Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 3 - Choose Available Technology (Part 1: Familiar, Convenience and Standard Sci-Fi)

May 21, 2018, 10:34 pm

≫ Next: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 3 - Choosing Available Technology (Part 2: Miraculous Technology)

≪ Previous: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 2 - Choose a Tech Level

$

0

0

Unrestricted tech can be challenging for the GM, especially at TL11 and TL12, due to the enormous range of possibilities and the array of resources it provides to adventurers –GURPS Ultra-Tech, “Unlimited Technology,” page 9

Once you’ve settled on your starting point, your technological “concept stage,” it’s time to move on to choosing what technology is available to us. I highly recommend against using all possible technology, in part because of the above quote, but also because it makes a setting very difficult to differentiate, as most people will naturally gravitate towards “the best” technologies they can find for a specific thing. It’s also difficult because even if you manage to work out all the implications of every technology in the Ultra-Tech book for a given tech-level, your players will have a very difficult time “getting into” your setting.

At its most conservative, science fiction invokes as few miracles as possible. - GURPS Space page 29

While we tend to think of sci-fi as about being “exotic” and chock full of wondrous technologies (“miracles,”) most effective sci-fi limits the number of truly unusual technologies or truly strange societal changes. Altered Carbon mostlyfocuses on sleeving technology with almost everything else readily recognizable by a modern audience; Asimov’s robot stories are essentially set in the “modern” 1950s but with intelligent robots. Even when we have a host of technological advances, most of them are stand-ins for readily recognizable technologies: Star Wars has blasters and lightsabers and droids and hyperspace travel, but it’s mostly just WW2 in space with mystical space samurai; Star Trek has numerous, highly advanced technologies, but borrows heavily from the naval traditions and American culture of the 1960s, and wields the technology in a familiar fashion.

Every setting element you add to your game has a “mental cost,” an amount of effort necessary for your players to expend to “get” the setting. It also has a “learning curve,” the speed at which they must expend mental effort to learn everything. By reducing complexity to just a few “miracles,” we can reduce mental load and focus audience attention to only those technologies that we care about. Similarly, if we “disguise” technology in a familiar form, then our audience can wait to learn more about them (a phaser is not a gun and can do a lot of things that a gun cannot, but you can think of it as a gun, and that’s helpful for getting up to speed on the setting).

So it behooves us when thinking about our setting to decide on what the general feel of the game will be, and then what technologies we want to highlight and explore. Any technology that is nota highlighted one should bemade as simple and intuitive as possible. We have several methods of doing that. We can break these methods into broad categories: Familiar technology, Advanced Technology, Standard Issue Sci-Fi technology, and Miracle-Tech. These methods are not choices of approach to take; think of them rather as layers that build atop one another, like layering paint: first you lay down your foundation, and then you more sparingly apply the more unusual and distinct levels atop it as necessary.

The following section will list appropriatetechnologies for the approach. This is meant to be a sampling, rather than an exhaustive list. I also don’t touch on weapon or armor technology, not because you can’t treat it this way, but because few campaigns do, and if yours does, you can simply apply the same principles below.

Familiar Tech

Without advances in these areas, tomorrow’s people won’t be much different from today’s, except for the quality of their technological toys. This sort of background is popular in supers and science-fiction settings, especially those rooted in the 1960s-1970s. If combined with a hard science path, it may even be realistic! – GURPS Ultra-Tech, page 10, “Safe-Tech”

The simplest way to handle advanced technology is to treat it as modern technology, “only better.” When characters get up in the morning, they step into the Shower of the Future, and then get into their Car of the Future, and then go to their Work of the Future, and then if they get hurt, perhaps by a Gun of the Future, they to go the Hospital of the Future, etc. The idea here is that all technology is ultimately perfectly familiar, it has simply been refined and made more efficient, effective, and has more LEDs on it, plus an electric whine.

A lot of sci-fi fans might frown here, finding this to be “boring,” but the point here is to establish a baseline from which the players can springboard towards the interesting things. You can think of this as the general, uninteresting technologies of the setting. This is actually an exceptionally common strategy in sci-fi of all stripes: most sci-fi still depicts characters as driving cars, or wielding gun-shaped weapons that they keep in holsters, or using computers to file their reports (Foundation featured someone reading a newspaper before putting tossing it into an atomic disintegrator bin). They may feature really interesting technologies, but those are grounded in a surprisingly familiar world.

This isn’t even unrealistic. We’ve been using essentially the same internal combustion technology for over a hundred years for our cars; we may well keep the “gun shape” not because our weapon technology doesn’t change, but because it’s an ideal ergonomic shape for weaponry. Sometimes, technology can only get “so good” before it essentially stops improving; alternatively, if humans do not substantially change in the future, then the human condition itself can ensure that certain elements remain the same into the future.

The core proposition of Familiar Tech is that it offers no newbenefits to the user. It might be lighter, cheaper or more efficient, but it is familiar (hence the name) to any modern character. A setting with nothingbut this technology will feel like the modern world, albeit with more wealth and nicer stuff. This has added benefits in addition to the ease of player adjustment: it’s also easier on the GM, since he knows precisely what the characters can do: the same things that modern characters can do. There’s no need to worry about things like “How does privacy work in this setting?” or “How does one buy something?” or “Can you even commit crimes in this setting?” because if it works in the modern world, it works here.

Examples of this technology can include (but is not limited to):

• Computers (non-AI; UT 22)
  
  
• Attache Case (UT 38)
  
  
• Cable Jack (UT 42)
  
  
• IR Communicator (UT 43)
  
  
• Laser Communicator (UT 44)
  
  
• Radio Communicator (UT 44)
  
  
• Sonar Communicator (UT 44)
  
  
• Encryption (UT46-47)
  
  
• Translator Programs (UT 47)
  
  
• Planetary networks (UT 49)
  
  
• Datachips (UT 51)
  
  
• Data Banks (UT 51)
  
  
• Digital Cameras (any; UT 51)
  
  
• Media Players (any; UT 51)
  
  
• Night Vision Optics (UT 60)
  
  
• Infrared Imaging Sensors (UT 60)
  
  
• Hyperspectral Imaging Sensors (UT 61)
  
  
• Hydrophone (UT 62)
  
  
• Sound Detector (UT 69)
  
  
• LADAR (not small; UT 64)
  
  
• Multi-mode Radar (not small UT 64)
  
  
• Sonar (not small; UT 65)
  
  
• Portable Laboratories (UT 66)
  
  
• Wristwatch Rad Counter (UT 67)
  
  
• Meal Pack (UT 73)
  
  
• Flashlights (UT 74)
  
  
• Glow Stick (UT 74)
  
  
• GPS (UT 74)
  
  
• Inertial Navigation (UT 74)
  
  
• Envirobag (UT 75)
  
  
• Power Tools (UT 81)
  
  
• Rope (UT 81)
  
  
• Tool Kits (UT 82)
  
  
• Fire Extinguisher (UT 87)
  
  
• Factory Production Line or Robotic Line (UT 89-90)
  
  
• Electronic Lockpick (UT 95)
  
  
• Variable Lockpick (UT 96)
  
  
• Disguise Kit (UT 97)
  
  
• Keyboard Bug (UT 100)
  
  
• Armored Doors (UT 1010)
  
  
• Electronic Locks (UT 192)
  
  
• Safes and Vaults (UT 102)
  
  
• Biometric Sanner (UT 104)
  
  
• Comm Tap (UT 105)
  
  
• Homing Beacon (UT 105)
  
  
• Laser Microphone (UT 105)
  
  
• Surveillance Worm (UT 105)
  
  
• RF Bug Detector (UT 106)
  
  
• Cufftape (UT 10&)
  
  
• Electronic Cuffs (UT 107)
  
  
• Antitoxin Kit (UT 196)
  
  
• Disposable Hypo (UT 197)
  
  
• Disposable Test Kit (UT 197)
  
  
• ESU (UT 197)
  
  
• First Aid Kits (UT 198)
  
  
• HyMRI (UT 198)
  
  
• Pneumohypo (UT 199)
  
  
• Physician's Equipment (UT 199)
  
  
• Surgical Equipment (UT 199)
  
  

All of these technologies exist in the modern world, though not all might be immediately familiar to the GM or the players. The only real difference with more advanced versions of these technologies is that they offer a modest improvement in efficiency (a TL 12 physician can deal with more people per day than a TL 8 physician; a TL 12 radio has 10x range that a TL 9 radio has, but otherwise works the same).

Some technologies are worth a very careful examination though. Computers, for example, should not be allowed to have any additional capabilities beyond what they have now (if you want them to remain “familiar tech”). A TL 9 mobile device is the equivalent of a modern desktop PC (or a vacuum tube driven mega computer) while a TL 9 desktop PC is equivalent to a powerful modern server. At TL 10, a mobile device is as powerful as a modern server while a desktop PC has the power of a modern megacomputer. By TL 12, a small, handheld device has the power of a modern megacomputer. These might sound like huge advances, but I can absolutely imagine what it would be like to have my desktop computer fit into my cellphone: it would game better and browse faster, and I might reasonably run virtual machines on it, but it would not be a life-changing upgrade. In fact, one might question the need to even have the equivalent of a megacomputer in a handheld phone if you’re running AI on it (modern examples of “AI” like siri typically run on big servers and then communicate their information to your handheld computers “thin client,” which means you can access megacomputer “AI” on a phone already. All a TL 12 device would let you do is carry a copy of a SIRI-like technology in your pocket).

Medical technology is often an issue as well, especially when one gets into drugs. The best way to handle it, if you want it to remain simple and familiar, is to treat it the way the generic GURPS book does: physicians can heal X hitpoints per day, and they can “treat problems.” If you get sick, they have appropriate medicines to fix it, and you needn’t worry about anything else. I wouldn’t even bother going through the drug list, but if you did, look at Bio-Techs list of modern medicines and take examples of medicine that look essentially the same, or simply make existing medicines a little better. if something offers +1 to a particular HT roll, consider improving it to add +1 per additional TL, so TL 12 penicillin adds +7 to recover from infection rather than +3; alternatively, they might remove or lessen side-effects: TL 12 aspirinis just aspirin that you can never overdose on and that will never make you sick.

Communication technologies typically get smaller and smaller and with more and more range, but otherwise work the same. Where a modern walkie-talkie, similar to those used by cops, weights 0.5 lbs and has 5 mile range, the TL equivalent might be a tiny thing that weighs 0.05 lbs and has a 10 mile range, but both are vulnerable to electrical interference and anyone on the same band can listen in on the conversation.

Basic tools are especially interesting as they essentially never change; it’s just that if you want to fix TL 12 technology, you need TL 12 tools, which happen to weigh and cost the same as TL 8 tools. So, a TL 12 mechanic has a belt as filled with as many tools as a TL 8 mechanic.

Using this approach alonemakes for a surprisingly approachable, if somewhatboring, TL 12 setting.

Alternate Familiar Tech

I, Mark Phellius of the Independent Republic of New Samarkand, given the insult to my word and honor, demand satisfaction from Phi’kl’ataraph of the N’kan Empire by blood and blade. – Pyramid #3/55, Ultra-Tech Swashbuckling

One can look at the list above as “default choices” for their setting, but just because it appears in the list above doesn’t mean you haveto take it, or that all sci-fi settings mustuse modern assumptions as their base. Many sci-fi settings (especially space opera) use other base assumptions: typical examples include WW2, the age of piracy, or medieval Europe. The approach here is essentially the same: take what are baseline technologies of that era and advance them. If a technology does not exist in the baseline, then it does not exist in the advanced version. You can think of them as TL X+Y, with standard Familiar Tech as TL 8+X (so TL 12 standard familiar tech is essentially TL 8+4)

For example, a TL 12 “Medieval Tech” would have TL 12 swords, TL 12 plate armor, TL 12 Esoteric Medicine, with forest witches using TL 12 herbalism as their excuse for creating especially deadly poisons or performance enhancing “potions.” If we accept the spyglass as a “medieval technology,” then characters might have exceptional optical devices with enormous amplification. If we accept the premise of “beacon towers” as a means of signaling, when we might have enormously powerful light towers that can project their signal for intercontinental or interplanetary distances. If we have compasses, we might accept inertial navigation systems. But if we feel that computers are “out of place” in a medieval setting, then we do not have computers in the setting, of any stripe.

Weird Safe-Tech

Many technological items listed in GURPS books could potentially be biogadgets. Mostly, it’s just a matter of changing their description – a strength-enhancing exoskeleton could be formed of living bones and muscle, a respirator might be a living creature that you breathe through, and a bug detector could resemble a snail with big antennae that hisses when it senses electromagnetic emissions. – GURPS Bio-Tech, page 95, Bio-Gadgets

One reason to play in a sci-fi setting is to play with unique “distancing mechanics.” We often want the setting to feel different, even if it doesn’t operatedifferent. For example, instead of going into a familiar hospital with doctors and nurses, when Luke Skywalker is gravely injured, he goes into a bacta tank and is watched over by medical droids. This sort of approach can make your setting feel unfamiliar without allowing player characters access to unfamiliar levels of resources. It’s especially good for making an alien race feel alien (perhaps humans and aliens have the same levelof technology, but humans use familiar metals and plastics to do familiar things, while aliens use icky carapaces and weird crystals to do familiar things).

GURPS Ultra-Tech is chock full of interesting technologies that, at the end of the day, fulfill a similar niche to other technologies, but are simply substantially weirder. The essential element here is that it should fill the same niches as technologies in the Familiar Tech, only operating in an unfamiliar way. Examples include (but are not limited to):

• Cleaning Gel (UT 38)
  
  
• Digital Shampoo (UT 38)
  
  
• Bioplas Contact Lenses (UT 38)
  
  
• Suitspray (especially Living Suitspray; UT 39)
  
  
• Swarmwear (UT 40)
  
  
• Clothing Belt (UT 40)
  
  
• Scent Synthesizers (UT 52)
  
  
• Sonic Projector (UT 52)
  
  
• Chemsniffers (UT 61)
  
  
• Sensor Gloves (UT 67)
  
  
• Cleaning Swarm (UT 69)
  
  
• Anti-grav Hammock (UT 70)
  
  
• Firefly swarm (UT 74)
  
  
• Smart Rope (UT 6)
  
  
• Construction foam (UT 83)
  
  
• Grav hammers (UT 84)
  
  
• Gravitic Tools (UT 85)
  
  
• Scent Masking (UT 100)
  
  
• Security Swarm (UT 104)
  
  
• Microbot Nanobug (UT 105)
  
  
• Surveillance Swarm (UT 106)
  
  
• Bughunter Swarm (UT 106)
  
  
• Forensic Swarm (UT 107)
  
  
• Paramedical Swarm (UT 201)
  
  

Psychotronics from GURPS Psi-Tech and Bio-Gadgets (BT 95) can also work like this. For example, instead of using radio, a psychic race might have psychotronic crystals that electrokinetically turn sounds into radiowaves, but it’s essentially the same as a radio, or instead of having a wristwatch rad counter, one has a small blobby creature that changes color in the presence of high radiation levels (sort of a canary in a coal mine). A swarm-based race might not pull out a forensics kit at a crime scene, but a forensic swarm, while another civilization might strap on a sensor glove and start carefully going over the entire scene with their “hands.” The effects in all cases are the same. We might also consider using alternate sorts of effects that closely mimic existing technology. For example, instead of using radio waves, we use gravity-ripple waves. This has the disadvantage in that interference with gravity waves is totally different than interference with radio waves, but the general principle is close enough that we might consider them the same, especially if we adjust their ranges or weights to be the same.

Convenience Tech

Where Familiar-Tech pulls unimportant technologies into the background, Convenience-Tech goes a step further and pulls entire problems or setting elements out of the picture. Convience-Tech is any technology that automatically solves a problem so that we no longer have to worry about it. It’s an especially popular element in a lot of cheap sci-fi, as it allows the writers to hand-wave away problems that don’t interest them. Why don’t we see characters in Star Wars or Star Trek swapping out their ammunition, and why don’t they seem to worry about logistic chains? Uh, because their power cells are like really good, anyway, back to shooting people! Pew pew!

Convenience tech often has the capability to enact major societal transformations. If you have a power cell that allows your blaster an effectively unlimited number of shots, for example, then you have the ultimate in energy portability! We could make extremely small, lightweight battery systems, or extremely reliable energy storage systems, making things like renewable energy far more effective. The economics of such a world is potentially very different. However, this is not the point of Convenience Tech. This isn’t to say you can’t explore the implications of one of these technologies, only that once you do, you’re no longer using it as convenience tech, and you should look at the Miracle Tech section below for discussions of how to treat it.

We use Convenience Tech to remove a potential problem, game-stopper, or inconvenience that we don’t want to deal with for whatever reason. The primary reason to do this is to focus attention on what you really want your game to be about. For example, if we want to have super-human androids in a police procedural to explore what it means to be human, super science power cells might explain why it can have super-human strength without running out of battery power in an hour, but you might not want to have a similar convenience tech for forensics, as that’s a major focus of the game. When choosing convenience tech, think about the things you don’twant the game to be about, and use technology to remove them from the equation.

Examples of such technology might include:

• Super-science power-cells (UT 19)
  
  
• Broadcast Power (UT 21)
  
  
• Dedicated AI (UT 25)
  
  
• Grooming Spray (UT 38)
  
  
• Ultra-Tech Clothing Options (UT 38-39)
  
  
• Universal Translator Program (UT 48)
  
  
• Domestic Nanocleanser (UT 69) or Industrial Nanocleanser (UT 83)
  
  
• Food Factory (UT 70) or Food Vats (UT 74)
  
  
• Pressure Tent (UT 76)
  
  
• Survival Watch (UT 77)
  
  
• Air Tube (UT 77)
  
  
• Gecko Adhesive (UT 83)
  
  
• Morph Axe (UT 83)
  
  
• Repair Nanopaste (UT 84)
  
  
• Sonar Probe (UT 84)
  
  
• Universal Tool (UT 85)
  
  
• Any suitcase factory, but especially suitcase nanofac (UT 91)
  
  
• EM Autograpnel (UT 96)
  
  
• Gecko Gear (UT 96)
  
  
• Document Fabricator (UT 96-97)
  
  
• Programmable Wallet (UT 97)
  
  
• Holopaper (UT 97)
  
  
• Disguise Fabricator (UT 97)
  
  
• Distortion Field/Distortion Chip (UT 99)
  
  
• Programmable Camoflage (UT 99)
  
  
• Remote Controlled Weapons (UT 102)
  
  
• Surveillance Sensors (UT 104)
  
  
• Nanobug (UT 105)
  
  
• Multipsectral Bug Sweeper (UT 106)
  
  
• Bug Stomper (UT 106)
  
  
• Neural Veridicator (UT 107)
  
  
• Automed (UT 196)
  
  
• Bandage Spray (UT 197)
  
  
• Biomonitor (UT 197)
  
  
• Diagnostic Bed (UT 197)
  
  
• Plasti-Skin (UT 198)
  
  
• Pocket Medic (UT 200)
  
  
• Medscanner (UT 200)
  
  
• Neural Inhibitor (UT 201)
  
  
• Regeneration Tank (UT 201)
  
  
• Suitcase Doc (UT 201)
  
  
• Regeneration Ray or Pocket Regenerator (Both UT 202)
  
  
• Antirad (UT 205)
  
  
• Hyperstim (UT 205)
  
  
• Crediline (UT 205)
  
  
• Ascepaline (UT 205)
  
  
• Purge (UT 205)
  
  
• Quickheal (UT 206)
  
  

Super-science power-cells, cosmic power-cells and broadcast power all remove the need to worry about tracking the duration of your gadgets: cosmic power cells will never run out, broadcast power is never a problem so long as characters remain within “range,” and super-science power-cells do run out, but it takes them 5x as long, which is the cut-off Action and other frameworks use for “basically don’t worry about it anymore”). There are broader implications with cosmic power cells and broadcast power to consider, however. Cosmic power cells can power cosmic devices, which can unbalance the game (unless, of course, you don’t include them) and might imply a setting with a very different economy. Similarly, broadcast power tethers most gadgets to broadcast stations. If you don’t want this to be an issue, make those broadcast stations broadly available (for example, the entire game takes place in Neo-Chicago, and the power transmitter covers the whole city, and terrorists never try to blow it up).

Medical Convenience tech is a good way of removing downtime for injuries. It might be especially useful in combat-oriented games where characters will inevitably take damage, but we don’t want the players to really worry about anything less than death, similar to how a typical Dungeon Fantasy game works with healing potions and convenient temples full of healing magic. Be careful with regeneration rays and regeneration tanks as they can fix damage “caused by aging,” which can substantially change the setting. You can, of course, simply ignore or remove this effect (like Star Trek does).

Many of the technologies allow a character to carry a whole host of technologies with a single tool: multiscanners are all scanners in one; Universal Tools and Morph Axes are an entire toolkit in a single catalog entry. A disguise fabricator means you can have any disguise you want on command. This often destroys the ability to “specialize,” but ideally, if you use this sort of technology, you don’t want specialists. A Star Trek Engineer with Engineering! might carry a universal tool, so he can always fix any problem he comes across, as opposed to grumbling that he left his electrician kit back in his quarters.

Some of these technologies will make certain elements of gameplay effectively impossible. For example, if you have industrial nanocleanser, it may make forensics virtually impossible, or at least completely different from how it works in the present. If you want the chance of characters “being caught,” then you shouldn’t include a technology like this. The whole point of it is to allow “convenient cover-ups.” However, in a black-ops game where you want to explain why local law enforcement never finds alien bodies of evidence of weird activity, then you can wave your hands and say “Industrial nanocleanser!”

Standard Issue Sci-fi Tech

Sometimes considered a subgenre of its own, space opera is SF with the dials all cranked to 11. The scale is titanic; seldom are characters concerned with the fate of anything less than a whole planet. The range is usually vast. Psychological realism takes a back seat to battles of Ultimate Good against blackest Evil. Scientific realism is back there, too, cowering helplessly as physical laws are broken with contemptuous ease – GURPS Space page 9, Space Opera

Most RPG players have consumed a lifetime diet of basic, mass-market sci-fi and are by now extremely familiar with certain sci-fi tropes. The core concept behind familiar tech is to keep technology on a level that the player will readily know, but the same can easily be said of more unusual technologies that don’t exist in the modern world, but do exist routinely in our fiction. The most common example of this is FTL travel: we do not have it, most people do not begin to understand the physical implications of such travel, but if we limit our FTL to space opera versions of it, everyone will intuitively grasp it, often grasping the finer points of it (“Of course you can’t detect a ship in hyperspace, it’s in a higher dimension!”). This gives us the opportunity to include “unusual” technology without actually placing additional mental costs on our players because these technologies are not actuallyunusual.

However, we must be cautious when we approach such technologies. Most such mass-market sci-fi media borrow their tropes from better sci-fi stories and fail to grasp their deeper implications or simply include something out of convenience without diving too deeply into what that technology might really mean for the setting. Star Wars uses robots because they were virtually ubiquitous in sci-fi at the time, but neglects any of the major questions that those stories often posed; Star Trek included teleporters because filming shuttles going up and down was too expensive, and in so doing, introduced one of the most philosophically provocative sci-fi technologies of all time, as well as a potentially setting breaking technology, entirely by accident.

Stories can get way with this sort of thing by simply ignoring the deeper implications and perhaps distracting their audience from it. Few people who watch Star Wars wonder why droids don’t rise up in rebellion, because it’s not what our focus is on. However, RPGs lack this potential protection as the “audience” interacts directly with the world, so while the writers of Star Trek might simply ignore a possible short-circuit of their story using teleportation technology, a player almost certainly will not, especially if it seems a particularly clever solution. It is here, thus, that most of our problems arise: we wish to include something because it is “in genre” but in so doing, we sow the seeds of our campaign’s ruin.

We can get around this a few ways. The first is through similar techniques that mass-market media use, namely drawing attention towards more interesting technologies or story elements. This works especially well if you can get players on board with your chosen genre (and you outline that genre well). Star Wars, for example, can succeed quite well despite ignoring virtually everything that makes robots interesting because robots aren’tinteresting to Star Wars, they’re just background elements that remind you that you’re in a sci-fi setting. The second is to strip potentially setting-corrosive implications from your technology. If you change teleportation to be some sort of “macro-scale quantum jump” using “reality softening beacons,” you might side-step the issues of identity and you might require that a “beacon” be present for teleportation, which prevents randomly kidnapping people from enemy ships.

Some examples of typical technologies of this sort include:

• FTL Travel
  
  
• Fusion Generators (UT 20)
  
  
• Antimatter Generators (UT 20)
  
  
• Volitional AI (UT 28)
  
  
• Holoventure (UT 40)
  
  
• FTL Radios (UT 46)
  
  
• Holoprojectors (UT 52)
  
  
• Augmented Reality (UT 56)
  
  
• Ultrascanner (UT 66)
  
  
• Sonic Shower Head (UT 70)
  
  
• Food Tablets (UT 73)
  
  
• Hovercart (UT 75)
  
  
• Invisibility Surface (UT 100)
  
  
• Laser Fences (UT 101)
  
  
• Neuronic Restraints (UT 108)
  
  
• Hibernation Chamber (UT 198)
  
  
• Nanostasis (UT 200)
  
  

Many of these are essentially harmless and can easily be included in a game. Food Tablets verge on convenience tech, as do Ultrascanners. Sonic Showerheads are essentially cosmetic. Laser Fences will harm nothing, and may well be too weak, as a sufficiently armored character can simply walk through them.

Some of the others have broader, but easily ignored implications. FTL Travel should violate causality or require mind-boggling levels of exotic matter and might still have weird causal effects, but most people, if they even realize it, happily ignore it. This is also true of FTL communication or some form or FTL sensor, all of which mainly exist to shrink space to manageable levels. It might be worth spending some time explaining why FTL doesn’t violate physics, but I generally find, at best, you get a couple ofgold stars for effort from physics students and nobody else notices.

Fusion generators imply a vastly more productive economy, but this is usually folded in with superior industrial processes to explain why TL 10+ people have more money than TL 8 people.

Some technology implies other technologies. If you have holoprojectors, you might have other forms of holotech, like holographic disguises, or the ability to create holographid distractions. Think carefully about how you present holograms and things like holographic controls. Low resolution or “crackling” holograms, as seen in Star Wars, will not “fool” anyone and are entirely cosmetic; “realistic” holograms, like those seen in Star Trek, have many, many uses and players will certainly use them.

Antimatter Generators imply other antimatter devices, like antimatter explosives and portable antimatter containers, and also raises the question of where one gets such antimatter (hint: it’s probably not the anti-matter mines of Rygel XVI). It also implies highly explosive ships. You can get around this by suggesting that you have a means of creating antimatter but only in vast “generators,” or that anti-matter (mostly likely created and stored in vast solar arrays which convert energy into anti-matter via some high efficiency process) requires very bulky containment and precise manipulation to get the most out of the energy of it. Even so, be cautious with it, because most players readily know that anti-matter is extraordinarily destructive and will want to use it as a means of destruction.

