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03-28-2013, 02:54 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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[Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
So, I've been thinkin'.
The beauty of Ultra-Tech lies in exploring the natural evolution of technology: faster, better, stronger, and what that means. If the developments of today naturally play out, the future of war lies in distance and power. Weapons grow increasingly accurate, powerful and with longer ranges (You can get quite some mileage out of TL 12 portable railguns with antimatter rounds). Sensors gain the same benefits. And soldiers move farther and farther from the battlefield. We already use drones extensively. One can easily imagine an era where we remotely pilot human-shaped or otherwise land-based "infantry" drones, what THS calls "cybershells." Beyond that, we might begin to upload coipes of ourselves into our cybershells, or simply give them AI and command them to attack. The future of warfare might be a nuclear-powered RTS, with a human directing dozens or hundreds of drones against another human's drones until one side wins, gets to the command post and slays the human within. A fascinating possibility. Space opera typically looks different than that. Whether we're talking 40k, Star Trek, Star Wars or Andromeda or Farscape or Firefly or Dune, ranges are generally very short. I'm not saying that they remove ranged combat in favor of melee. No, I mean that you can see your enemy. You don't send robots to fight your battles for you. You don't fire missiles over the horizon to the enemy you detected with your satellite system. You don't snipe someone from 4 miles away. He stands right in front of you, at wild west ranges. The question of melee vs ranged is a choice between whether you draw your blade and try to approach him, or you draw your gun and keep your range. It's not a fool's errand to attack at melee range because doing so wouldn't involve hopping into a car and driving 10 minutes down a road to get out and hit someone with your sword. Likewise, pistols still make sense. Rifles still make sense. There's a difference in ranges and people consider these worthwhile: Rifle = sniping (from a few hundred yards away). Pistols mean shooting people from a few dozen paces away. And blades mean closing that distance and hitting someone. Weapons remain profoundly powerful. In fact, space opera weapons are often very dangerous, sometimes instantly lethal (such as in the case of Star Trek), or they defeat arbitrary armor or shields. In fact, weapons often have neat tricks to express how awesome and advance they are, but they often still involve fighting at closer ranges than modern warfare does. These two concepts don't fit well together. I don't MIND the former, but it creates different assumptions that invalidate the latter, and sometimes, I want the latter. I've seen many a discussion about making melee an ultra-tech viable thing. I'm not interested in that (or not JUST interested in that). I'm interested in shortening ranges to a personal range. That means short-ranged pistols and "long" ranged rifles still make sense, but we're thinking of ranges like what you saw in the Wild West or the swashbuckling era (which often serves as an inspiration for space opera). What remotely believable suggestions do you have for keeping ultra-tech combat to visual range? Bonus points of the option already exists within UT or a Pyramid article.
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
03-28-2013, 03:30 AM | #2 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
The closest thing to a concept that satisfies me that I could come up with is an orgone shield. I suppose you can add that their effectiveness scales directly with the distance between attacker and target, thus making long-range shots all but useless.
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03-28-2013, 08:34 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
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As jsut one example, in the Real World assualt rifles are generaslly considered viable out to 300 yards. In Gurps world that's -13 to hit and even with all te tricks in the book your ACC 5 rifle is only being fired in an attempt to score a Critical. Even with UT energy handguns that have ACC 5 or 6 you're not going to shoot any farther. So if your UT players are armned with weapons of convenience and/or concealability (i.e pistols) they are aren't going to be fighting at extraordianry ranges. If they don't think they have time to Aim they'll be lucky to hit someone at the other end of an interior hallway. sow hile this may be a _conceptual_ problem with future combat I do not beleive it to be an _actual_ problem found in Gurps 4e.
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Fred Brackin |
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03-28-2013, 08:49 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Render computers and long range sensors useless.
ECM could become so effective that you have to use visual range. Lower ACC on weapons so you have to shoot closer or make some of the UT weapons that are more powerful simply have a shorter range. People still desire the weapons for their power and versatility even if the range is shorter then old fashioned weapons. Invent flicker or distortion fields that blur a target requiring you to get close enough to offset that. Armor could absorb energy attacks more efficently then kinetic attacks which means youi need to engage in melee when your blaster does not work.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
03-28-2013, 08:56 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
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The problem arises when you start getting radar locks and using targeting programs and HUD displays, which can quickly rack up the bonuses, and when you already have a +10, that extends your range to absurd degrees. So your first suggestion might do more than enough without reducing ACC. I'll have to ponder the rest. There may be something there.
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
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03-28-2013, 09:00 AM | #6 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Accuracy of individual weapons is kinda secondary. Artillery will be killer, and dodgyness doesn't help against it much if at all.
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03-28-2013, 09:31 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Quote:
Trouble is that the same capability that erases artillery potentially also erases most everybody else...
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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03-28-2013, 12:57 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
1. Have methods of messing with remote targeting.
2. Keep AI that can do the job of a human more expensive than the replacement cost of a human...if only by lowering the replacement cost of humans. 3. Don't have your hero be battlefield troops in the first place. In Star Trek, the characters aren't combat infantry. They're tourists with sidearms and strict limits on their rules of engagement. |
03-28-2013, 08:56 AM | #9 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
Skill 12, +5 (acc) +2 (aim) +1 (braced) -13 = 7, +2 for rapid fire and we're into 'yeah, that could hit something'.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
03-28-2013, 02:33 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: Apr 2006
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Re: [Ultra Tech] Shortening Range
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This won't be "believable" per se - as you've pointed out, ultratech shouldn't work that way - but it will adhere to the genre convention that you're consciously adopting. It may aid convention enforcement if you set a hard cap on effective attack ranges and/or increase distance penalties by some multiplier. Eliminating bonuses from laser pointers, shoulder-mounted radar and the like is probably a good idea too; heck, ban them from the game. Space opera characters never use that stuff. Also, as someone said above, if combat takes place in areas with limited visibility - broken terrain, forests, indoors - then ranges will necessarily be short. |
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Tags |
space opera, ultra tech, ultra-tech |
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