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Old 06-09-2022, 08:51 AM   #61
Rasna
 
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Using your rules and allowing for a Balanced (+1 Acc) Sling and Balanced (+1 skill) Lead Glandes, you'd be looking at a weapon system that has +1 to skill and is Acc 2, Range x16/x24, MinST 6, Bulk -4, $100 and 0.5 lb for the weapon and $0.8 and 0.05 lb for the projectile. Compare this to a Regular Bow, which is Acc 2, Range x15/x20, MinST 10†, Bulk -7, $100 and 2 lb for the weapon and $2 and 0.1 lb for the projectile. The former is logistically superior - the +1 to skill makes up for the higher difficulty of Sling, it has longer range, it can be used by weaker soldiers, is easier to transport (both the weapons and their projectiles), and the projectiles are less than half the cost. In terms of damage, for a character with ST 10 the sling does 1d pi, while the bow does 1d-1 imp - the bow is better against unarmored foes (sling averages 3.5 Injury, bow averages 5.17), but adding armor makes them closer - they deal equal Injury on average against DR 3 (1 each), and the sling outperforms the bow up to DR 5 (beyond which neither causes any Injury).

Given the logistical advantages of the slings, however, I think they would ultimately be preferable to bows, but it's close enough to go either way.
Well, bows and arrows still have an average advantage of +2/+3 to hit compared with slings and slingshots of the same quality after an Aim maneuver (at parity of skill points of the respective users), and arrow tips may be armour-piercing and give +1 to +2 damage for Fine or Very Fine quality, while slingshots cannot have such upgrades. I don't think my changes would make slings OP. They already suffer for having far lesser range than their real counterparts. They would be kind advantageous over bows only if used by a very strong character. A ST 13-14 PC with a sling can do some very serious damage.
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Old 06-09-2022, 11:19 AM   #62
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Are you saying a heavier sling will impart more energy to the projectile.
No. A heavier sling means more energy in the sling+projectile system, but the increase in energy is smaller than the reduction in efficiency.
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Old 06-09-2022, 12:32 PM   #63
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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I don't think my changes would make slings OP.
Honestly, I don't think so either - they simply make them more competitive with bows. PC's are probably going to favor bows anyway - what I posted was basically the best sling configuration available against a fairly basic bow, so if you've got money to spend, you can get a much better bow (I think Reflex Bow is the overall best bow in Low Tech, and a Balanced Reflex Bow with Balanced Arrows is going to massively outperform that sling), although you're certainly going to pay a good deal for it. High ST will give slings a bit of an edge against armor, but the two will maintain their current relationship when it comes to softer targets (swing damage increases at twice the rate of thrust, but arrows have a x2 WM, so you're looking at comparable Injury). I think your slings would result in militaries tending to favor slingers over archers, due to the decreased logistical costs of maintaining the former over the latter, but there are still some sizable advantages to bows - they more seriously wound unarmored and lightly-armored targets (which probably represents the bulk of most infantry forces), you can pack your archers closer together for massed volleys, etc. And, of course, if you're willing and able to sink some more $ into them, you can get long bows, composite bows, or even reflex bows to arm your archers, all of which will outperform those optimized slings.
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Old 06-09-2022, 01:20 PM   #64
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Honestly, I don't think so either - they simply make them more competitive with bows. PC's are probably going to favor bows anyway - what I posted was basically the best sling configuration available against a fairly basic bow, so if you've got money to spend, you can get a much better bow (I think Reflex Bow is the overall best bow in Low Tech, and a Balanced Reflex Bow with Balanced Arrows is going to massively outperform that sling), although you're certainly going to pay a good deal for it. High ST will give slings a bit of an edge against armor, but the two will maintain their current relationship when it comes to softer targets (swing damage increases at twice the rate of thrust, but arrows have a x2 WM, so you're looking at comparable Injury). I think your slings would result in militaries tending to favor slingers over archers, due to the decreased logistical costs of maintaining the former over the latter, but there are still some sizable advantages to bows - they more seriously wound unarmored and lightly-armored targets (which probably represents the bulk of most infantry forces), you can pack your archers closer together for massed volleys, etc. And, of course, if you're willing and able to sink some more $ into them, you can get long bows, composite bows, or even reflex bows to arm your archers, all of which will outperform those optimized slings.
Note that you did not consider the Staff Sling, which out-ranges bows when using lead bullets, does sw+2 pi with them, has Acc 1 as its base, and costs the same as a normal sling.
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Old 06-09-2022, 01:51 PM   #65
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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Note that you did not consider the Staff Sling, which out-ranges bows when using lead bullets, does sw+2 pi with them, has Acc 1 as its base, and costs the same as a normal sling.
This is true. That is probably going to be a bit on the OP side, although I'll need to take another look at LT to see how it compares to the various bows there, but Acc 3, +1 to skill (negating the penalty for being a Hard skill), and sw+2 pi is going to be hard to beat - indeed, at ST 10 and sw+2 pi, the Staff Sling's average Injury exceeds that of the Regular Bow against unarmored foes (5.17 HP for the bow, 5.5 for the sling). I also ignored the effects of hit location - hitting anywhere but the Face, Neck, and Torso (not Vitals) negates the benefits of the bow's superior WM (limbs and extremities treat pi, pi+, pi++, and imp all as x1; Vitals treats all piercing and impaling damage as x3; Skull/Eye treats all damage as x4), giving the advantage to the sling/sling staff.
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Old 06-10-2022, 02:15 AM   #66
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

Okay, so sling material will only be relevant in terms of durability/secondary uses (improvised kusari/ whip/ garrotte).
But I'll need to scale the slings up, from Basic ST6 to possibly 30ish*, and I can't remember which Book that's in.