Volitional AI absolutely raises all sorts of sticky moral and philosophical questions, but we often use it as a means of creating interesting optional races. If your intent is to create “robots-as-people,” use some form of “neural net” that makes the robot distinct and something you cannot copy or back-up, and limit them to IQ 10 (with some variation, perhaps, excused by the flexibility of the neural net). If you want to avoid tackling “Robots as slaves” or the “Robot revolution” make them a separate “race” of independent beings. Someone may ask who created them, in which case, it’s best to suggest that they were created many centuries ago by a now extinct race. Taken together, it allows robots to feel no different than any other race (they have some distinct traits, but so do the space amazons, or the shapeshifters of Rygel XVI)

While Teleporters are exceptionally common in sci-fi (from Star Trek to FTL), I would be very cautious in using them. Taken at face value, they also imply disintegrators and replicators, which can be spectacularly unbalancing and require deep thought on how to handle properly. The first thing I would ask yourself is “Why can’t you use shuttles and boarding pods,” and your answer will tell you a great deal about your setting. If you must use them, add some kind of “reality softening beacon” or “reality stablizing screens” to prevent people from just teleporting people off of ships and out into space or what have you.

Some technology implies a lack of other technology. This is especially true of hibernation chambers or nanostasis. Plenty of reasons can exist for using them, but the most common I see in sci-fi is to survive long, interstellar trips. If you introduce the technology for this reason, do not also include FTL unless that FTL is sufficiently slow and the distances sufficiently long to make hibernation chambers useful. In all cases, you must realize that hibernation chambers and their like primarily exist to allow something to survive for very long periods of time, and this creates disjointed narratives. Characters who go on 50 year journeys will return to find a very changed world with everyone they knew dead. Likewise, they make it plausible to find long lost ancestors or heroes of a bygone age and revive them. While common in sci-fi, tread cautiously here, though it should be noted that playerswill rarely abuse this technology. The problem is more that it implies things about your setting that you might not realize.

Some technology, like Ultrascanners and invisibility surfaces don’t necessarily cause problems, but they may have implications on gameplay mechanics. Invisibility surfaces (and chameleon suits) create stealth systems that you typically need a good eye or ready access to superior sensor technology to defeat, and ultrascanners can create a mess of questions about how to evade their detection, typically through super-science Deception jammers.

---

Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 3 - Choosing Available Technology (Part 2: Miraculous Technology)

May 22, 2018, 10:30 pm

≫ Next: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 4 - Customize your Technology

≪ Previous: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 3 - Choose Available Technology (Part 1: Familiar, Convenience and Standard Sci-Fi)

$

0

0

One way to classify SF worlds is to consider what technological miracles are inherent to the setting or story. In this context, we can think of a “miracle” as some area of technology that has a significant effect on the environment in which adventures take place. A technological miracle defines a significant difference between the fictional setting and the real world familiar to the reader or player. – GURPS Space page 29; A Taxonomy of Miracles

The previous sections may make it sound like one should avoid any technology with broader implications at all costs. This is not so! You should, however, only introduce the setting-altering technologies that you wishto introduce, and ensure that all other technologies don’t interfere with them. In fact, “Miracle-Tech” is often the most interestingpart of your setting.

Now, to be clear, you don’t need“Miracle-Tech.” Much sci-fi out there uses space tropes as an excuse for exploring exotic things, much as fantasy uses magic for the same purpose. If you want your hero to rescue a blue-skinned space-babe from a tentacled monstrosity, it’s a little more believable if it’s set on the moon of a dying Jovian world than it is if it’s set in the modern world, but that doesn’t mean it must have transformative technologies and tackle deeper philosophical implications unlessyou want it to. If not, then use the previously mentioned technologies as advised to create a familiar setting without worrying about exotic technologies.

But if you want Miracle-Tech that provokes thought and exploration, the first thing to realize is that nearly anytechnology can be miracle tech. For example, even if we set aside the qualitative differences TL 12 medicine might have and just look at the quantitative differences of a TL 12 physician’s kit, imagine the sweeping implications if modern doctors could treat five times as many patients five times as effectively? That alone would mean many more lives saved and an absolute improvement on standard of living.Most of the work I’ve done in the past there sections is about downplaying the potentially transformative nature of technology. Here, we do the opposite and play it up. The best candidates, however, tend to be fairly obvious. Anything where I tell you to be careful of the broader implications is a great candidate for transformative technology.

The next question is, of course, how muchMiracle-tech, and this is entirely up to you and your setting. You must understand, first and foremost, the mental cost of such a setting, and try to understand your target audience. For some groups, the crazier the better: they want to explore every facet of future technologies and how different and weird the world could be in the future. For others, the weirder the worse, and they’ll react with hostility to things that take them too far from their comfort zone. You’ll have to tailor to what your group can handle. One word of caution on excessive miracle-tech: the weirder your setting, the harder it is for your group to relate or to know what to do. A poster child for this sort of game is Transhuman Space, and the most common criticism made about the setting is “What do I do with it?” You’ll need to double down on your core activity and focus your players attention on it, so they have a starting point from which to jump into the setting. This can require a lot of work on your part as you carefully spoon feed the weird to your players in bite-size pieces until they fully grasp the setting and its implications. If done correctly, though, it can be an exceptionally rewarding experience.

The Miraculous Transformation of a Setting

As more technologies advance beyond what is currently possible, society (and the backdrop for adventure) will become increasingly unfamiliar. At its extreme, the addition of miracles gives rise to settings in which nothing is familiar to the GM or players! Such settings can be interesting, but very difficult to sustain for a lengthy campaign. – GURPS Space Page 30: More Miracle

As stated above, nearly any technology can becomeMiracle-Tech if explored to its logical conclusion. Even innocuous technologies that usually lurks around, undiscussed in the background of sci-fi, like advanced power cells or fusion power could have enormous and far reaching effects on our society. What makes a technology miraculous is its transformative nature. It encourages the exploration of philosophical or sociological questions; such settings are often built around such questions.

The easiest way to make a technology a miracle-tech is to make it ubiquitous and then explore how it would change society. What problems does it solve and, in solving them, change society? What problems does it cause? If the technology might not realistically make a big impact, pair it with innovations that maximize that impact. A good example of this in modern society are cameras: their ubiquity means many crimes can be easily solved or even prevented, but at the cost of privacy. Of course, this is limited by the number of human eyes that can attend cameras, but imagine of facial recognition software also became powerful and widespread, and computers could automatically scan camera footage and pinpoint the location of anyone anywhere with the push of a button. What sort of impact might that make on society? You don’t have to explore every possible implication; it can be enough to look at a single aspect of it (in this case, its impact on crime, and those that ruling elite wishes to present as criminals; or what happens when you combine this with excellent forgery or hacking).

Another, common approach is to allow the technology to change some fundamental aspect of the human condition, something that we build our current worldview around, and have that technology remove it. Antibiotics and vaccines had such an impact: before, disease was virtually ubiquitous; nowadays, the death of an infant is considered a tragedy while in yesteryear, it was quite common.

Topics often tackled include:

• Memories and continuity of consciousness as identity.
  
  
  • Brainwipe Machine (UT 109)
    
    
  • Neural Programming (UT 109)
    
    
• The concept of “character” and the perception of personality as an inherent, rather than mutable, characteristic, and the character has “free will” and can dictate his own actions.
  
  
  • Neural Programming (UT 109)
    
    
  • Dominator Nano (UT 162)
    
    
  • Psych Implant (UT 217)
    
    
  • Puppet Implant (UT 218)
    
    
• Death, and how society builds continuity and legacy around it, as well as how it creates a sense of urgency.
  
  
  • Chrysalis Machine (UT 201)
    
    
  • Uploading Technologies (UT 219)
    
    
• War costs human lives and are fought by humans. Heroes sacrifice their lives to protect others.
  
  
  • Drones (UT 26)
    
    
  • Robots of any sort.
    
    
• The march of maturation, how children become adults, and how adults gain experience, and then age and die
  
  
  • Regeneration Tank (UT 201)
    
    
  • Regeneration Ray (UT 202)
    
    
  • Biofabricator and Growth Tanks (UT 204)
    
    
  • Instaskill Nano (UT 59)
    
    
  • Chipslots (UT 216)
    
    
• Our civilizational ascendancy as the only sapient race
  
  
  • Volitional AI (UT 28)
    
    
  • Uplift technologies (UT 218)
    
    
• Individuals as distinct, concrete entities, as opposed to hive minds, copied mind or minds that can merge and diverge.
  
  
  • Mind Emulation (UT 27) and Uploading Technologies (UT 219)
    
    
  • Sensies (UT 57)
    
    
  • Neural Interface technology (UT 48) and Neural Communication (UT 46)
    
    
• We have a humanoid form and senses that dictate our experiences
  
  
• All cybernetics (UT 207+)
  
  
• Total Cyborg Conversion (UT 27)
  
  
• Implant Seeds (UT 202)

• We exist primarily in a concrete and largely immutable physical world, as opposed to a world we can directly control.
  
  
  • Virtual Reality (UT 53)
    
    
  • Interactive Holoprojection (UT 53)
    
    
  • Neural Interface technology (UT 48)
    
    
• Our economic systems are driven by a lack of material goods, food and energy
  
  
  • Fusion Power (UT 20)
    
    
  • Cosmic Power Cells (UT 19)
    
    
  • Robofacs, Nanofacs, Replicators (UT 90-93)
    
    
  • Food Vats (UT 74)
    
    
• We cannot know the future, and we cannot experience or change the past
  
  
  • Timescanner (UT 67)
    
    

Limiting the Impact of Miracle-Tech

If a technology or gadget seems like it may cause problems in a particular campaign, there are various ways to handle it – GURPS Ultra Tech page 12, Preventive Measures

You may want to include a miracle-tech without actually making huge changes to your setting, or making only specificchanges to your setting. Carefully controlling Miracle-Tech is crucial to getting precisely the setting you want! Fortunately, we have many options to control our miracle tech, many of which Ultra-Tech already discusses, as noted in the quote above, but we can expand this further.

The most common way of limiting miracle-tech in a setting, especially in many sci-fi short-stories or in supers settings, is to limit the setting to a single, or a few, devices, typically prototypes. The technology may have been freshly created, or only a single person knows how to make that technology. For example, there may be only a single sapient robot into the entire world, or only a single gadgeteer super-hero has created a cosmic power-source, which powers all of his super-gadgets and is constantly on the run from villains who want to steal his technology. This approach allows you to explore the philosophical implications of a technology, or allow you to fully embrace its awesome impact, without substantially changing the setting. The two cited examples could fit perfectly well in the modern world.

Another common approach is to limit the scope or scale of the miracle technology. You might remove or limit those aspects of the technology that would be truly transformative. Regeneration rays show up in Star Trek, but seem to do nothing for aging or restoring functions to plot-interesting injuries (typically certain handicaps, like blindness or infertility). You can also limit the scope of a technology: perhaps cosmic power exists, but it can only power certain, specific devices; perhaps replicators exist, but can only produce certain specific gadgets. You can also limit their impact on time. Perhaps instaskill nano “fades” after a couple of hours, or perhaps timescanners can only look back a day.

Finally, while the technology might be potentially transformative, either society or the story itself just ignores those transformative aspects, or doesn’t use their technology that way. Nuclear weapons serve as an excellent example of this, as they had the potential to dramatically shift the world, but instead everyone assiduously avoided using them in such a way as to create a radioactive hellscape; most “standard issue sci-fi tech” falls into this as well: human-level AI in androids might raise all sorts of philosophical questions, but people just don’t treat AI like people, and tend to avoid those questions where possible.

Mixing and matching your controls of miracle tech can help you explore the story that you want, and can be part of the story themselves. There may be very few robots, people might also dislike robots and those choose not to use them further, and their may be limits on how robot minds work (for example, they must reside on a neural net and cannot be easily uploaded or copied); taken together, this might allow you to explore artificial minds without also worrying about the nature of identity or what happens when you introduce total cyborgs, and the social limitations and prejudices themselves might be interesting to explore. Some GMs might bristle at such limitations as “unrealistic,” but such limitations seldom are: our predictions of the future are as often overly optimistic as they are pessimistic. Atomic technology represents a good example of this in both ways. Due to social pressures and unexpected impracticalities, neither the utopian nor apocalyptic predictions have yet come true.

Embracing the Transformation

On the other hand, if your setting is abouta particular miracle tech, or you wish to explore a specific issue deeply, you might want to take the brakes off and really, dramatically change your setting with that specific technology! This has the downside of often creating unexpected results, but if your intent is to explorewhat might happen, those unexpected results may well be a feature rather than a bug. Furthermore, if you follow the rest of the advice laid out in the above sections, you should have enough of a handle on the rest of the technologies that you can afford to unleash one or two.

One way to ensure that a technology makes a huge impact on the setting is to make it ubiquitous. What happens if anyone can go downtown and pick up a fusion generator for the same price as a gasoline generator? What happens when every home has an android or three? What if an entire civilization embraces VR and becomes a “sleeper” civilization, living in a virtual, rather than real, world?

Ultra-Tech has been careful to balance some of the crazier technologies, but there’s no reason you have to accept those limitations. Perhaps AI technology advances rapidly and allows for even smarter technology on relatively simple devices (for example, volitional AI’s IQ is limited to complexity*2 rather than complexity*2-3). Instaskill nano has an upper limit on how many skill points it can grant, but what if it didn’t? What if Timescanners could also scan alternate timelines or the future?

Upgrading miracle technology can be combined with limiting the technology, and often should be so you get exactly the results that you want. Perhaps androids are ubiquitous and can reach super-human levels of IQ relatively easily, but hide this fact from humanity, and cannot “upload” their minds (being locked into neural nets) and cannot “make back-ups,” or timescanners can look into the future and into alternate timelines, but only one such device exists.

Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 4 - Customize your Technology

May 23, 2018, 10:40 pm

≫ Next: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 5 - Putting it All Together

≪ Previous: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 3 - Choosing Available Technology (Part 2: Miraculous Technology)

$

0

0

Once we know what our baseline technology is, we can further tailor our gadgets to our setting. GURPS Ultra-Tech offers us only the most generic material. It will offer you a grav car, but not a grav ferrari or grav pinto; it’ll offer a heavy blaster and a light blaster, but not a Deagle Blaster or a 38 Special blaster. If we want more detail than “car” and “gun,” we’ll have to make it ourselves.

This step is not strictly necessary. In some cases, baseline technology is enough. Consider, for example, a high school drama set in the future: generic technology would be sufficient for capturing the futuristic feel of the game, and you could even inject some Miracle-Tech to force your high school students to wrestle with their changing world. They live in a world where “gun” and “car” is good enough.

But we’ll often find ourselves in a situation where we want more nuance to our technology. This may be because the technology in GURPS ultra-tech doesn’t quite offer what we want. A common example of this might be a desire for a specific model of robot that doesn’t exist in the book. More commonly, we’re fine with the technological principles as outlined in GURPS Ultra-Tech but we want to offer more variety, especially when it comes to our core activity. For example if our game is about space soldiers killing aliens, we might want to offer players numerous guns to choose from and we might want to make the various aliens they fight feel distinct and original.

Supporting your Core Activity

In step one, you determined your core activity. The most common reason to expand your technological options is to support your core activity. For example, if your game is about seeking out new life and new civilizations and then killing them, you’ll want a variety of weapons and armor to choose from, both to handle the different aliens the players might face, and to support different strategies the characters might employ (for example, a “heavy assault” soldier will expect to have different options than a “stealth commando” soldier). Similarly, if we’re focused on hacking, we might expect to face numerous different forms of computer security, and we’ll need different means of getting around those security methods.

The technology we choose must support our preferred core activity, and while Ultra-Tech might do that “out of the box” (it certainly does with weaponry and armor: see Typical Weapons by TL, page UT 148 and Typical Armor by TL, page UT 186), it often doesn’t, and we’ll need to give our players additional things to choose from.

Building a Mechanical Framework

Without diving too deeply into how to build gameplay (a post, or even a series, for another day), when you expand your core activity, you do so by trying to draw attention to certain mechanics by setting up scenarios around them, and thereafter encouraging your players to explore those mechanics in a variety of ways. What we need then is to define what challenges the players will face, what alternate strategies the players can use to get around those, and we'll want to "balance" those strategies so that each strategy is potentially interesting, instead of one exceeding all others.

Combat is typically the most intuitive framework for players to understand and a good example to start with. Ultra-Tech already does a lot of the heavy lifting here for you. Most combat technology within a particular tech level is "balanced" with itself and offers a variety of weapons and armor to choose from, allowing you to create interesting combat diversity "out of the box” (as noted above). In principle, Ultra-Tech tends to balance its weapons and armor around an ever-increasing armor divisor: TL 9 is consistent with most weapons having access to an armor divisor of 2, TL 10 around an armor divisor of 3, TL 11 around an armor divisor of 5, and TL 12 around an armor divisor of 10 (later improvements break this, immediately leaping into making all armor useless; you might instead use Armor Divisor 20, 30, 50 and then 100, if you wanted to continue the same sequence).

We can also see some interesting balance options in place around combat. For example, GURPS Ultra-Tech includes multiple forms of damage. At TL 10, one can access gauss weapons, which have an impressive armor divisor of 3 and deal piercing damage, while lasers are less impressive with armor divisor 2 on their burning damage, and one can load HEMP into relatively small weapons, improve your armor divisor to 10 using an explosive shell. Obviously, the last is the best against well armored targets, while lasers are laughably weak (though lasers have other benefits), but different forms of armor offer different protections. One can add reactive armor to almost anything, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of HEMP rounds; nanoweave armor has improved DR vs piercing attacks, reducing the damage of gauss, while reflective armor reduces the damage of lasers. We can shape the gameplay of the setting by making certain weapons fairly common and commonly defended against while making others more exotic or removing their counters entirely: for example, if everyone uses bullets and explosives, then nanoweave and reactive armor will be common, while if reflective armor is disallowed, then lasers might be especially devastating on the battlefield. One can perform similar tricks at higher TLs by defining how force screens work, what they defend against, etc.

We can also add accessories to our combat "mini-game." For example, personal radar adds a +3 to hit your target, and if you have decent sensors you can easily pick your target out, and with sufficient firepower, destroy them. "If I can see them, they are dead" might be a tactical maxim... but what if you cannot see them? Stealth options like invisibility surfaces, radar stealth and IR cloaking might make you especially difficult to detect, and distortion ECM allows you to spoof your enemy. However, using radar to detect your opponent might give away your position, which means that commando-type characters might engage in a game of electronic cat and mouse, while hulking "tank"-type characters can largely afford to ignore the whole mess if they have sufficient armor to soak the alpha strike of a commando and return fire, giving you a mess of interesting possible tactical options, both within combat, and outside of it.

But what about non-combat arenas? What about focusing our game on computer hacking, viral warfare, the solving of cosmic mysteries, or protecting people from psychic incursions by an elder race. In principle, you apply the same ideas. While I personally recoil from the idea of “social combat,” thinking of various fields as “forms of combat” is a good first step as you can begin by translating familiar mechanical frameworks into a new framework. Unfortunately, these sorts of things often don’t translate well as combat and need an alternative approach. Pyramid #3/21 has an extensive article on hacking, and GURPS Mysteries contains plenty of ideas on how to tackle mysteries of various sorts (though with a focus on murder mysteries); GURPS Monster Hunters also has an interesting research/investigation framework; After the End looks at survival and repair in great detail; Social Engineering gives you the tools you need for social “combat.” Beyond these, you’ll have to do your own homework and find inspiration where you can.

Ultra-Tech has less support for non-combat arenas of interesting mechanics than it does for combat (though it has pretty good support for survival and spycraft). Ultimately, to provide an interesting array of gadgets for a non-combat arena, we'll need to modify existing gadgets, or create our own, and we'll need to do it in such a way that we support an interesting diversity of strategies.

I find a lot of people struggle when it comes to an interesting diversity of strategies. An easy way to think of it is to contemplate various “character classes,” each representing a different approach to the core activity (these can be metaphorical: you don’t need to create specific templates, though people often do). This, like most of the best things in gaming, can be fractal and often are, so within a “class” you might have a variety of tactics, and within those “sub-classes” you might have a variety of tactics and so on. You can go as deep as you like, though I find many games get by fine with a single layer and few go deeper than 3 layers. You can add further complexity by adding new “modes,” which allows a character to approach a given strategy with different concerns, resources and themes, not so much altering his approach to a given tactic, but how he enacts that tactic.

As a start, let me propose a simple “sample” framework of 3 and then a “sample” framework of 5.

Once you choose a rough strategy framework, sketch out how it might look, how players will interface with it, and how they'll encounter choices and how those choices will be presented to them. I try to picture myself playing the game and ask myself why I would choose a particular path, or how I would deal with a particular problem. Try to avoid the trap of making "right or wrong" choices, or situations where if a player chooses a particular path, he finds himself facing insurmountable or excessively easy problems. Ideally, a players strategy should represent a mode of play, which each choice changing how the player interacts with the game.

The Dungeon Crawling Framework

If you play any sort of dungeon crawling game, either tabletop or computer, then you'll readily recognize three archetypal strategies that come up over and over again, remixed in various forms: the Fighter, the Thief and the Mage. If you imagine those archetypal conceptsconverting into other genres, it might be easy to see what sort of gear such a character might choose and how they might try to use that gear, and then build your gear accordingly.

The Fighter Strategy: At its core, the fighter strategy is any one that focuses on what is obviously useful, and maxes it out at the expense of everything else. In combat, this might be damage and armor, while in a hacking game, this might be brute forcing passwords while having the best possible firewalls. You can diversify Fighter Strategies by including multiple forms of the "obvious solution." For example, you can have multiple forms of damage and multiple forms of armor to protect it, so we might have bullet-specialized fighters, beam-specialized fighters, and explosive specialized fighters.

The Rogue Strategy: At its core, the rogue strategy is one that focuses on secondary concerns and lateral thinking to use skill and cleverness to defeat the obvious solution, often through technicalities. In a fighting game, this might use mobility, stealth and awareness to avoid taking damage by never allowing an opponent to reach you where you are vulnerable, and maneuvering yourself so you can strike at your opponent's vulnerable points. In hacking, this might involve researching software exploits unique to the target, tricking people into downloading software that creates backdoors, infecting networks, and hiding your tracks so nobody traces you to strike back. If we want greater diversity of rogue strategies, we create more secondary traits and more lateral avenues of attack; for example, our combat scenario might have stealth/awareness and mobility technology as well as armor that tends to favor one direction over another, and electronic warfare and hacking tricks that allow someone to "shut down" their opponent in some way as well as disrupt their targeting.

The Mage Strategy: At its core, a Mage Strategy is anyone that forces a frame-switch, using some form of limited trick to engage your opponent in some arena other than the standard one in which he is used to fighting in, pulling him into an area where you have an advantage. In D&D, of course, this involves using one-off magic tricks that can only be easily resisted with specialized traits or abilities, or that force your opponent into unexpected win/lose conditions (the classic example being save-or-die spells, but something similar to a mental duel or a curse that needs a special quest to break might also qualify). In a hacking mini-game, this might involve something like using electrokinesis to directly control computers, or defeating your opponent without using a computer at all (tracking them down the old fashioned way and putting a bullet in their rig, or them). If we want diversity of mage strategies, we include multiple possible frame-shifts into new arenas. For our space combat example, we might include psychics, bio-technological terror weapons, and memetic viruses (the hacking example above might also qualify).

The most common means of applying a “mode” in the dungeon fantasy model is with races, the most common being “elf,” “dwarf” and “human,” with elves typically having greater speed and intelligence so attempting to achieve the above three strategies with finesse (elven fighters look like swashbucklers; elven rogues and mages tend to look as we expect), while dwarves typically have greater strength and durability and so “tough out” the three strategies above (dwarven fighters look more like “knights,” while dwarven rogues might look more like engineering and dwarven mages might use their powerful stores of willpower and endurance to cast big, powerful spells, or to work with long-term runic enchantments), while humans typically have greater versatility and so can afford to specialize more deeply in their chosen strategy.

Alternate examples of modes in a combat-oriented game might be different technological bases: we might have cyber-tech assault troopers and commandos (using power armor and bullets), bio-tech assault troopers and commandos (using bio-mecha and poisons), and psychotronic assault troopers and commandos (using pyschokinetic armor and crystal-generated beams). This is, incidentally, one of the mode-themes of Starcraft! For a hacking example, the platform on which the character bases his rig on, or the target server is based on; a real world example (to over simplify) might be Windows machines vs Apple or Linux machines (though this is a little deceptive as Apple and Linux are more closely related than many people realize); games like Netrunner might offer additional inspirations.

The Five Color Strategies

In principle, one can draw inspiration from any number of familiar or unfamiliar games. You could use the five elements of Doaism, or the four elements of Western mysticism. You go with something as simple as Rock Paper Scissors, or look at the rock-scissors-paper within rock-scissors-paper of the surprisingly complex Pokemon for inspiration. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy as emergent themes of Holy vs Unholy and Natural vs Eldritch that you can play with.

Magic the Gathering is a fairly well-known strategy framework, and can also serve as inspiration for your own game design. White strategies involve patience, defense, and making use of mundane solutions well. Green strategies involve maximizing any desirable traits and creating monstrous offense/defense combos that can overpower a foe, but may prove unwieldy. Red strategies involve rapid mobility, quick strikes and offense over everything, creating a glass cannon. Black strategies involve self-sacrifice, and enormous power at a tainted cost, and much of the strategy involves accessing powerful-but-flawed tricks and then either trying to mitigate the flaw or turning it into an advantage. Blue strategies involve defeating your opponent on technicalities, precision and frame-shifts, similar to the mage strategy above.

Hackers using a framework inspired by magic might have the following strategies.

• Green hackers might have more powerful computers and deeper integration into the internet-as-the-internet. They might have access to AI-in-development, allowing their programs to “learn” and improve over time.
  
  
• Red hackers might have dangerously destructive programs that give them an enormous edge over their opponents but at a risk of burning out their own computer, and may have the capacity to do physical damage to other computers.
  
  
• Black hackers use very destructive exploits that more blatantly violate the law than the rest, often including viruses and bot-nets stolen from others. They make hacking harder for everyone. They excel at turning your computer against itself.
  
  
• Blue hackers have a detailed knowledge of the intricacies of the entire network; they often know of old, outdated architectures that many backbone systems still run on, allowing them to finesse their way through security. They also excel at hiding their presence.
  
  
• White hackers have detailed security knowledge and may well work as security. They excel at defending their own computers and networking with other hackers. They, however, have almost exclusively legal or semi-legal software.
  
