[Spaceships] Starfire to GURPS conversions?

[Pragmatic]

I'm a fan of the Starfire series of novels (Crusade, In Death Ground, Shiva Option, Insurrection... ignoring the fifth novel...). Does anyone know Starfire (as applied to the above novels) and Spaceships enough to help with rough conversions?

Weapons, armor, shields, stealth, engines, electronics, all of that?

[Pragmatic]

(Keeping in mind that this is all from my memory of the novels, that the current version of Starfire owes less to the novels than to game balance, and that my copy of Starfire is on the hard drive of a computer that died on Christmas...)

Engines: inertia-less drive; military version (which takes up more space) allows greater thrust over the short range, but more chance of breakdown over long distances; commercial version has a slower tactical speed, but over long chases has less breakdowns (and takes up less space). This came up during the In Death Ground/Shiva Option, when the opposing fleets chose different engine paths.

(Apparently, engines are weak points, as that's where fighters focus their attacks?)

Stealth: tends to be only used in smaller ships; not sure why it's not used in all the smaller ships, aside from expense? Possibly the space used...

Primary beam: penetrates shields and armors in pencil-thin beams; might penetrate critical systems or depressurize compartments.

Force beam: pressor/tractor beam that seeks to shake apart the ship.

(In Insurrection, one of the combatants managed to have a variable-focus beam that could be both a primary beam and a force beam.)

Het-laser: heterodyne laser, stronger than a regular laser?

Plasma gun: ???

Resetting shields: When pressed back, resets. (After a delay?)

External racks: One massive broadside of missiles, outside of the armor.

Datalink: Ties five or more ships' weapon systems together, so they are more efficient in fighting. (Starts out only point defense, works up to full weapon loads...)

[Langy]

Unfortunately, I can't help much - my memory of Starfire is extremely limited, considering I last read them at least three years ago and probably something like five.

That said, I can help you with one little problem. Baen gives out CDs of their work in some of their books, including the Starfire series. They even encourage people to distribute those CDs far and wide, including putting them online for anyone to read for free.

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/1...mtheShadowsCD/

[hal]

A lot of what you're looking to do depends on how faithful you want to be to the Starfire stories versus the Starfire wargame. It is perhaps Ironic that the author of the book series is also the author of the Wargame series, although how much involvement he had towards the end of its development is questionable.

I still have the games, although I no longer have the first edition rules. I've got both the 2d6 version and the 1d10 version, so if you need help, I could possibly help in that manner.

Ultimately however, the Starfire game is more about what the ship could do and how the damage came into play, than about the game starfire itself. It was also a series of stories that fleshed out the whys of things happening in the Starfire universe such as the disenfranchisement of certain voting blocs, etc. Once you switch from the game system of Starfire to something like GURPS however, you are going to run into issues of one wargame is not like another and won't simulate the "reality" of the wargame 100%

As for military engines versus civilian engines, if I recall correctly, the issue became an issue only if you attempted to operate at 100% thust for extended periods of time rather than using half-speed thrust for the same "distance". Also, one of the aspects of the game was that the engines were inertialless in the sense that if you built up a speed of 6, using all of your drives to produce that "velocity", your built up velocity vector dropped to zero the moment you lost all drives - regardless of your speed the previous turn. There are other "oddities" with STARFIRE to keep in mind when trying to convert it over to GURPS - such as the point defenses always degrading by the same percentage points (ie the roll of a 1-5 on the first attempt, the roll of a 1-4 on the second attempt, etc - the odds of securing a point defense hit drops by 16% for each subsequent attempt after the first in the same turn). If I recall correctly - STARFIRE also mandated that ships without fire control directors could only fire at the same ship, regardless of the number of weapons each ship actually carried. A ship with an M2 (if I recall correctly the code without pulling out the books themselves out of storage) permitted one to fire at 2 targets, and an M3 allowed firing at 3 targets. I won't get into the issues of capital missiles, etc ;)

So, what precisely are you looking to accomplish overall?

[Pragmatic]

I'm mostly looking for a "feeling" for the weapons systems and such. What's the closest comparisons in GURPS. I don't care about 100% accuracy in conversion, just what's "close enough."

[mlangsdorf]

I've got access to the 3rd and 4th edition of the war games, but its been a while since I read the novels. My memory is pretty good, though.


In Spaceships terms, I'd suggest the primary weapons as:

Force Beams are Heat Beams. They exist in Capital size as Major Batteries and as normal size Secondary Batteries.

Primary Beams are Graviton Beams with relatively low energy, about 1/6th to 1/10th the energy of Force Beams. They ignore shields and armor, though.

