Pseudo-Star Wars Idea

[VonKatzen]

So I'm working on a Star Destroyer, SM +15 (EU lore has them larger, but there's really no context for sizing them except 'obviously really huge')

They have Cosmic Power, and their Tractor Beam has to be Cosmic Powered (to defeat an enormous ship's reactionless drives and pull it into the hangar bay). Hyperdrive should also be Cosmic Powered.

Two questions, though: Should the Force Screens be cosmic powered? If so the weapons would have to be cosmic powered. But since there are so many guns all over a Star Destroyer that's a lot of systems to have to generate PP's for. What about the Reactionless Drives? But putting another power plant in doesn't leave enough room for the tons of guns (due to the 6/6/6 systems limit).

I'm leaning toward just making the Tractor Beam and Hyperdrive cosmic powered, while leaving the Force Screens and other Weapon Batteries non-cosmic (thus effectively having unlimited shots except for missiles). Alternately I could make a handful of the guns Cosmic Powered, but as above that almost forces me to have Cosmic Force Screens otherwise they get blown up too easily in capital ship combat.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by weby

Then a minor nitpick: In the original series of Star Trek the phaser pistols seemed to make the target totally disappear quite many times.

They were horribly inconsistent in general. The same weapon that could vaporize an extra would leave a scorch mark on the star's uniform, and could disintegrate objects that at other times would be treated as effective cover in a firefight.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

So I'm working on a Star Destroyer, SM +15 (EU lore has them larger, but there's really no context for sizing them except 'obviously really huge')

They have Cosmic Power, and their Tractor Beam has to be Cosmic Powered (to defeat an enormous ship's reactionless drives and pull it into the hangar bay). .

Where did you get the idea they can do this? If you stick with 3 movie canon you've got the Death Star using a tractor beam (of which it may have had only one) to pull a fairly small ship into its' hangar bay.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

So I'm working on a Star Destroyer, SM +15 (EU lore has them larger, but there's really no context for sizing them except 'obviously really huge')

They have Cosmic Power, and their Tractor Beam has to be Cosmic Powered (to defeat an enormous ship's reactionless drives and pull it into the hangar bay). Hyperdrive should also be Cosmic Powered.

Two questions, though: Should the Force Screens be cosmic powered? If so the weapons would have to be cosmic powered. But since there are so many guns all over a Star Destroyer that's a lot of systems to have to generate PP's for. What about the Reactionless Drives? But putting another power plant in doesn't leave enough room for the tons of guns (due to the 6/6/6 systems limit).

I'm leaning toward just making the Tractor Beam and Hyperdrive cosmic powered, while leaving the Force Screens and other Weapon Batteries non-cosmic (thus effectively having unlimited shots except for missiles). Alternately I could make a handful of the guns Cosmic Powered, but as above that almost forces me to have Cosmic Force Screens otherwise they get blown up too easily in capital ship combat.

What I would do for the Star Destroyers (besides making them Corellian instead of Kuati, since Han's comment "I've outrun Imperial starships ... the big Corellian ones" I always took to mean the ISDs when I was a kid) is give them a Medium battery, a Secondary battery, a Tertiary battery, three SM 14 Tertiary batteries, 10 SM 13 Tertiary batteries, all of the above as guns or launchers, and an SM 15 tractor beam array (not sure yet if Medium, Secondary, or Tertiary fit best) to start, and see if that's enough gun. The ISDs aren't generally going to be facing stuff their size, it looks, at least not until RotJ, and appear to be used mainly in an anti-insurrectionist/anti-piracy/anti-smuggler role against much smaller vessels.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Assuming his jump wasn't just his super-strength (and it's probably not since Luke does it) there is no logical difference between flying and a TK-lifted 'jump'. Power-lifted air travel is called 'flying', even if you only do it 5'. Using your legs to spring (with no interim power in flight) is jumping. Jedi don't jump, they fly short distances. Unless you're arguing that Vader is somehow increasing his leg strength with the Force - but since he's throwing lots of stuff around (i.e. making it fly) it seems pretty natural to assume he is also making himself fly.

I see what you're talking about now. Yeah, although they may not technically be jumps, I'd call those Force-assisted jumps rather than flight. Flight implies it is sustained and controllable, while all the Force Jumps done by Vader and Luke seem more like being fired out of a cannon than strapping on a jetpack. Importantly, in GURPS terms, Luke and Vader (and presumably other Force users) would have Super Jump, not Flight, based on the things they do in the films.