  

Customizing Gear

Once you understand how your “gameplay framework” works, you’ll need to make sure that you have sufficient technology to handle a variety of strategies, allowing you to create diverse gameplay. Ultra-Tech, being generic, has highly generic technology in it, and has a limited ability to anticipate your choice. However, you can adjust your framework to take advantage of existing gear within the book. GURPS Ultra-Tech has quite a diversity of infiltration, detection and combat gear. It also has interesting strategies built into their microbot swarms, cybernetics and nano-tech. If you're willing to expand your collection, Bio-Tech and Psi-Tech offer some pretty diverse options too! If Ultra-Tech lacks the technology you look for (for example, it defines very little in the way of computer security or hacking), then you’ll need to build your own gear.

This is where I find most people panic. They don't have a proper gear-designing book. Vehicles 4e is vaporware and there's no easy way to look up gear stats on wikipedia. So what can you do? Well, first, you can modify existing gadgets, or you can create your own wholecloth.

Creating your Own Gear

At the prospect of creating their own gear, many people freeze up, lacking a context, a system by which create said gear. To compensate for this, allow me to reveal for you the Ultra-Tech design system: They mostly make it up.

The truth is that we cannot know for sure what a futuristic device does, how it works, or how efficient it will be. So we make guesses or, in the case of super-science stuff, apply arbitrary values. We can acquire these arbitrary values from a few interesting places.

We can convert real-world vehicles from real-world values, after a quick trip to wikipedia and a few basic conversion tricks that are either commonly known, or easily picked up. A similar trick can be done with sci-fi gadgets. For hard sci-fi, we can look to real world physics, prototypes, and back-of-the-envelope calculations. A good place to start for these are Atomic Rockets, anything by Luke Campbell, or the videos of Isaac Arthur. For super-science gadgets, most series include technical volumes or wikis where such numbers as weight and effectiveness can be found or at least extrapolated.

But are these values actually "correct," per GURPS, given how GURPS works? I see this sort of question asked a lot, or at least implied. For example, are Star Destroyers "actually" a mile long? Do tricorders really work the way Star Trek describe? The answer is "yes and yes." Of course, some people argue that these numbers or values are "ridiculous" and more realistic numbers would be such and such; if you feel that way, use those numbers. If you must adhere to a system, use the metatronic generator rules: create the device, find the cost, and determine the cost as per those rules.

Many people have this sense that GURPS has this coherent system lurking behind its rules, and to be sure, it has a more coherent system than most other games, but it's far from a true physics engines that our little minds have merely failed to grasp. For example, the numbers for fusion generators in GURPS Spaceships suggest that, pound for pound, they are about twice as efficient as fission reactors, but GURPS Ultra-Tech suggests, pound for pound, that fusion is 10 to 100 times as effective. The force screens of ultra-tech are far more effective than they should be, given the values given in Spaceships, and you cannot replicate hardsuits with the new armor design rules. In short, GURPS isn't entirely coherent with itself. There may be numerous reasons for this, but it's also not important. What matters is not that your game is "coherent" with GURPS, but that it is coherent with itself.

Focus on ensuring that your system is balanced, that values make sense given what you want, and if you're concerned about mingling your own gadgets with GURPS gadgets, take those into consideration too.

Modifying Existing Gear

These modifications can be added to just about any gadget that has both a specified cost and weight (i.e., not software, drugs, etc.) – GURPS Ultra-Tech page 15, Integrating and Modifying Gadgets

Alternatively, you can take existing gadgets and apply changes to them.

The largest concern here is typically balance; after all, Pulver designed what he did for a reason, right? Well, as established above, I don’t actually believe this to be true. For example, if you allow all countermeasures to exist, TL 10 lasers are pretty easy to defeat, while TL 10 slugthrowers with the ETC option and TL 10 ammunition is pretty lethal and hard to beat. Ultimately, Ultra-Tech is necessarily arbitrary, and built around a fairly generic concept of “balance,” and so may not work for your specific needs,so I wouldn’t count on Ultra-Tech to do your balancing for you. You’ll need to carefully balance your own technology, especially if you want your framework to be especially compelling.

Still, a few benchmarks for balance might be handy, and Ultra-Tech serves as a good foundation for your design. For example, you don’t need to throw out all the weapons of gadgets of Ultra-Tech and start from scratch. You can use them as a jumping-off point. Instead of making new weapons, use the weapons that exist in Ultra-Tech and build variations. If you need new robots, take existing ones and tweak them. Ultra-Tech already has numerous options for doing just this, including making devices more attractive, more rugged, lighter, pricing tools based on quality, integrating additional gadgets into them, etc. Ultra-Tech also includes more unusual options scattered through the book, such as making them out of Smart Bioplastic (UT 170), Living Metal (UT 171) or Memory Metal to give it multiple “modes” (UT 97). Ultra-Tech began as a device design book, and only later converted to a catalog of read-to-use technology, thus most of the devices were built for your modifications. Furthermore, if you’re willing to look into new books, you can use Psychotronics from Psi-Tech, or Bio-Gadget options from Bio-Tech to further customize your gear.

If the tools Ultra-Tech offers are insufficient, you’ll have to adjust technology on your own. The easiest way to do this is to make trade-offs on whatever aspects of technology you have available. All gadgets have a weightand a cost; software has cost and complexity (and memory storage, though GURPS doesn’t get into this much); robots have a traits, point costs and dollar costs, as do cybernetics. Weapons have their weapon stat-line, and vehicles have their vehicular stat-line. All items might have a legality rating, which can change too.

Generic gadgets have very few things they can really change. Most have some measure of effectiveness that you can mess with (for example, a lockpick allows you to pick locks; a better lockpick might grant a +1, +2 or +TL/2), and they also often have power requirements. Cost, weight and power requirements all highly depend on the broader context you’re balancing the devices around. Power requirements will generally be a largely cosmetic concern; weight matters most for encumbrance (though if we include “size” in weight, whether or not the device is an effective holdout can represent an interesting option to play with), and cost mostly matters for budget. If you need more points on which to vary a gadget, you can simply create more. For example, if you need a wide variety of lockpicks, you can include a wide variety of locks; type A lockpicks might only pick type A locks, or might have a bonus to pick them; type C lockpicks might be able to pick type A and type B locks, but be too large to easily fit into your pocket, while type D lockpicks gain a big bonus to pick any locks but burn out when they’re done, making them “one shot.”

Software works largely like generic gadgets, except complexity and/or memory requirements replace weight as the limit on “how much you can carry,” and this naturally depends on the sort of computers available. A complexity 5 program is “heavy” if you only have complexity 5 computers, enormous if most people can only access Complexity 4 computers (you’ll need special computer options then) and inconsequential if everyone has access to Complexity 7 computers. Complexity ultimately determines how many programs someone can run, so an interesting conceit is to worry about computer memory and how many computer programs one can fit onto a computer, and also worry about how many a character can run. For example, a complexity 4 computer can only run two complexity 4 programs, but perhaps it can store10, so you can swap out what 2 programs you’re running. Of course, while we’re modifying gadgets, nothing stops you from changing how complexity and memory works. You need to know how many programs a character can acesssand how many he can use. If you want this to matter, but you want different values than the default values offered in Ultra-Tech, change them. Or, of course, you can ignore them if they don’t interest you and focus on other things that matter.

Robots and Cybernetics are, perhaps, the easiest to modify, and the most self-balancing. Just build new a new template. Use whatever pricing you feel appropriate (in many campaigns, players will purchase robots and cybernetics exclusively with points, so it won’t matter). You can include additional concerns here, like power-drain or “humanity loss” as you see fit, but you’re on your own for balance concerns (a suggestion for power drain, though is to treat power as fatigue points and price the cost of power drain around fatigue costs). Demi Benson’s “Living Better with Cybernetics” in Pyramid #3/51“Tech and Toys III” also offers some interesting insights into the thought processes behind cybernetics, and if you’re willing to dive into older works, GURPS Robots from 3e and Reign of Steel offer interesting ideas and technological concepts for building your robots around.

Weapons and armor have complex statlines around which to balance them. In general, damage should be balanced around DR. If you allow more than 20 damage in with a typical shot, then that attack is lethal. If the armor provides 6 DR (times the armor divisor of the attack) for every die of damage, then it’s completely invulnerable to the attack. Understanding this, you can play around with the values as you see fit, and add additional considerations (even impenetrable armor can be defeated if it has gaps…). You can also apply arbitrary values against specific forms of damage; Ultra-Tech certainly does this with things like Beam Adapted Armor (UT 190) and Electro-magnetic armor (UT 187); while no special option exists for piercing penetrators, like bullets, armor like Reflex or Nanoweave provides more protection against those forms of attacks than others, so you can really justify armor that’s better against any specific form of attack that you want.

Beyond damage, you have a whole statline you can play with. Christopher Rice breaks this down nicely in “It’s a Threat” in Pyramid #3/77“Combat.” While this is geared towards Dungeon Fantasy, we can still make some loose observations. A point of accuracy is worth about as much as a point of damage, so they can be traded back and forth. Rate of fire is worth a multiple of damageprovided it applies a bonus, which means roughly every +4 ROF is worth is worth about the same as doubling your damage. I would avoid altering recoil except in extreme cases (it tends to be driven by the physics of the weapon). Weight and ST have a close relationship with one another, and altering ST is worth a little less than accuracy (it affects skill, but only situationally); bulk has a similar relationship. Number of shots isn’t terribly important, and weight or cost can be modified quite liberally. Naturally, beam weapons have their own design system in Pyramid #3/37“Tech & Toys II”

Most people hesitate to touch Vehicles because of the lack of GURPS Vehicles for the new edition, and I can certainly appreciate this position, as it’s one I hold myself, but you cantreat vehicle statlines the way you would treat weapons. For example, if your main concern is the Action chase rules, +1 handling is roughly equal to +1 to chase rolls gained from speed, so any speed change worth +1 is close to the same value as +1 handling. I would be cautious messing with stability rating, but +1 or -1 is not out of the question, and worth about the same as handling. The same goes for size modifiers. Endurance is largely cosmetic and can be messed with as you please. Cargo is a slightly greater concern, but should be no problem to change by 10-20%. “Cargo” can also be seen as “spare space” in which you can place other gadgets, if you want to add things like force screens, pop-up weapons or distortion chips. You canuse GURPS Spaceships to “build vehicles,” but I suggest caution here, as it plays poorly with non-SS-designed weapons, and can lead to some really weird results. I personally have better results taking existing vehicles and modifying them.

You needn’t limit your modifications to GURPS Ultra-Tech either. If there’s an existing technology that’s very close, you can borrow it and “tech it up.” For example, many of the weapons from Star Wars are drawn directly from real-world weapons, with a few gadgets slapped on and shooting blaster bolts rather than bullets. You could probably take those real-world weapons and swap out the piercing stat for tight-beam burning and give them an armor divisor of 5 and most people probably wouldn’t know the difference. Likewise, you can probably take real-world vehicles and apply some slightly different technologies to them (for example, removing the rotor from a helicopter gunship and replacing it with contragravity, and replacing its weapons with ultra-tech weapons of a similar weight) and use the resulting stat-line without too many problems. If your intent with your sci-fi game isn’t “to explore the implications of technology,” then realistic depictions of that technology are not a priority; it’s often the case that GMs want to mimic a particular genre (swashbuckling pirates, only IN SPAAACE; WW2, only IN SPAAACE!); if that’s so, startingwith the gear of that genre and then adding some ultra-tech wizardry to it already takes you a pretty long way to getting nicely customized gadgetry.

Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 5 - Putting it All Together

May 24, 2018, 11:54 pm

≫ Next: Ultra-Tech Framework Post-Script and Comments

≪ Previous: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 4 - Customize your Technology

$

0

0

Once you’ve created your technological framework, you need to get it into your players’ hands. Players will interact and learn about your framework via a setting description, a gear catalog or alternate rules; optionally, they might use it during character creation (but we can treat this as a gear catalog).

Setting description is typically the most key point, as it will occur for any and all sci-fi settings, whether or not the players even have access to a gear-list. Typically, Familiar-Tech is not worth mentioning at all; it should be impliedin the basic premise of “Like X but in the future.” The exception to this is Weird Safe-Tech; you don’t need to be very explicit about it, but painting the technology’s differences helps. Convenience-Tech and Standard Issue Sci-Fi Tech also doesn’t need a great deal of discussion, at least not in the setting description, as they are meant to be familiar or to simply remove problems. These tend to come across nicely in the broader descriptions of the setting itself. In short, unless it drastically changes how the characters interact with the setting beyond default assumptions, it doesn’t need to be stated outright; it can be implied instead.

Miracle-Tech definitely needs a discussion and should be set aside and highlighted. These are the technologies that largely makethe setting. You should also discuss whatever limitations are in place, or any variant rules you’re using, or how people see that technology. This can and should be fairly explicit.

When it comes to a gear catalog, preface it with any sweeping mechanical changes, including the base TL, the effectiveness of power cells, special rules for handling computer programs, etc. The gear catalog, after that, should tackle onlythe things that matter to your game, typically things that the players will want to get for their characters. This can be as detailed as you want, and may be divided up into different markets (“This technology is available only to Alphan players; this technology is available to everyone, but Betans get a 10% discount”) and sections. Use GURPS Dungeon Fantasy or GURPS Action as a guideline.

If your campaign framework revolves around something innovative or requires substantial changes to the rules, make sure those rules are available to the players. For example, if you have detailed hacking rules, players should be able to access those so they know what it is that they need to buy.

Ultra-Tech Framework Post-Script and Comments

May 28, 2018, 12:25 am

≫ Next: Psi-Wars Power Technology

≪ Previous: Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 5 - Putting it All Together

$

0

0

I wrote my Ultra-Tech Framework articles with a couple of readers/patrons in mind, who often had questions about how I put together my own technology frameworks in my campaigns, so I thought it might be nice to loosely document how I handled it.  It is, of course, more art than science, and I could do an entire series on game design elements, but I hoped it was useful.

Given that it might be useful to them, it might be useful to you as well, dear reader, so I thought it might be nice to make it generally available, and I was right!  It seems quite well received, and it generated quite some discussion.  I wanted to tackle, broadly, some of the comments and questions I received over the course of the series.  All the questions are paraphrased, because I received many of them on Discord, and I didn't save them at the time, thus they are remembered, rather than directly quoted.  Apologies if this makes some inaccurate.

You say to start with the background tech and move on the big, setting-changing tech.  Shouldn't it be the other way around?

This is an interesting point.  First, I must say that I got this sort of question from the broken up articles, rather than the complete document, as seen on Patreon.  I imagine this is so because if you see that advice in isolation, you might become confused.

The first step in the ultra-tech creation process should be defining your concept and framework.  So, yes, you're "starting" with what makes your setting distinct and different.  Once you know that, for example, you're going to feature advanced AI in a campaign that focuses on murder mysteries, then you move on to detailing your technology.  Only once you have this worked out, I recommend starting with the simplest choices and moving on from there: pick your tech level, lay down the most basic tech and work out the tech at increasing complexity and concern.  This is the point where some people object: why not do this in reverse?  Hit the "most important part first."

I recommend starting simple to establish a familiar, setting baseline.  The "trick" of coming up with the setting defining technology was handled in the concept phase.  Now, we're working out things like setting implications.  But to understand the setting implications of a setting, we need to know the setting.  Thus, I recommend that as a foundation.  You might see the earlier steps as "getting the obvious stuff out of the way."  In our AI-who-solves-crime example, we know the TL (say, 10), and we know the feel (more or less like modern procedural crimes, but with an AI).  So we know that we should mostly have familiar TL 10 tech, we can have a few convenience techs (we might make forensics a little easier so a single duo can do quite a lot of it on their own), and certainly some standard sci-fi tropes, like hover-cars and beam weapon side-arms.  Now that we have an idea of what our setting is like, it's safer for us to go into what the AI is like, and how it impacts the setting.

This has several advantages.  First, I find it tends to "tame" the concept of the setting.  If you challenge a GM to come up with a TL 12 space opera, most will freeze, because there's way too many choices available, most of which are crazy.  So we start by removing the crazy and adding the TL 12 we find most palatable, the "familiar" technology that helps us grasp how our setting will work.  Once we have that bedrock, once our setting is in our grasp, then we can bring in the crazy.  Miracle tech also tends to be labor intensive.  You need to consider where things go wrong, or how players might use or abuse your technology.  If you use up your energy and time working out the details on your miracle tech, you have no game or setting to run; if instead, you use up your time and energy on all the rest of the tech, you can at least run the baseline setting you created.  Our AI procedural is at least a TL 10 procedural if we don't have AI.

This isn't to say you can't work that way.  If you don't like a specific piece of advice in a recipe or an advice column, but the rest of it is good, use the rest of it.  I often instruct stumped writers to "write what they know."  If you know your setting is going to have advanced AI and that's where your focus is, write that.  If you don't know what the rest is, you can "grab and go," especially if you understand the concept of familiar tech, convenience tech and standard-issue sci-fi tech.  So, we know we're going to have super-advanced AI, and we can work that out in detail.  What's the rest like? Oh, TL 10, but with a modern feel.  So, you can use modern cars, only they hover; you can use modern guns, only they deal burning (2) damage, or whatever.  If it's not important, you can "fill in the blanks" later.  This isn't bad advice; it just pre-supposes you have a good handle on the concepts I outline in my series.

This seems really complicated. Why do you have to make things so complicated? Why do you overprep? Why can't you just fudge it, like I do?

First, I want to say up front that there are many "right" ways to run an RPG.  I've got my style and approach and it works very well for me, and given my views and patronage, I have a sufficient audience that I can safely conclude that my approach has a sufficient audience to justify my continued blogging.  But that doesn't mean that I expect my approach to have universal appeal.  If you don't want detailed and richly complex works, then you're probably in the wrong place.  I understand that my "start simple, get complex" approach can feel like a bait-and-switch, but this is how complexity is built: it emerges naturally from simplicity.

My mother told me to go to the store and buy a dozen eggs and that if they had milk, to buy two.  I returned with 24 eggs and no milk.  She asked me why I bought so many eggs, to which I replied "They had milk!"

That said, there's an important principle that I want to highlight: humans tend to be good at hiding complexity.  We do ridiculously complicated things all of the time without being consciously aware of what we're doing.  If asked a difficult math question, a student might respond, correctly, with the answer, without knowing how he arrived at that answer: he might remember it from when someone else answered it, or the answer might simply make sense to him.  Even so, most teachers will dock you points if you cannot "show your work," which means to go through each step and explain how you came to those conclusions. The difference between logic and intuition is that the former is explicit while the latter is implicit, but both deal with complicated things.

The problem arises if someone doesn't understand the process at all.  How do you teach someone about the complexities involved.  An intuitive person cannot; they can only show the person what they do and hope the other person gets it (this is similar to memorizing all the answers to a math test).  A logical person can explicitly explain each step.  This makes it a more powerful teaching tool: you can understand the principles behind handling complexities, and then apply them on your own.

People don't always like facing complexities, but they are there whether you want to admit them or not.  My article is explaining what I've seen done in every successful ultra-tech game.  A simpler way of explaining it, the sort of advice I more often see is "Pick a concept, throw out all the tech you don't need, and just keep it simple.  Oh, and be honest about the implications of the technology you do choose."  Well, how do you pick out a concept?  What tech do I need and what don't I need and how do I handle them?  What is "simple" and is it always advisable to keep it as simple as possible? If so, why do we have so many different types of guns? Wouldn't it be simpler to have only a single gun type? And what about the realist/honesty of technological implications? If I introduce a technology am I stuck with all of the "implications?" Is there no good way to control those? Is there a good way to figure out what those are?

When I write, I'm trying to outline all the possible steps, cases and tools you might need.  Sometimes, I worry I'll come across as patronizing in how much I try to simplify matters, and worry that I assume to much foreknowledge.  I find a lot of people who criticize me assume far, far more foreknowledge, usually either because they're fairly experienced (but unconscious of that experience), or they simply dismiss the levels of details I offer ("There's nothing wrong with having just one gun, or faking all the different guns by using a single stat-line and making up bonuses and maluses on the fly"), which is fine, but as an article that seeks to help as many people as possible, I need to assume less foreknowledge not more, and assume more interest in detail, not less.

It's easier to ignore uninteresting details than it is to fill in blanks, thus more useful to people to be overly detailed rather than not detailed enough (though, naturally, this must be balanced for readability).

How can you say that increasingly complex computers aren't transformative? I think having a server in hand is pretty transformative!

I didn't say it wasn't, I said it didn't have to be.

This highlights a core and important principle: this series isn't about what is, it's about what you want.  It's about building a setting to your specifications.  You need to pick and choose your technology to highlight the story elements you want, and the rest, where possible, should remain familiar.  Advanced computers are a good example of a technology that can believably stay familiar.

Let's break down the specifics of that.  If you pull out  your mobile phone and look up a location on google maps, your phone doesn't know where that location is.  It just has a link to an API that talks to a server that returns that information to you. This is called a thin client.  As mobile devices get better, they get thicker clients, but most of that "thickness" is in clever display tricks (like handling screen rotation) or caching information than it is in complex calculations.  Siri does not live on your phone, she lives in a server, but she can talk to your phone.

If you suddenly had a phone with the capacity of a server: suddenly, you could have Siri and Google Maps loaded directly into your phone and that's... convenient, but not much more.  The capabilities of someone with a mobile device in such a setting aren't dramatically different from the capabilities they would have in the present.  A good example of this would be desktop computers, which in the 1990s could engage in gaming, hacking, programming and surfing the internet and today, can engage in gaming, hacking, programming and surfing the internet.  The gaming looks better today, hacking uses different tricks and different exploits, and the internet is better and more useful than it was, but there's no transformative change here.  If you asked someone in the 1990s to imagine the capabilities of the computers of the early 2020s and he imagined them like the present "only incrementally better," he'd be pretty spot on.

This doesn't mean that I believe computers cannot be transformative.  Our 1990s fellow would be dead wrong when it came to how mobile devices would revolutionize the world, as well as the impact of things like social media.  If we create new applications of our technology, that will have implications.  The mobile device turned the desktop into something you could carry around with you, which meant that the world became far more interconnected than before.  Imagine a TL 12 computer that fits in your skull and talks directly to your mind that is as powerful as a modern server, or imagine a TL 10 computer that fits in a pair of glasses and projects images directly in your field of view, layering a digital reality over the real one ("Augmented Reality") and it has the power of a mobile device.  Imagine a desktop computer that contained programs that weren't designed, but that were, instead, taught, and could be "taught" in seconds.  This could automate away almost any task in but moments, and would have major implications.  Any similar technologies introduced into a setting have the potential to be a transformative technology around which your story could be told.

The point of my article is not to dismiss the transformative power of computers, medicine, weapons, or any technology you want, but to help you tame that transformative power so you can highlight the transformations you want.  If you want to explore how future computers will change us (a typical theme of cyberpunk), then do that.  But if you don't, then you shouldn't.  Most sci-fi out there assumes future computers won't completely transform how we live our lives, and that's fair.

Speaking of which:

I think technology should be depicted as realistically as possible; ignoring the transformative nature of any technology is unrealistic, thus to be avoided.

Nobody actually said this, but it felt like an undercurrent of commentary from a few specific quarters.  I've seen this sort of commentary and themes before, especially when I get into discussions about "what sci-fi is."  So I want to address these quickly; this will necessarily involve some definitions, which not everyone will agree with, but I offer them primarily to model how you can handle various forms of science fiction.

First, science fiction is, to me, any fiction that explores the implications of science and technology.  A lot of people like to use the terms "hard" and "soft" sci-fi to define a continuum of how "realistically" or "respectfully" you handle the science and technology vs how loose and fast you play with those rules, but traditionally "hard sci-fi" was fiction about the hard sciences, like chemistry or physics, while "soft sci-fi" was fiction about soft sciences like psychology or sociology.  The desire for intense realism in sci-fi, the other use of the term "hard" in sci-fi is associated with a subgenre that I would like to dub "futurism." This is not a discussion about a scientific concept, rather an attempt to synthesize all the various advances going on in the present, and attempting to predict what the world will look like in the future, generally (but not necessarily) in narrative for,.  Fans of this genre want their fiction to be as realistic as possible and as authentic as possible.  They will dismiss blue-skinned space princesses as utterly unrealistic, and will concede that while terraforming Mars is possible, will argue that it will not happen on short time tables and might even question whether or not it would be practical given the feasibility of orbital colonies and so on.

I point out this genre not to suggest that it's a "bad" genre, but to point out that it is not the only possible genre, or even desirable in your specific case.  Many fans of futurism seem to behave as though their genre is the best or most desirable.  I'm a big fan of Isaac Arthur, and in his world-building discussion, he's as guilty as the rest of doing the same, while I'm quite sure that if you pointed it out, he would realize he finds perfectly unrealistic works quite entertaining. Isaac Asimov is famous for this.  For example, his Foundation series features atomic ray guns and force screens and interstellar civilizations spanning into the deep future, but also printed newspapers; his robots series depicts what is essentially the 1950s and 1960s, only with robots.  In neither case was his fiction "bad."  It was just focused.  Asimov wanted to talk about the cycles of civilization and the idea of psychohistory (foundation) or the implications of robotics and AI programming (I, Robot).  Good sci-fi authors try to pick and choose what they want to talk about.  There's nothing wrong with this approach.

My series is about how to minimize your workload and to focus down on the technologies you want for your setting.  This is not to say it cannot handle the "futurism" genre, but that there are more genres than that, and futurism is a remarkably unforgiving genre (it seems to exist primarily so smart people can criticize works in the genre, which is not meant to disparage it: by criticizing works of the genre, you sharpen your own knowledge, provided your criticisms are accurate).  Thus, I disagree with the assessment that "realism is always better."  Targeted realism that helps you tell the story you want to tell is "always better."  Unimportant realism represents excessive details threatens to get in the way of your storytelling unless handled very well. There are some genres were no amount of realism is "unimportant," even if it derails the story you were trying to tell, because that means that the story you were trying to tell was the wrong one.  But this is not the approach every GM will take, nor should you feel compelled to follow it.

This is cool!  Let me tell you about my setting and the technology I used then!

I know the boorish gamer who goes on and on about his character, setting or campaign is a time-honored trope, but I personally never liked the idea of finding such people "boring" or "irritating." I think if you don't want to hear the stories of other players, you're in the wrong hobby!  As a GM, I love it when my work inspired others, either to create their own works, to compare their works to yours, or just offer up their own.  It means my work spoke to them, and I like it when they speak back to me.

What I'm trying to do with my blog is encourage more people to build settings, to master the intricacies of GURPS and campaign design.  Worked examples, whether using my material directly or not, are always welcome. Always.

There have been several such works posted in comments.  You can go back and sift through my posts to find them, but if you post a link to a blog post or a google document here in the comments, or just send it to me, I'll link it here.

