GURPS Star Trekking - Help? Assistance?

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Greetings again,


Its "Star Trek" and I want to do ship combat - so I am trying to figure out the old GURPS: Spaceships combat system and how to approximate a Saladin-class destroyer and a typical Klingon D-7 Battle cruiser. The next game session there is very likely going to be a battle.

Oh yeah - the players are the Officers or Department heads of a Saladin-class destroyer named the USS Cochise NCC-530.

The year is 2261 - or 2 years after the current episodes of "Strange New Worlds" and 5 years before the classic Captain Kirk "TOS" stories take place.

I want to run a boarding action where a group of Klingons try to take over the USS Cochise. So of course I feel really out of practice with the combat rules or the way I used to run it so it never felt 'slow' to the players.



-Ed C.

The most honest answer for the balance between a Saladin Destroyer vs D-7 battlecruiser is what do you want it to be?

Don't read too much in the names destroyer & battlecruiser. The meaning of the name changes over time (e.g., frigate) so for Starfleet destroyer could just be the term for a major ship focused on combat operations.

In the Technical Manual, the Saladin is half the tonnage of a Constitution class cruiser (95,000 tons displacement) but has the same armament. That could be interpreted a number of ways:

1. The Saladin is a muscle ship focused on combat and competitive with the Constitution class.

2 The Saladin is more focused on combat than Constitution class ships but still serves secondary functions. Its weapons pack less punch than a Constitution class but more punch per ton.

3. The Saladin is functionally a scaled down Constitution class ship.

So compared to a D-7...D-7 tonnage is unclear but the numbers I've seen suggest around 125,000 tons. Bigger than the Saladin but not overwhelmingly so. Combat focused obviously but the models I've seen usually assume they carry significant troops as well. Usually they seem outgunned by Constitution class ships (that was true in the FASA rpg) but that could be explain by the power of Kirk. I'd assume Starfleet design is a little superior - the Feds have the best engineers. Depending on what you want, a Saladin class could be surprisingly even, somewhat outgunned or badly outgunned. Design the two ships accordingly. I'd also make the Klingons even in skill for strict combat functions but inferior for support - engineering, medical, operations not focused on blowing stuff up.

Depending on how balanced the ships are, you could play it as the D-7 got tricky and managed to beam over a bunch of troops to the Cochise so the crew has to fight off boarders while fighting the D-7. Alternately, if you assume the D-7 outgunned the Saladin badly, the Klingons deliberately set out to capture the ship so the Saladin is trying to resist boarding long enough for help to arrive and the D-7 is pulling its punches because it doesn't want to destroy its prize.

The Intrepid class cruiser in Spaceships 3 looks suspiciously Star Trek inspired so that might be worth a look for a build.