Converting Star Trek ship wpn dmg to GURPS

[Sumner Kai]

I am playing around with some Star Trek ships for an upcoming campaign and would like to be able to "build" the ships my own way. I have been hunting online for a formula that GURPS uses to convert damage into game stats. Is there such a thing? Specifically, a phaser system I am trying to convert delivers from 5 to 200 megawatts of energy to a target (if I am reading it right). Is there a way to stat that out in dice?

And while you are at it, is there a formula for slug-thrown weaponry as well? I have seen references to a damage calculator, but haven't found it either.

Thanks in advance...

[VadersFear]

What you are looking for is GURPS Vehicles.
Although it's not out yet for 4e.
If you can get the 3e version, beware, it is quite a mathematical book :-)

[Sumner Kai]

Originally Posted by VadersFear

What you are looking for is GURPS Vehicles.
Although it's not out yet for 4e.
If you can get the 3e version, beware, it is quite a mathematical book :-)

Gah. This was the response I feared that I would receive. I *do* own this book, and it is not with me at the moment, which happens to be when my brain is in gear to tackle this issue. Later, when I am at home, my brain will be conveniently engaged in some other task (perhaps dreaming as I sleep?), and this will be temporarily forgotten. Which will lead me back to work tomorrow, when I will think of this issue again, and I will remember that my book is still at home. Gah. Curse my Forgetfulness Disadvantage!!!

[Wicked Lurker]

While you might find this answer unsatisfactory..:

Assign a number based on how much damage they do in novels/film or whatever you base your campaign on.

Since a ship weapon will be used against ships and will always insta-kill any other thing it doesn't matter if it makes 100,000d burning and your ship has DR10,000 or if it does 10,000d burning and your ship has DR1,000.

Any normal handweapon will not endanger the ship and any weapon a ship fires will be sufficient to kill anything that is not a ship.

The scales are so different they don't need to be conguent.

[Sumner Kai]

Originally Posted by Wicked Lurker

Since a ship weapon will be used against ships and will always insta-kill any other thing it doesn't matter if it makes 100,000d burning and your ship has DR10,000 or if it does 10,000d burning and your ship has DR1,000.

Any normal handweapon will not endanger the ship and any weapon a ship fires will be sufficient to kill anything that is not a ship.

The scales are so different they don't need to be conguent.

This is certainly true.

I guess what I am trying to do is establish a "base" for the game. I own the Star Trek Technical manuals, and I am pulling the numbers from it. Using this weapon as the base for what a large warship's weaponry is capable of, I will then design the other weapons and defenses in the game to balance with this one. So, what I am looking for is, for example, how many dice of damage would a 1 megawatt beam do? Without having Vehicles with me, I cannot answer it, and was hoping to just get a "1 megawatt would = Xd" from someone, if that is appropriate.

[Sumner Kai]

okay, say a torpedo in Star Trek has a yield of 64 megatons. Would that put it in the neighborhood of 7dx500?

[MrId]

Every time that I try to design a ship based on Star Trek a number of issues develop, the most pertinent of which is this: Trying to match up GURPS weapon damage with the listed output of weapons from various sources on Trek (or Star Wars, or Babylon 5, or any SF TV show) makes the rest of the design process much more difficult. I strongly recommend figuring out how much DR you want the ships to have, and how much power and space for weapons they have, rather than anchoring it to any listed stats.

It is possible to do with the weapon design rules from VE2, but I'd recommend designing the ship rather than trying to reverse engineer the weapon. I realize that I'm pitching a solution that's a lot more work, but it's gets a more satisfying result IMO. It has the added benefit of having a consistent set of stats for the whole ship, rather than just the weapons.

As for the 1 MW does X damage question, it depends on how you want to model phasers. Treating phasers as Neutral Particle Beams at 1,000 kj at TL 10 does 80d of damage (all in 3e GURPS). Add in the Omni-blaster option from UTT2 and there's a not bad model of a phaser. However, damage is based on the square root of output, so doubling output doesn't double damage (2000 kj gets about 112d or 8d*14 and 200,000 kj gets you 1124 d, or 4d*281). Hope that helps. I don't know if these number are applicable in a 4e game.

[Lonewulf]

Honestly, I would hand-wave ship to ship combat, if the adventure focused more on the main characters. They do it for Star Trek in the first place, why can't you as GM? :)

I.E., "The ship is taking damage! Shields are at <random X%>! You need to come up with a solution in the next minute!"

*Cue random sparks and explosions appearing from the ship, because apparently they make ship electronics sparky and explosive*

[David Johansen]

Seriously though, for anything other than another super science ship with super science sheilds the only possible answer is "It's dead, now what do you want to do."

Or you could just use Federation Commander.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Sumner Kai

okay, say a torpedo in Star Trek has a yield of 64 megatons. Would that put it in the neighborhood of 7dx500?

No, 7Dx500 is only about 42.5 tons of TNT-equivalent (in 4e, it's less in 3e). 64 megatons is around 4,290,000 D. Call it 6 x700,000 D in round numbers. Even a single kiloton is a lot of damage and you're talking 64,000 x as much

In space damage will be reduced by the square of the distance from the target which helps somewhat.

While I want to say that arbitrary damage is probably the way to go, I will note that converting MW to MJ (1000 KJ) in the formulas in Ve2 will give _an_ answer.

Or you could just use the Disntegrator cannons and Fusion cannons from UT as phasers and photon torpedoes. Those are some of the fictional models they were designed to represent.

Also, the first of the forthcoming Gurps Spaceships E23 products has been through playtest and it handles Star Trek-like vessels decently and much more simply than Ve2. I don't know how long you'd have to wait for it though.

Fred Brackin