Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I'm thinking of melding the two skills. Currently Guns (Pistol) and Beam Weapons (Pistol) default to each other at -4. Which means that you can use your gun's laser sight on someone with full skill, but move the laser downstairs and amp it up and you are suddenly at -4 to skill. That sounds weird, and GURPS has too many skills anyway. What do you think?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I feel the only way for Beam Weapons to be a legitimately different skill is if the operation modes are different. If you have a beam generator that just makes a beam without any sort of variable focusing - like a laser pointer - Guns skill should work just fine, you'd just need to deal with some Familiarity issues. On the other hand, if you have a beam generator with variable focus - even one with something like a camera's autofocus - that is justifiable as a separate skill. Note Beam Weapons configured to be usable with Guns skill would, realistically, have a much shorter range than those configured to be usable with Beam Weapons skill.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I'm not a real-life gun person, but it seems to me that the lack of recoil is the most obvious difference between the two. Given how often recoil seems to make fools of newbie gun users, wouldn't its absence cause a significant difference in usage and thus skill? (Then there are potential issues, as already mentioned, like needing to adjust beam collimation for various distance bands, and all the other little bits of behavior that go into understanding the "immediate action" required to use / maintain a weapon.)

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

At the scale where you use Beam Weapons rather than Gunner or Artillery, another big difference is that lasers are effectively instantaneous. Even though that may only be a fraction of a second difference, that can still matter in some cases.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

True. Even with single-user weapons, the absence of any need to "lead" the target, and lack of any concern about things like "windage," seem like significant changes.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I thought about that too. But shooters seem to do fine with the gun sight, which has all the properties of a laser. Because it is a laser! They can put little red dots on people just fine.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

In a world where people routinely use laser sights and laser weapons, perhaps you could lower the penalty between the untrained use of one to the other. Keep in mind that the laser sights tend to aim at where the bullet is supposed to go, and may not coincide perfectly with where a laser would go. But I see your point.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

IMHO it should be different skills, as above a laser is hitting the target the moment you shoot, no need to lead the target. there is a recoil in projectile weapons, laser don´t have recoil by design. Also gravity has near zero influence, so you don´t need to calculate in into your aiming. taht means basically, point the gun at tatrget, press trigger and you will hit your target nearly with absolute precission. In the books is a option mentioned that the gun projects a weaker ray for aiming, combined with a sort of optics every one should be able to hit the target then. Even better put a camera parallel to the barrel and you can aim out of the hiding, without being spotted.
Of cours over LONG distances gravity has an influence, but on earth you can neglect it.
Lasers have one drawback, aside from having problems with targets who shine like a mirror. Its the fact, that a laser needed to stay focused. in an environment with heavy fog or dust into he air, not to mention something like the dust casters in Traveller, the effective range will be reduced - maybe drastically.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Most of the factors listed so far - as well as lack of need to deal with bullet drop - are things that make using beam weapons easier, rather than different, and may well be a big part of why they tend to have exceptional Acc values. For skill differences, the way you use the weapons needs to be different. Beam weapons (at least at the kind of ranges humans deal with) are functionally hitscan weapons, to use some videogame design terminology - you point the weapon at the target and pull the trigger, and the effect is instant. Firearms are much the same at sufficiently close range, but the skill used doesn't change at longer ranges (honestly, GURPS largely treats firearms as hitscan weapons as well, as the to-hit penalty is based on what size the target appears to be - realistically, it's easier to hit a SM-10 target at 2 yards than an SM+0 target at 100 yards). Again, to justify a different skill, they need to be used differently, and from what I understand about beam weapons, that likely has to do with focusing.

Of course, uses of the skill other than aiming at and hitting the target (such a various IQ-based rolls to identify a weapon, perform maintenance, etc) may well be markedly different, far more so than mere Familiarity calls for. Appropriately accounting for that would require deviation from GURPS norms - in this case, I'd say the player must choose if their character is more familiar with guns or beam weapons; whichever he is not, he's at -4 (which can be removed with a Technique - or maybe even a Perk) to do things other than shoot a target. That's assuming gun-like (no need to deal with focusing) beam weapons, of course.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

For what it's worth, even iron sights are usually only right at two places: the "zero" point and wherever the arc of the bullet takes it back to zero. A laser does the same thing, and may or may not be visible from there.