Psi-Wars Power Technology

June 9, 2018, 2:02 am

≫ Next: On the Demise of Star Wars

≪ Previous: Ultra-Tech Framework Post-Script and Comments

$

0

0

As discussed last month, I wanted to dive into the Psi-Wars technological infrastructure in greater detail, carefully defining how everything works.  Today, I have power technology.  There's a companion post on Patreon for all $3+ patrons, which goes into making this technology compatible with GURPS Vehicles, looks at the values behind the technology and the design process I used to come to those conclusions, and then looks at some additional technology that I don't discuss here (technology unique to artifacts or ancient civilizations).  So if you're a patron, check it out!

Power Technology

Like most advanced societies, most of the Psi-Wars galaxy runs on electrical power (though a few ancient civilizations ran on psionicpower!). Power generators create this electricity, which is transported along cables, and then used to power everything from small appliances to towering industrial infrastructure. However, the power technology of Psi-Wars has advanced to include fusion reactors, advanced power cells, and high efficiency energy transportation technology.

Power Plants

Fusion

Fusion is an older technology, typically found in older settlements, on older ships, or where power generation needs to remain constant over long periods of time. It represents the common fusion technology described in GURPS Ultra-Tech where a relatively small store of hydrogen can be turned over a very long period of time into useful energy. Fusion generators tend to be exceedingly heavy, thanks to the intense pressures and heat they need to generate to kickstart a stable fusion process. While the power generated is not as great as generated by Hyperium Fusion, it can remain stable for literally centuries. Thus, vast dreadnoughts with considerable power needs and an inability to refuel regularly and no major concerns for a heavy reactor often make use of fusion reactors.

Fusion reactors are too large for a portable reactor: the smallest weigh over a ton, thanks to the amount of shielding and pressure necessary to keep such a reactor running. Thus, fusion reactors tend to be mounted in large, heavy vehicles (typically starships) or as static installations.

Hyperium Fusion

Hyperium is a dense, metallic liquid that can be found deep in some planetary cores, or in oceans deep below the cloud layers of certain gas giants. When properly treated, Hyperium can fuse like hydrogen, but at much lower temperatures and pressures, allowing a form of "cold fusion." This generates far more energy than standard fusion and a hyperium reactor can be built at a fraction of the mass and cost of a standard fusion reactor. The price of Hyperium is that the process "burns" through fuel at a much faster rate than "hot" fusion, and thus the reactor needs to refuel much more often than a fusion reactor, on the order of days rather than years. Furthermore, hyperium is much less common than hydrogen and thus more expensive. Nonetheless, the Hyperium Mining Guild ensures that the galaxy has a steady, if pricey, supply of the powerful substance.

Unrefined hyperium, in its natural state, is only metastable and thus extraordinarily explosive. It has an REF of 6, making it slightly more destructive than thermobarics. Psi-wars has more destructive explosives, but insurgents often make use of it when creating improvised explosive. Unrefined hyperium can be used normally in a hyperium reactor. Refined hyperium has had additives that stabilize it, and to use its mass more efficiently in hyperium reactions. It only has REF 1 and weighs half as much per gallon as unrefined hyperium. The refinement process can be reversed with a Chemistry roll, resulting in half a gallon of unrefined (and highly explosive) hyperium.

Hyperium Fusion Technologies

Semi-Portable Hyperium Reactor: This relatively small reactor contains a space for five gallons of hyperium fuel, which provides the reactor with enough fuel for 20 days of constant use. $75,000, 300 lbs.

Hyperium Fuel: Hyperium fuel can be mined from gas giants, deep planetary cores and, for the daring, from certain exotic stars themselves! Hyperium in its unrefined state is highly explosive and has an REF of 6. When refined, it has an REF of 1. 1 gallon of Hyperium costs $100 and weighs 6 lbs (for refined) or 12 lbs (for unrefined).

Solar Power

Solar power is not a preferred form of energy generation in the Psi-Wars galaxy; it takes up far more space, and it generates less energy than fusion and presents a greater target for raiders or attackers. Nonetheless, it offers "free" energy and isn't especially expensive to build. Many non-military, non-mobile installations, such as space colonies of planetary farms make use of solar panels to handle their modest electrical needs.

Solar Power Technologies

Semi-Portable Solar Power Array: A small generator that unfolds into a large solar panel that can generate “external power” sufficient to power a small farm or nearby habitat. Requires steady sunlight! The solar panel array is 100 square feet. $5,000, 100 lbs.

Energy Storage

In cases where a generator cannot be carried with you (and a hyperium reactor can be remarkably small!) the people of Psi-Wars turn to power cells. The power-cells of Psi-Wars use a "caged plasma charge" technology similar to, but much more stable than, that found in plasma grenades. Treat Psi-Wars power cells as superscience power-cells, holding 5x as many "charges" as normal power cells from Ultra-Tech.

Power cells aren't typically explosive, but they can be changed into improvised explosives by those who know how. This requires both an Electricianroll and an Explosives (Demolition)roll to use the parts of the powercell to construct a proper plasma explosive. The resulting explosive is typically inferior to a true plasma charge, and only has REF 6.

Energy Generation Infrastructure

Power-plants differ in construction. Fusion or Hyperium reactors both utilize the same basic principle: the fusion reaction generates heat which is dumped into a coolant (this can be simply water, though more compact designs use denser coolants). The expanding coolant turns turbines and thus generates electricity.

In the case of solar power and fusion power, the energy is then dumped into an energy bank, essentially enormous power cells. Both have "constant" energy outputs, while the energy needs of the vehicle or the city vary over time, and this energy bank helps to stabilize peaks of demand. However, if demand grows too low and the energy banks fill, the fusion reactor must be turned off, and can take some time to cycle back into an on-state. Hyperium reactors can precisely control their flow of fuel, and don't need energy banks.

Extreme energy flux, caused by an unexpected runaway fusion reaction or a sudden surge in the power-grid, must be discharged before it damages the local infrastructure. Power-plants use "Plasma discharge stations," sometimes called "Flux chambers" to dramatically discharge excess energy in dramatic displays of crackling lightning. Such chambers can either be buried, discharging their excess charge into the ground, or they can be open-air, discharging them into the atmosphere. The latter tend to occur on highly industrial worlds or especially poor worlds, and their lightning is visible for miles.

Psi-Wars transmits power over power cables, thumb-thick grey-sleeved wires, generally buried in the ground. These have far less energy loss than TL 8 power lines but nonetheless operate on simiar principles. Those lines nearest the station tend to be the most energetic, with those energy levels "stepped down" as they reach regional, then local stations, then stepped down again once they reach their final point of access. The points at which they are "stepped down" are called "Power exchanges" or "Exchange stations," and they typically house their own energy banks, to manage local energy needs, and resemble "mini power-plants." Sufficiently large vehicles might also have power exchanges, and every home has a small "fuse box" sized power exchange.

If a hero needs to tap directly into the power-grid for some illicit purpose, the GM may rule he needs to "step down" the energy to keep from frying his devices. This can be done with an Electricianroll and a jury-rigged power cell, or by any electrokinetic with the power-generator perk.

Energy Security and Sabotage

Solar power plants tend to be sufficiently fragile that severe weather can damage them, making them a maintenance hassle. Most solar plants tend to be space-bound as a result.

Fusion and Hyperium reactors are much tougher targets. Damage to turbines or coolant tanks will disrupt the energy generation process. Destroying a flux station or local energy banks won't immediately damage a power-plant, but if used in conjuction with a surge, can result in a catastrophic faiure of the power-plant. Damaging a fusion reactor itself will not result in anything but power-plant failure and dissipating hydrogen gas. Damaging a hyperium reactor and hyperium fuel tanks, however, results in explosions that can result in a cataclysmic feedback cycle. A character may roll Electricianor Engineering (Civil)to know where possible entry points are, or how best to sabotage the reactor. Planet-Bound reactors tend to be wrapped in a protective shell, not to protect the populace from radiation (Psi-Wars fusion reactors are cinematically radiation free), but to protect the reactor from external attack.

An attack on a power exchange also represent a serious danger: while itwon't wipe out global power, it can seriously damage the power grid of a specific area. Large power exchanges tend to be as well guarded as power plants themselves. The smallest power exhanges, those connected to houses and buildings to transform "power grid energy levels" to local, "external power" energy levels can also be sabotaged to "cut power to a building." Secure facilities keep their power exchange internal (and may even have onsight energy banks or their own backup hyperium generator), but cheap buildings, especially apartments, have external power exhanges. In all cases, deducing the location of a power exchange requires an Electricianor Engineering (Civil)roll. Sabotaging one is as simple as an Electricianroll, or inflicting sufficient damage (a small grenade shoudl be sufficient). Many areas or buildings where security is a concern may have redundant power exhanges. This too can be deduced from with an Electricianor Engineering (Civil)roll.

Tampering with power cables and exchange stations can be dangerous! An attack from a high-power cable will inflict 6dx2(3) per second, while exchange stations or city-scale power-cables will inflict 6d(3) per second; a house-scale exhange station or power cable will inflict 3d(3) per second. Use the rules for lethal electrical damage on B432

Typical Power Plants

The sort of power-plant found on planets or in major colonies can be building sized all by itself. The sort of power-planet necessary for a city or a colony is SM +8 and fits into a decent-sized building. It usually has a “missile shield” with a DR of 10,000. A “planetary generator,” one large enough to power a planetary shield and typically found on highly industrialized worlds tend to dwarf the smaller reactors on other worlds and reach SM +11 and take up sprawling structures all on their own, and typically have a “missile shield” with a DR of 25,000.

A power plant, on a world, is generally housed within a broader campus or complex. Security walls or fences ring the power plant. The campus will have numerous “support” facilities, including warehouses with loading docks for the storage or transport of spare parts or hyperium cannisters, workshops and labs for onsite repairs and maintenance of the facilities, offices and reception areas where employees can meet to discuss future plans or to receive or train new engineers. At the core of the complex, one can find the reactor and its support mechanisms, including its coolant tanks, energy banks and flux stations, and the control rooms used by the staff to monitor the energetic fusion reactions and the energy flow. Some “power plants” have multiple reactors, typically located near one another; a particularly popular combination is a few classical fusion reactors with a spare hyperium reactor which can be activated when additional energy is needed (say, in wartime or during “peak” hours). A small scale power-plant employs 100 people or robots, while a large-scale power plant typically employs around 500 people or employees. About half are engineers and mechanics, while the rest are managers, scientists, receptionists, secretaries, instructors and security personnel.

Exchange stations tend to be much smaller. An exchange station for an entirey city might fit into a single house-sized building, and employees about 10 people, including mechanics, security and a handful of office workers. Smaller exchange stations tend to be entirely automated, and may have a single technician who visits them occassionally. Most cities will house a single exchange station in a building that also houses the support staff that visits smaller-scale exchanges, as well as management and local public relations and legal counsel that represent the power plant and its management to the city.

On the Demise of Star Wars

June 25, 2018, 11:14 pm

≫ Next: Psi-Wars Propulsion Technology

≪ Previous: Psi-Wars Power Technology

$

0

0

"You were the chosen one"? Or maybe "Strike me down and I shall only become stronger."

Forgive the provocative title.  My part of the internet bubble churns with much rage at the current incarnation of Star Wars, and especially at Kathleen Kennedy, at whose feet the perceived "Ruined Forever!" has been laid.  There is much angst and schadenfreude over the failure of Solo, but Solo is the crux of what inspired me to write this, as it's the first Star Wars movie in a long time that wasn't an instant "yes," though not the first Star Wars product in a long time that I had looked forward to, and then changed my mind about.

Then I put this post on ice, because I hesitate to post anything that sounds remotely political in this day and age as discourse is getting extremely divisive and it's hard to please both sides (and there are sides here) when you say anything, and because I have better things I should be putting my attention towards (the next post is almost done, I promise!). But as news continues to evolve and the corporate narrative of "a few disgruntled trolls vs the Last Jedi" explodes to reveal that the Star Wars franchise is Not Okay, I wanted to get my two cents in, especially given how my blog seems to eat, drink and breath Star Wars.

I hope you forgive this opinion piece.

Star Wars: Ruined Forever

Solo has not done well, and Grace Randolph of Beyond the Trailer sums up most of the arguments pretty succinctly in her video, (she has further news on Kathleen Kennedy; she's a great one, Ms. Randolph) so I won't repeat it here.  What I find interesting, and likely true, is her comparison to Batman V Superman/Justice League and the Last Jedi/Solo, in that the backlash of the first resulted in the failure of the second, regardless of the second's merits.  I've been watching this backlash build up for awhile, and not a day goes by where I don't see a video popping up claiming that Star Wars is dead, or that the Last Jedi is a terrible movie, which clashes strongly with the perception I get from the news or from sites like Wikipedia to the point where I wonder how much of it is real and how much is manufactured, though more on that later.

I feel like the only fandom that hates their fandom more than Star Wars is, perhaps, Doctor Who, which is something I talked about all the way back in the inaugural post about Psi-Wars.  This is, perhaps, just more of the same, but I wanted to tackle some of the arguments that I tend to see, to try to sift out some wheat from chaffe.

The New Star Wars Movies Suck!  Unlike True Star Wars Films!

This is the general thrust of most arguments that I see floating around the internet: once upon a time, the Good King George Lucas reigned over a Golden Age of Star Wars, in which all the films were good, and then the wicked stepmother Kathleen Kennedy took over and ruined it forever.  However, I must say, I find this black and white dichotomy more than a little weird, especially the calls for George Lucas to "come back" and fix his creation.

First off, most Star Wars movies suck, straight up.  Look, here's all the Star Wars movies I can find, in order of release, with opinions based on what seems to be the general perception of those who dislike the new franchise:

• Star Wars (A New Hope): Good
• The Star Wars Holiday Special: Not Good
• The Empire Strikes Back: Good
• Return of the Jedi: Good (though a lot of people at the time really hated the Ewoks)
• Caravan of Courage: an Ewok Adventure: Not Good
• Ewoks: Battle for Endor: Not Good
• The Phantom Menace: Not Good
• Attack of the Clones: Not Good (Saaaaand)
• Revenge of the Sith: Not Good
• Clone Wars: Not Good (Though I must confess I enjoyed the series)
• The Force Awakens: Good (but unoriginal)
• Rogue One: Good
• The Last Jedi: Not Good
• Solo: Not Good

Mileage may vary (I personally liked the Phantom Menace the most of the original trilogy; a lot of people like Revenge of the Sith, I think Clone Wars is underrated; a lot of people might toss everything new into the "bad" bin, while I think people forget the early negative opinions of RotJ, etc), but this seems to be the current internet consensus, and I count 5 good films and 9 bad films.  Of the new films, half of them are "good," and even if you press the most ardent Disney Star Wars hater, he'll grudgingly admit that Rogue One "was sorta alright." So the new stuff hasn't been all bad, but this idea that Star Wars was good until Disney came along, is just absurd, as is the idea that Lucas "would fix it."  Lucas has an even worse hit/miss ratio than Kathleen Kennedy, and she's his hand-picked successor, so no, I don't think Lucas will "save Star Wars."

Kathleen Kennedy Ruined Star Wars with Politics

The first woke robot of Star Wars

The argument goes that Kathleen Kennedy, unlike George Lucas, has used Star Wars as a platform for injecting her own left-wing screed into Star Wars.  To this, I say: Have you seen Star Wars?

George Lucas compared the Ewoks to the Vietnamese, heroically defying a technologically superior enemy.  The US would be the Evil Empire in this analogy.  And before you think he cooled down with age, he tossed in a "You're with us or you're against us" swipe at George W. Bush in Revenge of the Sith, which in the context doesn't even make sense ("Only the Sith see in black and white!" oh really, Obi-Wan "The force has a light side and a dark side" Kenobi?).

Star Wars has always been the fever dream of a 1960s activist, only two things changed.  First, George Lucas and Lucasfilms went from ardent hippy activist to more limousine liberal, which is one reason why Kathleen Kennedy is more worried about "representation" than rebellion.  The other, I think, is a cultural shift: Hollywood's Overton window has moved a lot more than most of the populace.  I don't think anyone minds the presence of "Strong Women" in Star Wars; Leia has been the prototypical "Strong Woman" of fiction for a long time, but now there's a much stronger push for far, far more female representation in Star Wars, perhaps to the detriment of the male leads (Finn, at least, seems to suffer at the hands of the writer for no good reason that I can discern other than, perhaps, that the writers don't actually understand comedy).

But I also want to come out and say that I don't think it's the politics that's ruining Star Wars.  I think it's a manufactured excuse to justify bad films, and I'll get more into that later.  How much outcry do you remember about the Jedi Council being lead by a black man (Mace Windu)?  He has his own comic book series, numerous books, features in video games and in the Clone Wars series, and there were some people arguing he should get his own film.  What about female representation in Star Wars? Asoka Tano, a female character, was the break-out character of Clone Wars and nobody called her a Mary Sue, even when she became the Super Special Awesome Character of Awesome in Star Wars: Rebels.  Who was your favorite character in Rogue One? Those of you who aren't voting for a robot are probably voting for Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen!), who is Chinese.  So this idea that "fans" are opposed to "inclusiveness" is nonsense.

It's not the politics that's ruining Star Wars.

Kathleen Kennedy hates the fans

 I don't feel that I have a responsibility to cater in some way [to those particular fans]... I would never just seize on saying, 'Well, this is a franchise that's appealed primarily to men for many, many years, and therefore I owe men something.'" - Kathleen Kennedy

This one I think is true, especially given that Kathleen Kennedy is on the record as disparaging a certain segment of the Star Wars fanbase (as well as other writers and directors).  I find her defense, her attitude that she doesn't "owe" fans something to be disingenuous.  Of course, she doesn't "owe" people something, she offers a product and you can pay for it or not: that's business.  But what she calls "fans," I call her core market, and what she's really saying is something along the lines of "I don't feel the need to cater to my core market," which is a daft thing to say in business.

I'm not saying that it's wrong to try to branch out, but it's generally not well advised to so do at the expense of your core supporters.  For example, there's nothing wrong with SJGames pushing a simplified version of GURPS that focuses on the dungeon crawling crowd: that's SJGames branching out.  But if they were to drop all support for GURPS to focus entirely on a new d20 clone, that would be a risky move at best.  Star Wars has a core audience that is remarkably faithful, despite their complaints and criticisms, to the brand, and I don't think it's wise to antagonize that core audience just because they happen to be white and male.  

That said, I don't think that's actually what's going on.  I think all the "politics" and fan-bashing and such is a smoke screen for poor management, and Kathleen Kennedy isn't the only one doing it.

Rent Seeking and Circling the Wagons 

"I know there's a lot of controversy around this game, but c'mon, it's Star Wars, I was never not going to buy it." - Tech Deals

I first noticed this sort of behavior not with Disney, but with EA, especially the release of Battlefront 2 (If I'm honest, I find everything surrounding the business decisions that led up to the release of Battlefront 2 fascinating).  First, EA gains sole access to the Star Wars IP when it comes to games, which is typical for EA: find something that people love, and monopolize it.  So, if you want a Star Wars game, you must go through them.  Second, create a game that looks good: appearance is the most important, because it helps with the hype train.  Third, find a way to monetize the hell out of it, because you've got a Star Wars game, people have no choice but to pay, and then brag about it to your investors, to get more sweet investment capital.  When the fans inevitably complain, divert them with empty promises that you're "listening," and then wrap yourself in a cloak of some form of morality.  For example, they had a female lead character, and the actress acted as their spokesperson, which gave them the cover of "we're supporting feminism;" to suggest that they've listened to the fans, they employed John Boyega, the actor who plays Finn, to talk about how much he liked the new Battlefront 2.  When criticism arose, they painted it as the rantings of an unreasonable, entitled minority, and fended off criticism of lootboxes and such by wrapping themselves under the mantle of "Free market!" and "Innovation!" But in the end, everything circles around extracting cash from people, nothing else remained.

I think the same can be safely said of Disney's handling of Star Wars.  If Kathleen Kennedy were really such a feminist, then why has she hired only white, male directors?  If she's so racially tolerant, then why do black characters get such poor treatment in her films?  If she hates the fans so much, why does she pepper so many of the Star Wars films with so much fan service?  If she hates Star Wars, why are all the films coming out right now such slavish remakes of the original trilogy, or direct references to the original films? Why has she not yet branched out into something truly new?

I think the truth is that making really good fan-based franchises is hard.  Of all the cinematic universes, only one has really been a success: Marvel, under Kevin Feige.  All the rest have failed.  There may be numerous reasons for this, but one take-away must be that it's difficult, and Star Wars is going to be no different, because even the stuff most people currently agree is "good," like Dave Filoni's Rebels, or Rogue One, are still somewhat controversial (and largely seem to be considered good more in contrast with the things fans consider "Bad"), and the stuff most people agree is "bad," like the prequels or even the Last Jedi, are equally contentious.  If you'll pardon the electoral analogy, it's not really red vs blue but a sea of shades of purple and general discontent, and that's hard for the best people to navigate, and Kathleen Kennedy seems to not be the best of people.

So instead, we get the easy outs.  Ms. Kennedy just grabs directors and makes films, and when they become too different, she fires the directors and makes them "safer."  When people criticize her work, she falls back and hides under the mantle of morality: if you hate her movies, you're part of an "the toxic fandom" and you're a bigot and a bully.  For me, this is a bridge too far, and really the core of this rant: you will never improve if you cannot take criticism.

I get criticized all the time, sometimes unreasonably in my opinion.  There are people who want Psi-Wars to be something that, in my opinion, it was never intended to be.  I see people who argue that it's too like Star Wars, and that it's not like Star Wars enough.  I get people who say they would do things completely differently.  But for me, these are not attacks, but valuable feedback.  Some I can use, some I cannot.  They give me a sign of where things are going, how audiences are shifting, and what I could do better.  Where are things too complicated? Where are they confusing?  What could I be doing better?  You have to pick and choose your criticism, and you cannot bow to what each and every person says, but feedback that is honest is feedback that is valuable.  You cannot learn without it.  Those who attack their critics will never improve.

This seems to be a trend, especially with poorly received films with strong female leads (Lady Ghostbusters, Oceans 8, the Star Wars franchise), but this is a mistake.  For an example of a franchise that took criticism to heart, see the Thor: Ragnarok.

Making a Better Star Wars

It seems like there's a shake-up already in the works, though not before we get Episode IX.  What will happen? I don't know, but weaker franchises than this have survived terrible treatment.  Star Wars itself is probably predated only by Star Trek for a franchise beloved by fans but abandoned or mishandled by the entertainment industry.  Star Wars endured all the years of neglect from RotJ to the prequels through books, comics and games, and it survived the prequels, and it will survive now: even if you don't like the films, check out the new TV series or the animated series.  While there are precious few video games (because EA has seemingly forgotten how to make video games, and killed the lonely one Star Wars video game that was set to release), there's still RPGs, books and comics being made, and some, I hear, are quite good.

Were it up to me, I'd encourage them to set aside this "Legends/Canon" split, or at least weaken it.  The Marvel films drank deep of their comic weirdness and embraced their legacy; they didn't precisely copy everything, but they understood they had a huge well to draw on and did, and as a result, each film, while formulaic, has something interesting enough to offer that audiences flock to theaters.  By contrast, Star Wars fans feel like they've seen the films already ("The Force Awakens was just a New Hope reskinned; the Last Jedi was just the Empire Strikes Back reskinned, and Solo was so predictable that Red Letter Media released a Solo Trailer reaction video before the trailer released, and then edited in the actual trailer afterwords, and got it spot on"), and while I'm not sure that's entirely fair, that perception makes going to the theater less of a priority, and that's not what you want from your audiences.  Imagine if Lucasfilm released a KOTOR Star Wars film, or one featuring Thrawn, Mara Jade, the Yuhzon Vong, the Hutt Cartel, Darth Nihilus (or really any Sith from the past), or worlds like Corriban, Ryloth, or Tython?

But what makes me saddest about watching and listening to people talk about Star Wars is that they seem to have forgotten what came before it.  I've talked about how much Star Wars has borrowed from, for example, Dune, Flash Gordon, Foundation, samurai films and many more.  If you're desperate for inspiration, why not draw from those films?  Why not borrow from history and instead of using the First Order as a way of replacing the Empire, why not look at the fracturing of the Empire and its internal wars and its warlords and the efforts of the Republic to reconquer the galaxy with the struggle between their ideals and the hard realities of war.  Want to be inclusive? Have General Leia in charge of everyone and put Gwendoline Christie in a role that doesn't completely waste her talents.  Bring in Thrawn as one of said warlords, and Mara Jade as your dark and terrible menace, the Emperor's Hand that the Republic fears.  Give a callout to the Jedi Academy series, with some of Luke's students trying to help the Republic.  Give us a Dune-like world with a warrior-people who follow a jedi-like creed (the Guardians of the Whills?) who must be talked into fighting back against the nearby warlords or against the sweeping pirate menace. You might even draw from Seven Samurai, by having seven heroic characters gathered to defend that one world. There's such a rich tradition you can draw from, and it's such a waste to see it lie fallow.  People are forgetting their history.

What is killing Star Wars isn't female leads, it's not politics, it's not toxic fandom, it's just bad films and an inability to listen to criticism.  It's an institutional problem, one that seems fairly ingrained into Lucas Film at this point, so I don't see it changing soon.  But Star Wars is too beloved to die.  It'll just do what it did through the 90s and go quiescent for a time, at worst.

On the Demise of Psi-Wars

So given the rancor and frustration around Star Wars, do I fear for Psi-Wars?

No.

I'm honestly more worried about my time and flagging interest in the series, though my backers still seem firmly committed to the cause, and I'm rounding a corner on a particularly sticky issue.  But even if Star Wars dies, which it won't, I still wouldn't worry about Psi-Wars because, despite much nudging and winking, it isn't Star Wars.  That rich tradition I mentioned above is something I definitely draw on for my work, and other works besides, and those works still live on. 40k continues to churn forward, Dune has a new movie in the making, the Metabarons has a new series focused on the Metabaron, a new season of Killjoys is on the horizon, we can expect to see a Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (assuming they survive the turmoil of the Infinity War!) and people still love pulpy Space Opera, even if they sometimes forget it's more than just Star Wars.

So I'm still here, and I'll still be here when all the turmoil has died down and this Star Wars mess has sorted itself out one way or another.

Psi-Wars Propulsion Technology

June 29, 2018, 1:52 am

≫ Next: Psi-Wars Material Technology

≪ Previous: On the Demise of Star Wars

$

0

0

Psi-Wars features vehicles of all sorts, from hover cars for high speed chases to starfighters zipping around great and mighty capital ships in battles that look surprisingly reminiscent of WW2 battles.  This post takes a look at what technologies the Psi-Wars setting uses to traverse its planets and the galaxy, including:

• Hyperspace drives
• Hyperdynamic technology and aerospace engines including plasma thrusters, impulse drives and the grav drive
• Ground-based propulsion technology including repulsorlift technology, legged vehicles and tracks.
• Aquatic propulsion technology and why it is slowly becoming obsolete.

