[Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS

[warellis]

Originally Posted by cmdicely

No, its light on laser pistols because because their gravity-related technology is so ridiculously advanced that artificial gravity propelled projectile sidearms are so much better than lasers would be in the setting that using power cells to power laser pistols in the setting makes about as much sense as using gunpowder charges to provide the energy to cock hand-fired crossbows makes in our world. (And, apparently, the breakthrough happened early enough that laser pistols were never the main sidearm thing.)

Regarding lasers, won't they typically do less damage than an exploding bullet anyway? Frankly a bullet that explodes inside your body sounds more damaging than heating up the outside of the body until something boils.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Honorverse is far beyond TL10. It's just light on laser pistols, probably due to power cell tech or something like that.

Honorverse grav guns are very much the TL11^ guns of that name in UT. It's a very clear port. I've even heard that David Pulver may even have suggested to David Weber the idea of gravity-based projectile weapons before the whole series started.

They have a form of TL11^ barrier shields. Space stations without impeller walls can put up "spherical sidewalls". They're just relatively weak compared to the regular sidewalls anchored to the impeller wedges.

Grasers, even huge ones appropriate to SM16 or 17 SDs designed with Spaceships should be TL12.

The Grav Lances are UT TL11^ Gravity Beams though not in portable form.

Those gawdawful missiles, even though they "only" accelerate at 90,000 Gs rather than instantly going to near C speeds till hit their targets at ridiculous ranges in only 1 game Turn on a Spaceships scale greater than point blank so they're effectively Warp Missiles. They're much faster than simple Super Missiles.

The whole distance scale is much grater than anything considered in Spaceships.

Impeller wedges are more like a form of Sub-warp with their 500G accelerations than anything else.

You mention impeller wedges are like a form of sub-warp due to their really high accelerations. What's the acceleration threshold in between what is merely a reactionless engine and a sub-warp engine? For instance in the Prince Roger series, written by Weber and John Ringo, the heaviest military starships, carriers, have a maximum acceleration of 164 Gs, cruisers have an acceleration of 450 Gs, and fighters at 800 Gs. As for missiles, cruiser-sized and capital ship "shipkillers" have an acceleration of 3000 Gs, counter-missiles accelerate to 3500 Gs, and fighter-carried shipkillers, which are bigger but shorter-ranged than the shipkillers carried in capital ships, have an acceleration of 4200 Gs.