The classic example is sighting in an M16 at 25 yards. The ballistics of the round mean that it comes up to the sighting-in point, goes higher from 25 yds to about 300yds, and then after that keeps on falling.

That upward travel might be 4-6". So at 125 yards (about in the middle) if you want a shot in the center of a head, you can't just aim where you want the bullet to go.

More advanced rangefinding systems compensate for this, calculating trajectory and saying "put dot here." Higher tech sights (including some that exist now) don't make you muss overtly with ballistic tables, as they're programmed in.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

They still use the same Armoury skill, though. Frankly, that's a bigger stretch for me.

Doug, you're mr. Ballistics. What do you think of melding the two skills?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

If a weapon handles like a rifle, I'd use a rifle skill. Hans suggested - and I heartily agreed with him - that merging Rifle, SMG, and Shotgun into a Longarm skill (with special fire modes being handled by familiarity and/or techniques) was a good call. I'd include the actual point-and-shoot part of most beam weapons that are usually constructed in rifle-looking shapes.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

A laser designation isn't the same as a laser carbine. You never have to worry about the charge level of the capacitor in your laser pointer. Don't have to think about refraction from water particles/fog/exotic material. If you press the trigger and it doesn't fire you don't perform a degauss on the charger on your laser sight.

That said there are similarities and there are differences. Defaulting to a beam weapon is -4 to your guns skill. If they're the same weapon then they're most likely a different TL upwards of -2 to your guns skill, they have an unfamiliar action -2 familiarity, and they're completely recoilless, a further -2 reaction. So you can take the default off of the skill or if you really feel their the same weapon the rules can give you -6 or more off the Guns skill.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

When you're at comparably close quarters and your opponents are shooting back, I really don't see a functional difference. Its about quickly lining up your beams, predicting your foes, and staying out of the line of fire.


When you're on the range or playing marksman, the changes become a lot more important, as the physical differences between the guns start to matter.


When you're gun has a mechanical problem and you need to fix it, they're completely different.



so its this weird continuum.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

To this I'd point out that grenade launchers, gyrocs and muskets all have significant mechanical differences yet are still covered by the Guns skill. Maybe make Armoury skill more important for immediate action usage?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I don't see the relevance of this. Yes, they are all covered by "Guns", but they're different skills. And GL and Gyroc default from other Guns skills with as large a penalty as Beam Weapons does.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I just changed the defaults to/from Beams (Pistol) and Guns (Pistol) to -2. I did the same for rifles. Likewise between Beams (Pistol) and Beams (Rifle), because if it's -2 between Guns (Pistol) and Guns (Rifle) why would beam weapons be -4?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

If they're as different from each other as from lasers, why make Beam Weapons a separate skill?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Because guns fire solid projectiles and beams fire beams. The delineation of skills isn't an exact science (see Artillery, which covers multiple specializations that have literally nothing to do with one another apart from their game mechanical functioning).

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Right, but many in this thread are arguing that that's a distinction that makes less difference than the mode of handling. And, as you point out, if artillery lasers and artillery projectiles both fall under the Artillery skill, due to their method of control, why not the same for their handguns?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Artillery Beam weapons are much less straight forward things than Lasers. The canonical UT examples are things like Ghost Particle Projectors and Tachyon Displacers. Basically you need to aim at a 3D point rather than a 2D line of sight.

Laser cannons are a Gunner Skill.

I don't see how Beam Weapons and Guns can reasonably be the same Skills. We tend to look at it for defualts going from Guns to Lasers but what about the other way? There probably shouldn't be a Default from Lasers to guns. A future man whod never seen a gun at first hand or even seen it fired in a detailed and realistic video probably shouldn't be given a Default from Attribute.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Ok, but Artillery still covers projectiles and forms of beam weapon then. Likewise Gunner covers beams and projectiles, despite the difference in windage and droppage and despite the fact that engagement is more likely to occur at ranges where those become important factors.

I think that's a generic question about when defaults can be used rather than one particular to beamers and slugthrowers. For example, would your average suburban gun owner, who's done the self-defense course and had a few hours on the range with their 9mm auto, be able to fire a smoothbore musket?