For those who want additional details about the design process, including the specifications (compatible with the design process of GURPS Vehicles 3e, and with the previous power post!), $3+ patrons can find the design notes here.

Aerospace Propulsion

For the Psi-Wars galaxy, the discovery and mastery of hyperspace, and its hyperdynamic nature, meant that air and space travel merged into the same technologies. While occasionally one can find primitive aliens making uses of gasbag technologies or turbofans or space rockets, the rest of the galaxy uses hyperdynamic engines to drive both its spacecraft and aircraft.

Hyperdrive

The Hyperdrive “shunts” a ship from “normal” space to four-dimensional “hyperspace,” which allows the ship to travel at far greater speeds. A typical hyperdrive engine reaches speeds of 30 light years (10 parsecs) per hour, through more powerful drives can reach speeds two or three times as fast! While in hyperspace, a ship cannot see or interact with “real space” matter, though strong gravity fields, like those found on planets or around stars, or for light years around black holes, can distort the medium of hyperspace, making travel difficult, throwing the ship off course, or even pulling the ship out of hyperspace entirely. Thus, the spacefarer must carefully choose his course before activating his hyperdrive. Generally, a hyperdrive is activated once a ship has left a planet’s orbit, and the ship travels a course that takes it to just outside the orbit of their target world.

The act of shunting a ship into hyperspace takes farmore energy than the act of traveling through space. This energy can be through the use of energy banks, which generally take 24 hours to recharge on an inactive ship, or by actively burning hyperium fuel. The latter requires a hyperium fusion reactor, but the amount of hyperium required is a fraction of the mass of an energy bank, and has become the preferred means of paying the high costs of hypershunting. In principle, once a ship is inhyperspace, it can remain there for as long as the traveler wishes (and “exit” for free, like “falling” into real space), but in practice, the farther one must travel without interacting with real-space, the more likely one is to go wildly off-course. In practice, most hyperspatial journeys are “hops” of 100-200 light years at most.

The medium of hyperspace is not a perfect vacuum, but a sort of hyperfluid through which the ship can travel and, with a hyperdynamic field, can “push” off of. This medium distorts and changes over time, and can interact with the ship, making passage more difficult, disrupting the ships travel, or driving it off course. Some regions have placid, easily traversable hyperspace between their systems. The most well-known of such regions is the galactic center, where travel between worlds is relatively easy. The easiest and most well-charted courses tend to become major trade routes and avenues along which major empires project their power. These tend to be called “hyperlanes” or “hyperstraits.” Other regions have much “denser” or more “difficult” hyperspatial medium: most travelers avoid these, but especially daring navigators might give them a shot, and may well know a “pass” through such a dense region. The space between the galactic arms or between galaxies tend to be notoriously tricky to traverse. Finally, the hyperspace medium has “weather,” and hyperstorms can kick up, throwing ships out of hyperspace or making travel difficult. The death of the homeworld of Styx when its star suddenly collapsed into black hole threw their entire region of the galaxy into a chaotic storm that raged for centuries and makes travel in that region treacherous to this day.

Charting a hyperspace route takes 30 minutes and requires a Navigation (Hyperspace) skill roll. A successful roll means the jump will occur without incident. A failure means the ship is “off course,” typically ten parsecs times the margin of failure, while a critical failure can put the ship nearly anywhere, ruin the hyperdrive or crash the ship into a star or planet (though not a recommended choice for pcs!).

Modifiers: The GM may assign a difficulty between -0 and -10 to a particular route, depending on how “dense” or “easy” the region is to traverse. A well-charted hyperlane adds +4. Every 30 light years (or 10 parsecs) after the first 100 light years (or 30 parsecs) applies a -2to your navigation rolls; and, of course, if your route takes you over multiple “regions” of hyperspace with different difficulties, the GM should apply the penalty for the roughest region of hyperspace. Finally, “hyperspace weather” can apply between -1 to -10, with a typical hyperstorm applying a -4 to the roll, and typical “bad weather” applying a -2.

Shunting into hyperspace requires the drive charging for 5 minutes, though it can be charged faster with a Mechanic (Hyperdrive) roll with a time modifier applied.

Hyperdynamic Drives

Hyperspace contains a “medium” through which a ship must travel, and off of which a ship may push. Ships equipped with hyperdynamic fields may this medium to accelerate and to maneuver. Depending on what drive has been equipped, this may allow a ship to maneuver through space as though it were a jet aircraft, or it may grant it contragravity-like properties, or allow it to float serenely through the sky like an airship. Ships with hyperdynamic fields maneuver through atmosphere exactly as they do through space.

Outside of a gravity field, hyperdynamic drives allow a hyperdynamic ship’s relativistic frame of referenceto accelerate to light speed. This happens naturally: once a ship exits the orbit of a planet, its frame simply accelerates without additional cost to the ship. As the frameaccelerates, this is a form of psuedovelocity: if the ship collides with another ship, the collision occurs at the ship’s “real” speed (typically measured in miles per hour, rather than thousands of miles per second!). Furthermore, when ships enter another ships frame of reference, while an outsider will see both traveling in the same direction at the speed of light, in their own reference, they seem to be traveling at their own, natural speeds. In practice, this “frame dragging” simply means that ships that wish to travel to other worlds may do so very quickly (typically in minutes or hours) while still engaging one another at their own “normal” speeds.

Hyperdynamic Plasma Thrusters

A plasma thruster is a form of “fast” reactionless drive that produces extremely fast thrust, and interacts with hyperspatial medium as though it was as diffuse as air. This gives the plasma thruster performance similar to a jet engine. Ships equipped with plasma thrusters travel at supersonic speeds and might have “afterburners” to allow them to reach even higher speeds, but must maintain high speeds in both atmosphere or space or risk “losing grip” on the hyperspatial medium and losing control. They maneuver similar to aircraft with wings. Unlike other hyperdynamic drives, plasma thrusters require no direct power input, but do consume hyperium fuel.

A plasma thruster has a bright, highly visible and hot signature that resembles rightly focused blue or red “flame.” They require extensive hyperdynamic structures, and often have a great deal of surface area dedicated to either aerodynamics like wings, or hyperdynamic control structures (which may or may not resemble wings, but still take up a considerable volume of the craft’s volume).

Plasma thrusters tend to be used on starfighters and starbombers; occassionally, it sees use on craft intended only for aerial travel. It can also operate as a jetpack, though such engines need decent heat dissipation.

Hyperdynamic Grav Drives

A grav drive was the first of the three hyperdynamic propulsion systems and was believed, at first, to interact with gravity itself; only later was it discovered that it interacts with the hyperspatial medium, but the name stuck.

A grav drive provides both a motive thrust and “lift,” allowing it to move at very high speeds (up to 600 miles per hour), or to float perfectly in place, granting it high maneuverability. Such a drive must at a minimum, provide enough lift to counteract the vehicle’s mass, but requires no “minimum” speed like a plasma thruster, and is less efficient at extreme masses than the impulse drive, which tends to limit it to medium-class starships, such as corvettes, or smaller craft like gunships where the ability to hover is more important than the ability to maximize speed. It consumes only energy to produce both thrust and lift.

A hyperdynamic grav drive produces an intense blue or red glow from its engines, but no visible flames.

Hyperdynamic Impulse Drive

A hyperdynamic impulse drive is a large, heavy thing engine that interacts with the hyperspatial medium as though it was “dense,” similar to water. This greatly slows its speed, which cannot exceed 300 miles per hour and is typically below 100 miles per hour, but “pins” it against the hyperspatial medium, so that it does not interact with gravity at all. Even at perfect rest and consuming no energy at all, an impulse drive allows a ship to float perfectly above a planet or even above the ground.

An impulse drive is very heavy, requiring at least 5 tons of mass, but is more efficient at large scales than the grav drive, and is by far the cheapest of hyperdynamic drives. This makes it the preferred choice for extremely large vessels, such as interstellar capital ships and transport vessels. It sees much use on planets, often replacing sea travel with slow-moving-but-cheap aerial transport.

An impulse drive produces a faint and streaky blue, white or red glow, often appearing like diffuse, escaping gas; it resembles the ancient “ion drive” in appearance, and is sometimes (mistakenly) referred to as an ion drive.

Ground Propulsion

Repulsorlift Drivetrains

A repulsorlift utilizes the opposite of a tractor beam, a pressor beam, to both lift a vehicle off the ground and to provide directional thrust by pushing off the ground. The result resemblesa low-flying grav-drive, but works with a completely different technology. Vehicles equipped with a repulsorlift seems to hover or skim across the ground with about a foot of clearance. It moves swiftly, slightly faster than a wheeled vehicle under ideal conditions, but does not require a road.

Repulsorlifts tend to see use most often on the equivalent of cars or motorcycles, but also sees use in high-speed military vehicles. Because it must expend energy to both lift and push the vehicle, it tends to be less efficient for very heavy vehicles, unless built around a rail that interacts with efficiently with the repulsorlift: hover-trains tend to be common on highly industrialized worlds, or on worlds with intense mining.

While repulsorlifts don’t require roads, they do (marginally) benefit from them and, of course, a hover vehicles can still crash into a tree or a spike of rock, so many municipalities that can afford to do so still pave their roads, as it provides a convenient path for pedestrians, makes life a little easier for hover-cars, and provides clear routes for traffic.

Legged Drivetrains

Legs provide vehicles with greater mobility, but less speed and higher costs than a hover-vehicle. Thus, legged drivetrains tend to be used only for highly specialized vehicles, though the Cybernetic Union makes extensive use of them. They don’t require a “lifting energy” when resting, and which makes them slightly more useful for heavier vehicles such as tanks, but their high cost limits such vehicles unless the vehicle needs to be highly agile (such as scuttling side to side to dodge shots, or stepping over broken and rugged terrain). Most legged drivetrains have four or more legs, as this provides more stability than two-legged designs.

Tracked Drivetrains

Vehicles with tank-style treads do exist in the Psi-Wars setting. These tend to be limited to older vehicles and has largely been superceded by the repulsorlift, except where the vehicle is exceptionally heavy. Giant, industrial crawlers use tracks, as do super-tanks. Older vehicles may as well, like the Gristian track-cycle. Vehicles with tracks tend to be the slowest of the three sorts of ground vehicles and the least agile, but they’re cheaper and more rugged than their counterparts.

Animal Propulsion

On remote or primitive worlds that lack a major industrial base, locals often use indigenous species as transportation. One might see an alien raider riding a multi-legged, feral-looking creature into battle, or see aliens who have hooked up wagons to great behemoths to draw their vehicles through great salt deserts. This tends to be rare in the “civilized” galactic center, however.

Aquatic Propulsion

Aquatic propulsion has largely been overtaken by the Hyperdynamic Impulse Drive, as it provides similar performance but can travel to space. So one is more likely to see serenely floating skyships over the oceans of a world than to see ships plying the seas. That said, starships make poor submersibles, and a Magneto-Hydrodynamic Turbine is slightly more efficient than an Impulse Drive if one onlywants to travel by sea, or beneaththe sea.

On more primitive or poor worlds, aliens still make use of sails, paddle wheels and animal transportation when traveling on water.

---

Psi-Wars Material Technology

July 7, 2018, 4:58 am

≫ Next: Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (the Ground Edition)

≪ Previous: Psi-Wars Propulsion Technology

$

0

0

In the far future of the Psi-Wars galaxy, industry makes use of new materials from which to construct their buildings, factories, starships and to armor their soldiers. Most of these materials resemble modern materials, but typically are far stronger and lighter, able to stand up to the firepower of a blaster and to shrug off more primitive attacks with ease. Some are the results of far superior crafting technology, but others are mined from the depths of planetary cores, or taken from exotic asteroids who passed too close to hyperspatial anomalies.

This post has two companion patreon posts:

• For Fellow Travellers ($3+) I have a more detailed look at these materials, including using them for armor design, vehicle design, building design, and some advanced and primitive materials.
• For Dreamers ($1+) I have some research notes on real-world sci-fi materials, as well as conversion notes for GURPS Vehicles 3e armor and GURPS Spaceships armor.

Structural Materials

The buildings of Psi-Wars make use of exotic materials for greater durability and lightness, allowing for highly durable buildings and very agile starships.

Episteel

Deep in the hearts of planets or planetoids, the intense pressure crushes iron into a new molecular configuration called hexaferrum, or “epsilon iron.” This state of iron is more dense and far tougher than normal iron: it is to iron what diamond is to carbon. The civilization of the Psi-Wars galaxy mine it from planetary cores or, more commonly, from the destroyed remnants of destroyed planetoids in the form of M-class asteroids. The resulting iron is carefully alloyed with carbon to form “episteel,” a material four times as durable as steel for the same weight. Episteel is common throughout the Psi-Wars galaxy, and forms the basis for “cheap” metal construction.

Titanium Foam

When mixed with certain nanomaterials, a titanium powder can “bubble up” into a foam that sets with structural strength as durable as iron, but exceedingly light as most of the structure is air or void. This is often used as a “filler” material where construction must be both light and durable, such as the cores of light starships or the interior of metal doors.

Ferrocrete, or Heavy Nanocrete

Concrete allowed ancient civilizations to construct “stone” structures easily, but often required steel reinfrocement. Nanocrete imbeds iron nanoparticles in the concrete mixture, so that as the concrete sets, the iron forms a natural crystalline lattice to reinforce it. This results in a dusky gray or reddish concrete structure with superior durability.

Light Nanocrete

Light Nanocrete is a more recent invention and relies on the same principle as heavy nanocrete, but replaces the iron with a tight carbon lattice, mixing the strength of diamondoid with concrete to create an astonishingly light structure with the same durability as heavy nanocrete.

Diamondoid Plate Glass

Not nearly as durable as true diamondoid armor, this mixes a transparent carbon lattice in with the silica of plate glass to create an astonishingly durable form of plate glass. This is often used where armored glass is necessary, or as a cheap material for armored visors.

Barriers and Doors

GURPS Action 2 lists the values of various items someone might try to blast their way through in great detail. This changes in Psi-Wars as the technologies involved differ substantially.

Door Controls

Most Psi-Wars doors have their mechanisms buried deep behind walls. Going after the actuators is usually harder than trashing the door itself. However, wrecking the door controls may result in a door opening or locking shut, depending on its settings. This can be accomplished through raw damage, or through a power-outage (Electrician). You can set the control settings with Mechanic (Any), Lockpicking or Electronics Operation (Security), or via a local computer interface if you have access. Once destroyed, the door will trigger its safeguard: in most cases, this will open the doors, but in highly secure areas (especially prisons), it will prevent the door from opening until repaired.

Controls tend to be a simple electronic panel; how robust they are varies.

Delicate: DR 7, HP 3

Standard: DR 15, HP 5

Tough: DR 35, HP 10

Extra-Tough: DR 75, HP 20

Door DR and HP

Most doors are sliding doors, thus one cannot attack the hinges. Bringing a door to 0 HP allows one to force it back into the wall, or push through a gap between the two doors.

Plastic-faced door: DR 4, 10 HP

Episteel-faced door: DR 30, 15 HP

Episteel Door: DR 45, 15 HP

Carbide Armored Door: DR 250, 25 HP

Blast Door: DR 1000, 50 HP

Force Wards

An intensely strong force field projected on a 2d plane, typically used for prison doors, or to lock away certain passages on command. They provide hardened DR 100. The projector is typically on the far side of the ward, and generally has a DR of 30 and 12 HP. Cutting power to the area will instantly shut-off the ward (though high security wards have their own back-up power supply that will last 12 hours). It can be manually disengaged with an Electronics Operation (Security orForce Screen), or deactivated via a computer interface.

Bars and grills

Cell bars or barred windows rarely appear outside of more primitive alien worlds; they feature strongly in the Dark Arm of the galaxy, however. They’re usually constructed of Episteel

Makeshift bars: DR 30, HP 5

Standard bars:DR 50, HP 10

Rugged bars: DR 100, HP 20

Walls and Barriers

4” Light Nanocrete Wall: DR 100, 50 HP

12” Heavy Nanocrete Wall: DR 300, 90 HP

3’ Heavy Nanocrete Bunker Wall: DR 1000, 135 HP

1/2” Diamondoid Glass: DR 50, 20 HP; Brittle

1/8” Mild Episteel Wall: DR 20, HP 25

Defensive Materials

As weapon technology advanced, armor technologies needed to advance with them. Thefollowing materials are typically used in armor, whether on vehicles or as personal armor. Some primitive civilizations use Episteel for armor, but this is not noted below.

Carbide

Carbide is a crystalline alloybetween grapheneand some other material, typically titanium and hexaferrum, which creates an extremely durable material.It has a flat, matte grey cast, though it can be polished to a chrome shine. This is the preferred armor of the setting, often used as for plates or armor, or to cover vehicles, and may be made into a laminate (but may not be made transparent).

Diamondoid

Diamondoid armor is crystalline carbon armor of the Maradonian aristocracy. It offers nigh unparalleled protection, though it is more fragile than carbine armor and offers less protection against crushing attacks as it has a tendency to fracture under extreme pressure. Extremely difficult to manufacture and thus very expensive, this is retained almost exclusively as a personal armor for space knights. It typically has a highly polished sheen, or may appear as a glittering, greyish-blue armor, or it may be transparent or semi-transparent.

Cerablate Plating

An advanced form of ceramic armor, cerablate plating evaporates quickly under energy attacks, including blaster fire or plasma attacks. This grants it considerable, but temporary and specific, protection. Fortunately, it is cheap enough to be disposable, and some soldiers use it to augment their armor. Cerablate is white, similar to polished ceramics, and may gain fine “spider-web” fractures on it, like broken glass, after an extended battle.

Nanopolymer

Nanopolymer is a nano-particle reinforced plastic, and an outdated, but cheap, armor technology. It appears as a dull, matte grey or brown composite metal, similar in appearance to ancient tank armor.

New Armor Rules

Psi-Wars sports seriously advanced technology, but depicts a cinematic reality where a brawler can punch out a man in full armor or an assassin with a knife can expertly kill a soldier in full plate armor. Thus the following new rules:

Cinematic Rule: Armor Blowthrough

All armor counts as flexible against crushing attacks. Crushing attacks that deal knockback cause one point of damage per yard if the target fails his knockdown roll or he is knocked into a hard surface.

Harsh Realism for Armor: Armor Gaps

Plate Armor is at -6 to target armor chinks on the torso and -8 to target armor chinks elsewhere; all other forms of armor have the standard rules for chinks (-8 for targeting the chinks on the torso, -10 to target chinks elsewhere). All armor except for flexible or solid armor have gapswhich can be targeted at -8. Attacks to gaps bypass DR entirely while attacks to chinks halve DR as normal.

Force Screens and Wards

Psi-Wars uses Force Screen technology both as a form of active support structure and a form of defense. The former shows up in certain environmental domes in hostile environments, or as the crackling “force wall” of a prison door. These suffer the drawback of disappearing when they power down, but most such systems have redundant power supplies that last for about 12 hours after power is shut off.

Force screens tend to be used on corvettes and capital ships, as well as some well-protected fighters, to divert blaster fire and missiles. The most extreme example of such a force screen is a planetary shield, meant to prevent space bombardment They may be “angled” to better defend the ship from attack from a particular direction. No force screen can prevent “slow” (that is, slower than a bullet) craft or people from entering its space. A force screen cannot be made small enough to protect a single person, though rumors persist that Denjuku or the Empire have both perfected personal force screen prototypes.

Force Shields and Force Wards

But what about Force Bucklers? The closest I can find to them in GURPS Vehicles is a Deflector screen, which has no DR and only provides PD. We mightcorrelate these with Force Shields and work out their power/mass requirements by surface area onlyand assume that they alwayshave a DR of 100, but then we need to struggle to figure out why smaller vehicles don’t cover themselves with force buckler-like constructions, or how we make force buckler masses and power requirements mesh with those of the force ward and balance everything with force screens!

I have a better idea, however! How about we just leave them as writtenin Ultra-Tech? We don’t need to use them as vehicular design options (or, at least, we can treat them like we would any gadget and allow someone to purchase them straight out of GURPS Ultra-Tech). This also minimizes the fuss, as GMs can use these straight out of the books as well. It’s simpler and side-steps messier issues. If this turns out to be a problem in the future, I can always revisit it.

Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (the Ground Edition)

July 12, 2018, 7:45 am

≫ Next: Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (Starfighter Edition)

≪ Previous: Psi-Wars Material Technology

$

0

0

Those following this new Tech Series of Psi-Wars might have caught a whiff of GURPS Vehicles and, if so, you're exactly right.  I'm too dissatisfied with GURPS Spaceships for all of this, so I thought I would dive in with both feet to see if I could bring Vehicles into 4e.  With the conversion of propulsion, power and materials, that begins to look possible.

This patreon post contains three design diaries:

• A generic hover-car
• A generic hover-bike
• A generic hover-tank

In these design diaries, I check to see if I like the results my numbers give me and look for holes or problems.  This post is available to all $1+ patrons (while it contains some preview information, it's more about a larger project to see what it would take to get Vehicles into 4e, which I think interests more than just the Psi-Wars fans).  If you're a patron, check it out!  And thank you for your support.

Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (Starfighter Edition)

July 21, 2018, 6:28 am

≫ Next: The Eye of Providence Closes

≪ Previous: Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (the Ground Edition)

$

0

0

I continue my examination of my vehicles conversion by diving into starfighters.  Previously I looked at mostly civilian ground vehicles, but this time it's exclusively militaristic aerospatial vehicles using plasma thrusters.  As a result, I learned a lot about how Vehicles handles aerodynamics, and I got a thorough working of my engines, power-plants and took a new look at weaponry.  This is an ongoing process, and each step of the way teaches me a little more about vehicles.

In this case, I've converted a 4e fighter craft from a Pyramid Article, and then two classic vehicles from GURPS Starships: the Typhoon and the Starhawk.  I wouldn't take these versions as "gospel," because I think I'd go into more detail and change quite a few things about the Spaceship design, not the least of which because the SS designs are based on SS constraints, which we don't  have, nor need.

Still, I think it's worthwhile to get a sense of where the design process is going, and I hope you enjoy it.  This is a patreon post available to all $1+ patrons.  If you're a patron, check it out!  And thanks very much for your support.  If you're not a patron, don't worry.  Once I have this stuff worked out, I'll be back with more sci-fi goodness.  Thanks for your patience!

The Eye of Providence Closes

July 25, 2018, 12:40 am

≫ Next: Patreon Art Preview and Poll: The Eldoth

≪ Previous: Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (Starfighter Edition)

$

0

0

If you follow my blog more than you follow the GURPS Facebook group or the SJGames forums, you might not have heard by Pyramid is closing down.  It's been, what, nearly 30 years?

My own first pyramid was an actual magazine plucked from a store shelf.  I began following it back in the late 90s, and so I've had at least part of all three iterations of Pyramid, and fond memories of all three.  This is definitely a major blow, and I have quite a mix of emotions and thoughts about the announcement, as I'm sure you do as well, so I thought I would share some of them here.

Is GURPS Dying?!?!

Every time someone makes a change, any change, to GURPS, there's always someone who comes out of the woodwork to cry doom and gloom.  Going to PDF? GURPS is dying. GURPS DF kickster? GURPS is dying.  Going to the free-to-play model with lootboxes? GURPS is dying. Pyramid closed? GURPS is dying.  Is there any merit to this doomsaying?

Yeah, I think so, depending on how you look at it.

Look, there was a time when SJGames could produce several hardbacks in a year and Pyramid, then a time when they could produce about a PDF a week and Pyramid, and then a PDF a month and Pyramid, and then a PDF sometimes and Pyramid, and now, Pyramid is dead.  There's a clear line here, and it's not on the up-and-up.  Pair this with the GURPS DF success-failure, and I would be worried.  I am worried!

But there's dying and then there's dead.  Things go up, they come down, they go around and around.  Bigger RPG companies, like White Wolf, went belly up years ago.. but White Wolf books are still made, just by new people (mostly old writers and fans).  It takes a lot to kill an RPG, because they are the most distributed sort of game.  If, for example, an MMO dies, you just can't play it because the server is gone.  If a board game goes out of print, you can only play it as long as you have the board and chits.  But a role-playing game is a weird beast, as most of its content is not created by the company, but by individuals using their material.  I don't mean fanmade supplements, though those are definitely part of it. I mean the fact that every time a GM sits down to write up an adventure and run it for you, that's game material created by someone outside of the publishing company.  There are many GURPS experts who have never graced the halls of SJGames, and that will be true probably after Evil Stevie himself has passed into the grave, just like Gygax before him, because we keep these things alive.

Is GURPS dying? In the sense of SJGames losing money on it, probably.  Is it dying in the sense that less people are playing it? My modest research suggests that this is not the case.  GURPS occupies a pretty unique niche in the market, and while it has never been top 10, it definitely maintains a presence.  I don't think that will go away soon.

Adapting to Changing Realities

One poster claims he spoke to Steve Jackson at a panel about Pyramid, and Steve claimed that Pyramid was a money sink.  That's a shame, and if that's so, I can see why Pyramid is being cut.  In fact, I think SJGames has made a lot of mistakes, but companies usually do, and it's only the bad ones that don't recognize it.  If SJGames did nothing and let GURPS slip into oblivion, then I'd be worried.  Acknowleding mistakes and changing markets is vital to surviving the game.

Let me ask you this: How many of my Pyramid articles have you, dear reader, read? Can you even name any of their titles? I'm guessing you can't, because I haven't written any.  I thought about it, but it seemed like such a hassle, and it's intentionally so, because they wanted to weed out the weaker writers. SJGames acted as a gatekeeper on its material, to ensure the quality of its product.  But this is also an older mentality, one that doesn't really fit anymore, and I can prove it by pointing to the fact that you are here, now, reading this post.  In fact, a lot of you pay me money to write these posts, some of you at least as much as a Pyramid issue is worth.  The world is no longer made up of "Official" RPG writers who get published in big, glorious books, but each RPG ecosystem is a rich cornucopia of authors, bloggers, vloggers and fans, whether it's D&D, White Wolf or GURPS.

I don't mean this as some kumbaya statement about how we're all in this together, but as a hard statement of fact.  I get a lot of my extra material for ultra-tech stuff from Pyramid, sure, but I get at least as much from GURB.  I have a mess of links to blogging material that I draw on.  I'm also a patron of Christopher Rice.  I write a lot of what I write because people ask for it, and they can't get it, for whatever reason, from SJGames.  Given all of this... why would you continue to subscribe to pyramid? Think about it for a second.  If the bloggers who blog too much really ramped up their game, would you even need Pyramid?

You might say something like "I want to support GURPS and their writers."  For example, every pyramid you bought helped put money in Christopher Rice's pocket.  But... why not just put it into his pocket?  Patreon offers entirely new avenues for sponsorship, and given that you're not paying SJGames $8 a month for Pyramid anymore, why not pay the authors you like better that money?  I might talk to Chris about that, but I'm seriously considering upping my bid if it increased the chances of more complete articles from him (and I'm telling you this in an effort to convince you to do the same!)

