Plasma weapons

[Scottyvader]

I am working on a ultra tech campaign and plan on having plasma weapony being
one of the major armaments of the campaign, but I am finding that the description of plasma weapons from the book to be somewhat confusing.
The ultra tech book lists 2 plasma weapons types the first being a "plasma flamer" that says that it is a projector yet they seem to behave like normal guns and the other plasma weapon causes a small explosion with each shot which is a little to devastating in my opinion to be a standard weapon of soldiers aboard a spaceship.
I am trying to make plasma weapons that behave more like the plasma weapons from the convenient from halo or the plasma weapons wielded by the aliens in xcom enemy unknown, or the staff weapon of the goauld from stargate.
With this in mind I was hoping that someone has a better idea on how to achieve what I am trying to do. The best I can figure is to just use the plasma flamers and jump up their rof and treat them as a plasma bolt thrower rather then a flame thrower.
Also do you think that the energy cells of plasma weapons would be interchangable with the power cells of say a laser weapon or would the plasma weapon require a sort of hydrogen fuel cell to make plasma from?

[vierasmarius]

For the Halo or X-Com weapons, "Plasma" is mostly fluff. I'd just treat them as Blasters (described in UT as charged particle beam weapons, but can be used as a stand-in for any energy weapon firing discrete bolts rather than a continuous beam). Maybe drop the Surge damage effect and replace it with linked Corrosive damage (ie, the plasma is so hot it melts through armor). Weaponized plasma is so far outside what is remotely plausible that you can have it do whatever you want.

[Scottyvader]

I really like what you said about adding corrosive to the plasma weapons as that is a nice alternative to a armor divisor and makes sense. But I feel that if i used particle weapons as a base I would have to reduce its range, divisor, and accuracy which sounds like it would be easier to modify the plasma weapons altho the particle weapons do provide a good comparison for damage.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Scottyvader

I am trying to make plasma weapons that behave more like the plasma weapons from the convenient from halo or the plasma weapons wielded by the aliens in xcom enemy unknown, or the staff weapon of the goauld from stargate.
With this in mind I was hoping that someone has a better idea on how to achieve what I am trying to do. The best I can figure is to just use the plasma flamers and jump up their rof and treat them as a plasma bolt thrower rather then a flame thrower.

Use the blasters from UT. You sound like you want semi-automatic energy weapons (that is, distinct "bolts" of "plasma" energy rather than a beam or a rapid-fire weapon). Blasters are basically that.

[vierasmarius]

Fair enough. I had assumed you were happy with the range and accuracy of the Plamsa "bolt" guns, which are roughly the same as the Particle Beams. As for Armor Divisor, I'd leave that alone unless you want these weapons to be completely ineffective against armor. At TL10-11, even civilian armor like Bioplas has a good chance of protecting against Flamer sidearms, and military-grade armor confers complete immunity.

[Scottyvader]

well most "plasma" weapons iv seen seem to move comparatively slow compared to particle weapons which seem to move at the speed of light. But I looked up blasters and Im starting to think that you are both right in using blasters as a base instead even if I modified their range as the blasters are much more fleshed out and have a full spectrum of weapons to pull from as opposed to the 4 flamers listed. as far as your point about armor divisor do you think trading the surge for corrosion as the campain is only a 9-10 the armor shouldnt be to overwhelming.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Scottyvader

well most "plasma" weapons iv seen seem to move comparatively slow compared to particle weapons which seem to move at the speed of light. But I looked up blasters and Im starting to think that you are both right in using blasters as a base instead even if I modified their range as the blasters are much more fleshed out and have a full spectrum of weapons to pull from as opposed to the 4 flamers listed. as far as your point about armor divisor do you think trading the surge for corrosion as the campain is only a 9-10 the armor shouldnt be to overwhelming.

There's a tricky thing in modeling a lot of space opera in GURPS, namely in that space opera ultra-tech sucks. For example, you're right: most "plasma" weapons move slower than the speed of light. They also move slower than bullets. They typically move about as fast as you'd expect an arrow to move. They also fire about as quickly as a semi-automatic weapon, and tend to be about as lethal as a bullet. So one might find them comparable to a winchester, and actually inferior to an M16 in many ways, never mind what a TL 11 weapon might actually look like.

You can either just stat things up based on what you want, or accept the versions found in UT, which I find a superior option as you'll probably also use armor from UT, and the two are (or should be) balanced against one another.

It does tend to pull your fights very far apart, though.

[vierasmarius]

Let's see.. a Blaster Rifle normally deals 6d(5) burn. It can reliably penetrate up to DR 105. If its entire 6d is also treated as Corrosive for the purpose of damaging armor, each hit will on average knock off 4 DR. If you remove the AD, it would take 21 consecutive hits to drop that DR 105 to the level where it could be penetrated.

Of course, at TL9 the only armor with that much protection is the Combat Walker, or at TL10 the Commando or Heavy Battlesuit. A more modest TL9 Combat Hardsuit could be compromised in about 8 hits. That still leaves the question of why they're bothering to use this Plasma gun, instead of something like a Storm Rifle firing 10mm AP rounds, or 25mm shaped charge mini grenades.

[Scottyvader]

You bring up a very good point the damage of weapons in gurps without armor divisors are very high, so maybe i should use the higher damage variants of the plasma weapons from the ultra tech book and trade their explosive damage in for a corrosion modifier as a person armed with a plasma pistol of that type would be doing 7 to 10 dice of damage and could potentially work his way thru most armor types he encounters and these guns come with a built in armor divisor of 2 which would make them more lethal against lightly armored opponents but still have a chance against heavily armored opponents especially if they are armed with the heavier riffle sized models

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Scottyvader

I am working on a ultra tech campaign and plan on having plasma weapony being
one of the major armaments of the campaign, but I am finding that the description of plasma weapons from the book to be somewhat confusing.
The ultra tech book lists 2 plasma weapons types the first being a "plasma flamer" that says that it is a projector yet they seem to behave like normal guns and the other plasma weapon causes a small explosion with each shot which is a little to devastating in my opinion to be a standard weapon of soldiers aboard a spaceship.

You can remove the explosion part from the UT Plasma guns. It's not particularly realistic (even considering plasma weapons unrealism) and it's actually more annoying than devastating.

Take that 10D from the Heavy Plasma Pistol. It sounds impressive but the 35 damage to the main target become 11 a single yard away and 5 a yard farther than that. Then 3, 2, 2,1,1,1,1,1,1, and then 0 at 12 yards away.

You could have a high probability of killing an unarmored human and seriously wounding the guy standing right next to him (but only if he has no armor either) but after that you mostly scorch paint or possibly singe your own eyebrows. Get rid of the "exp" and it gets a lot simpler and more sueful to people not in battlesuits who are trying to start fires.

Without the "exp" a Heavy Plasma Pistol wounds like a 12 ga shotgun slug. It won't penetrate at TL11 Combat Hardsuit unless you go for a limb or the faceplate. The regular Plasma Pistol wouldn't penetrate at all.

Simply removing the "exp" is what I'd do.

If you follow the technobabble in the descriptive text for Plasma guns their power cells would not be interchangeable with other weapons. They work on what 33 called "Power cartridges" rather than "Power cells". Power cartridges aren't rechargeable either.