Comparison of Space Beam Weapons in GURPS Vehicles, 2 Ed.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Working with Seldon's stuff we see that some late Starfighters (and even those 375 ton scouts) are capable of exceeding 300ls/turn i.e. light speed without hyperjumping.

Exactly what this does is unexplained but going strictly by the SO rules they've run off the Attack Matrices and you can't shoot Nova Guns at them. I think I remebr combinations of speed and ranges where you couldn't target them even under lightspeed.

There are. Also even moderately fast ships (like high TL destroyers and light cruisers) can't be hit at long ranges.

Back in the day we ruled that ships doing more than 300LS couldn't see what was going on and you had to write out orders for everything they'd do until they came back down under light speed. They were still trackable though, so mostly it was good for getting close fast and running away.

In a game that doesn't deal with distances less than 25 LS you have little need to get really close and there isn't even any reason to launch StarTorps at less than 300 LS.

Yes there is - less time to shoot them down, and for starfighters they really have to launch them at under 400LS so the torps can self-target because they lack the gunners and computers to guide them.

Also, megabolts had a max range of 400LS, and the 'carronade' function on some warships had a 300LS maximum. If the target ship's screen were weak enough that would let you go straight to doing hull damage.

As for 25LS, there's a little comment that at 25LS big guns can 'penetrate any armour', so getting in close speeds up the 'smash shieldless ship to rubble' phase a lot.

Still in battles when we had them masses of StarFighters and their StarTorps made a good hammer to start knocking shields down with. Hangers full of StarFighters would multiply the number of StarTorps you could get into a battle. I remember mass firing their N25s into shields too.

Space Opera was very much about hammering shields down, because only quite small ships had shields that even huge guns/torps could penetrate. If the ships were large, even then most guns wouldn't penetrate the underlying battlearmour, so once the screen were down you were hammering away doing 10% damage per hit unless you could close to 25LS.

There were some interesting ideas and rules in Space Opera, but the execution was somewhat lacking in most cases.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

There were some interesting ideas and rules in Space Opera, but the execution was somewhat lacking in most cases.

I embraced it at the time because Traveller was so much more limited in comparison but from even at the time I knew SO was awkward. Now I'm annoyed that it was both abstract and awkward. You'd think that if you were abstracting so much you could at least make things simple.

If I was tempted to rescue soemthing from SO I think it might be the Sector Atlases. Possibly my memories are tinged with nostalgia but what I remember seems good to me by comparison with alternatives.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If I was tempted to rescue soemthing from SO I think it might be the Sector Atlases. Possibly my memories are tinged with nostalgia but what I remember seems good to me by comparison with alternatives.

They are fun in a very 80s cold war way. That also means they are very much a product of their time, and if not taken as such won't have aged well.

The Azuriach are of course Space Nazis and clearly set up as one of the bad guys. The UFP/Terrans are the good guys of course (but there's a chance that a serious political shock could result in an imperialist faction gaining control of Terra, and a possible civil war from that).

A recent re-read of the Mercantile atlas was interesting - on the surface they're presented as 'flawed, but basically good', but they're raging libertarians and mercantalists and there's a sub-text of slavery, displacement of populations, etc. going on 'out there' where nobody can see it. So maybe not so good after all.

Some of the individual world writeups are worth stealing. Others, not so much.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

It sounds like you're converting to 4e while I'm converting to 3e. I can't answer for Spaceships but I'm finding that Vehicles is workable but as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm not going for an exact conversion, partly because even a FP 40 beam weapon is an energy hog.

I'd use VE2, but my brain doesn't really grok it any more. Also, were I to use the stuff it'd be in a 4e game, so there would be a further conversion step, and choices to be made about tech levels, and it starts looking like too much work at that point. I wish 4e had its VDS, but that's probably not a thing that's ever going to see the light of day.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I'd use VE2, but my brain doesn't really grok it any more. Also, were I to use the stuff it'd be in a 4e game, so there would be a further conversion step, and choices to be made about tech levels, and it starts looking like too much work at that point. I wish 4e had its VDS, but that's probably not a thing that's ever going to see the light of day.

That's a problem alright. I commiserate. The awfulness of some of the game systems and the choices made in some of the premises have contributed to my dilitariness with this conversion project. Some days the game just doesn't seem worth the candle.