So, from at least one perspective, it make sense to kill off Pyramid.  Pyramid belonged in the  era of the FLGS, and then in the era of dial-up and BBSes.  In the era of social media, youtube and blogs, I'm not sure it still has a place.  I think it actually makes more sense to encourage the bloggers to continue their reviews, their campaign summaries and their mini-supplements, and use the broader internet as your proving ground for new writers, and then focus your official muscle not on small articles, but on big, official works that will fuel that community.

The Silver Lining of the Storm Clouds

Times change, and change is scary.  Change often brings a lot of bad with it, but I would argue that the change has already happened.  It was happening before Pyramid's closure was announced.  I'm not happy about it at all, but if I stop and I think, I'm forced to admit it's probably overdue.  If I look back at what I consider to be SJGames's big missteps, most of them seem to center around wanting the world to be as it was in the 90s and early 2000s, making efforts to cater to retailers and the three-tier supply chain that just isn't there anymore.  Magazines were part of that model. Holding onto it wasn't helping GURPS. Closing Pyramid acknowledges reality as it is, not as they would have it be, which is the right move.

So, what comes next?  Without the shackles of Pyramid, what can SJGames do?

Well, as Phil Reed points out, they can focus on bigger things.  Maybe Vehicles 4e, finally?  They mention consolidating the best rules from Pyramid (you could easily get an Ultra-Tech 2 out of that, I've nearly consolidated all the major tech articles into a single work just for my own purposes), and consolidation might mean a push for a new edition.  At least, not having to maintain Pyramid makes such a shift easier.  If they're genuinely moving towards a more internet-oriented model, then an OGL for GURPS might be in the offing.  There are some indications that they're more open to "third-party" GURPS products than before so.. maybe. 

Of course, they might just kill off Pyramid, continue to release a handful of small PDFs a year until the trickle dries up and GURPS blows away.  This is all speculation. The point is that killing a money sink frees up resources to tackle other things.  Those things might be all of your GURPSiest dreams, or it might be Munchkin, who knows.  But Pyramid was, evidently, a dead man walking. In retrospect, this was inevitable.

Together, we can save GURPS!

So, maybe you're worried.  What can you do to help GURPS?  Well, I say you keep doing what you're doing.  I think people who blog GURPS, or patronize GURPS writers, or set up discord channels, or even just run games, are "saving GURPS."  That's what a living, vibrant game looks like.  I've been a little out of the scene because I'm busy, but whenever I poke my head into the GURPS sphere, it's always bustling.

The way we relate to games, whatever games, has been changing over the past few years, and a lot of gaming industries are in turmoil, from the rise of the indie game to the lootbox debacles of the AAA gaming industry to the collapsing golden age of the Eurogame to the rise of numerous RPGS (D&D is doing better than ever, apparently), from Tabletop Simulator to VTTs to social media RPG groups and RPG vloggers, everything is different now.  This is part of that difference.  We're going to have to change how we relate to GURPS, just as SJGames evolves, we'll have to evolve too.  In particular, we have to be less dependent on "official supplements" and be more proactive as a community.  This is true of all modern successful RPGs.

As for me, will I keep writing for GURPS?  I think so.  I will admit somethings about it really frustrate me (the lack of an OGL that means my work could be shut down with a single e-mail; the lack of a decent Vehicles book, etc), and I do go through moments where I consider moving on (Fudge/Fate looks like it'd be great, if I can shake off some of that community's biases against the sort of gaming I like, and I keep flirting with EABA), but I keep returning to GURPS because it lets me explore a lot of the things I'd really like to explore.  There may be some changes in the future, but that's always the case. For now, Psi-Wars remains on course.

Still, as much sense as it makes to kill it, I will very much mourn its passing.  Pyramid gave us Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmission and introduced me to John Wick.  It gave me about half of my Psi-Wars material.  It gave us Christoper Rise and Douglas Cole.  Ahh, and how I will miss you, Murphy's Rules.  Time marches on, but, allow me nostalgia for just this moment...

If you want to join me in supporting GURPS Bloggers, here's a few you can check out (if you know more, or blogs of note that you want to comment on, leave a comment!)

• Christopher Rice, pyramid contributer (and his blog here)
• Mook runs the GURPS discord server and works hard to bring GURPS to the common man (His blog here)
• Psuedonym works hard at the Psuedo-bot, a utility for gamers, and publishes a fairly intense blog here.
• Gaming Ballistic doesn't have a patreon, but often runs kickstarter campaigns, and is building DF material.
• Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff isn't GURPS specific, but both have previously been in Pyramid, and are worth listening to.

Patreon Art Preview and Poll: The Eldoth

July 28, 2018, 4:55 am

≫ Next: Book Review: The Empire of Silence

≪ Previous: The Eye of Providence Closes

$

0

0

It took me a bit of time, but the art for the third major race, the Eldoth, is complete.  If you're a Fellow Traveler ($3+) patron, you can check it out.  I want to give you guys a big thank you. You literally make this happen, as I use the proceeds of Patreon to pay for the artwork.

What comes next? Well, that's up to you, dear Patron, to decide. If you're a Companion ($5+) patron, you can vote! This will be a more complicated vote than usual, and I don't want to post every time a poll comes up, so just keep your eye on the Patreon feed.

As always, thank you for your support!

Book Review: The Empire of Silence

August 14, 2018, 7:25 am

≫ Next: Dogfighting Revisited

≪ Previous: Patreon Art Preview and Poll: The Eldoth

$

0

0

I'm an avid podcast and audible user, since I commute and it gives me a chance to "read" while on the go.  Lately, I've been trying to follow works that might give me additional Psi-Wars inspiration and I've certainly struck... well, silver with the latest work: Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio, 

I found the book in a local bookshop, and I'm always on the lookout for an audio book that will tide me over in between works, as I get one "credit" per month, with which I can pick up a free audio book, so I tend to be on the lookout for lengthy works with cheap price tags, and the book interested me.

So what is it?

Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy. 

It was not his war. 

The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives—even the Emperor himself—against Imperial orders. 

But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier.
On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe starts down a path that can only end in fire. He flees his father and a future as a torturer only to be left stranded on a strange, backwater world. 

Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, Hadrian must fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand. --Empire of Silence, Sleeve Summary

 The book, it turns out, is "part 1" of a series, so all that cool stuff about fighting a war and destroying a star, while teased in the opening of the book, don't actually happen in the book.  Instead, it serves as the introduction to the main character, the aristocratic Hadrian Marlowe, and chronicles his noble origins, his fall from grace, his arrival on a new world, and his slow journey from ignominy back into a sort of freedom; that pursuit of freedom from the "gilded cage" of aristocracy is the core narrative thread of the book.

The book is decidedly space opera, and almost an homage to Dune.  It certainly differs from the book, in tone and in setting, as it explicitly includes aliens (including the Cielcin, against which the mentioned war is raged, but also other aliens, at least two others which feature in the book) and nothing like the spice of Dune or the hints of drug culture rife throughout that book.  Instead, it features aristocratic houses, shield belts, blade combat, and a more medieval culture, with an all-powerful religion featuring inquisitions, forbidden technologies replaced with superior mental training and genetic engineering, and sprinkles in gladiatorial combat for good measure.

Is it Bad?

I'm sorry --Hadrian Marlowe

This audio book clocked in at 24 hours, which is three times the length of an average book, which leads me to believe it's somewhere around 1000 pages long, which is fine if it's chronicling a very extensive story, but it is, instead, a first volume to a larger saga, shades of Robert Jordan.  It definitely overstayed its welcome, and I was glad to be finished with it.  I would have have cut at least a third of the book, were I its editor, and this is a first published work of the author, as far as I can tell.

The character himself is someone tedious.  I believe the author was going for something of a subversion of Paul Atreides: instead of a fearless man who holds to his duty, we get an apologetic man who runs from his duties in disgust.  It's not quite the subversion that we get from Consider Phlebas, which felt like it was mocking the typical space opera hero, but a deeper meditation on what sort of person might become a space opera hero, and attempts to inject realism into such a journey.  The hero is often driven by events beyond his own control, and regularly makes mistakes that cost him... or that come to benefit him.

The book revels in our hero's disgust a little, showing the horrors of the Empire, including at least one detailed torture scene.  It's a brutal book in general, putting Hadrian Marlowe through hell in more ways than one and chronicling his misery.  It is, by no means, "grimdark," though I found myself comparing it to Warhammer 40k, with the Cielcin a sort of "realistic" Ork, and the Inquisition as...well, an unsanitized version of the Inquistion.  It offers a sense of wonder, mainly through the glimpse of alien ruins we eventually get treated to and, of course, the Dune-esque detail to the strange universe.

It uses a very high sort of language and routinely borders on, or even crosses into, pretension.  This is space opera as written by a well-educated member of the British peerage and drips with it.  It even touches on some modern, politically correct themes: the Earth is gone, destroyed by over-industrialization; homosexuality features prominently (though it is not portrayed as especially good or bad, simply there), and he emphasizes the equality of women.  I will say that the author does not hamfistedly drop political anvils, only that these themes are there.  The narrator of my audiobook narrated in the most received of received pronunciation, and it fits the work.

This is not a classic space opera romp where the hero gets the girl (though, at the risk of spoiling things, he is eventually offered the hand of something akin to a space princess, but flees from it) and kills the vile alien .  I've seen it compared to Game of Thrones, and that's an apt comparison.  Both have this drive towards "realism," this grim cynicism that refuses to accept the mythology of space opera, and while using typical technologies and tropes of that genre, treats them very seriously.  If you don't mind that, and you don't mind a long read, then...

Is it Good?

Well, I finished it didn't I?  Better books have failed to hold my attention.  Empire of Silence has a good grasp of how to build up to a moment of tension and then leave you hanging, to draw you in and entice you.  It takes its time getting to those answers, and I've certainly read more exciting works, but it does reward your patience.

Christopher is a master of "Show don't tell." To be sure, Hadrian Marlowe has an incessant internal monologue, but he often fails to draw conclusions that the astute reader could pick up on.  Why do particular characters hate one another so much?  What political moves are being made and why? Not all of it is explicit, and Hadrian occasionally meditates on them, but the book very much invites you to read between the lines.

The "Show don't tell" approach means that the setting is richly described.  For example, the world of Eemesh swelters with a tropical heat and sticky humidity and a literally heavy air (as it has more gravity than Earth does), that oozes from the pages in a stultifying atmosphere that you can positively feel.  He lavishes his often genetically perfected characters with appropriately beautiful descriptions and returns to them again and again, which is a technique I like and try to emulate myself.

By showing us this world, Empire of Silence gave me something I was very much looking for: an exploration of a setting.  I don't especially care about the travails of poor rich-boy Hadrian Marlowe, and while Christopher Ruocchio clearly does, he's willing to accept that I'm just there to see the sites and obliges in exquisite detail, from torpid cities barely reaching over the still surface of a tropical sea to the dance of too-polite realpolitik of interstellar aristocracy to the very languages of the setting and the details of its exotic aliens to the most interesting lightsaber expy I've seen, the "high matter sword."  If you want to read (and read and read) about a sumptuously detailed space opera setting, this is where you should go.\

I think I might buy a physical copy of it, so I can go over it in more detail (and so I can go over a glossary, which I'm supposed to be able to download from Audible, but can't seem to find).

But is it Psi-Wars?

Oh my yes.  While doubtlessly less harsh, the book very much reminded me of the aristocracy of Psi-Wars, with their careful genetic pruning, their dueling culture, the watchful eye of their church (though the Akashic Mysteries are far less prone to torture than the Chantry). I'm  totally going to steal the technology buried within their signet rings.   It's definitely a worthy read if you want more inspiration for how the Maradonian elite might behave.

They also feature alternate human cultures, from the psuedo-Ottaman Jadians to the super-technological Demarchists to the cybernetic pirates, the Extra-Solarians, who steal men away with their black-masted ships and force slave implants into them, which remind me of the Psi-Wars approach of having alternate "cultures" of humanity. I may borrow the Extra-Solarian idea as well, though I think I would tie them to remnants of the Great Galactic Threat.

I wanted "something like Dune, but different" and I certainly got it.  I wanted loads of new ideas, and I got those too.  I do recommend the book, with the caveats that it's long and pretentious.

Dogfighting Revisited

August 21, 2018, 11:29 pm

≫ Next: Dogfighting 2: Jet vs Tank

≪ Previous: Book Review: The Empire of Silence

$

0

0

I looked at David Pulver’s Dogfighting article, from Pyramid#3/53, way back in Iteration 3 and dismissed it as inappropriate for what I was trying to do, and in some sense that’s probably still true. Dogfighting won’t cover everything and misses a lot of elements key to space combat, especially how capital ships interact, or things like power management. Even so, Dogfighting is close to “chases,” and I find it easiest to handle gameplay when all the rules match. Broadly speaking, the space combat scenes from Star Wars do not differ dramatically from the chase scenes from Star Wars, and in at least one case, the space combat scene wasa chase scene!

Furthermore, as I step away from GURPS Spaceships as the driving mechanics behind my vehicles, I find that I need to look elsewhere for rules governing how they fight. I do still believe that GURPS Spaceships includes lots of interesting concepts for space combat, but it’s also clear to me that Psi-Wars space combat more closely resembles naval and aerial combat than it does space combat, which means we need more aerial and naval forms of combat.

I have no doubt that the final version of these rules will likely integrate elements from GURPS Action, GURPS Spaceships and GURPS Vehicles (especially as the first two are generally simplifications of the third). But if I have to choose a base, it looks like Dogfighting might be the ideal foundation from which the rest of my system will flow.

Walking through the Rules

We’ll be using the Dogfighting article straighttoday, but I want to see how well I understand it. The intention here is that when we get to our space combat, we port as much of it over as we can, with only a few tweaks here and there, either to accommodate the characteristics of Psi-Wars space combat, or to account for any additional cinematic twists I want to add. But before I can do that, I need to know how everything works.

Movement

The basic rules are out of GURPS Action 2, which is explicitly for chases. It assumes a pursuer and a quarry. Dogfighting, of course, doesn’t have this. It has two vehicles attacking one another. In principle, they are two people attempting to pursue one another. On the other hand, we might get a quarry if you’re attempting to “lose” the other fighter, either because you want to escape combat, or because you’re trying to regain the upper-hand. However, the rules for chases are sufficiently generic that this isn’t necessarily the problem. “Move” or “Move and Attack” can bedone by quarry or pursuer, and the winner decides we “close” range by a band or two, or “open” range by a band or two. Dogfighting also states that only the person who won the contest by “0 or more” can fire on the other because all dogfighting vehicles have forward facing mounts. I’m curious how one can “win by 0” given that this is a tie, but this presumably means succeeding where the other failed; I think I’ll also give ties to the person who won the previous round (that is, once someone is on your tail, they remain there until you “shake” them).

The roll for our movement portion of the dogfight is Pilot (of course), modified by handling and a “speed bonus.” The speed bonus is interesting for Psi-Wars. Currently capital ships will move at between 200-300 miles per hour (+10 to maximum +11) while grav drives and ion thrusters cap out at 600 (+12 to max +13) and plasma thruster equipped fighters move as fast as modern fighters (about +14). This means the difference between a starfighter and a capital ship, setting handling aside, is only about +3, while a fighter vs something like the Millennium Falcon is only +1 to +2, something easily exceeded by a top-notch pilot. Interesting! Perhaps I can/should revise the maximum speeds for capital ships, and this also means that “slow” Ion Thruster fighters aren’t so bad off, especially if they have a high handling.

Note that we get an additional bonus for “Radar.” That will be something else in Psi-Wars, but it’ll stand for now.

Dogfighting action clarifies some additional ranges, and states that fighters rarely get closer than 500 yards. That might be worth looking into more closely.

Attack

GURPS Action says that one can “attack” if one is static (not possible on a fighter, I think), and Move and Attack otherwise. I’m not sure if the Chase rules are explicitly covering vehicle-mounted weapons, or if Gunslinger refers to your own guns; I’m inclined to treat it that way!
Dogfighting Action states that you must “win” your contest to attack, that you can ignore your bulk penalties due to “bracing and sighting systems” and you get +3 with a radar lock. The +3 is a standard rule, but the ignoring bulk is interesting. On what physical mechanism is that based? How can we “build” a fighter that has the same advantage?

GURPS Campaigns offers several modifiers for moving and firing for air vehicles: you’re at -1 if using a handheld weapon, but that’s never going to come up. You’re at +0 otherwise, so far so good. It also hits you with a penalty to all shots equal to -4 if you dodged last turn, and with a penalty equal to how much you failed a control roll last turn. “Vehicular Targeting Systems” add +1 to +3 if the shooter took a turn to aim. If we dig a little deeper, we find several interesting rules. First, a typical optical sight will give +2 while a TL 8 fire-control system will give a +3 (but this might be part of radar). A fixed mount requires you to roll the lower of your gunner or pilot skill to hit (same with hardpoints, but you’re at -1 Acc). GURPS Vehicles offers a +2 to fire with a fixed mount (which is borrowed by GURPS Spaceships). Gyrostabilization seems to offer some bonuses, but mainly to turrets to “reduce the penalties for firing on the move.” These penalty reductions are handled in the Ranged Attack Modifiers section, which state that bonuses from Accuracy, Aim, bracing and targeting systems cannot exceed stability unless stabilized, and that (for example) a water vehicle in rought-water is at -1 to hit if moving and attcking with a stabilized mount, -2 with a fixed mount, and so on but no rules on the penalty for attacking with an unstabilized turret).

Move and Attack on B365 states that you lose all Aim bonuses, which makes me wonder why everything is discussing Accuracy at all! After careful hunting, the only rule I can find that negates this seems to be “Weapon Fire from a Moving Vehicle” on B469, which discusses aiming from a moving vehicle.

So the intent here seemsto be that the “bracing” of weaponry (the +2 from fixed mounts and hardpoints), the accuracy of the weapons themselves and any “scopes” that they might have are being simplifiedinto “ignore the bulk value.” It might be worth looking into that more closely, since both this and Space Combat seem to just toss aside quite a few rules by suggesting that other modifiers make up the difference, but this mightcause a problem if we don’t know what modifiers still apply and which do not. In thiscase, it seems clear that the weapons don’t gain the +2 from fixed mounts, or from any “scopes,” but this might not be the case with our ultra-tech vehicles, so we’ll need to return to this topic.

It should be noted that even with all of these rules, we have a -15 to hit at Extreme range, which is the closest the article says we can get. The highest ROF cannon, the 20mm autocannon, fires 100 rounds, which is +7 to hit, and our radar gives us a +3, and the size of the vehicles gives us another +5 to +6, which is, altogether, a +0 or +1 to hit. It’s not clear to me if and how I should apply the speed penalty, but a close reading suggest that I only apply the worst of the two; the simplest way to handle this is to apply the worse or range or their speed modifier. Given that their speed penalty is -14 and the closest range penalty is -15, then range seems the greater concern, at least for now.

That leaves us with the homing weapons from before, which is where everything went south fast (well, at least one of the issues). The problem I had here was the ROF and how to handle it. The rules state that you roll Artillery with the missile’s Accuracy as a bonus, and a penalty equal to the ECM modifier. “All usual attack roll modifiers apply” except we ignore range and apply only have the speed penalty. Setting aside accuracy and ECM, “half speed modifiers” will be -7 on average, Size modifier is +5, the ROF of 100+ is +7, which means we have a +5 to hit with a Rcl of “--” (I presume 1?), which means we’ll hit with an average of 6 fragments; the accuracy of a TL 8 missile is +5 while our ECM is typically -3, so we’re looking at another +2 for a total of +7 or 8 fragments per missile, and even if we dodge or manage to make it a little harder for our opponent to hit us, we just reduce the number of fragments.

Psi-Wars isn’t going to use those sorts of fragments, because I have no way to design them, so in the interest of moving this along, I’m going to replace those rules with an explosive round that deals 6dx10. It can “airburst” for +4 to hit and be close enough to apply full damage. If you miss by 1, you still hit but you do 1/3 damage, and if your opponent successfully dodges, but only by 0 or 1, he’s still hit, but only takes 1/3 damage (unless he was already going to take 1/3 damage, in which case he dodged the shot). This is to simulate the Plasma Missiles our ships will be using. This means that we have an average of -7 for speed, +4 for airburst, +5 for accuracy and -3 for ECM, or -1 on average to hit.

The Dogfight

Part 1: The Fighter-Craft and Pilots

So, we’ve got our basic rules. What will the fight look like? For our fighters, let’s put a skilled “underdog” against a less-skilled “brute.” In Team America, we’ll take a “Viper,” and treat it as an “advanced” fighter, perhaps something like an F-18. It’ll have the standard stats, including a 20mm gatling cannon +6 ROF), six a2a missiles, and we’ll treat it as a later model with 75+ mile radar and ECM -3. Our pilot, Maverick, will have Pilot-18, Gunnery-16, Artillery (Guided Missile)-16, and HT 12. I don’t think any other stats are relevant.

On Team Bad Guy, we’ll use a lower-tech Phantom as a stand in for a Mig-28 (The Mig-28 is a fictional aircraft that Top Gun depicted with an F-5, which is close to a F-4, and thus a Phantom is appropriate). I’ve chosen a 30mm cannon (+6 ROF) to reflect the fact that Russian craft depicted tend to have heavier guns than American fighters, 8 air-to-air missiles, 50 mile radar, and ECM -2. Our nameless pilot will have all appropriate skills at 15 and HT 11.

The first thing that jumps off the page is that we don’t see much difference in stats. I had wanted to see what it would look like with a Flanker vs a Viper, but they’re really, really close, so if I really want a difference between the vehicles, I need some sort of difference, and this should give us a good idea. It is interesting to see that most vehicles won’t differ substantially, however; a point of handling here and there, a minor weapon difference, etc.

Part 2: Engagement details

Both craft have radar, so we can start Beyond Visual, which means they’re only picking up one another as bogies.

Weather is clear, terrain isn’t particularly special (but, say, a big rocky and mountainous below). Neither can be reached by the other side’s support, so they’ll both be alone.

Part 3: The Fight

Turn 1: Beyond Visual: Encounter

Step 1: Quarry chooses his chase maneuver

Step 2: Pursuer chooses his chase maneuver

Well, it’s not clear at this point who is quarry and who is pursuer. The rules suggest that if its not clear, bothpick blindly. So, all we have is a radar ping on both (or so? We don’t really get into sensor checks here). So, I think the reasonable thing for our Russian to do wouldbe to Move closer to investigate. For Maverick, let’s go ahead and fire a missile: his superior radar was picking up the Mig from a lot farther off, so he has a better idea.

A note: rules on whether you detect someone would be nice here. The fact that one guy has 75+ mile range and the other doesn’t doesn’t seem to make much of a difference at this point. I’m also curious about how facing would work. Perhaps if you detect someone first, or you happen to be behind them, that you are automatically the pursuer?

Step 3: Pursuer resolves any attack rolls for his manuever

Well, Maverick is attacking, so he’s surely the pursuer at this point.

• His Artillery is 16;
• his missile has an accuracy of +5 (he’s using the TL 8 version);
• The Russian’s SM is +6;
  
• our missile airbursts for +4;
• we’re not worried about range;
• his opponent has an ECM of -2;
• his opponent has a speed modifier of +15; we halve it (round down) for -7.

So, we have a total of...22or less. We roll a 10 and hit, no problem!

The Russian needs to dodge now. He has a skill of 15, which is a 7or less to dodge, plus his handling of +1, so 8or less. If we assume combat reflexes, he has a 9or less. We can boost that by +1 more if we take a high-G defense, which requires him to make an HT roll. Let’s do this. We roll a 9, which beats our 10by enough to get rattled by the missile, which deals 80 damage (after reducing for distance). That’s enough to “stun” the jet and possibly set it on fire (11 or less to avoid being disabled, 8 or less to avoid being on fire). We roll a 14 and an 8, which means we’re not on fire, but we’re falling out of the sky. We roll 8 on our HT roll, which means we can handle the intense Gs just fine.

Note: For the sake of the fight, let’s call that attack a miss, but it’s interesting that’s very hard to dodge a missile and very easy to hit with it from such a long range. It’s also arguable that Maverick couldn’t make this attack at all: we’ve not established who the pursuer is, and he has won no particular contest yet. Still, the extreme effectiveness of the missile is potentially a problem.

Step 4: Quarry resolves their roll

The Russian has no special rolls

Step 5: Resolve the Chase quick contest.

Maverick is at -2 for his Move and Attack maneuver, has +14 speed and +3 handling. Paired with his 18 piloting, he’s got a total of 33. The Russian has Skill 15, +15 speed, and +1 handling, for a total of 31. Both can make an electronics operation (sensors) roll to get a boost. Maverick rolls an 11 on his electronics roll and gains a +1 to his chase roll (34) and rolls an 11, passing by 23. The Russian rolls a 13 on his electronics roll and passes, gaining a +1 (32) and rolls a 7, passing by 25.

The Russian wins. He can fire on Maverick, but not vice versa.

Step 6: Adjust range band and continue to next round

No range band change is allowed.

Note: Dogfighting Action states that one can only attack if he succeeded by 0 or more on the previous chase roll. But what about the initial check? A couple of options are possible: you roll off to see who senses who first, or you just state that neithercan fire or bothcan fire.

It’s also interesting how painfully accurate the missile is. It looks like Dodge is your only real option! That said, while I’m not sure, I know that 160mm missiles typically have an accuracy of +6, while TL 11 jammers tend to have a ECM penalty of -6, so it’ll be harder to hit a Psi-Wars fighter with a missle, but not by much.

Round 2: Beyond Visual; The Russian Pursues; Russian has full ammo; Maverick has 5 missiles and full cannon.

Step 1: Quarry chooses his chase maneuver

Well, Maverick is definitely in the hot seat now. His radar is going nuts, showing his enemy has a lock and, likely, is pissed. He needs to turn things around fast. He chooses a Reverse.

Step 2: Pursuer chooses his chase maneuver

The pursuer chooses second so he can adapt, but the Russian doesn’t need to. He chooses to Move and Attack.

Step 3: Pursuer resolves any attack rolls for his manuever

The Russian is attacking with a missile:

• His Artillery is 15;
  
• his missile has an accuracy of +5 (he’s using the TL 8 version);
• The Maverick’s SM is +5;
  
• our missile airbursts for +4;
• we’re not worried about range;
• his opponent has an ECM of -3;
  
• his opponent has a speed modifier of +14; we halve it (round down) for -7.
  

So, we have a total of...19or less. He rolls an 8, and hits, of course. It’s almost impossible not to.
Maverick has a dodge of 13, with +1 for a High G maneuver. We roll a 7 to dodge (easy) and a 10 for High G (Out of our 12), so we’re fine. Whew!

