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Old 04-16-2020, 10:21 AM   #1
thalcos
 
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Default GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

I'm almost done with the next GURPS adventure for my adventures blog (1shotadventures.com), which is a TOS-era Star Trek adventure. The finale of the adventure has a good chance for a starship battle between a Federation cruiser and three older and smaller Romulan ships.

I've never really used GURPS Spaceships before, and I'm having difficulty porting two Trek ships over to the system. (I usually use a nice simple GURPSified version of the old FASA ship combat rules, but wanted to have official GURPS stats in there if I can).

Does anyone love Spaceships enough / is bored enough to help me convert these two ships?

The two ships are a TOS-era Miranda-class cruiser and a smaller Romulan Starglider cruiser.

The Miranda-class' Trek specs are:
Length - 226m, Width 145m, Height 51m, Weight 149k mt
306 crew, 40 passengers, 4 shuttlecraft
Enough cargo room for 300mt
4 phasers in 2 banks, 2 photon torpedo launchers
Capable of cruising at warp 6, or warp 8 in emergencies
And then the usual Trek stuff like transporters, escape pods, emergency bridge, short and long-range scanners, etc.

The Starglider is an older ship, built ~60 years before the first Miranda-class, and ~20 years before the more recognizable Birds of Prey.
Length 60m, Width 162m, Height 40m, Weight 52k mt
135 crew, 16 passengers
Enough cargo room for 6k mt, no shuttles
6 disruptors, no missile weapons (no cloaking device either)
Capable of cruising at warp 7, or warp 8 in emergencies

The Miranda *should* be able to take on three Stargliders in a fair fight. In Trek terms, this would be because not only is it bigger and sturdier, but its phasers are more powerful than the older disruptors, and it has far more power to divert to its shields.

Appreciate any help!
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Old 04-16-2020, 11:18 AM   #2
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

I'll take a crack at it when I get home (at work on my lunch break right now), but to start out, the Miranda is a biggish SM+12, the Starglider an equally biggish SM+11. Do you have any particular design rules established?
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Old 04-16-2020, 11:23 AM   #3
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
I'll take a crack at it when I get home (at work on my lunch break right now), but to start out, the Miranda is a biggish SM+12, the Starglider an equally biggish SM+11. Do you have any particular design rules established?
You came to the same conclusion about SM that I did. I don't really have conviction around any specific design rules -- there's enough variability in "what exactly is Trek spaceship tech?" that I've managed to confuse myself multiple times trying to set them :-)

Thanks for the help!
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Old 04-16-2020, 02:28 PM   #4
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

I came up with some GURPS Spaceships stats for the Miranda-class Light Cruiser some time ago, though I don't believe I've shared them. (Google document linked.)

The document details differences between the USS Reliant seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the Miranda-class and variants seen in ST:TNG, ST:DS9, ST:VOY, and Star Trek Online. I had to make judgement calls.
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Old 04-16-2020, 02:37 PM   #5
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

Quote:
Originally Posted by thalcos View Post
The Miranda-class' Trek specs are:
Length - 226m, Width 145m, Height 51m, Weight 149k mt
306 crew, 40 passengers, 4 shuttlecraft
Enough cargo room for 300mt
4 phasers in 2 banks, 2 photon torpedo launchers
Capable of cruising at warp 6, or warp 8 in emergencies
And then the usual Trek stuff like transporters, escape pods, emergency bridge, short and long-range scanners, etc.
The weight is, as mentioned, a bit heavier than SM+12, but on the very light end of SM+13; considering it's going to have armor, SM+12 should work fine. Length to Width/Height I think is a small enough ratio to justify calling it Unstreamlined. It needs a minimum of 86.5 Cabins (if everyone had bunks, there were no sickbay, etc); a single Habitat system is good for 600 Cabins, so that will be more than sufficient. The shuttles need a Hangar Bay, which could handle 4 shuttles of 750 tons (a light SM+8). I believe the shuttles were markedly smaller than that; if we assume 300 tons each (SM+7, which may still be on the large size), that leaves a full 1800 tons leftover, enough to have your 300 tons worth of cargo as roll-on/roll-off (rather than stored in a depressurized Cargo Hold; I think ST cargo was stored at least in this manner if not as steerage, where 300 tons would take up 60 Cabins) and only be at half capacity in case of emergency (ST ships were markedly more spacious than SS assumes, so this might be appropriate). From what I remember of the show (although I mostly watched The Next Generation and Voyager, and honestly not a lot of either), the phasers and photon torpedoes seemed to be able to fire at any angle, which implies turrets in the Central Hull; perhaps two Medium Batteries, each containing 2 phasers (however you've opted to represent those) and 1 missile launcher. The main bridge and the various sensors are included with the normal Control Room (although you can have a separate Sensor Array if the Miranda-class has stronger sensors than typical for a ship of its size). The secondary bridge (note most of the Control Room's mass is taken up by attitude thrusters and the default sensor array), teleporters, sick bay, etc are probably all included with the 600 cabins. For motive power, a Stardrive will work for Warp (Super Stardrive, or perhaps multiple, if the Miranda-class is considered particularly fast). I think "impulse" was meant to use the Warp drive at a sublight speed, in which case you can just use the Stardrive (Reactionless) setting switch and have the vessel's Stardrive(s) provide STL movement as well; if not, give it at least one Subwarp Reactionless Drive. The vessel probably has a Force Screen (for the ubiquitous shields), possibly a Heavy Force Screen. It needs at least 4 Power Points (1 for each Medium Battery, 1 for the Stardrive or Reactionless Drive, 1 for the Force Screen), and may need up to 6 (to double up for the Super Stardrive and Heavy Force Screen). I'd probably go with 4, and anytime you need to double up for speed or defense or whatever, well, that's a task for the engineer to eek more power out of the system. I think ST ships are stated to use antimatter, and as luck would have it a single Antimatter Reactor provides 4 Power Points.