*speed of sling bullets - if ST6 might be 0.5 or 1oz at 100mph, what would ST30 x 8oz or 1lb be like?
There are velocity reactive shields to consider and sling bullets might mean retconning the limits.
Giant robots slinging squished cars sounds fun - thankfully not part of this setting.
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Old 06-10-2022, 05:58 AM   #67
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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But I'll need to scale the slings up, from Basic ST6 to possibly 30ish*, and I can't remember which Book that's in.
LTC2 has melee weapons scaling linearly with the BL of the intended user. Slings probably scale differently, but I don't think you'll break anyone's SoD by just following the LTC2 guidelines.

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*speed of sling bullets - if ST6 might be 0.5 or 1oz at 100mph, what would ST30 x 8oz or 1lb be like?
If you have High Tech, you can probably look to see what firearm with the same WM (pi, pi+, pi++) has a similar amount of damage, look up said firearm's muzzle velocity, and use that. You could also use Douglas Cole's spreadsheet - work up a sling bullet traveling at the maximum velocity that can get past your shields and see what damage it does; anything below that gets past the shields, anything above does not.
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Old 06-10-2022, 07:23 AM   #68
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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You could also use Douglas Cole's spreadsheet - work up a sling bullet traveling at the maximum velocity that can get past your shields and see what damage it does; anything below that gets past the shields, anything above does not.
I know there's a simplified equation, but I can't find it at the moment - but the older, more complicated one was ((KE^1.04)/(X^0.314)/13.3926)^0.5, where KE is Kinetic Energy in J and X is cross sectional area in square meters. If, for simplicity, we round pi to 10 mm, pi+ to 15 mm, and pi++ to 20 mm, those are X's of 0.00785, 0.018, and 0.031, respectively. A typical lead glandes does pi and weighs 0.05 lb; a larger one would do pi+ and weigh 0.15 lb while the largest would do pi++ and weigh 0.5 lb. These are 0.023, 0.068, and 0.23 kg, respectively.

If anything going supersonic is blocked by the shields, then we can set the upper limit just below the speed of sound - let's go with 340 m/s. That gives us damages of 24.6, 38.0, and 65.7, respectively, which are right around 7d pi, 11d-1 pi+, and 19d-1 pi++*, respectively. As the equation is more-or-less linear with the square root of KE (which in turn is linear with velocity), for a different velocity you can just take my numbers, divide by 340, and multiply by the new velocity. Want anything faster than 100 m/s to be blocked? That's 7.2 (~2d pi), 11.2 (~3d+1 pi+), and 19.3 (~5d+2 pi++), respectively.

*Part of me is tempted to just round these to 7d, 10d, and 15d, respectively, following SSR; the 100 m/s version would instead be 2d, 3d and 5d.
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Old 06-10-2022, 10:45 AM   #69
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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Originally Posted by jacobmuller View Post

*speed of sling bullets - if ST6 might be 0.5 or 1oz at 100mph, what would ST30 x 8oz or 1lb be like?
.
<shrug>It's 5D+3 and probably P++ (I would prefer that slings did CR).

Velocity wouldn't go up much if any. It's be weight that made up all the energy increase. If you just _have_ to know an exact weight scale according to BL. That's 7 lbs for ST 6 and 180 lbs for ST 30 or 25x (rounded) heavier. It's much less likely that users are casting lead bullets for slings this heavy.
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Old 06-10-2022, 11:06 AM   #70
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Default Re: (Basic Set; Low Tech) Slinging things

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Velocity wouldn't go up much if any. It's be weight that made up all the energy increase.
Stronger characters should be able to propel the same bullet faster, at least up to a point. Of course, a character with ST 6 isn't going to be propelling much of anything at 100 mph!*

Running the equation from above in reverse, to get 1d+1 (4.5) pi with a 10 mm diameter bullet calls for 50.6 J of KE; for a 0.05 lb - 0.023 kg - lead glandes, that calls for a velocity of 66.3 m/s, or 72.5 yards/sec, or 148 mph. That's with ST 10 - higher ST means a higher velocity; in fact, given GURPS damage is close enough to scaling linearly with velocity (in fact, in GURPS collisions, it does), and every +4 to ST is +1d to damage, we cap out (at 3*MinST = ST 18) at 3d+1 (11.5) pi, which would correspond to 378 mph, or 185 yard/sec, or 169 m/s. Which is... pretty ridiculous, but then that's how ST-based damage rolls.

*Running the above method, ST 6 is 1d-2 pi, which is an average of 1.67 - only around 55 mph. Although that still seems pretty quick for a character with such low ST.
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