A good argument for the ability not being Flight can be seen in Episode V. Luke uses it to escape being frozen in carbonite, but later in the fight is hanging precariously from a ledge after being knocked off a taller one by Vader. If he could use the ability to fly, once he caught his bearings he could have simply let go of the ledge, then flown back up onto the walkway to confront Vader. Of course, he does appear to have some control over his falls, as later once Vader has lopped off his hand Luke purposefully drops from where he's hanging and directs himself into some sort of chute system to escape.

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

If I were to characterize the very vague evidence given in the movies the Republic had been declining and becoming a military bureaucracy for a long time, and the Emperor uses the military as a power base (assisted by his psychic powers). Unlike most people who didn't know or care about Jedi (a remnant of the feudal republic of the old days, like Princesses and Lords; and some BS pagan religion no one believes anymore) the Emperor knows they have psychic powers so he has his Gestapo commander Vader pogrom them when he gets to power. It's more a combination of the old Roman Republic and its gradual transformation into an Empire (which long predates any 'Emperor') with the destruction of its old higher class families, institutions and religions - and The Emperor is basically Napoleon, the 'saviour of the Republic' who embarks on a train of conquest that eventually triggers a massive civil war because it's so expensive and destructive. The collapsed timeline of the prequels where this all happens in a period of 20 years just makes no sense at all on the basis of the first 3 films.

By being careful about how real-world history and terms are used it's entirely possible that the Empire is hundreds of years old by IV, that the Emperor is a recent position, and that Jedi Knights were virtually extinct/irrelevant during the Clone Wars but a couple of them (being an aristocratic order) were important enough on other grounds to be generals and hotshot pilots. And while Jedis were known for training in backward places (or at least hiding there) they were probably not monks, but instead fully engaged in civilian politics and so forth as members of an elite (though largely symbolic, by then) group. Sort of like the Equites of ancient Rome.

I really like this interpretation, but Obi-Wan seem to speak as though he actively remembers the Republic. However, if we assume he was given a secluded upbringing by the Jedi Order, it's possible he grew up being told of the "good old days" so much he internalized the concept, and was incredibly disheartened when he saw what the Republic had become. It may have still been called the Republic in those days, not being formally renamed until the Emperor came to power.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Where did you get the idea they can do this? If you stick with 3 movie canon you've got the Death Star using a tractor beam (of which it may have had only one) to pull a fairly small ship into its' hangar bay.

He may be thinking of the opening to Episode IV, when a Star Destroyer has Leia's ship pinned down. However, there's a lot of exchange of fire between the ships before it's pulled in, including a big explosion that may have disabled the thrusters (I believe C3PO makes an observation of the main reactor being shut down/disabled). Even if the engines weren't disabled, the Star Destroyer significantly out-masses Leia's ship. While not stated in the movie, her ship was meant to be something like 150 meters long, which would roughly put it somewhere around SM+11 (30k tons). The Star Destroyer chasing it is meant to be around 1600 meters long, which would put it somewhere around SM +17 (30M tons). You could drop each of these up to 2 SM's (for SM +9 and SM +15, respectively) by considering each has a significant length-to-width ratio and calling them Streamlined, but it's 6 SM's of difference either way. That means a Major Battery tractor beam (with 3 TJ of output) could exert 100G of acceleration onto the tractored vessel, while a single tractor beam from a Tertiary Battery (100 GJ) would exert 3G of acceleration. Unless your vessels are using TL 12^ Super Reactionless or Subwarp Reactionless Thrusters, you won't need Cosmic Power (Hot Reactionless seems most appropriate for Star Wars).

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I really like this interpretation, but Obi-Wan seem to speak as though he actively remembers the Republic. However, if we assume he was given a secluded upbringing by the Jedi Order, it's possible he grew up being told of the "good old days" so much he internalized the concept, and was incredibly disheartened when he saw what the Republic had become. It may have still been called the Republic in those days, not being formally renamed until the Emperor came to power.

Somewhat like Rome, which was in theory a republic for a long time after it became an empire*, just one headed by the lifetime holder of an unofficially hereditary title.