That covers at least 7 of our 20 systems. The Stardrive is in the Rear Hull, the two Medium Batteries are in the Central Hull. I'd be tempted to put the Control Room in the Front Hull, the Habitat in one Core system, and the Force Screen in the Rear Hull. The Antimatter Reactor should be in the Core for protection, but I think that tends to get hit with some frequency (and is maybe actually part of the Warp drives?), so Rear Hull it is. Assuming this is a weapon of war, I'd be tempted to give it 3 Defensive ECM's (one Front Hull, one Central Hull, one Core), a Tactical (or Multipurpose) Array (Front Hull), and then basically fill the rest of the slots up with armor. Assuming TL 12 armor, and a TL 12^ Heavy Force Screen, that means dDR 600 all around, +500 semi-ablative dDR with 1 PP or +1000 semi-ablative dDR with 2 PP. Assuming we treat phasers as Disintegrators, we're looking at (assuming you don't go RF/VRF; I'd probably say phasers are able to freely switch between standard, RF, and VRF) 4dx10 dDamage per hit.

Assuming we just treat the Stargliders as roughly the same (but smaller) while replacing the photon torpedo launchers with additional beam weapons, those would have dDR 450, +300 (1 PP) or +600 (2 PP), and their weapons would deal 6dx5 dDamage per hit. ST shields regenerate more slowly than SS ones, possibly slowly enough it can be ignored for the encounter. I'd probably have the phasers have an armor divisor of (10) rather than (∞), with shields ignoring the divisor, and with disrupters perhaps having an armor divisor of (5) (shields still ignore). So, in a fight with just the beams, the Miranda will knock out the shields of a Starglider in approximately 21 hits (43 if the Starglider shunts extra power to the shields), while a Starglider will knock out the shield of a Miranda in approximately 48 hits (95 if it shunts extra power to the shields). With a 3:1 numbers advantage, the Stargliders have a decent chance of dropping the Miranda's shields first, but looking at things it appears if we give the disrupters an armor divisor of (5) they won't actually penetrate the Miranda's shields. What might work better is to give both weapons AD (10), and have the phasers get AD (2) against shields; this will let the Starglider deal around 15% dHP in dDamage once the shields have dropped (enough to disable whatever system is hit, and taking around 7 hits to drop the Miranda below 0 dHP, 15 to get it to its first death check), but will allow the Miranda to drop the Starglider's shields more rapidly (around 10 hits, 21 with a doubled shield). The Miranda would then deal around 45% dHP per hit (also enough to disable a system, but a lucky roll can destroy one, and only 5 hits needed to drop the target to its first death check). That's a bit more even of a fight, with the Miranda holding a bit of an advantage; the photon torpedoes will probably be sufficient to give the Miranda a serious enough advantage that the players would need to screw up (or have rather bad dice luck) to lose the encounter.
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Old 04-16-2020, 02:50 PM   #6
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

Star Trek's shuttles appear to be about the size of a full-sized van to cargo van, going by how people look when standing next to the props, about SM +4 or +5, accounting for being treated as elongated boxes; the larger runabout is easily SM +6.
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Old 04-16-2020, 05:37 PM   #7
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

Quote:
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I'll take a crack at it when I get home (at work on my lunch break right now)
Unfortunately, unexpected commitments will prevent me from looking into this in the immediate future. :(
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Old 04-16-2020, 06:30 PM   #8
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

No problem! Lots of useful tips already appearing (like the premade Miranda) :-)
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Old 04-16-2020, 08:48 PM   #9
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: GURPS Spaceships / Trek help

Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
From what I remember of the show (although I mostly watched The Next Generation and Voyager, and honestly not a lot of either), the phasers and photon torpedoes seemed to be able to fire at any angle, which implies turrets in the Central Hull; perhaps two Medium Batteries, each containing 2 phasers (however you've opted to represent those) and 1 missile launcher.
From what I remember from Wrath of Khan (which of course is about the Reliant) the phasers fire from the "shoulders" of the rollbar and the torpedoes fire from the pod the rollbar supports with those being one forward and one backwards. This is beginning to sound more complicated than exact emulation is worth.

There's definitely a Force Screen though it might be 3 acreens with one to each hull section.
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