[Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

Greetings, all!

In preparation for my Star Control campaign, I'm looking over spaceships in hopes of making conversions. No, I'm not going after the silly literalism like crew=HP and other stuff. Instead, I'm aiming for the spirit of the ship designs. So, here are things I figured so far:

TL
It seems most convenient to set the general setting TL to 10^ after the Second Doctrinal War. Some races have unique access to rare technologies, such as a short-range Jump Drive.
Computers seem to be retarded, except for the civilizations who are computers. I guess that warrants the Electro-Mechanical switch; Chmmr and Daktaklakpak are just built with points, and considered non-reproducible except through 'black-box', i.e. 'natural' reproduction.
Personal-scale TL is probably better left a bit lower - 9 seems okay.

Engines:
Standard Reactionless and Hot Reactionless are the two standard methods of propulsion. Both engine types have a maximum speed relative to the star system (which usually means its sun) in which the ship flies. If a ship somehow attains a greater speed, and activates the reactionless engines, it will decelerate with their usual sAccel value. Maximum speed is proportional to the number of engines (yes, original SC had separate acceleration and max speed values, but I don't see the point). I'm considering setting the equation such that for each 1G of sAccel the ship's maximum speed equals the 'average' engagement speed for whatever combat scale will be deemed 'generic' for the setting (which is probably 0.5G/Close, i.e. 1-minute; might be forced to use Standard 3-minute though). Thus either 1 or 3mps per engine. That would take years to reach the Oort cloud, so maybe I should set the max speed higher when away from gravity wells and 'non-synchronized' engines (thus allowing 'synchronized' fleets to travel faster in places where they have nothing to run into).

Power Plants
The idea of using capacitors that are spent and then recharge on a combat timescale seems a bit dubious, and certainly very far from RAW. So I'm considering giving most ships Fusion Plants in such a way that they can't power All of their systems simultaneously. For instance, the Yehat Terminator can't power both their unique heavy shield and all of its guns (and drives). The somewhat unintended result is that some engineers will have the choice between not only weapons and special systems, but also engines.

Weapons
Not all weapons match their SC descriptions. In general, 'powerful' small attacks, like those of the Yehat Terminators, I would represent using EM guns. Short-ranged powerful weapons are usually Plasma-based. Earthling missiles are just that, missiles; however, as real nukes would often be game-enders in this setting, I'm considering the idea of using normal missile stats instead, claiming that those are micronukes in this setting, and real 'big' nukes are unavailable.
LASERs seem kinda meh though. Not sure if they're appropriate.

FTL
The default assumption is Hyperdrive + Fueltank(s). The hyperdrive eats fuel proportional to the distance traveled, not acceleration/speed. Top hyperspace speed does, however, depend on the the number/power of engines.
With the hyperspace collapse, only precursor ships get to use Hyperspace throughout the galaxy (I initially wanted to say it's the new W-Space, but now I'm unsure); however, there are *shallow spaces* where Hyperdrives still function even after the *crumble*.
And then there's Quasi-space for those who can *slip* into it.

Fuel
While fuel is essential for FTL travel, I'm considering the idea of making it so that Reactionless drives do not require fuel, or require amounts totally negligible.

Ship sizes
I'm very, very unsure how to approach that. Canonically, ships have rather small crews by space operah standards - 6 to 42 is typical. However, I think that is a bit too little, and consider the possibility of expanding the top limit.
However, there's another idea: the SC2 Flagship has place for 50 crewmen per Crew Quarters; assuming rough equivalence between an SC2 Crew Quarters and a G:SS Habitat full of Cabins with Total Life Support, that puts the Flagship at SM+10. However, that puts the top size of the Dreadnought, Marauder and Avatar at SM+9 (if that). Autonomous Fighters should logically be SM+4 (they're rather small); a single +9 Hangar is large enough to fit 10 inside (10t per fighter, 100t per hangar); some experiments on my part confirm that UQ Dreadnoughts launch up to 12 fighters at a time; call it 2 hangers full of fighters in G:SS.
Making Arilou Skiffs smaller than SM+6 is hard, so I guess they define the lower size limit for non-fighter craft.
IOW, sizes for hyperspace-capable craft range from +6 to +9, giving us 4 size categories, plus fighters (5th - non-capable).

