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Old 04-19-2020, 12:13 PM   #31
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

It looks like to fix TL9 lasers you'd need to give them an S of 2. Possibly most of the curve-fitting was done around TL10 beams and not checked carefully for either lower or higher TLs.
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Old 04-19-2020, 12:38 PM   #32
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
It looks like to fix TL9 lasers you'd need to give them an S of 2. Possibly most of the curve-fitting was done around TL10 beams and not checked carefully for either lower or higher TLs.
Yeah, giving an S of 2 to 'premature' weapons was what I expected the original fix to be. The way the blasters are actually laid out was not what I expected to see...
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Old 04-20-2020, 11:42 PM   #33
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

Belated follow-up: I went through and did a fairly thorough check of all the "beam cannon" stats in Ultra-Tech that can be replicated with the Pyramid article. Two other anomalies stood out: it looks like the E values for force beams and pulsars got switched. E should be 4 for pulsars and 6 for particle beams. The semi-portable versions of those beam types should also maybe do more damage, though that can be hand-waved as the technology scaling down poorly. (Note I haven't checked rifle sized and smaller versions of these beams.)
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Old 04-20-2020, 11:55 PM   #34
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
Belated follow-up: I went through and did a fairly thorough check of all the "beam cannon" stats in Ultra-Tech that can be replicated with the Pyramid article. Two other anomalies stood out: it looks like the E values for force beams and pulsars got switched. E should be 4 for pulsars and 6 for particle beams. The semi-portable versions of those beam types should also maybe do more damage, though that can be hand-waved as the technology scaling down poorly. (Note I haven't checked rifle sized and smaller versions of these beams.)
I think you've made some kind of mistake here. Pulsars definitely need E=6 to give them their characteristic 'does twice as much damage as a blaster' specification.

I haven't checked how E=4 works out for the force beam. It matches the ratio in performance between the semi-portable weapons, but that doesn't take into account the difference in ROF and in needed array size. I actually think those balance out at a glance, though.
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Old 04-21-2020, 10:10 AM   #35
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

I think sometime between the writing of Ultra Tech and the writing of Spaceships, there was a decision that being 1 TL above the point of introduction was good for x2 energy output, rather than the x8 or so of UT (beam weapons of 1+ TL higher than the minimum have double RoF in SS). It sounds like the article may lean more toward the SS interpretation, but I don't have said Pyramid issue to check (if designing lasers and the like, I'm happy with kludging something from SS; I've been working on a blaster design system for my Harpyias setting, but as those blasters are blatantly superscience I'm fine making parts of it up, with SS as the base).
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Old 04-21-2020, 10:14 AM   #36
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I think you've made some kind of mistake here. Pulsars definitely need E=6 to give them their characteristic 'does twice as much damage as a blaster' specification.

I haven't checked how E=4 works out for the force beam. It matches the ratio in performance between the semi-portable weapons, but that doesn't take into account the difference in ROF and in needed array size. I actually think those balance out at a glance, though.
Actually, in Ultra-Tech it looks like pulsars don't do twice as much damage as blasters. So maybe the lesson of this thread is "between writing Ultra-Tech and writing the Pyramid article David changed his mind about some things."
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Old 04-21-2020, 10:27 AM   #37
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
Actually, in Ultra-Tech it looks like pulsars don't do twice as much damage as blasters. So maybe the lesson of this thread is "between writing Ultra-Tech and writing the Pyramid article David changed his mind about some things."
In my copy of Ultratech they do...except for the biggest cannons, which underperform for no apparent reason.
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Old 04-21-2020, 10:28 AM   #38
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
It looks like to fix TL9 lasers you'd need to give them an S of 2. Possibly most of the curve-fitting was done around TL10 beams and not checked carefully for either lower or higher TLs.
TL9 lasers weight 4 times as much as TL10 lasers, basically weapons that are one tech level earlier then the "base" TL are 4 times weight and versions that are one tech level higher are half the weight.

Of course keep in mind that Ultra-Tech has some.... issues when it came to whoever edited the tables.

Now the weights for the TL 10 and 11 Blaster Cannons are... odd.

The TL 10 Blaster Cannon does 50 dice of damage, weighs 4,000lbs and has a half damage range of 30,000 yards but the Blaster design system gives 4,600lbs and 80,000 yards. Reducing range to 30,000 yards would drop the weight to 3,300lbs. The TL 11 version shouldn't have double the dice since doing so has it weigh over 13,000lbs (accounting for the reduced range), doing 6d×10(5) burn with a range half damage range of 43,000 yards makes more sense.
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Old 04-21-2020, 10:36 AM   #39
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

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Originally Posted by The_Ryujin View Post
TL9 lasers weight 4 times as much as TL10 lasers, basically weapons that are one tech level earlier then the "base" TL are 4 times weight and versions that are one tech level higher are half the weight.
Where are you getting this? Non-chemical TL 9 lasers in UT weigh exactly the same as their TL 10 counterparts, and the semi-portable laser weighs the same as the gatling laser too. The assault laser and laser sniper rifle weigh slightly more than the laser rifle and dinosaur laser respectively, but nowhere close to 4 times as much.

I suppose it could be said that the laser sniper rifle weighs around 4 times as much as the laser carbine and does the same per-shot damage. That's a long way from being an apples-to-apples comparison though.
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Old 04-21-2020, 10:47 AM   #40
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: Weighty problem when attempting to reproduce Blaster Cannon canon; Pyramid #3/37

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
In my copy of Ultratech they do...except for the biggest cannons, which underperform for no apparent reason.
Fair, I focused my curve-fitting on the biggest guns.
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