* Technically, it was a republic right up to the fall of Rome, but any pretense of the Senate's independent authority was abandoned by the fourth century.

[Skarg]

Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that Leia's blockade runner get hit, 3PO says "they've shut down the main reactor" and "we'll be destroyed for sure; this is madness!" and the Star Destroyer does not have to keep shooting or do much of anything but come swallow it up. There is a grappling-like sound before it gets grabbed, but the external shot just looks like docking with an out-of-action ship. Point being, it doesn't look like the SD had a tractor beam that overpowered the BR's engines - they blasted it till it stopped running. The underside shot of it doing that gives a good picture of their relative sizes, especially combined with the other models and shots available.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Where did you get the idea they can do this? If you stick with 3 movie canon you've got the Death Star using a tractor beam (of which it may have had only one) to pull a fairly small ship into its' hangar bay.

That ship they pulled in at the very beginning of IV was pretty big. Nowhere near as big as the Star Destroyer, of course, still something like 1/20th to 1/10th the size of Star Destroyer (Star Destroyers are very streamlined, and hers was fat and barrel-headed), which would make it about as big as a large cruiser or battleship given an SM +15-16 size for a Star Destroyer.

Of course if you mean 'relatively speaking that may not be a feat' then you may have a point there.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

give them a Medium battery, a Secondary battery, a Tertiary battery, three SM 14 Tertiary batteries, 10 SM 13 Tertiary batteries, all of the above as guns or launchers, and an SM 15 tractor beam array (not sure yet if Medium, Secondary, or Tertiary fit best)

I was wondering this last night: are there rules in one of the Spaceships books for using a smaller gun emplacement? Specifically, putting more guns of a smaller type on a big ship? I think a Star Destroyer seems like it has some big guns for capital combat/planetary bombardment, some smaller capital batteries, and tons of little guns all over (to ward of fighters and stuff). I have (I think) all the Spaceships expansions but I have not really read through them. Thanks for the suggestions, in any case.

I ended up using an Antimatter Reactor (instead of Cosmic Power).

Somewhat like Rome, which was in theory a republic for a long time after it became an empire*, just one headed by the lifetime holder of an unofficially hereditary title.

That's sort of the idea, though it's only gone full-blown Principate recently - they've been ruled by military oligarchies for a while (like Rome after the Punic Wars) but still the old families and forms have some importance, and though they've had a few 'imperators' and 'dictators' these were always 'emergency' measures. But now the Emperor has made it unambiguously permanent and - rather than a Republican office - a personal attribute.

I would probably characterize the Galactic Republic as somewhere between the Roman Republic and the Holy Roman Empire - the member states all have their say, they have an oligarchic Republican form of central state, and (citizens, Humans) do actually have some measure of private property, personal liberty, and a right to challenge arbitrary arrest. But it's being transformed from the 1st Reich/Roman Republic into the 3rd Reich/Domination by the Emperor - and not just by him, but by endless wars (some of them the Republic basically lost!), economic calamity, and civil strife. The Emperor did not create the Empire, he merely made it his, whereas before it was a sort of aimless plaything of arms contractors, plutocrats and nutball revolutionaries.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I see what you're talking about now. Yeah, although they may not technically be jumps, I'd call those Force-assisted jumps rather than flight. Flight implies it is sustained and controllable, while all the Force Jumps done by Vader and Luke seem more like being fired out of a cannon than strapping on a jetpack. Importantly, in GURPS terms, Luke and Vader (and presumably other Force users) would have Super Jump, not Flight, based on the things they do in the films.

Yeah, that's probably how I'd model it, too. I don't see Darth Vader flying around like Superman (though in space, possibly, since he wouldn't have to fight gravity the whole time).

A good argument for the ability not being Flight can be seen in Episode V. Luke uses it to escape being frozen in carbonite, but later in the fight is hanging precariously from a ledge after being knocked off a taller one by Vader. If he could use the ability to fly, once he caught his bearings he could have simply let go of the ledge, then flown back up onto the walkway to confront Vader. Of course, he does appear to have some control over his falls, as later once Vader has lopped off his hand Luke purposefully drops from where he's hanging and directs himself into some sort of chute system to escape.