Considerations for specific ships:
Some ships are relatively easy to build; others require bending the rules or even more. Since I'm intending to primarily use only 8 of the races/civilizations, here's the list of the ones I worked on:

Earthling Cruiser
Spinal Missile Launcher, Central Hull Laser Medium (or smaller) Turret. Unused slots filled with ECM to denote generally being defensive.

Syreen Patrol Craft
(Yes, I'm not using the P-word in my campaign.)
More Habitats and Cargo Holds than typical for combat craft. Fixed Particle Beam on the front hull. Mind Disruptor with special effect: the more powerful effect is a compulsion to abandon ship instead of the usual incapacitation.

Arilou Skiff
Central LASER Major Turret. Short-range teleporter denoted as Jump Drive, with the special feature of increasing total sAccel of the ship for combat purposes, and maybe giving some bonus for escape.

Chmmr Avatar
The LASER will probably have to be replaced by something different to buff damage. Tractor Beam should probably be replaced by the GURPS version of Tractor batteries in the central hull. ZapSats are probably best represented as SM+4 automatons with Tractor Drives (linked to the Avatar's position by a permanent Tractor Link).

Ur-Quan Dreadnought
I suppose I should arm it with a Spinal weapon of some sort, but not sure what would fit best. Plasma is too short-ranged, and anything else doesn't look like it fits. Fighters are just that. I'm probably arming them with Spinal Particle beams, even though missiles would probably make more sense from a DPS perspective.
The ship should probably include luxury cabins instead of normal ones, and lots of Open Space (this being a post-second-war era, where Ur-Quan are no longer dispersed to 'one Ur-Quan per ship').

Kohr-Ah Marauder
Absolutely no idea on either the blades nor the FRIED system. OK, just one couple of ideas: maybe make blades into just a special form of missiles or propelled mines, and represent FRIED with ECM+PD, but that makes the Marauder into a 'Dark Earthling Cruiser'.

Androsynth Guardian
The Androsynth are essential to the story arc of my campaign, but I have even more problems converting their ship. This is one weird-science design, I tell you. For those not in the know, their primary weapon is a launcher of 'bubbles' [sic] which essentially do Corrosion damage upon contact, and are erratically semi-homing on enemy ships. Their special system of the ship is the ability to temporarily transform into a comet-like form, increasing speed, maneouvrability, and dealing very nasty collision damage (while becoming essentially immune to collisions with anything of its size).

Yehat Terminator
Pretty easy, actually. Heavy Shield with the feature that it is available at TL10^, but must be either on or off (no 1-PP mode). I suppose it's possible to add another limitation - that it overloads in several seconds unless it gets more than 2PP per turn, but that seems somewhat overcomplicated.

Looking forward to comments and advice.
Thanks in advance!

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

You know, there used to be a page about GURPS Star Control some guy made. Too bad it doesn't seem to exist any more. It had a lot of stuff I didn't agree with, but it would have been very good for mining ideas. I remember some of it. I think it was mostly race templates.

Also, you probably know of this wiki already, but here's the link in case you don't: Ultronomicon

IIRC, that guy had the most advanced guys, such as the Ur-Quan, Chmmr and Yehat at 11, most of the others at 10 and more primitive ones, especially those who had been uplifted, like Shofixti by Yehat and some of the Hierarchy races, at 9.
I think you are on the right track. Just play it loose with TL and don't be afraid to snag a higher TL gizmo if it fits the setting. The Yehat obviously have force field tech, for example, at least at starship scale. Precursor tech is obviously 12^ and beyond.

Remember, that on SC2 it costs some fuel to fly around in star systems. Lander uses fuel too. I can understand wanting to avoid the headache, though. The SC3's Warp Bubble Transport always sounded to me much like the regular scifi warp drive, as described in GURPS Space p.40. It just can take the fleet along the ride. I don't think it needs a separate 'space'.

I'd say keep the small ships like the Skiff and Shofixti Scout small and make the big ships a little bigger.

There's also the inertialess propulsion. High Handling stat perhaps. It is certainly very maneuverable. Besides the Pkunk Fury, the best ship to make Mycon eat its own plasmoids. Don't know about the HyperSpace Shunt. Maybe using it could randomly rearrange the Skiff's Range with every other spacecraft.

I agree. Better range, though.

Could be treated like an explosion, I guess. Or something that automatically hits at Point-blank range. Could be still dodgeable. With penalty, I suppose

Maybe treat as weird short ranged missiles that can dodge.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

I searched for quite a while, and I think it's down. Some broken links and other wreckage, but no survivors.

