Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.

[doctorevilbrain]

From what I've read, Cold Fusion is really chemistry. I agree with the idea that Vader's armor isn't power armor. His strength comes from the force.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

As a young child, Anakin was able to make an advanced protocol droid out of old scrap. I would suggest SW droids are largely superscience as well, as they likely run off of some sort of technological basis that doesn't exist (or hasn't been discovered) in our world, much like the transtator from Star Trek.

I would suggest that Anakin had the Gadgeteer advantage with a Force power source.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Weaponized particle accelerators and Star Wars blasters are distant relatives at best. The former accelerate particles to a high fraction of c, and strip them of charge so they can stay more-or-less together during the short travel distance involved. The latter use a superscience material (Tibanna gas or similar) to produce something called "coherent light," which is then accelerated to a velocity roughly akin to the firearm of a modern bullet.

Not even close. Bullets are much faster than the speed of the blaster bolts we see on the movie screen.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

As a young child, Anakin was able to make an advanced protocol droid out of old scrap. I would suggest SW droids are largely superscience as well, as they likely run off of some sort of technological basis that doesn't exist (or hasn't been discovered) in our world, much like the transtator from Star Trek.

The only thing about R2-D2 and C-3P0 that would strain our understanding of How Things Work is their conscious AI. Which might or might not be superscience, since we know nothing about how consciousness happens or works, we know things that can affect it, but nothing about it itself.

Everything else about R2-D2 and C3P0 is well within the bounds of our scientific understanding, if not necessarily our engineering ability. For a science-fantasy franchise like SW, R2-D2 was actually oddly gritty and utilitarian, a service robot with lots of integral tools and the ability to interface with and service/maintain all sorts of different machines. (Though the lack of convenient spoken communication is peculiar.)

(Granted the prequels with the rocket flight is another story.)

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Not even close. Bullets are much faster than the speed of the blaster bolts we see on the movie screen.

Blasters aren't bad. They're just drawn that way. The bolts are visible because if they weren't, it would like they were just pointing toy guns...which of course they are. The blaster bolts are as nonliteral as the "real" guns that for some reason cause sparks and make kapwing noises when they shoot at hard surfaces.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Not even close. Bullets are much faster than the speed of the blaster bolts we see on the movie screen.

Tracer fire looks a lot like Star Wars combat, though.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Varyon

One of the issues there is that UT opted to assign numerical TL's to a variety of pure-superscience technologies, despite the fact that such technologies generally have no real physical basis and thus in a world where they are possible could show up at nearly any TL.

That's because GURPS Ultra-Tech isn't trying to reproduce specific settings; it's trying to conform to a generic synthesis of the future as depicted in science-fiction broadly.

"An ^ after TL indicates the gadget requires superscience technology. The GM may wish to omit the gadget, or to reassign the TL."

Star Wars has Force Screens (deflector shields), which are TL 11^ IIRC, so Star Wars must be TL 11^

This is an example of trying to treat GURPS like a simulator. You're coming at it backwards. What GURPS offers is a discussion of TLs so that you can work out what TL your setting should be and what variations it has, and then you can go through the book finding what equipment is available. If you're trying to reproduce a specific setting, ignore TLs for those devices that you already know the setting possesses. Reassign their TLs if necessary and if you think the numeric TL will be needed during play.

In other words, GURPS Ultra-Tech was not written to be a Tech-O-Meter that you hold up to a setting and get a TL reading.

If UT had opted to just give pure-superscience weapons TL ^, rather than assigning a number, some of this could have been avoided

GURPS Ultra-Tech positions devices according to its broad synthesis of science and science-fiction, "a typical sequence for the development of ultra-technology." It lays out one specific technology path, the "generic" GURPS path, to line up with the one specific technology path of the past. But it gives you the tools to construct alternative paths for yourself, comprehensively.

"The standard GURPS tech levels represent just one of many paths that describe how different technologies pace one another in development. The tech levels of the various items in this book should be treated simply as guidelines — a culture may develop some technologies more rapidly than others."

If GURPS had just said "TL^" for superscience devices, then there would be no guidelines, no concept of when these devices tend to be developed in science-fiction.

As a simple example, GURPS Ultra-Tech assigns semi-portable fission reactors as TL9, semi-portable fusion reactors as TL10, and portable fusion reactors as TL11. It assigns portable cold-fusion reactors as TL10^. It specifically chooses TL10^ instead of TL9^ or TL11^ or TL12^ because fusion comes into its own in TL10, and compactifying it with cold fusion is superscience. You would have gained nothing if the book had simply listed it as TL^, especially since the TL10^ device is listed as an alternative to the TL11 portable version. But if you know that you want cold-fusion reactors to be TL9^, then it doesn't really matter if the book says otherwise.