There is probably some coefficient between what he can do naturally and what the Force can help with - not just here, but in other areas. As opposed to all Force users being super-pilots and tech geniuses (for example) it could just be that Vader and Luke are pretty handy with machines and flying ones in particular - thus the Force helps them in that. Whereas Palpatine is a cranky old wizard, so he channels the Dark Side into lighting bolts to burn away the people he hates so much. I never myself imagined that Palpatine even had a lightsaber. Doesn't seem his style. I like the idea of Force powers being tied to natural ability and talents, rather than a generic set of 'super powers'. Though Jedi, being trained by masters, might also have common talents.

I really like this interpretation, but Obi-Wan seem to speak as though he actively remembers the Republic. However, if we assume he was given a secluded upbringing by the Jedi Order, it's possible he grew up being told of the "good old days" so much he internalized the concept, and was incredibly disheartened when he saw what the Republic had become. It may have still been called the Republic in those days, not being formally renamed until the Emperor came to power.

I would think of it much like Cato or Seneca. They're old class Oligarchs with formal positions as 'Equites' whose actual military and social prominence has been eclipsed by the development of the mass armies and commerce of the Empire, but they still bear the stamp of the 'Old Days' and think that 'if we could just get rid of the Emperor, we'd go back to the Republic!' without realizing that the Republic created the Emperor. I am also assuming the Jedi are more like knights than monks - quasi-aristocrats still largely responsible for their own maintenance and increasingly irrelevant in mass warfare. They have religious training and habits, but of course Crusaders did too - didn't mean they were all monastics.

[Skarg]

Technology - Spaceships

• Small Spaceships capable of planetary landing
• Large battleships ('Star Destroyers')
• Huge battleships (the *Executor*)
• The Death Star
• 'Blaster' type ship weapons
• Missiles of some sort Something other than the proton torpedoes?
• Shields
• Tractor Beams
• Hyperdrive (requires calculations)
• Space fighters (TIEs)
• Smaller (but still large) spacecraft (Leia's ship)
• The *Millenium Falcon*
• Those escape ships on Hoth
• Rebel big ships in *VI*'
• X-Wings
• Various Rebel Fighters/Small Ships
• Bounty Hunter's spaceship in VI
• Emperor's shuttle in VI

Planetside Vehicles

• Landspeeders
• Chicken-legged armored vehicles with blasters
• The four-legged walkers with blasters
• Flying speeder things on Hoth that the rebels use, have blasters
• Flying boat thing on Tatooine
  
• The huge Jawa land-crawler

Big Guns & Defenses

• Those defensive cannons on Hoth
• Some kind of shield over the rebel base on Hoth
  
• The gun towers next to the trenches on Hoth
• The gun towers on the Death Star
• Dug trenches on Hoth
• Planetary shield generator from Endor to DS II.

Personal Weapons Technology

• 'Blasters' - semiautomatic energy guns of some kind, including some gun Leia has (presumably a blaster), the rifles the Stormtroopers carry, the big pistol Han Solo has, Greedo's gun, presumably the MG42 looking thing the Stormtroopers were getting ready to blast Han with when they were taking off in the *Millenium Falcon*
• Lightsabers - seem to cut basically whatever, not actually used much except Vader v. Obi/Luke fights
• Axes
  
• Polearms (q.v. Lando at Jabba's barge)
• Thermal Grenades
• Spear thingies Palpatine's guards have
• Bounty Hunter's gun in VI
  
• Extra-large LMG/SAW weapons carried by Sandtroopers and Han in IV.

Personal Armor

• Stormtrooper armor (seems useless, at least against direct hits from the weapons the heroes carry)
• Red armor the emperor's guards are wearing (never tested)
• Vader's armor (either his armor or his powers or both stopped a short-range hit from Han's big pistol)
• Vests that rebel pilots are wearing in V/VI (never really tested)
• Bounty Hunter's outfit in VI (maybe durable, the fight with him in the desert was pretty short)
  
• Rebel soldier & Imperial crew helmets in IV.

Androids and Cyborgs

• R2D2, C3P0, C3P0 knock-off, droid that catches fire up in IV, trash can droid, little black box robot on wheels, bounty hunter robot in V
• Darth Vader is cybernetic
• Cyborg with weird head appliance on Cloud City
• Luke's robot hand in VI
• Imperial probe droid
• Torture robot used on Leia
  
• C3P0 has massive language and protocol skills.
• All sorts of robots in Jawa inventory, & wandering around Mos Eisley.
• Medical droids in V.