Yeah, nice source, though I need to replay SC2 to get some of the more detailed info (e.g. Kohr-Ah reply to The Words).

GURPS TLs are very harsh. 1 or two TLs of difference will make a mess of the weaker ship immediately. Besides, it's easier to scale armor and engines that way.

There's like a 0.3 fuel cost per landing, but flying in-system is free. As for the Warp Bubble, this is where I'm planning the diverge my campaign from the canonical SC timeline. Remember the Androsynth vanishing *somewhere*. They learned to *go and return*, and this time, they are the ones behind the big precursor vessel and the expedition. Makes for much more fun politics (some more notes in the Nomad Fleet thread).

Any bigger and Skiffs will die in one shot from PD fire. Luckily, the Shofixti haven't joined the expedition, so I don't need to worry about those gummybear-piloted nukes.

I used the Pseudo-Velocity feature for them. So they don't worry (much) about Collision damage.

Prolly. Tractors are very, very weak in GURPS anyway, compared to EVE or SC2.

Yeah, but what system?

The bubbles you mean? They just don't make much sense in the first place. I guess I can get away from the issue by saying that all Guardian blueprints are lost, and that the Flagship is the Androsynth ship in this expedition.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

If fuel consumption rate is linearly proportional to speed(i.e. a convenient form of SpaceFriction applies), then fuel consumption amount is linearly proportional to distance traveled.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

No, fuel consumption for Hyperspace travel (and equivalent) is proportional only to distance traveled. It is totally speed-independent. Hyperspace indeed has a phenomenon similar to SpaceFriction, but with Reactionless engines it doesn't matter. Keeping the Hyperdrive functional is what matters; I think the Hyperdrive eats fuel to allow Reactionless drives to 'hold onto' Hyperspace or something. In fact, I think this is why Quasispace doesn't consume fuel - because the Hyperdrive doesn't need to do anything - just engage the normal thrusters without add-ons.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

It's probably all here: http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/kohr-ah/

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

Thanks. This one confirmed the Perk/Quirk level Racial Memory of the race, as well as added the implication that Ur-Quan do not lie (or at least so they say; seems plausible though).

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

I started figuring out the ratios between ships. Here's the way I'm trying to do it:

The baseline assumptions are that the Kzer-Za Autonomous Fighter is SM+4, Arilou Skiff is SM+6, and the Kzer-Za Dreadnought is SM+9. Some scaling comparisons:

dHP:
Fighter 15
Skiff 30
Dreadnought 100

dDR per system:
Fighter: 3 Streamlined.
Skiff: 7 Streamlined.
Dreadnought: 30, unstreamlined.

Weapons:
Fighter Spinal Particle Beam: 4d(2); average dDamage 13; average penetration 26; must use precision attacks to scratch a Dreadnought, but still dangerous in numbers with proper capital ship support.
Skiff LASER: 6d burn (2); average dDamage 20, average penetration of 40 dDR.
Dreadnought 'Fusion Blast' (RAW Spinal Particle Beam + Gravitic Focus): 3d*5 (5); average dD 50; average penetration 250 (!); potentially one-shots a Skiff.
(It can do twice that w/o the Gravitic Focus, but I'm not sure I want that much damage anyway.)

I also figured I must use Pseudovelocity for collision purposes, because otherwise even a puny fighter hitting a capital ship will do enormous damage.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

Here's my take on the Dreadnought

And here's the fighter:

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

Just noticed that nobody can do two Gunnery tasks in a single turn, so there's no point in the dual-spine build for the fighters. :(

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

I thought you could fire a set of identical, fixed weapons in the same arc as a single attack, with x2 RoF?

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

The rules say that they should be in the same battery, but I choose to interpret the rules so that if they are identical fixed (or spinal in this case) they can fire as a single attack without actually being in the same battery.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

It seems like to emulate the feel of the ship comparisons, I'll need to use some optional rules/house rules. Here's what I think is needed:

Gradual Closing and Retreat
A ship doing a successful Closing with an Attack Vector or Engaged result does not automatically get into Close range. Instead, such a ship reduces range by one class (X->L, L->S, S->C). It may opt to reduce its Margin of Success by 3 [or should it be 4 or 5?] (before choosing Advantaged, Engaged etc.) to reduce range by one more range class.
Likewise, Retreat only moves the ship away from the engagement area by one range class, plus one for each +3 (or +4 or +5?) on MoS.

