GURPS Heavy Gear

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Anthony

When converting many systems to GURPS (and, from what I remember, Heavy Gear is no exception), you'll have the problem that in GURPS, the difference between 'target slightly damaged' and 'target obliterated' is quite small -- for armored vehicles, it might be as little as 50% more damage. In many other games, this difference is much larger; IIRC in heavy gear (been a long time) it takes about 4x as much damage (16x as much penetration) to obliterate a target as to slightly damage it. In Starcraft, to give another example, the difference between 'damage a battleship' (3 armor, so 4 points) and 'obliterate a battleship' (503 points) is more than a factor of 100.

Exactly. My goal isn’t to accurately reflect the numbers of Heavy Gear, but the feel. And, I would want the rules to mesh with the rest of GURPS. I don’t want to shoehorn GURPS into Heavy Gear, I am, however, willing to shoehorn Heavy Gear into GURPS. The two, huge, problems I’m running into with Heavy Gear is A, their math doesn’t jibe with their results and B, it’s way too abstract.

And, I agree with OldSam: extra bookkeeping = bad. I’m a huge fan of KISS (the concept, not the band).

Originally Posted by Anthony

Ablative DR or damage divisors are usually the easiest way to manage this.

They’re already unliving machines (and if Word changes that to “unloving” again, I’m going to go smack IT), but most of the weapons hitting them are going to be cr ex, burn or pi++. I’ve been strongly considering a damage divisor of /2 or /3 to represent the ruggedness of how Gears are assembled. But, that feels like a shoehorn.

Another idea I’d had, and it’s probably a bad idea, is basing the Gear’s DR/HP off of it’s Overkill value (AV x 3). But, that strikes me as a bad idea.