Step 4: Quarry resolves their roll

Maverick has no special rolls.

Step 5: Resolve the Chase quick contest.

Maverick is at -10for his Reversemaneuver, has +14 speed and +3 handling. Paired with his 18 piloting, he’s got a total of 25. The Russian has Skill 15, -2 from move and attack, +15 speed, and +1 handling, for a total of 29. Maverick rolls a 9 (being his skill by 16) and the Russian rolls a 14, which beats his skill by 15.

Maverickwins by 1. He closes from Beyond Visual to Distant.

Note: Reverse is… weird in this version, and I’m not sure I like it. It’s much more difficult than a Stunt, and roughly equivalent to adding a +5 to your chase roll, which is an average of +1 or -1 range band, which is exactly what Maverick got here. It’s possible to get 2 range bands out of it, so I suppose there is that, but I’m not sure that’s better: it means that if you want to close in a dog fight, it’s always better than a stunt. What’s also weird about it is that it’s just part of your “chase” roll, as opposed to a separate roll, as in a stunt. This means that extremely fast craft are less likely to “wipe-out,” thanks to their high speed bonus, than a slower vehicle. That’s… counter-intuitive, and I’m not sure it’s a good rule.

Round 3: Distant; MaverickPursues; Russian has 7 missiles and full cannon; Maverick has 5 missiles and full cannon.

Step 1: Quarry chooses his chase maneuver

The Russian is now on the run, and he can turn around to SEE Maverick, who has managed to close in on him. He pushes to go as fast as he can to escape. He chooses Move.

Step 2: Pursuer chooses his chase maneuver

Maverick almost hit the Russian last time, but it almost lost him the race. So let’s complete our close with a Stunt at -4.

Step 3: Pursuer resolves any attack rolls for his maneuver

Maverick needs to roll against Pilot -4, so a 14 or less. He rolls… a 15. Man, what are the chances! He’s got a stability of 4 so he’s more-or-less fine and can participate in the chase, but he’s in trouble next round.

Step 4: Quarry resolves their roll

The Russian has no special rules.

Step 5: Resolve the Chase quick contest.

Maverick is at +0for his stunt, has +14 speed and +3 handling. Paired with his 18 piloting, he’s got a total of 35. The Russian has Skill 15, +0 for move, +15 speed, and +1 handling, for a total of 31. Maverick rolls a 12 (success by 23) and the Russian rolls a 7 (success by 24).

The Russian wins by 1.

Note: I’d almost rather see Maverick win with the stunt. That would have given him enough to continue to hold his advantage, but not so much that he could choose to gain ground. Gaining ground is hard! Harder than I expected. Also, this fight is far more dynamic than I thought it would be. This is actually kind of dramatic!

Step 6: Adjust range band and continue to next round

The Russian becomes pursuer. He cannot close range.

Round 4: Distant; The RussianPursues; Russian has 7 missiles and full cannon; Maverick has 5 missiles and full cannon, and must make an emergency action.

Step 1: Quarry chooses his chase maneuver

Maverick must make an Emergency action.

Step 2: Pursuer chooses his chase maneuver

The Russian could simply move. That might give him enough speed to close in for a kill with his superior cannon, and Maverick is at a penalty for the chase. So let’s do that. Seeing Maverick flaming out, the Russian dives after him, pushing to get as close as he can.

Step 3: Pursuer resolves any attack rolls for his maneuver

The Russian needs to make no special roll.

Step 4: Quarry resolves their roll

Maverick makes no special roll and recovers his craft.

Step 5: Resolve the Chase quick contest.

Maverick is at -5to recover, has +14 speed and +3 handling. Paired with his 18 piloting, he’s got a total of 30. The Russian has Skill 15, +0 for move, +15 speed, and +1 handling, for a total of 31. Maverick rolls a 14 (success by 16) and the Russian rolls a 12 (success by 19).

The Russian wins by 3, which is not enough to close range. Man, that’s hard!

Note: Maverick is just a better pilot and in a more nimble jet. It’s really the only thing keeping him alive now. An emergency action, at -5, averages a free band of movement, so he’s lucky he was able to hold the Russian at bay.

Step 6: Adjust range band and continue to next round

The Russian remains pursuer. No closed range is possible.

Round 5: Distant; The RussianPursues; Russian has 7 missiles and full cannon; Maverick has 5 missiles and full cannon.

Step 1: Quarry chooses his chase maneuver

Maverick makes a Stunt at -4 again. Surely problems can’t happen twice in a row!

Step 2: Pursuer chooses his chase maneuver

The Russian simply can’t catch up to Maverick. He’ll fire a missile.

Step 3: Pursuer resolves any attack rolls for his maneuver

The Russian still needs a 19 or less to hit.He rolls a 12, and hits. Maverick has a dodge of 13, with +1 for a High G maneuver. We roll a 9 to dodge and a 13 for High G (Out of our 12); he doesn’t pass out buthe loses 1 fatigue!

Step 4: Quarry resolves their roll

Maverick needs a 14 or less and rolls a 13 (man, his rolls are not great today, but it’s enough). I think it’s a shame that he can’t use a High-G “stunt.” And why not? Perhaps a +2 if you’re willing to risk blacking out!

Step 5: Resolve the Chase quick contest.

Maverick is at +2for his stunt, has +14 speed and +3 handling. Paired with his 18 piloting, he’s got a total of 37. The Russian has Skill 15, +0 for move, +15 speed, and +1 handling, for a total of 31. Maverick rolls an8(success by 29) and the Russian rolls a 12 (success by 19); success by 10!

Maverick succeeds by 10; he can close twobands.

Note: Nothing says you can’t close by to less than Extreme, just that jets rarely do. Let’s say that they do, but immediately revert to Extreme on the next round.

Step 6: Adjust range band and continue to next round

Maverick leads and they are at long(-11)

Round 6: Long; MaverickPursues; Russian has 6missiles and full cannon; Maverick has 5 missiles and full cannon and 11 fatigue left.

Step 1: Quarry chooses his chase maneuver

The Russian needs to get out of this. He’ll stunt for -2.

Step 2: Pursuer chooses his chase maneuver

Move and attack! Kill the Russian with cannons!

Step 3: Pursuer resolves any attack rolls for his maneuver

Maverick fires his cannon:

• He has gunnery 16
• He has a radar lock (+3)
• He’s at Long Range (-11)
• His quarry is SM +6
• He has ROF 100 for +7

He needs a 21 or less to hit (this close range is helping a lot!). He rolls a 13 to hit, which will hit a total of 5 times!

The Russian needs to dodge, again with a High G manuever. He dodges on a 9 or less and rolls… a 14. Well, that’s not good. Maverick hits dead on 5 times for (after DR 5) 30, 48, 45, 45 and 51, for a total of 219 damage against an HP of 125. That’s a stun check (11), a fire check (8), and a disabled check every second after this one. With an 11, the vehicle can still fly, but with a 16, it is on fire. But he passes his HT check for high-G! At least he has that.

Note: Given that speed now exceeds range, I could replace range with speed. That feels like an added complexity, and likely why David Pulver mutters about never getting closer than Extreme, as that means the -15 is always worse than the -14 for speed. It also means that there’s no pointin getting closer. I’ve avoided that complexity for now, but it’s worth bearing in mind.

Step 4: Quarry resolves their roll

The Russian, I remind you, was in the midst of a stunt. He needs a 13 or better to pass, and rolls a 14. Oh… bother.

Step 5: Resolve the Chase quick contest.

Maverick is at -2for move and attack, has +14 speed and +3 handling. Paired with his 18 piloting, he’s got a total of 33. The Russian has Skill 15, -4 for damage this turn, +0 for move, +15 speed, and +1 handling, for a total of 27. Maverick rolls an8and the Russian rolls a 12; Obviously, Maverick maintains the lead; we’ll keep to Extreme, rather than Long.

Note: There’s no rules her for reduced handling when you’re below 0 HP, but maybe there should be. GURPS Basic talks about it, but Action doesn’t. Might be a good rule to import from Spaceships!

Step 6: Adjust range band and continue to next round

Maverick leads and they are at Extreme (-15).

Post-Script

After this, the Russian needs to make an HT roll every turn to keep from wrecking and a critical failure results in an explosion because he’s on fire. It’s not clear what, if anything else, the fire does. Perhaps continues to do damage? I think that’s fair! In any case, on the next turn, the Russian would be at -5 from needing to make an emergency action, so even if his plane survived, Maverick would retain his advantage and get to fire again, probably hitting again, and forcing more HT rolls. The Russian could make a DX roll to bail before he crashed, which looks inevitable at this point.

And I have to admit, with a few minor changes, this isn’t bad. It feels more dynamic than the space combat, and easier to remember. It’s pretty fast paced and dramatic and can turn on a few bad rolls. I honestly thought this was a bad pairing, because Maverick would clearly win, but the dogfighting system keeps the rolls pretty close, overall. This mightcause some problems with other sorts of ships (capital ships aren’t as “slow” in this form of combat as I might like).

There are a few things I’m concerned about, but we can look at those in more detail later. They are mainly:

• Why not High-G stunts? Too many rolls?
• Are reverses worth keeping in at all?
• Rules for who detects who first?
• Missiles seem really unlikely to miss.

---

Dogfighting 2: Jet vs Tank

August 23, 2018, 8:01 am

≫ Next: Book Review: We Are Legion (We are Bob) and the Bobiverse Trilogy

≪ Previous: Dogfighting Revisited

$

0

0

One thing I’ll need to handle if I get into fighters vs cap-ships, I need to see how high-speed craft work against slower, sea-bound craft, but I don’t havesea-bound craft that I can compare the standard TL 8 fighter to. However, I do have tanks. High-Tech has a TL 8 main battle tank, but I’m pretty sure I know how that fight will end, which is with a dead tank on turn one, because the fighter will get a missile lock, fire, and kill. The only real disadvantage is that the fighter isn’t carrying any missile that easily punches through armor, but the top of a tank is only DR 100, and the missile deals 200 damage; it wouldn’t necessarily be a one shot kill, but the tank sure wouldn’t be happy. Thus, I’d like to propose using the TL 9 “Light Battle Tank” from GURPS Ultra-Tech. It’s more advanced than the fighter, but at least it can fight back and make things interesting.

“Surely,” I hear you say, “GURPS Action doesn’t handle things like a fighter jet ‘chasing’ a tank.” Oh, but it does! It calls this mobility pursuit. The fighter is able to operate on three dimensions and can treat the tank as static. Of course, it must pursue in ways that the tank cannot compensate for. Just chasing the tank over flat ground is not mobility pursuit, but if the tank must go over rough, rocky ground that the fighter can just soar over, then it becomes a mobility pursuit. Similarly, if things go bad for our fighter, it can use a mobility escape, simply climbing beyond the range of the tank.

It should be noted that the tank and a Psi-Wars capital ship aren’t precisely the same, because a fighter can’t use superior mobility against a capital ship, as both operate in three spatial dimensions, but we have some additional ways we can simulate it in Psi-Wars, if it comes to that.

The Craft

The fighter will be Maverick, once more: pilot-18, all other pertinent skills at 16. He’ll fly an advanced Viper (an “F-18”-ish craft).

Our tank will be a dangerous, experimental tank in the hands of some hyper-advanced criminal cartel. The Light Battle Tank (UT 226) comes with a tank cannon (which won’t be useful), a coaxial chaingun (which also won’t be useful), a “strike laser” which will be useful, and a rack of 10 missiles, which will also be useful. Among other things, it sports a tactical ESM (+1 to dodge if locked on). It has no radar or, despite its description, radar stealth. I am, however, going to borrow the Radar Stealth from the hover tank on the same page. At TL 9, this gives a -4 to radar, so we’re going to treat it, altogether, as ECM -4, for simplicity (we can argue it has thermal cloaking to prevent IR locks, etc).

The strike laser is on UT 116 and is, surprisingly, a TL 10 item on a TL 9 tank. Interesting. Let’s replace it with the Point Defense laser at TL 9, which weighs the same, just has halved damage. It has an accuracy of 18, and halved damage at farther than 9,000 yards (so, beyond visual). I’m not sure how it’ll handle “point defense.” I see no special rules anywhere, so for here, I propose we treat it like a parry. I might not use that rule for Psi-Wars, but we’ll use it here.

The Missiles are TMLs from UT 146. They have an accuracy of 3, and we’ll make them homing, but just treat them like the homing missiles from Dogfighting: they’re as vulnerable to ECM as any missile. Their minimum range is 3000 yards so, like the missiles from Dogfighting, they cannot hit closer than Distant, but can reach out to Beyond Visual. It’ll use proximity detonation HE rounds, so benefit from the +4 to hit, and will deal 6dx5 damage, which is less than the fighter’s missiles, but it’s also a smaller warhead (100mm vs ~160mm); the closeness in damage is no accident, as I used the TL 9 HE warhead as the base for my new missile. I could probably have worked out a more “realistic” version.

(The realistic version would use HMX from GURPS High-Tech, which has an REF of 1.7. If my calculations are correct, such a weapon would give 6dx7 cr ex, rather than the 6dx10 that I used; I could transition to this, but the LBT has a side/top DR of 200, which means it would be virtually impossible for our fighter to damage it).

The LBT can move at a top speed of 50 miles per hour, giving it a +6 to chase rolls.

The Tank is driven by the Claw, a nefarious agent up to no good; he has Gunnery and Artillery 18, and Drive (and all other pertinent skills) 16.

The Fight

Turn 1: Distant

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver

This is an interesting question, as our fighter really occupies a different scale than the tank does; this matters most for radar, as it’s much easier to pick up a jet, silhouetted by the sky, than it is to pick up a tank driving in a radar-noisy landscape. Nonetheless, we’re going to start with Maverick chasing the Claw, as the reverse is absurd, and Maverick wants to stop the Claw before he can get to some civilians and deal some real damage.

We’ll start at Distant, mainly because I don’t believe you could pick out a tank in cluttered terrain without visual confirmation, not well enough to target anyway, and I don’t have decent “sensor” rules yet, so we’ll go with this.

The Claw has some interesting options. He could Hide, which gives him a +0 due to the range involved, so he has a pretty good chance of pulling it off. This sort of makes sense: slip behind some trees and a jet-fighter cruising at mach 1 at high altitudes is going to have a pretty good chance of passing you by completely. Then you could pull out and “chase” the jet-fighter. However, since that sort of thing won’t be happening in space, and that’s really the sort of thing I want to understand, we’re not going to do that. Another good option is Attack. By stopping and taking time to aim a shot at the jet, our tank could do some real damage. I’m not going to do that either. Instead, the Claw chooses move, based on the rational that he doesn’t yet realize he’s under attack (he lacks radar, though perhaps his hyper-spectral sensors could pick up the jet, but is he even looking?) and he wants to reach his nefarious goal as soon as possible.

Maverick, of course, needs to remove this guy as quick as possible and chooses Move and Attack, firing off a missile. He’s not making a mobility pursuit, as he’s not actually cutting the Claw off in some unusual way.

Note: You can’t make mobility pursuits and attacks. Why not? Come to think of it, there’s a lot of maneuvers that look more like options. Couldn’t you do a Mobility Stunt Move and Attack, like your helicopter cuts off someone’s motorcycle while flying upside down and peppering the area with bullets? Or is that to much awesome for a single maneuver?

Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls

Maverick gets to make his attack. He’s firing a missile, so he takes his:

• Artillery 16
• Accuracy 5
• Target ECM -4
• Target Speed (halved) -3
• Target SM +5

So we need a 19 or less to hit. That ECM makes a difference, but not enough for its slow speed. Maverick rolls a 15, and hits.

The Claw gets notified the moment Maverick locks on (Tactical ESM), and begins to swear. He can dodge (he has a base dodge of 8, with a -2 from the tank’s handling, a +1 from combat reflexes, and a +1 from his tactical ESM, giving us a 8), or we can try point defense. If we treat that as a “parry” with gunnery, then we have a 9 + 3 + 1 +1 or 14, but I’m not sure this is the right approach: are all missiles equally easy to engage in point defense against? We have no rules I can find anywhere on point defense, so I don’t know what’s fair here. So, instead, let’s try a lame dodge. We need an 8 and we roll… a 9. So we’re hit. It’s a top hit (I can’t find where the rules say that its armor is located, but I’m going to assume the turret and front are DR 500, and tops and sides are 200). Maverick hits with 250 explosive damage, which means the tank takes 50 damage, out of it’s 150. That’s not enough to “stun” the vehicle, though it’ll temporarily have a -4 to its control rolls. It’s shaking and bouncing mercilessly, and the Claw’s ears are ringing, but he’s fine.

Note: the weaponry our fighter is carrying is just not strong enough to punch through armor. An air-to-surface missile might have something more like 6dx8(10) cr ex, which averages 160 damage and would punch through 1600 DR; the tank has DR 200, and is laminate with EMA, and thus has effectively 600 DR, which means it would take 100 damage from such a missile, on average, which is worse than what the air-to-air missile can do, but still isn’t a one-shot kill. Most of this is a technological disparity, though. An air-to-surface missile can generally kill a tank, and "fighter vs tank" is usually a terrible match-up for a tank.

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

No Rolls necessary

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

Maverick has a -2 from his move and attack, +14 from his speed, and +3 from his handling atop his skill 18, for a total of 33; he rolls an 11 and succeeds by 22. The Claw has +0 from his move, -4 from shock, -2 from handling, and +6 from speed with a drive of 16, for a total 16; he rolls a 3 and succeeds by 13, which is technically not enough, but it’s a critical success! C’mon!

Just based on results, Maverick could approach by a band, but let’s make the case that with a critical success, the Claw is able to somehow out maneuver him and stay just on the edges of Maverick’s approach. On average, though, we would expect Maverick to close a band at least once a turn, often two bands per turn.

Turn 2: Extreme; The Claw has 100/150 HP; Maverick has 5/6 missiles.

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

The Claw is definitely the quarry, and running is futile, so we’re going to stop andAttack.

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver

We rattled the tank last time. Another missile might get lucky again. Move and Attack.

Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls

Maverick makes to make his attack. Our stats are largely the same as last time, but here they are again:

• Artillery 16
• Accuracy 5
• Target ECM -4
• Target Speed (halved) -0 (he’s static)
• Target SM +5

So we need a 22 or less to hit, which means we’ll almost certainly hit. We roll a 10 and hit.

I don’t think I can make the case that our tank can dodge; this would be another good time to make a point defense attack; I sat down and hunted up some rules on this, and the only thing I could find was in Modular Mecha which gives point-defenses a skill of 13 or less. This is TL 10, so perhaps a TL 9 point Defense would be skill 12? If we do that, and roll an 11, then our point defense defeats the missile.

Note: Is this fair? I’m not sure. We really have no logic behind point defense, and it’s not something I’d include in Psi-Wars, but it would be nice to have some official rules behind it. The idea seems to be a wait and attack with an AI controlling the point defense, but would it aim? Do we care about range? Do we care about missile SM? How is this supposed to work? It’s not something I feel the need to dive too deep into, but I know it’s something a lot of people would like to see on a tactical (not space) scale of combat.

Incidentally, the damage it took last turn, does it still affect it this turn? I would say no, but then, I'm not really clear as to how shock should impact vehicles in chase scenes at all!

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

So, the Claw gets to make his attack. He can fire his Strike Laser (but if that was used as point defense, it is still an option?) or his missile. Given the ambiguity of the point defense, a missile would make more sense, but let’s see what the Strike Laser would look like.

For the Strike Laser:

• Gunnery 18
• ROF +0
• Accuracy 18
• Range -15 (Range + Speed = -17, if we wanted to be picky)
• Target SM +5

We would need a 26 or less to hit, which is as close to a sure thing as we’re going to get. Lasers have absurd accuracy values; if we us the Psi-Wars reduced blaster accuracy, we drop down to 17, which is a much more interesting value.

For the missile:

• Artillery 18
• Accuracy 6
• Target ECM -3
• Target Speed (halved) -7
• Target SM +5

This brings us to a 19 or less.

Either way, we roll 10 and hit. That leaves Maverick to dodge; he has a skill of 18, so a base dodge of 9, with a handling of +3, and can make a high G dodge for +1, so he has a 13 or less. He rolls an 11 and easily dodges.

Note: In my space combat rules, I made missiles harder to dodge, the idea being that they could turn with you. It’s an interesting idea, but given that they’re so accurate already, I’m a little loathe to do that. It might be interesting to explore in the future.

What’s also interesting is how agile and able to dodge our fighter is. We really need some means of trimming that dodge down, so it doesn’t turn into an interminable exchange until someone gets a critical hit.

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

The Claw took a static maneuver, but still rolls. As far as I can tell, he still rolls Drive and adds Handling, but doesn’t add speed. That’s weird, didn’t he stop? Well, as best as I can tell, these involve up to a full minute of manuevering, so what likely happened is that our tank drove, stopped, aim, and then drove some more, all during this one turn. The handling handles how quickly it can stop and go, so if this was a ferrari he was driving, he’d still have a decent chance of keeping ahead… well, to some extent as we’ll see. In any case, this gives him a total of 14 to roll against; he rolls an 11 and succeeds by 3.

Maverick has a -2 from his move and attack, +14 from his speed, and +3 from his handling atop his skill 18, for a total of 33; he rolls an 13 and succeeds by 20.

This means Maverick wins by 17, again, which is enough for a +2 shift, and because his opponent is static, he gets another shift! In principle, Maverick can move from Extreme to short and pass within 6 yards of the tank. There’s no reason to do this, of course, and Dogfighting suggests we get no closer than Extreme; given our elevation, this seems to be best.

Note: This makes “Attack” an ideal maneuver for our tank. We can’t escape anyway (though we could Hide, at least as a tank). This would be the sort of behavior I would expect from Psi-Wars capital ships: shot at incoming craft, and shoot at other vehicles, but not to try to “escape” fighters. In principle, it should not be practical.

It is interesting though: what happens if you’ve got your enemy down cold, and have that much mobility on them, but you’ve reached a point where there’s nothing more you can do with that mobility? Perhaps there’s such a thing as “too much mobility,” and that’s fair and this reflects that, but I wonder. Perhaps we should have some kind of strafing maneuver?

Postscript

I think I’m going to stop here, not because I’ve run into problems: we could play this fight out to the bitter end, but either Maverick runs out of missiles (either because the point defense takes them all down, or because he can’t get through the armor), or the tank gets a lucky shot on Maverick and takes him out. It’s actually fairly close at this point: each missile only has about a 50% chance of doing any damage, and a lot of it will be negligible (it got lucky on that first shot), mainly because it has the wrong armaments. With the right armaments, it’s one shot and one kill. We don’t have good rules for point defense; if we use the point defense rules from Modular Mecha, though, then the tank is pretty safe from missiles and I would hand the fight to the tank (It’s TL 9, so…).

I also note that the fight involves extremely accurate attacks, but we’re also featuring extremely competent characters, so that might be part of it. If the characters had skill 12, would this still be true?

What also jumps out at me is that at this point, the tank is actually stopped and fighting, and the rules for “Stop” in Action is that the Chase is over and you’re having “tactical combat.” This, of course, is geared towards people in cars shooting pistols at one another. The Chase rules are for chases, and what we want are vehicular combat rules. The combat rules of the rest of Action covers this for people; we need this for vehicles, which shouldn’t be too hard to put together. What the chase rules offer is an abstract form of movement which even the Combat rules of Action use for personalmovement.

But what I find interesting is that this holds up remarkably well. It does some odd things, but for the most part, it works more or less as I expect, and that’s because, as noted above, we’re using standard, not simplified, vehicular combat rules, we just have an abstract movement system layered atop it.

Book Review: We Are Legion (We are Bob) and the Bobiverse Trilogy

August 26, 2018, 3:00 pm

≫ Next: Meditations on the Biplane Part 1 -- Feedback

≪ Previous: Dogfighting 2: Jet vs Tank

$

0

0

When I finally caved and joined Audible, it was to support Isaac Arthur's SFIA youtube channel, as he covers topics I dearly love, and he highly recommended the Bobiverse Trilogy, so I thought I would check it out.

I must say, I quite enjoyed it.  It is not a series without flaws, by any means, and I understand this was the author ("From annoyed fan to professional writer" went one of his tag-lines, if I remember correctly) is a fairly new one.  All in all, I would say it's quite a romp, a sort of popcorn sci-fi, each book fairly small and digestible (the entire trilogy clocks in just a little longer than the single Empire of Silence), and has a nice, hard edge for those who take their laws of physics very seriously.

I definitely recommend this series.

A Summary

We Are Legion follows Robert Johanssen, the eponymous "Bob," who uses the money from the buyout of his successful tech-startup to sign a contract to be cryogenically frozen after his death. Then, while attending a sci-fi convention, is hit by a car and dies.

He then wakes up in the laboratory of a theocratic United States some two hundred years in the future, not as a human, but as an  uploaded copy of the original.  He has been selected as a candidate for the "Heaven" project, which will involve sending a probe out to another star system, where he is expected to build more copies of himself and rinse and repeat, while seeking good colony targets and returning to help bring humanity to the stars (the copying process gives the book its name).  Unfortunately, there is no small amount of competition, and Bob finds himself under attack from international espionage and then outright declarations of war which has apocalyptic results for the Earth.

Once in space, Bob needs to tackle the lingering reach of enemy human empires, help rehabilitate the Earth, seek out new worlds and new civilizations, help humanity reach the stars, uplift newly discovered sapient species, squabble with his clones, do his best to keep from going insane, and then uncover and wage war upon a horrifying race, the "Others" who see all other races as sources of food.

The Bad

The author is clearly a nerd, or at least knows the nerd target audience very well, and I find the work falls into some geek fallacies pretty quickly.  Bob often finds himself dealing with bullies or bully-like people, and we're expected to root for him when he outwits of defeats them, but I find this very dissonant when the person being "bullied" is an interstellar battleship capable of orbital strikes.  We can chalk this up to the personality of Bob lingering within the digital copies, but what I find mind-blowing is that people would even try it.  We regularly see villainous personalities making threats or posturing against Bob, or making unreasonable or realistic threats against him, and at one point, he is the subject of bigotry and discrimination, and we are meant to sympathize, and given the response the book receives, quite a few people do.  I just found it absurd. Oh, sure, there's always some punk who's going to talk up to a Terminator and pick a fight with it, but I think most people would give it wide berth or, maybe, even worship it.

In general, I find the way a lot of characters behave in We are Legion and its sequels to be a tad unrealistic, namely in the author doesn't, to me, feel like he has a good grasp of motivations.  People take over governments, or hate the Bobs, or cast him into exile, or demand his time and attention, and while these follow naturally from situations and previous actions, I think they fail to take into account, first, that Bob is often dealing with literally millions of people, and I would expect some diversity of opinion.

