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

[Kissamies]

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

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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).

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

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.

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.

Chmmr Avatar
Tractor Beam should probably be replaced by the GURPS version of Tractor batteries in the central hull...

I agree. Better range, though.

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'.

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

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.

Maybe treat as weird short ranged missiles that can dodge.