Lasers come in three styles: basic, X-Ray (used in Crusade), and Heterodyne. I think the later books may have type 2 Heterodyne. Starfire X-Ray Lasers likely correspond to UV Lasers, and Heterodynes correspond to X-Ray lasers.

The E-beams used by Gorns are similar to Graviton beams, but without the shield penetration.

Bug Plasma guns are Plasma.

Most missile/rocket launchers are multirole grav guns that also can be used to fire small missiles of the same caliber (so from something SM-4 smaller). Capital Missile launchers are full size GURPS Spaceships missile launchers.


Defensively, Starfire ships depend on armor that block all attacks except P-beams and E-beams, and ablative, Opaque shields that block all attacks except lasers and P-beams


Drives are pseudo-velocity, reactionless engines. They can reach ~1/10 the speed of light, depending on ship size (fighters are faster, and depending on edition, so are destroyers and frigates). Battleships, superdreadnoughts, and even larger ships are slower. Military drives are more compact and have higher peek speeds, but commercial drives can run slower. The Gorns use engine tuners that increase peak speeds by 15% but radiate the crews (with the Gorns can handle). At some point, someone develops improved tuners that are safe.

Ships don't require Stardrive Engines. Anything entering a warp point exits on the other side. Jump transit time is nearly instantaneous.


Size-wise, fighters are SM+5. A battlecruiser sized carrier requires about half its space to carry 42 fighters, so each Spaceships space holds 4 fighters making the carrier a large SM+9. Battleships and superdreadnoughts would be roughly (small) SM+10. Monitors and supermonitors would edge toward SM+10 or SM+11. Destroyers would roughly SM+8. Bug gunboats (and scout pinnacles) would be SM+6.


As far as ship design goes, military engines should take 1-3 spaces, armor and shields should be 2-6 spaces, and the rest should be weapons, hangars, or other military systems. Life support, crew quarters, and command spaces are at most 1-2 spaces on most ships.


Hope that helps!

[Pragmatic]

Actually that does help, thanks.

Any word on how to model Datalinks? Or are they just not covered in Spaceships?

[hal]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Actually that does help, thanks.

Any word on how to model Datalinks? Or are they just not covered in Spaceships?

The thing to ask yourself is "What did Datalinks do in Starfire". If you remember in Starfire, each "volley" of incoming missiles suffered from a degradation in accuracy in point defense. Suppose you had 6 small ships firing at a medium sized ship with 1 point defense system. If the ships lacked datalinks, each ship firing its missile, would be treated as six separate volleys, and the point defense systems were at full effectiveness against all 6 separate volleys. However, if all the ships had datalinks, such that you had two groups of 3, then the incoming volleys of missiles would be treated as two salvos of 3 missiles each. Thus, only a 6 rolled against the first missile would let it through, a 5 or 6 would let the second one through, and a 4 thru 6 would let the last of the volley through. Without the datalink, it would be 6 volleys where only 6's let any of the missiles through.

GURPS STARSHIPS doesn't really have this kind of a set up as far as missile defense goes.

[Langy]

Sounds like it could be done pretty easily by letting missile fire from different sources (different batteries, different ships) be treated as one single salvo as far as point-defense is concerned, kind of like how all of the missiles fired from one battery are considered a single target for PD as-is in Spaceships. I'm not sure that would work well, though - I can't remember if that would make PD better or if it would make PD worse *shrug*

[mlangsdorf]

I dug my rules set out of storage and did some modeling.

Ship sizes should probably go more like this

cutter/ship's launch     SM6
assault shuttle            SM7
fighter                       SM7
pinnace                     SM8
gunboat                    SM8
Escort class               SM9
Destroyer                  SM10
Battlecruiser              SM11
Superdreadnought      SM12 (but small SM12)
Monitor                    SM12
Asteroid Fort              SM13+

This puts fighters a bit on the large size but I think it gives a more satisfactory feel of the larger ships, with a destroyer being roughly as large as a modern US destroyer.


As far as datalink goes, I'd probably say that datalinked ships can fire together for purposes of missile and cannon attacks. Multiply the margin of success by the number of ships in the datalink (3 for standard, up to 6 for command datalink late in Crusade). Datalinked ships must fly in formation (per p65) and only ships with datalink can fly in formation. Any non-P/non-E damage past armor destroys the datalink and removes the ship from formation.

Note that command datalink is huge: the command system is a 2 space system for SM11 ships (6 spaces for SM10!) and a space for SM12 monitors and superdreadnoughts. The equipment needed to join a command datalink is 2 spaces for SM10 ships, and a space on SM11 ships. SM12 ships get it for free with their control rooms.