GURPS Star Trek (DS9 era)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I know you're trying to keep Template costs down for whatever reason (and in 4e Templates don't really matter most of the time) but I think you may have gone to far in that direction.

....

OP is definitely going more super low points Traveller than Star Trek space opera style.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by CaelibDarkstone

For my first GURPS campaign, I decided to do Star Trek from the Deep Space Nine and Next Gen era (that is, pre-Abrams). I only have access to the Basic Set, so this won't take advantage of any of the special features in GURPS Space, etc.

You've done a nice job without GURPS Space, presumably because of your good grasp of the Basic Set and Star Trek. If you were going to spring for another book, I would recommend GURPS Ultratech. (Or at least the GURPS Ultratech: Weapon Tables.)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But they're still just explode-y missiles no matter what you call them.

Player characters live in the world and don't just watch it on TV. What are just explode-y missiles to you could have important differences for them.

You certainly wouldn't want he same game stats for the little torpedoes on the Maquis ships and the big ones on the Galaxy classes.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Player characters live in the world and don't just watch it on TV. What are just explode-y missiles to you could have important differences for them.

You certainly wouldn't want he same game stats for the little torpedoes on the Maquis ships and the big ones on the Galaxy classes.

Well, a photon torpedo is a photon torpedo. The phaser banks, however, will have significant differences.

[The_Ryujin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But they're still just explode-y missiles no matter what you call them.

Well to be fair a AIM-9 and a BGM-109 are both still "explode-y missiles no matter what you call them" to someone who doesn't know much about them but that doesn't change the fact that there is still considerable difference between them in actuality.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by The_Ryujin

Well to be fair a AIM-9 and a BGM-109 are both still "explode-y missiles no matter what you call them" to someone who doesn't know much about them but that doesn't change the fact that there is still considerable difference between them in actuality.

There's also significant differences between the AIM-9 Sidewinders used in the Vietnam War and those used in the Iraq War; granted those differences aren't as pronounced as the differences between a Sidewinder dogfighting missile and a Durandal runway-buster.

[borithan]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I've been working on my own captain-and-crew space opera for awhile, and one thing I did a lot was study Star Trek a lot (especially DS9, which is my favorite ST series, so hat-tip to you, Caelib) and it's a remarkably inconsistent series when it comes to weaponry. Characters will often take a hit that seems to leave a wound no larger than a bullet wound, and the main cast regularly survive it, not as flesh wounds (a phaser hit is enough to at least leave them wounded and vulnerable, or unconscious and in dire need of medical assistance). Mooks might be simply badly hurt, instantly dead, or disintegrated by the blast. Furthermore, the weapon seems to do absolutely nothing to ship bulkheads, which regularly serve as cover, or rocks, which do the same, unless the crew needs to blast through rocks, in which case they work perfectly fine, except when they mysteriously don't.
...
My solution was to throw away Star Trek as inconsistent nonsense and build my own setting/rules. Nobody can say my material is "inconsistent with the source material" because it's original. But with Star Trek, you'll always get people saying it's inconsistent with the source material, because Star Trek itself is inconsistent. Unfortunately, Caelib doesn't have this luxury. Still, 3d is appropriate for a pistol, and 5d is appropriate for a carbine (I would go 6d for the rifles, but I tend to see them as rifles. Carbines aren't a bad interpretation).

The show is pretty consistent about one thing: Getting hit by a phaser (or disruptor etc) ends the fight, armour or not. Characters don't tend to "shrug off" the fire or anything. They either end up dead (most common if they are mooks/redshirts etc) or stunned. It is one of the reason why so much of the show ends up in fist fights: because the characters can have their fight and get away with some cuts or bruises. If things need to get nasty a Klingon gets out a knife, which gives a nicely dramatic wound that doesn't just instantly kill you. I think there have been a couple of episodes with non-incapacitating wounds, but they tend to have been glancing hits, and from non-phaser weapons (Jadzia has a bleeding wound inflicted by Jem Hadar disruptor).