How much trouble would your future man have using a Gauss Minineedler from the same TL if he'd never seen one? Would he need different skills to use a laser pistol and a gauss pistol made by the same manufacturer with the same profile?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Per Spaceships, Artillery (Beams) is suitable for any beam weapon if you're laying it based on direction from a forward observer (relevant for orbital fire when the atmosphere doesn't give a good view) rather than direct sighting. I think I've seen discussion of it for lasers bounced off orbital mirrors too but I don't remember where that was or if it was canonical.
Why not?

There's two very separate things gun skill is used for, really. One is the primary application of shooting the thing accurately. I can't see any reason that would necessitate any real familiarity with firearms, as opposed to with the ergonomics of a gun-shaped object. In most settings handheld beam weapons remain gun-shaped objects, and that's probably justified. I see no reason somebody who uses a laser pistol couldn't use a ready handgun with literally the exact same technique and get passable results (though recoil might come as a nasty shock).

On the other hand, there's the secondary but undeniably critical 'armory-lite' aspect of dealing with firearm mechanics outside of the shot itself. Having no idea about cocking a single-action weapon, not knowing how to reload, and so forth could certainly be issues for someone with no familiarity with firearms.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I don't know about melding beam weapons and gnus, but here's a possible version with a buffalo:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/71...2bb7ab8799.jpg

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

A powerful laser would have a reaction, but it would be a constant tug instead of a jerky recoil.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

There was a Pyramid article that tried to simplify the Guns skill. It basically got rid of the existing specializations, and replaced them with how you hold/use the weapon: Pistol, Long Arm (i.e. rifles), and Shoulder-Mounted.

It then went to add a whole bunch of cumulative familiarity modifiers: caliber, ignition, action/mechanism (automatic vs pump), handling, sights, feed, etc. I'd have to re-find the article to get the full list and nuances.

Personally, I think this method works perfectly fine for adding Beam Weapons into the mix as well. Just plug in where a beam weapon differs from a non-beam weapon into the familiarity penalty lists. You can even distinguish between beam weapons if a laser is different from a blaster or sonic disruptor.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I would have to be insanely powerful for the reaction to be noticed.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Atomic Rockets is always a good place to start: http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...earmenergy.php

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

Pyramid 3/65.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I had a powerful photographic flashgun that had slight, but detectable recoil. This was due to it heating up the air in front of its output window, but you'd get a similar effect with a powerful pulsed laser.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

That's a good point. I was thinking photon momentum. Sorry.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I suspect it would still have to be extremely powerful for this to occur, or be focused very close to the emitter. From what I understand, any sort of laser with decent range is rather unfocused at the emitter, but focuses down to a very small area on the target. You need a laser powerful enough that it seriously heats the air when unfocused, and something like that is going to be really powerful when it is focused.

Of course, I'm far from a physicist, so take the above with an appropriate quantity of salt.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

On the one hand, it seems odd to expect a laser weapon to put out less energy than a photography flash.

On the other, depending on the technology and spectrum of the flash it might manage to cause much more heating at the output for a given energy, due to putting a lot of energy into wavelengths that are absorbed either by the window or very quickly in air.

I don't think it matters much how concentrated the light is at the emitter unless it's so concentrated it's flashing the air to plasma or something. So long as you're not doing something like that, the same energy more spread out would produce less pressure, but only in proportion to the increased area. So it would yield the same produced force. (To a really basic approximation.)

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I don't think you even make skill rolls for aiming unless you're using Cole's On Target system from pyramid 3/77

Laser sights (ie did I get a bead on the guy or not) are an interesting consideration since unlike pure-vision aiming there is an observable indication that someone's being aimed at.

There's clearly incentive though: if attacker observes the laser dot then they know their aim is good and can remain stable and attack.

Cole has DX-based gun roles for aiming because I believe that reflects actually lifting the arm and leveling the weapon at the target in preparation.

Aiming clearly has a vision component (hand-eye coordination) but then so does a lot of DX stuff, we have vision penalties apply to DX as well as Per.

Would be kinda cool if there was some way to have good perception benefit this (or bad perception detract), like being a setup skill, similar to how in "Dodge This" Cole had a Vision check before making active defenses.

