More [Spaceships] of the [Solar Patrol]

[Stormcrow]

Although Quadrone's conversion of Tales of the Solar Patrol spaceships for GURPS Spaceships was well considered, I have had the nagging worry that some of the numbers don't work out to the relative power levels of the original. I spent a great deal of time working out a custom Hull Size Table, various custom system tables, and whatever else was necessary to bring the Spaceships system in line with the reality-breaking values in Tales of the Solar Patrol. (I was especially excited when, after calculating the cost of the Audie Murphy–Class Patrol Ship with the custom rules, it came out exactly the same as the original!)

Ultimately, however, cargo space did me in. There was either way too much or way too little. It may seem a small detail, but it made me realize that the whole thing probably wouldn't be better able to capture the feel of the original any more than the standard Spaceships system would. Therefore, I abandoned this tack and decided to try to build ships using as few custom systems as possible.

Here are some of my results. The actual numbers weren't important; the relative effects of those numbers were. The biggest issue was the effectiveness of weapons on a nega-barrier. Tales constantly mentions how only the awesome power of atomic guns are able to penetrate a nega-barrier, but the numbers in the text don't bear that out. If two patrol ships were fighting each other, for instance (say, one is controlled by the Mind Masters of Mars), their atomic guns do 10d×5(4) burn against the nega-barrier's DR of 550. The minimum possible basic damage is 50, the average is 175, and the maximum is 300. A corsair's lasers (8d×5(2) burn) do min 40, ave 140, max 240. Not much difference against a nega-barrier after all (and the armor divisor has no effect against a force screen). At first I tried making atomic guns one output level stronger than lasers, but test battles showed that to be too strong, so I ended up making atomic guns the equal to standard lasers (except for the armor divisor of 4), and making Tales lasers one output level weaker. This seems to bring the right balance of offense versus defense.

Here I present some ships as I have designed them, adhering as closely as possible to the Spaceships rules, while maintaining the playable balance presented in Tales. Please comment on anything that strikes you.

Note: where Tales mentions a “spinal” weapon, it means mounted on the top of the ship, not a spinal battery weapon. Once I figured that out, everything started to fall into place.