2300AD Conversion

[Draconius]

Originally Posted by macphersonrants

Keep us posted on your progress. 2300AD is a great setting and I would love to see some discussion on the board about how it might convert to GURPS.

Will do. I got half the basic set of GURPS in today, the other half is on the way.

[Tzeentch]

Cool, how about some discussion of how to translate the starship rules into Spaceships terms? The old NAM was a horrible mess of errata and even GDW plain ignored it most of the time (Ship's of the French Arm, please stand up) but it's a useful reference.

GURPS Naval Architect's Manual
Sources:
Star Cruiser: Naval Architect's Manual
GURPS Spaceships

Technology
NAM grouped spacecraft construction technology into a few general categories:

• Old Commercial (OC): Available everywhere.
  Modern Commercial (MC): Better shipyards
  Old Military (OM): Better shipyards, restricted access.
  Modern Military (MM): Core shipyards, classified.

2300AD/2320AD is pretty low-key with a lot of technology so I would place it as roughly TL8-9 in most areas. So perhaps:

• OC: TL8 with some TL7 throwbacks for cost savings and ease of manufacture.
  MC/OM: TL8 with some TL9 advancements, such as more efficient stutterwarps and control systems.
  MM: TL9

- Most TL^ systems are not available. The notable exceptions are stutterwarp (stardrive engine), force fields (of a sort, see Screens, p. 9 of NAM) and almost certainly the thrusters, which seem more like high-thrust fusion torches. Stutterwarp ships rarely use thrusters unless they operate in atmospheres since they can operate at "subwarp" speeds even in gravity wells. All ships have a basic maneuvering thruster system as part of the hull.


Armor
- No special notes. Note that heavy armor was almost an exploit in NAM :)

Power Plants
- Fuel cells and MHD Turbines are the most common power sources in 2300AD for starships. However, it's difficult to emulate the fuel consumption and endurance figures for the NAM MHD turbines due to the abstraction of the Spaceships Power Point system. Also, there probably should be a TL8 MHD for OC technology, with an internal fuel endurance of 3 hours.
- Off-hand I think that measuring endurance in days, no hours, better emulates the 2300 figures (frex, TL9 MHD turbine generates 2 PP for six days on internal fuel).
-- Fission and fusion reactors are quite massive in 2300AD (they get smaller in 2320AD) and installed on few vessels, such as the Richelieu class.

Exposed Radiators
- Ships should probably use this option but it's generally ignored in the setting.

Screens
- The refractive dust screens used by 2300AD vessels are treated as TL11^ force screens with the energy option (only applies against lasers and particle beams). Heavy force screens are probably applicable given the description of how they work in 2300AD.

Stutterwarp Drive
- Hard limit range of 7.7 light-years before the drive must be discharged into a gravity well of sufficient strength.
- Uses the pseudo-velocity option (p. 33, Spaceships) I believe.
- "Speed" in ly/day is determined by drive efficiency, which I must say is a fairly arcane procedure for something that probably isn't radically important even within the context of the setting. I'm sure a simple formula that uses warp efficiencies (even the ones from 2300AD) divided by SM or something could be used. Original stutterwarp efficiencies are: OC - 14.5; OM/NC - 16.05; NM - 17.5.

Example Ship
- Quick sketch of a ship based on 2300AD design.
- Based on notes above, the MHD have an endurance of 36 days (a bit longer then the 7 weeks quoted in SotFA)

Lideau-class Courier
p. 70, Ships of the French Arm

TL8
SM +8 Winged Streamlined hull.
9 Cabins, 1 Briefing room, 1 Office, 1 Sickbay.

Front Hull System
1 Metallic Laminate Armor
2 Control Room
3 Habitat
4 Habitat
5 None
6 Enhanced Array
[core] None

Central Hull System
1 Metallic Laminate Armor
2 Fuel Tank (for MHD)
3 Fuel Tank (for MHD)
4 Fuel Tank (for MHD)
5 None
6 Tertiary Battery (1 dispenser)
[core] Stardrive

Rear Hull System
1 Metallic Laminate Armor
2 HT Fusion Torch (7.5 mps/tank)
3 Fuel Tank
4 Fuel Tank
5 Fuel Tank
6 Engine Room
[core] MHD (3 day base endurance)

TL Spacecraft dST/HP Hnd/SR HT Move Lwt. Load SM Occ dDR Range Cost Notes
8 Lideau 70 -2/4 13 1G/22.5 mps (warp 2) 1000 45.3 +8 18ASV 7/7/7 7.7 ly $53.1M [1]
[1] Air speed 2,500 mph.

[Cernig]

GURPS 2300: running 2300AD under GURPS 4th edition
by Roger Burton West.

Useful?

[Draconius]

Originally Posted by Cernig

GURPS 2300: running 2300AD under GURPS 4th edition
by Roger Burton West.

Useful?

