Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

8' / cutting rate. Not much chance of getting realistic results from GURPS, though.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

Fred - here is the video I saw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsqFS7bbaMc

I would like to know how GURPS is supposed to stat something like this without it being a high damage paradigm.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

I don't know that there is an official answer. This is how I would do it.

The table in question says DR 112 and HP 75 for cutting a 10sqft hole in 2" steel. Also, I assume this works like for the bars and cables on the table -- that is, it's just an "attack" to achieve an effect. I'd reduce the HP, not the DR, for a proportionately smaller hole. I'd probably give the bonus for Forced Entry or an applicable tool operating skill, such as a repair skill.

As for how it works for a hot cutting tool, HT188 has thermite. It treats its attack as semi-ablative. According to Basic Set 415 you get max damage for contact explosions, so we will assume this max damage works for cutting tools not used in combat. Also, I'd treat a specifically designed cutting tool versus DR as ablative, not semi-ablative. It's not moving and you are specifically hitting a very specific point, i.e., all advantages go to the cutting tool.

A TL12 heavy graser torch is going to do 4d(10) per second. That's really DR11 versus Dmg 4d, max damage is 24, or 13 points per second. At 75 HP it'll take 6 seconds to cut the 10 square foot hole listed in the table, and less for a smaller hole.

A TL8 plasma torch does 3d+6(2), which means it's going to do 24 per second, facing DR 56. But it can't get through, so it will degrade that DR at -1 DR per second from 56 down to 0 in 56 seconds, after which point it can start doing damage of 24 per second, defeating the 75 HP in 3 seconds or so. And yes, you could start doing damage as soon as the DR is 23, so you'd save a few seconds if you figured it that way. Anyway, maybe a minute to cut through it. It's a lot slower than the TL12 torch above, but then, it should be.

That seems a decent WAG. Now, this assumes the GM would let the tool in question do it like this; I would not let a low-tech saw cut this material at all. I wouldn't allow this to work in combat where the target is moving, etc.

I'm not sure that answers the question in a canonical way, but maybe that's helpful.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

For a thing which is essentially unusable as a weapon I would not give it weapon stats. Its' "stats" would be ""makes cuts in common industrial metals of thickness x at rate y".

There isn't really a lot of reason to give it game stats or even describe its' workings in terms of combat Turns.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

The stats are in weaponized format because when you encounter a Wall etc. in GURPS, you have its stats in the format of HP, DR, perhaps but not necessarily material, and size. When someone makes a Binding or buys a Spaceship, you usually don't know the precise thickness of the targeted thing - you know the HP and DR. And so the cutting-tool stats need to be in a format that allows some sort of cutting-time calculation based on those stats.


Since when?

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

Ultratech has many weapons over RoF 20, not sure where you got that.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

Then you're going to have to just make something up. You're not going to pass Reality Checks with a system created mostly to model projectile penetration at medium-high speeds when you're tying to handle what is only sort of "Burn" damage.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

We have stats for either destroying an object, or going through an object to hit someone else, but we don't have stats for "What if I want to cut a section out of an object?"

What I mean is for time/HP:

Cutting Point < Cutting Section < Cutting til Door is "Not Present"

Lowering DR makes no sense of the equation because you are lowering DR per location on the object. What I mean is, you cut a foot long slice in the door. If someone shows up with an assault rifle and shoots at it, the bullets are still going to bounce off.

Yet without lowering DR you will never be able to damage HP with a plasma torch. The only way to really make it work is if you can somehow treat cutting through the door as a series of cutting attempts through smaller increments of material. Like say, an inch. You figure DR/HP for that inch of area cut and figure out how many seconds of damage you have to do to that length. Then you determine the perimeter of the material you want to cut and apply inch by inch cuts.

... Which I think Safischer's suggesting.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

Err, we have rules for 'cut out a 10ft² section' rules, and they have been cited, but they're mostly calibrated to wood and stone. I'm looking to getting some of those clarified in contexts of metal and/or different-sized holes. Even HT drills are described in such a context, but some things aren't quite clear in it.

Re: [UT] Plasma Torch vs. big metal door on a spaceship?
 

Yeah, I spotted Safisher's post that this rule is somewhere after I wrote all that, so I figured everything is good. I don't know where that rule is written to figure it out, but I feel like if someone could just come up with some form of damage needed to cut an inch given DR/HP of material (I think DR is unchanging based on surface size but HP would change?) then you got your answer.