Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

My players, not unreasonably, assume that anything close to 0% will take no time to resolve.

The only people making relevant rolls willl be PCs and their critical NPC foes.

Oh, I am. I just don't see any reason why it should work differently from gaming it through second by second. I'm very prepared to boil things down to how things would turn out a minute by minute or even hour by hour. I just want it to fit second by second odds, unless there is some reason to assume the phase being used favours one side over the other.

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

I see these people saying that you need a 30 foot map to play ship combat in GURPS and that therefore musketeers destroying ships are acceptable just like people who say that D&D HP and damage is wrong, but it doesn't need to be changed because if you change it, you will also need to create a medical system who encompass everything from ear cancer to the death plague.

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

So what you're really saying then, if I'm reading you correctly, is that GURPS can't handle vehicular combats all too well. The fact that SJGames has a product out there that suggests game turns of 20 seconds to 10 minutes, has no bearing on whether or not GURPS can handle that genre of vehicular combat? The fact that GURPS VEHICLES when it came out, could handle building an analog for an PZ Mark IV tank, or a World War II aircraft - but we can't expect that people might want a reasonably realistic approach to vehicle design for use with GURPS 4e? That sounds like GURPS VEHICLE DESIGN SYSTEM for GURPS 4e is doomed from the start!

Frankly? GURPS VEHICLE DESIGN SYSTEM for 4e is doomed from the start if it produces 1st rate ships of the line that can be sunk by Musket Fire! It is doomed from the start if a person can't build a B24 Mitchell Bomber that has attributes similar to the real world version. It will be doomed - because, as you say, GURPS is really a melee game design that functions best for 1 second turns, 1 yard hexes. This implies of course, based on other things you've said, that GURPS doesn't really handle World War II combats where rifle ranges could be at 300 yards. Do you know how BIG a gaming table would have to be in order to play out an encounter of that magnitude? 1 Inch hexes, requires some 300 inches to game out encounters at 300 yards. That's roughly 25 feet!

So, if we want a wargame simulation (how is this different than a melee simulation for a TL 2 or TL 3 combat/skirmish) we need to turn to wargames? Hmmm. That's good to know. When I want to do a World War II game, I should play Squad Leader instead right? If I want to simulate World War I aerial dog-fighting, I should get out some wargame (Dawn Patrol from TSR maybe?) instead of hoping that the Vehicle Design rules can get me the same thing using GURPS?

Ah well - it is late and I should end this here. In fact? I should remove my subscription to the list, because someone I respect, wrote something whose implications are depressing to say the least, and whose intent may very well be why GURPS 4e vehicle rules became what they became.

As I say to my one player in my gaming group...

A implies B.

The cube root of mass/weight times a constant makes larger vehicles subsequently more vulnerable and more fragile. To what end? If it is gameability or playability - then so be it. LIke you say, I should use miniature rules I respect more than I should play GURPS based games.

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

While I agree that GURPS tactical combat doesn't work at all scales, the issue with ships being sunk by musket fire goes beyond this. Let's say you want to run an adventure where a ship of evil pirates have taken over a port town, and it's up to the PC's to save the beleaguered citizenry. You've opted to leave the way they do this up to the players - perhaps they'll try diplomacy to convince the pirates to leave, perhaps they'll sneak on board the ship and blow up its powder storage, maybe they'll even round up the local militia for an all-out war on the pirates.

A stat-savvy player opts to round up the previously mentioned militia and has them come to the ship under the cover of night. They all aim their muskets, and you get ready for an epic confrontation - you already have plans in your head of the surprised pirates grabbing their weapons to mount a haphazard defense, during which time you imagine the PC's will be sneaking on board to dispatch the captain.
Instead, the NPC's fire their weapons, you roll damage, and then gape as you realize their volley has just sunk the pirates' ship.

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

If vehicle combat requires giving every crewman a turn, then a chase through a crowd and along a highway in rush hour has the same problem. So does a heist during a party. In actual games, people ignore the unimportant NPCs and just give turns to those who are most relevant to the PCs. Similarly, if I were GM I would say "splinters fly, sails rip, and cables part but the ship sails on" rather than accept a silly outcome of a mass volley against a sailing ship. Rules which lead to implausible results and GM fiat are a problem, but not a fatal one.

I know that this has been a long thread, but I already pointed out the comment on this forum where a GURPS author explained why scaling HP with area causes problems. No need to speculate if you can track that down.

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

The problem is, there really should be rules to resolve the actions of a crowd, in a way that produce similar results to resolving the actions one at a time. Those rules don't exist, but if they did, they'd produce silly results in many cases (shooting at ships is hardly the only one).

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

Here's the problem. Let's say we have two age of sail warships facing off. On one of these ships are our intrepid PCs, and they are actually TIME TRAVELLERS(or dimension hoppers, whatever) with some TL8 weaponry. Like say, a single M2HB machine gun. What happens? The games that focus on age of sail combat are great at handling age of sail combat, but when you throw anachronistic devices in, it creates a problem.

By the RAW, I think an M240G should be sufficient to sink a ship of the line. I don't think that jives with reality.

Should a Boston Whaler with an M2, a couple M60s and maybe a Mk 19 be able to completely destroy a TL4 ship of the line with ease? I don't think so.

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

You don't need all that, a M16 will do the job.

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

If you're referring to GURPS Spaceships, it's really more an exhibit for the prosecution. The Spaceships combat system proposes a variety of distance and time scales...and the way the combat will work will change dramatically depending on which one you play it out in. The shortest timescale might be somewhere close to compatible with second-by-second, though you need to make a whole bunch of interpretations to figure out how stuff behaves on a second-by-second basis. Any of the other scales are comprehensively off.

Spaceships might be playable...I have lost all desire to test it on that point. But as far as faithfulness, you might as well play your combats out in Attack Vector: Tactical.

I don't think a functional system for GURPS-compatible large-vehicle actions is impossible, by any means! But I haven't seen it published. (Unless we count Basic Set vehicles plus a GM readily glossing over turns and dealing with mass rolls with a mix of abstractions and computational aides. Which isn't exactly published.)

Re: 4E's hit point philosophy
 

We do have some such rules, such as using a crew's average Crewman skill for rolls, or treating the fire of many weapons as a high Rate of Fire attack, but many of those are problematic (the latter, for example).

GURPS does have some odd gaps (chase rules) as well as flaws (treatment of privilege and authority, the damage model, GURPS Magic magic).