I still feel fairly new as a GURPS GM, and still feel like I structure the scenarios like an encounter. What did you mean by indiscriminate here? As for weapon/armor loadout: Gauss pistols and rifles with a smattering of laser pistols for ranged, and superfine vibroblades (sometimes on) for melee/nanoweave suits for light or stealth combat, and tacsuits or plate for heavy combat.

Some others mentioned limiting or changing equipment. I don't think I need to. Both me and the players are happy with what we have. We've avoided ETC and superscience, which makes things easier. I pretty much just use what I listed above.

Originally Posted by Rupert

Use guns with high penetration modifiers and modest damage...

If your PCs are like mine and like hardsuits (DR75/45) and space combat helmets (60/45), rather than finding something with 15-20d of damage, finding something that does 5-7d with (3) penetration works better (assault carbine with APEP ammo, for example, or a gauss rifle). Beware large calibre weapons like gyrocs that do pi+ or pi++ damage, as they make any penetrating hit likely to be very serious. Gauss weapons and AP rounds are good because they tend to be pi-, so even highly penetrating attacks will often be less than lethal.

Thank you for the tip. As I'm reading through this, I think I'm realizing I need to change the weapons for different scenarios. Some of our combat is with light armor, and some with medium armor (as I described above), but I use Gauss weapons for all of them. And Gauss weapons scare me against light armor! I will look at switching weapons based off of the armor the PCs should be wearing. On this note, how do you all decide between realism (everyone using Gauss weapons, for example) and making an interesting scenario?

Thank you all for the feedback. It's really helped me think things through, and has given me some good directions to explore.