Of course the exception to this are the frequent aliens who are immune or resistant to the phaser. Doesn't apply to the "normal" races, but it does seem to be a common feature of anything that is meant to be a significant threat on its own. I guess this is for the important reason that if the characters can just shoot it with a phaser it just isn't a threat (see my Star Trek/zombie cross over attempt... at least it was only one session in a campaign and the players had fun disintegrating things with no worries about the moral implications).

As has been said much of the inconsistency can be attributed to different settings. Stun settings seem to pretty much be Affliction effects, (maybe Heavy stun having some physical damage at short range). Kind of makes sense that you don't want to have your ship board weapons punching holes in the wall. I think this also applies to the "kill" settings, which would appear to inflict some sort of physical shock to body systems, rather than inflicting straight up damage. As Star Trek normally operates on a procedure of having their phasers set on stun as a default, it doesn't surprise me they have no effects on rocks and walls. It is more difficult to explain why they don't do more damage to the scenery when they show they are set on the heavy disrupt settings (the disintegration setting). However, those episodes where they go to in more detail it does suggest that shallow burns of some variety are left (there are at least 2 episodes where the burns and residue are important to them solving some mystery), just they don't bother showing it on those occasions where there are fire fights (too much time and money for very little actual return in terms of the story).

My personal take on it is that there are two separate types of effect which the phaser can be dialled to: The "disrupt" effects, which do not inflict physical damage (or only small amounts as a side effect), but would work through Affliction effects, and straight energy transfer (which would just use straight damage). The latter is more commonly used by disruptors, which rarely seem to have a stun setting, but phasers can be turned to this setting, more commonly for a special use, rather than combat (the blowtorch use as Captain Joy described).

Originally Posted by Mailanka

(Oddly, I've seen several episodes where they use phasers set to a "fan pattern" to sweep for changelings, but they never use that setting to shoot at bad guys. You'd think it'd be really effective. Given that the fan pattern doesn't even disturb the delicate house plants in the rooms they sweep, though, it might be more of a light slap on the wrist that merely knocks a changeling out of his shapeshifted form)

Tuvok uses it once in Voyager to knock out the entire bridge crew (and says he could use it to kill everyone in the room... being possessed or mind controlled or whatever it was does tend to bring that side of someone out). However, I think it is meant to guzzle the energy store. The phasers in that DS9 episode are meant to be set really low, I presume to extend their endurance and to avoid damage to the rooms they are sweeping.

[The_Ryujin]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

There's also significant differences between the AIM-9 Sidewinders used in the Vietnam War and those used in the Iraq War; granted those differences aren't as pronounced as the differences between a Sidewinder dogfighting missile and a Durandal runway-buster.

Indeed.

But I think that when it comes to stating these kinds of things it's more important to base the stats on the devices intended effect and not how its special effects are portrayed (in that lies the maddness of stardestroyer.net and muti-gigaton turbo laser output heh) since at the end of the day we need to keep in mind that Star Trek is for the most part a tv series and most of the time these inconsistencies are less them being lazy or not caring but rather the reality that they have only so much money and even more importantly not a lot of time to pump these FX out so most of the time they need to focus more on what is needed for a given scene to work and less about overall continuity (in fact it's really amazing that they were even able to pull off how good the effects were on those shows half the time, especially for the respective eras each show was filmed in)

In fact I remember reading an interview with one of the producers where they lemented that they can't ever get a phaser fire fight right because to do so would mean they would have to wreck whatever set they filmed it on and they just can't afford to go that far.

[chandley]

Note that 5.5 lbs is heavier than a Desert Eagle, and 13 lbs is most of the way to a light machine gun. Granted the props really are made of plastic, but you never get the impression that phasers are all that heavy (and the little garage door opener ones should be very light in deed). Might I recommend 2 lbs with ammo loaded for the pistol and 5 lbs with ammo for the rifle?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by chandley

Granted the props really are made of plastic

Indeed, the "real" things might also be made out of plastic. The military has a long history of trying to make things lighter for soldiers (so that they can load them up with even more stuff). A plastic shell around some electronics might very well mean the little Type I phasers pretty much are garage door openers, if a lot tougher thanks to futuretech materials. The power cell might be the only massive part, and that depends on Trek-tech power density. The weapons probably are lighter than their modern counterparts.