Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

I am playing around with some Star Trek ships for an upcoming campaign and would like to be able to "build" the ships my own way. I have been hunting online for a formula that GURPS uses to convert damage into game stats. Is there such a thing? Specifically, a phaser system I am trying to convert delivers from 5 to 200 megawatts of energy to a target (if I am reading it right). Is there a way to stat that out in dice?

And while you are at it, is there a formula for slug-thrown weaponry as well? I have seen references to a damage calculator, but haven't found it either.

Thanks in advance...

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

What you are looking for is GURPS Vehicles.
Although it's not out yet for 4e.
If you can get the 3e version, beware, it is quite a mathematical book :-)

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

Gah. This was the response I feared that I would receive. I *do* own this book, and it is not with me at the moment, which happens to be when my brain is in gear to tackle this issue. Later, when I am at home, my brain will be conveniently engaged in some other task (perhaps dreaming as I sleep?), and this will be temporarily forgotten. Which will lead me back to work tomorrow, when I will think of this issue again, and I will remember that my book is still at home. Gah. Curse my Forgetfulness Disadvantage!!!

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

While you might find this answer unsatisfactory..:

Assign a number based on how much damage they do in novels/film or whatever you base your campaign on.

Since a ship weapon will be used against ships and will always insta-kill any other thing it doesn't matter if it makes 100,000d burning and your ship has DR10,000 or if it does 10,000d burning and your ship has DR1,000.

Any normal handweapon will not endanger the ship and any weapon a ship fires will be sufficient to kill anything that is not a ship.

The scales are so different they don't need to be conguent.

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

This is certainly true.

I guess what I am trying to do is establish a "base" for the game. I own the Star Trek Technical manuals, and I am pulling the numbers from it. Using this weapon as the base for what a large warship's weaponry is capable of, I will then design the other weapons and defenses in the game to balance with this one. So, what I am looking for is, for example, how many dice of damage would a 1 megawatt beam do? Without having Vehicles with me, I cannot answer it, and was hoping to just get a "1 megawatt would = Xd" from someone, if that is appropriate.

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

okay, say a torpedo in Star Trek has a yield of 64 megatons. Would that put it in the neighborhood of 7dx500?

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

Every time that I try to design a ship based on Star Trek a number of issues develop, the most pertinent of which is this: Trying to match up GURPS weapon damage with the listed output of weapons from various sources on Trek (or Star Wars, or Babylon 5, or any SF TV show) makes the rest of the design process much more difficult. I strongly recommend figuring out how much DR you want the ships to have, and how much power and space for weapons they have, rather than anchoring it to any listed stats.

It is possible to do with the weapon design rules from VE2, but I'd recommend designing the ship rather than trying to reverse engineer the weapon. I realize that I'm pitching a solution that's a lot more work, but it's gets a more satisfying result IMO. It has the added benefit of having a consistent set of stats for the whole ship, rather than just the weapons.

As for the 1 MW does X damage question, it depends on how you want to model phasers. Treating phasers as Neutral Particle Beams at 1,000 kj at TL 10 does 80d of damage (all in 3e GURPS). Add in the Omni-blaster option from UTT2 and there's a not bad model of a phaser. However, damage is based on the square root of output, so doubling output doesn't double damage (2000 kj gets about 112d or 8d*14 and 200,000 kj gets you 1124 d, or 4d*281). Hope that helps. I don't know if these number are applicable in a 4e game.

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

Honestly, I would hand-wave ship to ship combat, if the adventure focused more on the main characters. They do it for Star Trek in the first place, why can't you as GM? :)

I.E., "The ship is taking damage! Shields are at <random X%>! You need to come up with a solution in the next minute!"

*Cue random sparks and explosions appearing from the ship, because apparently they make ship electronics sparky and explosive*

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

Seriously though, for anything other than another super science ship with super science sheilds the only possible answer is "It's dead, now what do you want to do."

Or you could just use Federation Commander.

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

No, 7Dx500 is only about 42.5 tons of TNT-equivalent (in 4e, it's less in 3e). 64 megatons is around 4,290,000 D. Call it 6 x700,000 D in round numbers. Even a single kiloton is a lot of damage and you're talking 64,000 x as much

In space damage will be reduced by the square of the distance from the target which helps somewhat.

While I want to say that arbitrary damage is probably the way to go, I will note that converting MW to MJ (1000 KJ) in the formulas in Ve2 will give _an_ answer.

Or you could just use the Disntegrator cannons and Fusion cannons from UT as phasers and photon torpedoes. Those are some of the fictional models they were designed to represent.

Also, the first of the forthcoming Gurps Spaceships E23 products has been through playtest and it handles Star Trek-like vessels decently and much more simply than Ve2. I don't know how long you'd have to wait for it though.

Fred Brackin

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

..Or Sumner Kai could grab a copy of GURPS:PRIME DIRECTIVE and see how they solved a similiar problem.

Keep in mind its NOT the "true"/canon universe - but its pretty close in lots of places.


- Ed Charlton

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

Dunno about 4th ed, but back in 3rd ed, ISTR a kiloton being rated at roughly 2,000,000d.

1000kt = 1mt

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

Lol, I said 7dx500 and it was really 6dx700,000!!! Woops!

Thank you everyone! MrId, Fred Brackin, rosignol, you answered my question directly - my hat's off to you.

MrId, your approach (designing a system that is internally consistent and doesn't worry about what the Hollywood numbers are) is how I used to handle it. It worked fine, as you suggested. I just wanted to know if I *could* model it off of those numbers. Bleh.

*off to find my copy of UT...*

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

The first GPD did have stat's for ships and weapons but they were based on the Gurps Space 3rd edition ship design system. Unfortunately when they updated GPD to Gurps 4th ed they decided to hold off on updating the ship stat's untill a vehicle design system was published for G4th ed. They said they'd put the old stat's up on their website but I've never found them. They also promise to someday put out a Gurps Starfleet which will include ship stats for 4th edition for several starships but that must wait untill SJG publishes a design system for them to use. Of course if you can get the first GPD you can always convert the ship stats to 4th edition, IIRC the Federation Heavy Cruser (Constitution class) had ablative cDR 400 or so and overloaded Photon Torpedoes did enough damage to knock the sheilds down with a couple of hits.

Re: Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS
 

(Sick. Sorry if this gets incoherent.)

You could also go on ebay and see if you could find the old Star Trek Tactical Ship Combat Game. Then you'd only have to convert the to-hit function of the game to GURPS and you'd be ready to go. Get yourself the Starship Construction Manuel and you'll be able to make "whatever" you want.