I am often dismayed at the poor regard GURPS Ultra-Tech has on this forum. It's an incredibly sophisticated book, with layers upon layers of interlocking parts, but I feel like its purpose is not really understood here, where people seem more interested in arguing about what the correct TL of Star Trek or Star Wars really is. GURPS Ultra-Tech does not set out to answer questions like that. It provides a future path of technology based generically (this is GURPS!) on science-fiction, along with tools to customize it to suit any setting.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

This is an example of trying to treat GURPS like a simulator. You're coming at it backwards. What GURPS offers is a discussion of TLs so that you can work out what TL your setting should be and what variations it has, and then you can go through the book finding what equipment is available. If you're trying to reproduce a specific setting, ignore TLs for those devices that you already know the setting possesses. Reassign their TLs if necessary and if you think the numeric TL will be needed during play.

I agree with this; my point was that, by assigning pure-superscience technology a numerical TL, readers are going to be "coming at it backwards," as you state. That's how you end up with people treating fictional settings as being overall a certain TL (11 for Star Wars, 12 for Star Trek) simply because much of the signature technology of the setting (blasters and deflector shields for Star Wars, phasers and teleporters for Star Trek) is assigned that TL... despite said technology often being pure-superscience.

To be clear, the "setting has Y which is assigned TL n^, so setting must be TL n^" bit was meant to be a description of how many people go about assigning TL's to various settings, not how I was thinking it should be done. Indeed, my point was that it shouldn't be done that way!

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

As a simple example, GURPS Ultra-Tech assigns semi-portable fission reactors as TL9, semi-portable fusion reactors as TL10, and portable fusion reactors as TL11. It assigns portable cold-fusion reactors as TL10^. It specifically chooses TL10^ instead of TL9^ or TL11^ or TL12^ because fusion comes into its own in TL10, and compactifying it with cold fusion is superscience. You would have gained nothing if the book had simply listed it as TL^, especially since the TL10^ device is listed as an alternative to the TL11 portable version. But if you know that you want cold-fusion reactors to be TL9^, then it doesn't really matter if the book says otherwise.

Cold Fusion isn't the kind of thing I mean when I talk about pure-superscience. Neither are many of the superscience drives from the Spaceships series - you aren't going to have a fusion torch drive before you have a fusion drive, as the former is a superscience refinement of the latter. You also can't have a NEMA reactor (which transforms the hard radiation that a fission reactor produces into mana) without first having a fission reactor, so giving it a numerical TL makes sense. But a force field? A teleporter? A disintegrator ray? Those don't really have any basis in reality - at most, you may need access to a ready supply of electricity to power them (probably TL 6, although if they have low power requirements you may be able to make due with something akin to TL5 telegraph batteries). Those are the kinds of technologies I would have preferred to have simply been given TL ^. It's more just a pet peeve of mine than a serious issue, however.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

... where people seem more interested in arguing about what the correct TL of Star Trek or Star Wars really is.

I'll note the purpose of determining what TL a setting should have is that doing so means that, when playing in that setting, you can more-readily extrapolate what sort of other technologies exist that the setting's official media hasn't yet had reason to explore (or you're unaware of any exploration of this). What are military rations like in Star Wars? I've not seen them depicted (although maybe it's the weird insta-bread that Rey was bartering for at the beginning of The Force Awakens), but if we assign Star Wars a TL, we'll know what options from UT are likely to be appropriate (although offhand I don't think UT made much distinction between rations available at a given TL; I think we may already be at the point where you can technically make nutritionally-complete rations as light and compact as physically possible, at higher TL's you'd just have a better eating experience - which GURPS doesn't generally concern itself with - and/or longer shelf life, so this may be a bad example).

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I agree with this; my point was that, by assigning pure-superscience technology a numerical TL, readers are going to be "coming at it backwards," as you state. That's how you end up with people treating fictional settings as being overall a certain TL (11 for Star Wars, 12 for Star Trek) simply because much of the signature technology of the setting (blasters and deflector shields for Star Wars, phasers and teleporters for Star Trek) is assigned that TL... despite said technology often being pure-superscience.

To be clear, the "setting has Y which is assigned TL n^, so setting must be TL n^" bit was meant to be a description of how many people go about assigning TL's to various settings, not how I was thinking it should be done. Indeed, my point was that it shouldn't be done that way!

How should it be done?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How should it be done?

Based on the non-superscience technology, and how it functions. In a setting where basically everything is superscience, you'd instead go off of what things seem to approximate in terms of performance - although in really heavy-superscience settings you're sometimes better off largely ignoring TL and just limiting things to the gear that canonically exists, is related, or seems to thematically fit (although eyeballing some level of TL can be useful for types of gear not explored in the media, as I noted upthread).