Sealed Advantage for Vehicles

[Pursuivant]

To avoid serious thread-jacking, I've split this topic from the Advantage of the Week: Sealed thread.

It occurred to me that the Sealed advantage is poorly integrated with GURPS 3E Vehicles and its GURPS 4E descendants, like GURPS Spaceships.

With that in mind, I propose that any GURPS 3E vehicle with the Sealed modification to its surface only has the full version of the Sealed advantage if it has Total Compartmentalization. Less extreme compartmentalization counts as a Special Limitation to the Sealed advantage.

GURPS 4E vehicles, robots, and similar entities are assumed to have Total Compartmentalization, but can take reduced levels of compartmentalization as a limitation to the Sealed advantage (and possibly a reduction to hull or frame cost).

Special Limitations

Compartmentalized (-40%): Your internal parts have limited contamination resistance if your DR is breached. Any cutting, impaling, or piercing damage which penetrates DR negates the Sealed advantage, for that specific body part, until the damage is healed. Burn, Corrosive, or Crushing damage which penetrates your DR requires you to make a HT roll, at -1 per point of damage (or -1 per 10% total HP loss for characters with multiples of 10 HP), to avoid losing your advantage for that part. In some cases, the affected part’s interior might need to be cleaned, dried, or decontaminated as well. If you are a vehicle such as a boat or submarine, and are in water when you take damage, you start to take on water and will eventually flood and lose buoyancy if damage control measures aren't taken. If you are a terrestrial or space vehicle, interior areas adjacent to the damaged part are open to the exterior environment. If you are in Vacuum or a Very Thin environment, they might suffer from Decompression or Explosive Decompression. This corresponds to normal Compartmentalization for typical GURPS 3E civilian ships and spaceships.

Heavily Compartmentalized (-10%): As for Compartmentalized, but you have the equivalent of Heavy Compartmentalization (see GURPS 3E Vehicles), limiting exposure to outside atmosphere to just a fraction of your body. If you are a vehicle, flooding, loss of atmosphere or or exposure to the outside environment is limited to just a single compartment, or a few compartments, within your interior.

Uncompartmentalized (-60%): Your Sealed advantage depends on having an intact skin. Treat this as Compartmentalized, but any damage which compromises DR negates the advantage until the damage is healed. If you are a vehicle such as a boat or submarine, you start to take on water when your DR is breached and will eventually sink unless appropriate damage control measures are taken. If you are a terrestrial or space vehicle, your entire interior atmosphere is compromised. If you are in
Vacuum or a Very Thin environment, your interior suffers rapid Decompression or Explosive Decompression. This corresponds to GURPS 3E ground vehicles with the Sealed advantage but no compartmentalization as well as boats and historical ships with no ability to seal off flooded or contaminated interior compartments.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

It occurred to me that the Sealed advantage is poorly integrated with GURPS 3E Vehicles and its GURPS 4E descendants, like GURPS Spaceships.

.

That's because those supplements don't buy vehicles with character pts and vehicles are treated as equipment rather than Characters (or even Allies).

....."But" (you will ask)"What about when other characters have Powers builds that require Sealed as a defense?". <shrug> That may not be as common as you might expect. It was basically unknown before 4e and all sorts of campaigns get run where no one has a Powers build much less one with an unusual defense.