Uh, yeah! Guess it's already been done.

Thanks a bunch.

[Cernig]

Perhaps even more useful:

GURPS 2300AD conversion (29 page PDF by Matthew Pook and Soren Anderson)

[Timolas]

Nice work on the Lideau Class, Tzeentch. I reckon you are probably right with the fusion torch - although 2300AD never really went into any great detail on the reaction drives as far as I could tell. There were some similarities to the HEPlaR thrusters from Traveller: The New Era - that is, power and reaction mass goes in, hot non-radioactive exhaust comes out; but HEPlaR and the 2300AD equivalent are so far beyond realistic that you might as well just go hot reactionless. A fusion torch is probably more acceptable to the hard SF feel of the game.

One thing that was very clear in 2300AD, and a nice feature to the setting, was that orbital access was not supposed to be easy. So you may want to tweak the delta V on the Lideau down a bit (2 tanks instead of three perhaps, or even less?) And then perhaps replace those systems with a jet engine and jet fuel tank - not strictly canon perhaps, but adds some more interesting wrinkles to gaming the ship. Presumably a fusion torch would be illegal close to inhabited areas - possibly below some significant altitude (say 20 km); and so interface craft (or starships capable of planetfall) would need to use conventional jets to get to safe distance before lighting up the fusion drive. Core worlds might ban fusion torches completely - requiring the use of beanstalks or conventional boosters.

Stutterwarp was definitely a pseudovelocity device with the subwarp switch as well. A thing you didn't mention that I think is very important is the reduction in stutterwarp speed as a function of local gravitational gradient. Star systems have an FTL 'shelf' where the gravity is 0.0001G - within this boundary the rate of travel drops enormously from lightyears per day outside it, to "only" 1/10000th of that speed - which is sublight, and within which ships can engage one another. That shelf forms the border for the system - there is no point trying to patrol outside it as there are no FTL sensors in this setting, and so ships appear and disappear in an eyeblink. This makes Saturn (for example), which is outside the shelf, very difficult to defend - attackers can pop out of warp near to their target, let fly, and then scarper.

There is another gravity boundary as well when the local field exceeds 0.1G, within which stutterwarp is only good for relatively normal orbital manoeuvring speeds. It certainly isn't fast enough to be used to land or take off... which is probably good because I reckon that whole pseudovelocity thang would make it very complicated to referee - and even becomes slightly comical. Picture a starship, trying to warp itself up into the sky, all the while building up a rather horrific head of momentum straight down....

I'll save rambling about sorting out orbital velocity changes using stutterwarp for another day - there are some good articles on it out there though (one I liked had a picture of Jupiter, with its nice deep gravity well, used as a velocity vector staging post for ships on their way in- or out-system. Do a close flyby, let Jupiter curve your vector around onto something appropriate for making orbit at your destination, and bob's yer mother's brother).

One last thing though - the charge buildup limitation, which prevents stutterwarp ships travelling further than 7.7 LY - and therefore results in the geography of the Arms (a map that means something!). To make that work, and prevent easy use of stutterwarp staging or tugs to boost the range, the guys at GDW included the difficulty of being able to recalibrate a stutterwarp drive if it had been shut down. In other words - it wasn't as simple as shutting your drive down, catching a piggy-back on another ship heading in the right direction, and then spinning up your own drive once that carrier ship had reached its range limit.

So - my question for any of you who have played 2300AD and might be able to help (for all my waffling I'm only an enthusiastic reader of the setting!) - how does this apply to missiles? They have miniature stutterwarp drives themselves after all - they'd be useless without them. But surely they can't be transported with their drives spinning and ready to roll "in the tube" - or they'd be merrily building up their own charge of lethal radiation.

Does this mean that any hostile encounter between ships would be prefaced by some frantic "calibrate the weapons, Mr Scott!" going on? And are missiles easier to calibrate than ship drives? Otherwise you are back to everyone getting tugboat rides from everyone else.

[Tzeentch]

Originally Posted by Timolas

Nice work on the Lideau Class, Tzeentch. I reckon you are probably right with the fusion torch - although 2300AD never really went into any great detail on the reaction drives as far as I could tell. There were some similarities to the HEPlaR thrusters from Traveller: The New Era - that is, power and reaction mass goes in, hot non-radioactive exhaust comes out; but HEPlaR and the 2300AD equivalent are so far beyond realistic that you might as well just go hot reactionless. A fusion torch is probably more acceptable to the hard SF feel of the game.

-- I belive the MHD thrusters of 2300AD have an Isp of 7,000+ if I recall the reverse engineering someone did on their stats. They are, at best, incredibly optimistic.
-- But you are right, HePlaR does seem to the Traveller adaptation of the technology (have to check FFS to see if that's explicit). They can also generate power (fuel consumption only comes into play when used for thrust).
-- For those without 2300AD/Star Cruiser a Thruster is a MHD turbine (purchased as a normal power plant) with a reinforced re-ignition chamber and thrust nozzles. When in thrust mode, additional fuel is added to the re-ignition chamber and ejected as reaction mass. In Spaceships this is basically a drive and MHD turbine installed in the rear section.