Nerf Missiles
Missiles are deadly in the classic rules. Thus, they get several nerfs that reduce their effectiveness (but they're still pretty good).

• Normal missiles get no armor divisor.
• Missiles with frag warheads (yes, those are special warheads, replacing the Proximity Fuse option) do get the +4 to hit and ×10 to the maximum number of hits, but they get a 0.1 armor divisor, making them into anti-fighter flak weapons.
• This being a setting with Elctro-Mechanical Computers, missiles are rather dumb. Under no circumstances can a homing missile dodge, sneak, or target specific hit locations (this is similar to how Homing Innate Attacks work) - roll randomly. It is possible to shoot a missile as a rocket, allowing the gunner to aim for weak spots or specific system, but then it gets the Acc of a dumb cannon round, and must be done at Point-Blank or Close range.
• A rare case where a missile is Guided, it requires a gunner per missile for the whole duration of its flight (negating any RoF of that launcher), may Dodge as if it has Hnd+0, and has a maximum number of turns of activity equal to the number of Range classes it needs to cross to reach maximum range (1 for C, 2 for S, 3 for L, 4 for X), must choose Closing each turn (it cannot fully turn off its engines); it doesn't have the endurance to turn around and get another pass on a failed Ballistic Attack unless it has range X and was fired at range P.
• RAW nukes are unavailable, as otherwise they would dominate warfare. I guess I can handwave it through different laws of nature, saying that large missiles are nukes, it's just that their explosions don't do much damage in this world.
• With reactionless pseudovelocity drives being standard, the missile damage is explosive or directed explosive, not kinetic. Relative velocity is treated as 1 (for bullets too).

Ship survivability

• Ships have Hardened armor against Missiles (see above) and Particle Beams for free.
• All ships have compartmentalization and robust builds that provide Damage Reduction 2 after DR.
• (Not sure) systems are damaged after losing 10% of the ships HP, disabled at 50%, and destroyed at 100% (or after being disabled twice). A damaged system experiences minor malfunctions, but keeps going with minimal effort on the part of the engineers; it becomes disabled a short while after combat. This is definitely cinematic, but otherwise a single hit from a Skiff (LASER of 6d(2), or 20 dDamage on average) will easily disable any system on a Cruiser (dHP 50, dDR 15).
• The Surge effect only works for EM Disruptors. Electronics may be dumb, but they sure are robust.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

My take on the Cruiser

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

Tried out Tactical Combat yesterday.
With some specifics in place, it seems to reproduce the feel of the original game very closely.
Notably,

• 1 minute turns,
• 1000-mile hexes (so Earth is 4 hexes in radius/8 in diameter)
• Boost drives giving a top speed of 1 hex per engine, and an acceleration of a half-hex each (i.e. 1 Thrust Rating per engine).
• Facing change rate reduced to 1 face/minute for a typical SM+9 ship, 2 for +8, 3 for +7.
• Missiles need a total rehaul. Since most weapon ranges are between 1 and 10 (depending on size and type), missiles should have a max speed around 6, an acceleration somewhere around 3 hexes (as if they had 6 engines), and a turn rate dependent on model (cruiser missiles around 1 or 1½, Mycon plasma and Eluder BUTT launcher around 2, Marauder blades 3). Missile damage/RoF ratio is still scary, and thus needs considering. Also, missiles are moving at their own independent velocity, regardless of the launching craft's velocity.
• I'm heavily considering making all ships Unkillable up to -5×HP, though I'm not sure whether to make them roll HT past that or mark them destroyed at that point. Otherwise they look too fragile.

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

Hi all, I don't know if anyone is still checking this thread but I too was looking for the GURPS Star Control site mentioned earlier in the thread and found it at the good ol' Internet Archive.

http://web.archive.org/web/200104060...gsc/index.html

Hope this helps or is at least interesting. :)

Re: [Spaceships] Converting Star Control spaceships (more spirit than letter)
 

Welcome to the forum.

Saw that, but it's mostly outdated by now (4e). I do have some notes on races and ships (more than posted in this thread, but very disorganized). I kinda gave up on organizing them when I figured I won't be able to get enough players for the campaign.

On a related note, you might be interested in a way to make these fellas actually playable in a campaign. I think I also have notes on the other 4e-ified and made-playable races somewhere.

This is the discussion that concerns the campaign type intended for my SC½ chronicle.