Actually seems strange when I look at defaults how guns all seem to be DX-4 while Throwing is DX-3. I get that throwing is a much more instinctive skill but pointing something in a direction still seems like an easier skill...

It's not an issue close-up as guns alone can take the +4/+4 for AOA:Determined / Telegraphic Attack at melee ranges while throwing weapons can't, while at long ranges, throwing weapons incur range penalties sooner... but you still have the weirdness at long range that I can somehow aim better whipping a baseball than with a gun.

Actually maybe that's what Acc does because throwing weapons lack Acc? Not aiming means not enjoying the Acc so you're just snap-shotting in which case I could see how guns could fall behind snap-throws.

As for how people aim so well with a laser pointer... given that it's a continuous beam I'm wondering if maybe we should treat that as having some kind of insanely high ROF (like 300+) so that there's just a huge bonus from that?

That could also explain how you could swipe a laser pointer across a room and in theory blind a dozen guys... although there should probably be something in regard to "exposure time" to light needed to do damage to retina.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

It has a reason why in many nations, including mine the output of laser pointers is capped, some of them go in the 5 Watt range or higher, the time of exposure for eye damage is extremely short. Depending how close you are it´s less than 1/10 of a second. The distance to to the laser is also important. Of course you need to differ between short time blindness, and lasting crippling injuries. Military or police forces want to mark the target, so the output is lower, dangerous for eyes it´s nevertheless. Normally this forces are not interested in a unnecessary high output, because the batteries are draining faster. Some nations build blinding lasers on purpose, or experiment for Spec Op / SWAT Forces with lasers that can switch power output, between target / blinding mode. Also their are experiments with lasers that blink at very high frequency, so that they can trigger epileptic seizures. GURPS High Tech page 181 has further Info about lasers. Because time goes on their are claims by china and russia that they build portable lasers, that are able to shoot down drones.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

just randomly looking found https://www.ceenta.com/news-blog/can...nter-blind-you

10 seconds is mentioned between1 and 5 milliwatts, so the 1/10 second (that's 1/100 the time) I'm guessing is near 5 watts, which would be 1000x the power?

One mitigating factor would probably be a blink reflex: you just naturally tend to close your eye (or even raise an arm to block your face) when a bright light is shone in it.

Requiring 1/10 a second sounds like you could blind a maximum of 10 eyes in a single second, so RoF 10: but probably less since you're not immediately going from one eye to the next: you're "missing shots" in your ROF as you put the laser on intermediary places...

An alternative to ROF 10 though (which assumes a single shot will blind) would be doing something like ROF 100 and then saying TEN shots is needed to blind.

Damage somehow accrues and must build up quickly I would assume? Or would taking 0.01 second increments an hour/day apart eventually lead to the blinding damage 0.1 second would induce?

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

blinking your eyes is very fast, but the lid wouldn´t protect most of it, if the source e.g laser is strong enough, you need more between the retina and the light source to be safe. It´s like looking at the sun with closed eyes which will blind you to after longer exposure. Even some LED Flashlights are strong enough to damage your eyes.


I think not, I worked once in a company that did a lot of welding, everyone who got " verblitzt " e.g. had sparks in his vision when looking at something, was strongly discouraged to weld further until healed, mostly next day was enough to avoid lasting damage. According to a master there, little damage would build up over time. Just imagine you scratch yourself a the same point over and over again, it will take time but you will hurt there. Therefore any unhealed damage would add to the next damage. According to my version of wiki it takes less than 250 ms to blink. This means if 0,1 seconds are enough as I understand your calculation this people would be blind, before the blink reflex could safe them. Also according to the same source in 10 - 20 % of all testpersons, the blink reflex isn´t triggered by lightsources. I think pain will do, but then it´s to late anyway.

Re: Melding Beam Weapons and Guns
 

I think this sounds fine, with the usual TL/specialization/familiarity adjustments - provided the general operation of the beam weapon is similar to a gun. Star Wars blaster pistol to Glock? Sure. Glock to Zoltarian Gravitic Degluonator (forelimb mounted, vibration activated) not so much. Even a canonical treatment of a Star Trek TNG hand phaser would seem to justify a different skill, or perhaps a unique specialization (how do they aim? By guess?).