One thing that was very clear in 2300AD, and a nice feature to the setting, was that orbital access was not supposed to be easy. So you may want to tweak the delta V on the Lideau down a bit (2 tanks instead of three perhaps, or even less?) And then perhaps replace those systems with a jet engine and jet fuel tank - not strictly canon perhaps, but adds some more interesting wrinkles to gaming the ship. Presumably a fusion torch would be illegal close to inhabited areas - possibly below some significant altitude (say 20 km); and so interface craft (or starships capable of planetfall) would need to use conventional jets to get to safe distance before lighting up the fusion drive. Core worlds might ban fusion torches completely - requiring the use of beanstalks or conventional boosters.

-- I'm not sure what the best way of doing this is. Probably the best "fit" is to create a "Thruster" (even if its just another name for an existing Spaceships drive) with appropriate stats. Probably this would be similar to a Fusion Torch in stats, but less d-V per tank by adding TL8^ and TL9^ versions. (given the progression of the torch, 1.5 mps (TL8), 4.5 mps (TL9)). Probably should count as a MHD as well in this case as you'll need a lot more fuel tank space (and 2300AD MHDs can burn normal hydrogen, although the Spaceships costs are probably much too high for the 2300AD setting)

One last thing though - the charge buildup limitation, which prevents stutterwarp ships travelling further than 7.7 LY - and therefore results in the geography of the Arms (a map that means something!). To make that work, and prevent easy use of stutterwarp staging or tugs to boost the range, the guys at GDW included the difficulty of being able to recalibrate a stutterwarp drive if it had been shut down. In other words - it wasn't as simple as shutting your drive down, catching a piggy-back on another ship heading in the right direction, and then spinning up your own drive once that carrier ship had reached its range limit.

-- Tugs were introduced in the old canon setting, and are now explicit in 2320AD.

So - my question for any of you who have played 2300AD and might be able to help (for all my waffling I'm only an enthusiastic reader of the setting!) - how does this apply to missiles? They have miniature stutterwarp drives themselves after all - they'd be useless without them. But surely they can't be transported with their drives spinning and ready to roll "in the tube" - or they'd be merrily building up their own charge of lethal radiation.

-- The missile rules NEVER made sense in 2300AD, even their own "construction systems" were useless for replicating the stats given. But, I'd say that they do indeed run "off" (but building a charge anyways, as only completely spun down drives don't if carried by another stutterwarp). In most cases this is a non-issue as they discharge when the rest of the ship does.

Does this mean that any hostile encounter between ships would be prefaced by some frantic "calibrate the weapons, Mr Scott!" going on? And are missiles easier to calibrate than ship drives? Otherwise you are back to everyone getting tugboat rides from everyone else.

-- Doesn't seem to be the case.

-- A LOT of Star Cruiser stuff I think can safely be canned in a GURPS adaptation. This includes most of the sensor profile stuff, different turret mountings, UTES, etc. Especially if using Spaceships, approximating the feel is more important IMO - this does mean that the ships may vary in performance and crew requirements.

[Whome?]

When I got into 2300AD it was: "2300AD - the Cyberpunk Game of a Dark Gritty Future" as advertized by GDW in their catalogs.

I only played it as a cyberpunk game - and we loved it. Having other worlds to role-play on made 2300AD quite fun and better than the other cyberpunk games on the market.

I now play it as "GURPS ULTRATECH: Blade Runner" with all the 2300AD material all updated for GURPS 4e.

In fact - it will be at 5 MAJOR Gaming conventions starting next month.

So - to convert 2300AD to Gurps - GURPS ULTRATECH 4e will help.

So - I use:

BioTech 4e

Ultratech 4e

Space 4e

As my core books for running Gurps 2300AD.

Ranger for 2300AD is a fabulous adventure - I've actually got Dave Nelson's hand-written origonal copy of that adventure!

He knew I loved 2300AD and sent it to me as a gift!

[Luke Bunyip]

Sounds good. I recently generated a very rough version of Kafers for an Ultratech test combat game with some players. Nothing to write home about, but it was fun to play.

[cjbeiting]

Originally Posted by Tzeentch

-- I belive the MHD thrusters of 2300AD have an Isp of 7,000+ if I recall the reverse engineering someone did on their stats. They are, at best, incredibly optimistic.

Tzeentch, to change topic slightly (and if this needs to, the Powers That Be can kick it to another thread), what kind of engines in GURPS Spaceships do you reckon best model the spacecraft drives on ships from the Blue Planet universe? The BP fusion drives seem a lot more efficient than the ones in GURPS Spaceships--what numbers could be substituted, do you reckon?