Other Technology

• Cameras (on Death Star)
• Hologram communication (Emperor to Vader)
• Hologram recording (R2D2) and display (IV)
• Stormtrooper communicator link thingies in IV
• Freeze people in carbonite (potentially non-lethal)
  
• Bacta medicine tank.
• Darth Vader suit life support.
• Long-range tractor beam from Death Star.
• Tracking device used by Empire to track Falcon to Rebel Base.
• Computer plans & control systems for huge ships & space stations, and databases, that can be explored & controlled by R2D2.
• Holo-chess
• System sensors that could track approach of the Death Star from behind an intervening planet.
• Long-range in-system voice communications (Rebel Base to fighters over Death Star).
• Training hovering zap ball thing in IV.
• Artificial gravity.
• Escape pods.
• Weird illogical breathing things Leia & Han walked outside with in asteroid field / space worm . . . (uh, maybe pretend that didn't happen since it makes no sense)
• Ewoks that can defeat Stormtrooper armor with sticks & stones (uh, maybe pretend that didn't happen since it makes no sense)

Imperial Politics

• Empire had a senate (was dissolved)
• Empire has an Emperor. No explanation of how or why he's the Emperor, or how old the empire is, or if he's the first emperor or one in a series, or what came before the empire, whether the empire is a revolutionary government (i.e. overthrew the previous state which ruled Tatooine and other parts of the Galaxy) or an expansionist one (which conquered them). This really just isn't gone into at all.
• Tarkin is apparently important (is his rank ever given?)
  (Tarkin was "Grand Moff" Tarkin, per credits in IV)
• Some other imperial officers on the Death Star and various imperial ships (ranks? I recall Captain, I believe...)
• Deleted Tatooine scene has Biggs talking about the Empire nationalizing commerce, so it's apparently somewhere between interventionist and communist in its economic policies.

Rebel Alliance

• Lady in the big meeting over the Death Star plans in IV (is she named?)
• Other people in the meeting, also people in V and VI rebel base (are any ever given name or rank?), rebel pilots (some are 'leader' of a squad but no rank otherwise given)
  
• Admiral Ackbar
• Mon Mothma
• Leia seems important

Places

• Alderan (blown to bits)
• Tatooine
• Bespin/Cloud City
• Hoth
• Rebel base on Yucatan Pyramid Planet (ever given a name in the movies?)
• Swamp planet with Yoda (ever named?)
  
• Endor

Force Powers

• Dark Side named
• Vague stuff about the Force being some kind of energy that binds the Universe
• In script Vader is referred to as a 'Dark Lord of the Sith', which is never mentioned or explained in any of the movies as far as I remember
• Push/throw/lift stuff is a pretty common technique
• Befuddle the minds of/evade notice from dumbasses
• Improve your sword-fighting and piloting/space shooting abilities
• Block blaster bolts? (Vader in V) (Luke saber-parries them in VI too)
• Fly (only Vader does this) (Luke jumps/launches out of the carbonite pit)
• Shoot lightning (only the Emperor does this)
• See into the future or something (Yoda does this, the Emperor too?)
• Turn into a force ghost when you die (Vader, Obi-Wan, Yoda)
• Jedis: Obi-Wan, Yoda, no one else ever mentioned as far as I can tell. No information given on them at all.
• No mention of the Sith at all (except in script, unexplained), or any order of Dark Side users. Vader works for the Emperor, the Emperor is the Emperor, they both have Dark Side powers. Vader used to maybe be a Jedi (never explicitly said IIRC) but there's no explanation for who the Emperor is or why he has powers/where he got them
  
• Sense the presence of others (only other known force users?) somewhat nearby (q.v. Vader senses Obi-Wan on DS, Vader senses Luke going to Endor)
• Short-range sensing of others' (Force-users' only?) thoughts - see Vader vs. Obi-Wan during fight and even "escape is not his plan" and showdowns in V and VI, Yoda monitoring Luke, etc.
• Seems like the Vader versus Obi-Wan confrontation is more about something non-physical than physical.
  

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Technology - Spaceships

• Missiles of some sort Something other than the proton torpedoes?

Are they ever actually called "Proton Torpedos"? I watched IV last night but I don't remember exactly what they referred to the missiles as in the Death Star briefing.