Two stark examples stand out to me.  First, Bob eventually offers the uploading technology to humanity, but they, with one sole exception, reject the technology.  Nobody wants to be uploaded, and they point out that all Bob seems to do is chores for humanity and wage wars.  Who would want that?  Folks, that's what the military looks like, and we get people willing to join that all the time.  If, right now, you went out into the world and offered a million people the chance to become an interstellar battleship, I guarantee you that you're going to get more than one person reluctantly agreeing.  You might not have a stampede, but there will be people who sign up.  And given the heroism and glamour of what Bob is doing, from exploring the stars to waging war on an alien menace to saving the lives of humanity, I would expect to have seen some hero-worship; people would want to be a part of all of that, but instead, we see Bob treated as an exile, selflessly and thanklessly working for humanity.

The second involves a military leader who becomes the main contact person between Bob and humanity, who regularly makes demands and argues with Bob, and rejects certain proposals that Bob makes, about how Bob wants to use his own resources.  The general's angry reactions to Bob's proposals becomes something of a running joke of the series, but I found it perplexing.  It would be like a US Aircraft carrier parked off of an island devastated by a natural disaster with only a small fragment of the original populace clinging to life and offering assistance, and then the captain of said aircraft carrier complaining that the representative of the survivors is mean.  Why does the captain care what the representative has to say?  He's an adviser at best; every once in a while, Bob will threaten to pull stakes and walk if people don't cooperate, but that sort of thing would have to seem pretty obvious to most people involved.  I would have expected a lot more toadying from the ambitious, rather than grandstanding: You would rather be seen as the captain's best friend, rather than his task master.

The other irritation I had was how he tackled the concept of religion.  His theocratic masters were, of course, mustache-twirling villains, while Bob is a perfectly rational atheist.  I find this sort of attitude common among the futurist crowd, and I find it uncharitable.  The rise of the theocracy read like left-wing conspiracy theory, and no effort is made by the author to understand how such a thing could actually happen, and what sort of nuance we might have.

I rush to note that most of these can be explained away as expedients to getting to the better part of the plot, and that there are a few moments when the author seems to be highlighting that a lot of what he is showing has more to do with Bob's attitudes than what is actually going on (For example, one of the Bobs questions another Bob's handling of humanity, pointing out that they're reacting out of fear).  The book, after all, is not about the rise and fall of the United States, or the nature of humanity.  It stood out to me more because I was going through the Dune series around the same time, which tackles these concepts in a far more nuanced way.  But still, they stood out to me, so I thought I would point them out.

My only remaining complaint is that it sort of... just ends.  The author seems to have decided to wrap it up, he tied off all the main plot points, has a final good-bye and he's just done and moved on to the next trilogy.  It's a touch perfunctory, and I found it a bit unsatisfying, but I didn't especially mind it.

The Good

Right out of the gate, the book has an easy and jovial tone that makes it a delight to read.  Normally I just listen to my audiobooks when I have nothing better to do, such as walking between home and work, but with this trilogy, I found myself flipping it on just to see how it finished.

The Bobiverse trilogy absolutely brims with a love of science, technology, futurism and sci-fi.  It's loaded with references, and a sense of wonder, as Bob's clones discover new species, new worlds, new life, and discusses them in detail. The first book also includes quotes from sci-fi conventions discussing futurism, which expand a bit on some of the ideas that his series explores, though the latter do don't do this, which is a bit of a shame.

I would can't the series "Hard," as it includes reactionless drives and FTL communication, but beyond those few conceits, it remains rigorously focused on science and explores their implications as well as it can.  It is absolutely a must read if you want to understand how GURPS Space Combat is intended to run, and it had the most fascinating space battle I've ever read in the first book, which involved long, slow trajectories, intense calculations and recalculations up until the instant of contact which led to a millisecond-scale exchange of ordinance.  The final battle of the series also touches on the sheer scale of power that a true interstellar war might have.

This may seem terse, compared to my complaints, but this is the bulk of what makes up the books, and its excellent.  It's why you read them.  They definitely outway the bad, above.

But is it Psi-Wars?

Ha ha, no.  It's got sapient,  uploaded brains running STL dreadnoughts to fight wars mostly decided by missiles and point defense when it isn't discovering new life and new civilizations.  If you're looking for books that I'll borrow for Psi-Wars, this definitely isn't one.  It is fantastic inspiration for Heroes of the Galactic Frontier, a Star-Trek-like that I would like very much to get to.  In fact, it very much reads like someone wanted to write Star Trek, but was irritated  by all of the unrealistic elements of Star Trek and so ditched all of them, and wove in a few interesting new concepts, like uploading consciousnesses and a little existential introspection on what cloning your consciousness means.

Meditations on the Biplane Part 1 -- Feedback

August 29, 2018, 11:27 am

≫ Next: Meditations on Biplanes Part II - The Actual Biplanes

≪ Previous: Book Review: We Are Legion (We are Bob) and the Bobiverse Trilogy

$

0

0

My discussion of dogfights have stirred up quite some commentary, not all of which I've had a chance to really address, and some I cannot (yet) address.  I take that sort of enthusiasm as a good sign, and I wanted to tackle a specific post here, by the esteemed Salsathegeek.  His commentary is especially important to me, as he's played a fighter ace, and his experience is one I seek to improve by updating these rules.  If he likes them, then it's a sign of a job well done, and if he doesn't, it hints that there are further problems, so I take his feedback seriously.

I should point out that he's not exactly criticizing me so much as expounding on what I'm talking about.  I don't really feel I need to "defend" myself (I think creators should avoid defending their work anyway; it should stand on its own two feet), so much as expand on some concepts and address why I'm doing certain things, and what it might look like if I didn't.  That is, I want to explore, rather than refute, his feedback.  I want to see what I can take from it and what you could for your own settings.

What is a Space Battle?

So what, precisely, is the problem that Salsathegeek sees?  The core of it is around missiles, but the general thrust is that I should use the model that most closely fits the expected performance of my setting.  I don't remember if I discussed it here on the blog, but I know I did on the chat, and I've argued that Star Wars space battles seem to draw their inspiration from WW1, WW2, and Top Gun.

Now, the fact that Star Wars draws inspiration from WW2 is a fairly well-known fact.  The use of fighters and bombers which launch from carriers and then attack enemy battleships is clearly drawn from the pacific campaigns of WW2.  But if we stop and actually look at how the battles take place, we see a different picture. The fighters lazily take multiple seconds to soar over a mile-long battleship, more like they fly over terrain than they zip past it at super-sonic speeds.  They fly close enough to one another that they could wave or fire a pistol at their opponent, if such a thing was an option.  You can see from the picture that the ships involved are very close.  If this was a sea battle, you could reasonably swim from one ship to another.  This is more "age of sail" distances than modern "I fire a cruise missile over the horizon" distances. Furthermore, the primary weapon of choice is the gun, not missiles.  If you put all of this together, you get biplane combat from WW1.

The fighters of WW1, as you will see shortly, would be easily outpaced by a modern car.  They struggled to climb at any pace, and fought close enough to the ground that you could reasonably hit one with a rifle, if you were a good shot.  They moved fast, but not so fast that you couldn't try to outrun one as it came low to strafe the ground.  They moved at human-intuitive speeds, rather than the breathtaking speeds of modern combat.

Modern combat is dominated by missiles.  Does Star Wars have missiles? Well, Salsa points out the proton torpedo, but I think I would compare that to the bomber-mounted torpedo from WW2: you would dive low to the water, drop your torpedo, and it would take off and hit the ship below the water line.  It certainly acted nothing like the modern missile, and Star Wars doesn't seem to use proton torpedoes like missiles; tey certainly don't use them against other aircraft.  A better example would be the concussion missile, but tellingly, if you click through and check the sources of that link, it only shows up in one film: Return of the Jedi, and I'm not even sure when it was used (I'd have to go back and watch it).  The vast majority of its appearances in Star Wars is in video games, starfighter games in particular.

The problem with modern air combat is that it's not especially cinematic or fun, and worse, you probably don't understand it.  I certainly didn't before doing some homework.  Binkov has a pretty good breakdown of how air combat works(part 1 and part 2; note that the real intent is to compare the F-35 to the Su-35, but it does give an idea of how modern air combat works out).  What struck me is that it's all about how many missiles you carry, how well you can jam them, how well you can avoid detection in general, and they worry about the best approach route, etc. What we don't hear about is cannons, aerobatic maneuvers, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants tactics and instinctive improvisation, all of which are hallmarks of Star Wars.  Salsa points out that when you include homing missiles, they will necessarily start to dominate the game, and that this is undesirable.

This might sound like I'm supporting, rather than refuting, Salsa's point.  But I said as much at the beginning, yes?  The point here is to explore, and to look at options, and Salsa's point is not wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean I should jump on the Biplane-model right away.

The Iterative Method

My approach in all of these things, as my regulars by now likely know, is to go through an iterative cycle of rinse and repeat.  It looks something like this:

I need a thing.

• Does something exist that can support that?
• if yes, test it out to see if it works
• Did the test work?
• If yes, use it
• If mostly, then customize it
• If no, try something else.
• If no
• Try out something else, if it exists
• Make your own
• Decide maybe it's not important ("Do I really need it?")

I need dogfighting, so first I tried GURPS Space Combat.  You can read about it in Iteration 3.  It worked well-enough, so I customized it, but I found I had to customize it more and more, and now, I'd like to try the Action dogfighting. I'm pretty sure that won't work out as well as I might like and I may have to customize that, and/or use a completely different system, but I'm going to try to stick with it because it's a system that works well with pretty much any vehicle, and it's fairly simple and straight-forward.

So far, though, I'm still in the testing phase, and the Dogfighting rules were written for modern aircraft. Does it even work with biplanes?  I imagine so, but do we know for sure?  Why don't we find out? I'd like to write a post on just that.

I've not settled on the modern aircraft model and, even if I did, that doesn't mean you might not be better off with a different model.

The Psi-Wars Dogfighting Model

As noted above, I've not explicitly settled on a model. I've chosen some values already, but we're still in a design process, so that can be changed.

So why not a WW1 model? The truth is, biplanes had carriers.  They dropped bombs on targets.  You could update them a little, especially their look, but keep the feel of it the same.  In fact, why not keep everything WW1-ish?  Look, the AT-AT is bulky and slow, just like WW1 tanks.  The combatants use single-shot or semi-automatic weapons, just like in Star Wars.  If you picture Star Wars as a 1920s pulp film only set in space, you're actually spot on for what it is, as its a pastiche of the old pulp novels.

So why not go that way?  The main complaint I have with "WW1 in spaaace!" is that if you took a Sopwith Nova and brought it into the atmosphere and pit it against a modern fighter, the modern fighter would win.  Star Wars has lots of similar problems (Abrams > AT-AT; M-4 carbine > E-11 blaster rifle).  We intuitively expect sci-fi technology to make modern technology obsolete.  GURPS is especially brutal when it comes to this, as players readily have access to all books, so if we introduced a crappy blaster rifle, someone will ask to take a TL 8 rifle into battle and just by asking that, make a mockery of the setting.

Fighters have less of a problem with this, though players could point to the Dogfighting Action craft for comparison (and be countered with something like "Well, those are better in atmosphere, but these fighters operate efficiently in space!")  But we run into distance/speed issues pretty quickly.  If a fighter moves at biplane speeds (~100 miles per hour), it would take a long time to get anywhere on a planet.  The first transatlantic flights, via biplane, took literally weeks, nearly a month.  Interstellar travel isn't that important as we can just hyperjump from system to system, but I think the average player expects that a vehicle that can travel interstellar distances at the snap of a finger could get from one place to another on a planet in a handwave during a session, rather than a grueling, multi-session journey.

In a sense, the best way to handle scale and technology would be to make it a strict TL 6^ setting set in some completely odd world, such as some sort of aetheric plane with floating islands instead of planets, where your aetheric fighter can cross from one side of the island to another in an hour, and that's fast, because most inhabitants travel on the backs of squiggs or whatever.  You must admit, that rather fits the Star Wars aesthetic better than many of its fans would admit.

But, as I'm often a fan of saying, Psi-Wars isn't Star Wars, and needn't adhere to it.  Homing missiles show up in Wing Commander and Strike Suit Zero and any number of other space combat sims.  They introduce an alternate form of attack and defense: dodge blasts, jam missiles.  Moreover, why couldn't Psi-Wars be like modern warfare set in space?  I think there are some limitations here, as I don't see Psi-Wars as nearly as "technical" as modern warfare;" I think there's arguments to be made for settings rife with hackers, encryption, multi-layered jammers vs low-intercept-burst sensors and shoulder-mounted radar systems that wire into a targeting computer that displays its output on your HUD, but that setting is not Star Wars nor Psi-wars (it is very Halo, though, and I explored similar ideas in G-Verse), but there is a balance in there, we just have to find it.

So Psi-Wars dogfighting concepts aren't done.  I will note that the rules I'm using, the Vehicular Chase rules, should cover anything.  I mean, it covers cars and motorcycles and speedboats, so I'm sure it'll cover biplanes as well as it covers jet fighters.  The real concern here isn't whether the rules will cover it, but what options to we include (Missiles?) and what scales we use (How fast should fighters go?)

Meditations on Biplanes Part II - The Actual Biplanes

August 29, 2018, 3:00 pm

≫ Next: Dogfighting 3 - A multi-party dogfight

≪ Previous: Meditations on the Biplane Part 1 -- Feedback

$

0

0

Based on the feedback discussed in the previous post, I thought it might be fun to turn the third dogfighting post, the one where I tackle complex scenarios that aren't one-on-one, into a biplane dogfight.  In principle, I think it should work, as I believe the Action chase system is robust enough to handle biplanes, and I think it'll give us an idea of some of the inner logic of that system.

To do that, I need biplanes, and we actually have four in GURPS.  GURPS Campaigns offers us a "barnstormer," but its stats are a bit dubious, and its unarmed in any case.  The next option are the biplane fighter-bombers from GURPS High-Tech, and I thought I would use those, until a little investigation showed me that they were really bombers, not the sort of fighters that an "ace" pilot would fly.  So, I did a little hunting, and uncovered two iconic fighters from the era: the Sopwith Camel (duh), and the Albatross D.II.

Naturally, one can simply convert real-world stats to GURPS stats with relative ease, but I also wanted to dive into GURPS Vehicles a little, to see how well everything holds up.  These definitely weren't built with GURPS Vehicles, but I'll include some commentary and how I might port some concepts into Psi-Wars.

Building a Biplane

You can find quite detailed biplane stats on wikipedia or just by perusing the internet.  They're doubtless not up to the standards of Hans-Christian Vortisch, but they don't need to be.  We just need something close enough for our example.  I wouldn't necessarily use these for a detailed WW1 combat scenario.

It turns out that most of the fighters use the same machine guns as the biplanes in High-Tech, which is both very convenient, and also a hint at how biplanes were built.  They seem largely to be wooden "kites" built around an engine, a gun system, and a pilot's seat, which is fitting.  That means that most of them used the same sorts of gear.  

When I looked into engines, this largely confirmed this. The Albatross D.II uses the Mercedes D.III engine, which is listed as alternately 120 KW or 130 KW, and as about 683 lbs.  When I went through GURPS Vehicles and tried to rebuild it as a TL 5-6 propeller engine, I found it didn't weigh nearly enough, but when you add a gasoline engine (TL 6, supercharged), I come to within a few pounds of the right weight.  The Sopwith Camel used (depending on its configuration) the Clerget 9B, which clocked in at 97 KW but weighs a mere 381 lbs; this is the equivalent of TL 5-6 propeller engine attached to a TL 6 HP gasoline engine (I read a comment about how the Mercedes D.III was inferior compared to the engines of other biplanes, and you can see that the Clerget is a better engine: it has less output but weighs nearly half of what the Mercedes D.III weighs; the Sopwith looks, stat for stat, to be a much better fighter than the Albatross D.II).

What struck me about the engines is that they're clearly built as a piece.  GURPS Spaceships makes things a bit too modular (people rarely insert two engines to get twice the power from their vehicle), but GURPS Vehicles tends to imply that everything is fundamentally connected somehow.  The reality seems somewhere in between: you do not have  "Sopwith drive train and internal combustion engine," but a Clerget 9B, which you could pull out and put in some other aircraft, or use for some other application.  I'd like to do something similar with Psi-Wars, if I'm honest.

The main reason for working out the details in Vehicles was to work out the acceleration value.  I can work out move and HP just fine; I can guess at HT and Hand/SR, but Acceleration I couldn't be sure.  I came away with an acceleration of a little over 3 miles per hour per hour for both fighters.  This is less than the fighter/bomber values of ~8 miles per hour.  I don't know where HT got those numbers, as I get 1.5 miles per hour for those vehicles when I reverse engineer the numbers.  For our purposes, let's assume Vehicles is wrong on acceleration and give our fighters an acceleration somewhere closer to 10 miles per hour: definitely faster than the fighter/bombers, but not to the point where the pilots are pulling hard Gs.

Beyond that, nothing else is much of a mystery.  They have no armor to speak of, and the rest can be absolutely determined by stats, or guessed at.

The Sopwith Camel

This British fighter is the most iconic fighter of WW1.  My stats come from the F.1 camel, which I found on Wikipedia; I presume it's the most common, if not the "best."  It uses the Vickers machine gun (I assume a Vickers Mk II, from HT page 131).  I chose a better handling of +1 to make it superior to the fighter/bombers it might escort, but I lowered the SR because it has an unfortunate reputation for aerial instability among pilots and a tendency to "turn" thanks to its rotary engine (You could definitely make the case that this was just a case of unfamiliarity, though, as when taught how to handle the Camel, the problem seemed to disappear). The HT is typical for a biplane.  SM is based on its length, not wingspan, as I suspect the HT numbers are.

ST: 40

Hnd/SR: +1/2

HT: 9f

Move: 5/57

LWt: 0.75

Load: 0.25

SM: +3

Occ: 1

DR: 3

Range: 220
Loc: O2W2Wi

Stall: 24

The Albatross D.II

This is the fighter of the legendary Red Baron, though it seems it was an unremarkable German fighter and perhaps even inferior to the English and French biplanes of the time.  It was equipped with the LMG08/15 (See HT130, under the Maxim MG08).  I'm assuming the better handling, but roughly the same stability as other biplanes; the length is just over 7 yards.  I would not fight you if you said it should be SM +3.  I don't have actual stats on the stall speed; that's an estimate, based on some guesswork and what Vehicles comes up with.  

ST: 45

Hnd/SR: +1/3

HT: 9f

Move: 5/55

LWt: 1

Load: 0.3

SM: +4

Occ: 1

DR: 3

Range: 160
Loc: O2W2Wi

Stall: 29

Dogfighting 3 - A multi-party dogfight

August 31, 2018, 8:08 am

≫ Next: Cross-Post: The Foalkan Clans

≪ Previous: Meditations on Biplanes Part II - The Actual Biplanes

$

0

0

So far, I’ve handled dogfights “as the rules are” between two fighters, go get a feel for the rules; between a fighter and a tank; to see how the rules handle a fighter vs a relatively static target; finally, I want to tackle how the Chase rules handle multi-party chases. This is where I crashed and burned before. This time around, I chose to approach it more slowly and methodically, to understand everything else around the system before I approach this. It’s critical that this works, because Psi-Wars is never going to be static one-on-one fights; instead, it’s going to be swooping, gnarled, fiery furballs of fighters with fellow pilots crying out “I can’t shake him!” and heroic fighter aces tackling whole squadrons of enemy fighters. If the Chase rules can’t handle that, then we have no business using them.

We’re also going to do something else a little different: We’re going to use biplanes this time around. Some people have suggested that biplanes are a better model for Psi-Wars than modern fighters. Maybe that’s true. What’s certainly true is that the Chase rules should be able to handle biplanes, and that biplanes are different from what we’ve messed with before. By trying them out, we can check their suitability, and learn some things about how the chase rules are constructed and how they work.

The Craft

Rather than use the figher jets from the last two dogfights, let’s try our hand with biplanes, and we’ll need several.

Our heroes, the British Ace, Chad Goodwick and his trusty companion, Melvin Fobsworth, will fly Sopwith Camels. These are classic British fighter biplanes; they have the Vickers mark II (6d+2, Acc 6, Range 800/3,3000 ROF 10! (+2 to hit)). Like with the dogfighting rules, we’ll assume for now that we don’t have to worry about the bulk of the weapon while moving and attack.ing. Chad Goodwick has Pilot-18 and Gunner-16, like usual. Fobsworth is less capable, and has overall skills of 15. The Sopwith camel has a handling of +1 and its max speed gives it a bonus of +6.

His enemy will be the nefarious Brutus Hasslefhoff, a competent gunner and bomber. He has Gunner-18, Artillery (Bomb) and Pilot-16. He seeks to drop bombs on the delicate French coast, where Chad’s lady love, Stacey Wellington, picnics. He is flying a Junkers J.I , found in High-Tech page 233. It has an HP of 65, a handling/SR of 0/3, a top move of 38, an SM of +4, a DR of 15 (!) and has a forward mounted Maxim LMG08/15 (7d+1 damage, Acc 6, Range 1000,33/400, ROF 7! (+1 to hit)) and a “flexible” DMB LG14 Parabellum (7d+1 damage, Acc 6, Range 1000,33/400, ROF 11!) in the “observer” seat behind the pilot, where one of Hasslehoff’s minions sits. This gun can be fired in any direction. His bomb load out is irrelevant: it’s enough to destroy poor Stacey and her dainty picnic. The Junkers J.I has a handling of +0and its max speed gives it a bonus of +6.

Hasslehoff has two Albatross D.II escorts. They also have forward mounted LGM08/15 machine guns. The Albatross D.II has a handling of +0and its max speed gives it a bonus of +6.

The Fight

The first question is: how far do we start them out? Dogfights normally start “beyond visual distance,” but that simply makes no sense here. Even Distant might be too far. You can see the spots on the horizon, but you can’t really do anything. It seems reasonable to argue that the fighters should be in range of one another; Extreme seems our best bet, at least for starting out. It applies a -15 to hit, and note that our fighters don’t have radar or anything. At skill 14, with our rate of fire, we have a reasonable chance of hitting our target at Short Range; if we add our accuracy of +6, on average, then we’ll hit reasonably at Medium, and perhaps even Long, though I’m not sure how one would add accuracy, but we’ll see. Extreme seems a good enough value for now.

Turn 1: Extreme

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver

So here we are, at the first core crux of our chase. Who is the pursuer and who is the chaser. The most likely scenario is something like this: Hasslehof and his escort are on their way to blow up Stacey, when Chad spots them in the distance and gives chase. Thus, Chad and Mr. Fobsworth are the pursuer while Hasslehof is the quarry.

This model is simple enough and is, in fact, a classicchase. Action 2 suggests that each group select a leader, and that leader makes the roll. Thus, it’s Hasslehoff vs Chad, with Hasslehof’s escort’s and Mr. Fobsworth’s results dependent on their leaders respectively. This has some potential problems, like what happens if it’s Chad, Mr. Fobsworth, and Private Joe, a footman down below. Can he use their “roll,” and keep with the other fighters on foot? Not likely, but this is not a concern for our current fighters, and Action suggests that groups will naturally break down into similar mobility levels.

So, Hasslehoff and his minions choose “Move,” while the gunner-minion, as a passenger, will choose to Attack (using a passenger attack).

Chad and Mr. Fobsworth choose Move.

Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls

Chad and Mr. Fobsworth have no special roll.

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

Hasslehoff and his escort have no special rolls. His gunner-minion can swing his gun around behind, and open fire on Chad and his escort. We’ll fire on Chad.

• Gunner 14
  
  
• Passenger on a vehicle: -1
  
  
• ROF: +1
  
  
• Range -15
  
  
• Target SM +3
  
  

Hmmm, those are terrible odds. While the Chase rules don’t mention it anywhere I can see, I would imagine a player might ask “Can I aim?” That’s a tricky question as, for chase maneuvers, you need to stop and make an “Attack,” but this is a passenger. Can they aim? It seems possible, but I believe they lose all of their aim bonus if they dodge, and his total bonus cannot exceed the stability of the bomber (3).

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

Chad, as leader, has Pilot-18, Handling +1 and a speed bonus of +6. Hasslehoff, as leader, has Pilot-16, Handling +0, and Speed bonus of +6. This is thus a quick contest of 25 vs 22. Both roll an 11, which means Chad beats Hasslehoff by 3, which means there is no change in distance: Hasslehof is not escaping, but nor is Chad closing. We stand at an impasse.

Turn 2: Extreme;

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

Not much has changed. For now, let’s continue to Move, trying to evade/lose Chad and bomb poor Stacey into oblivion. Our gunner, however, is going to open fire (this time for real)

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver

A straight chase, with our current rolls, is just not going to do it. We need to find some way to cut in closer. Now, in principle, this sounds like a straight chase, but we might imagine some tall buildings or some rough terrain. Chad chooses to short-cut through some of that rough terrain, spinning and swooping to get at Hasslehoff he gets to sweet Stacey: a stunt! At skill 18, he could reasonably apply a -6 with a solid chance of success, but Mr. Fobsworth would be unable to keep up with that, so we’ll go with a simpler and more stately -4.

Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls
Per Action, all characters in the “group” must make the stunt roll themselves. For Chad, this is a simple 14 or less, but for Mr. Fobsworth, this is a far trickier 11. Chad passes casually with a 10, but Mr. Fobsworth, while making it through the entire course, manages to lose control of his Sopwith with a roll of 11: he gets out, but his craft has begun to spin out of control!

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

Hasslehoff and his escort, again, have no special rolls, but his gunner has finished aiming, and takes his shot just as the two escape from their stunt. He chooses Chad as his target..

• Gunner 14
  
  
• Passenger on a vehicle: -1
  
  
• ROF: +1
  
  
• Range -15
  
  
• Target SM +3
  
  
• Acc +3 (+6, in fact, but his weapon is not stabilized).
  
  

He will hit on a 5 or less, and rolls a ten. Chad hears the reports of the shots, and sees some cinematic tracer rounds erupting from Hasslehoff’s bomber, but is in no serious danger.

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

Mr. Fobsworth may be in the midst of a wipeout but per the rules, both may still participate in the chase. Chad, as leader, has Pilot-18, Handling +1, a speed bonus of +6 and a stunt bonus of +2. Hasslehoff, as leader, has Pilot-16, Handling +0, and Speed bonus of +6 (his passenger fired, but that doesn’t count as a Move and Attack for Hassleholf). This is thus a quick contest of 27 vs 22. Chad rolls a 7 and Hasslehof rolls a 17! How lucky for Chad! This is a difference of 15 (Hasslehoff didn’t critically fail, as he has an effective skill of 17+, but I’m curious what a critical failure in a chase roll would look like; a wipeout?). Chad closes from Extreme past Long and into Medium. A good trick!

Turn 3: Medium; Mr. Fobsworth needs to either make an Emergency Action or Stop.

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

Chad is too close for comfort and could open fire soon. Hasslehoff waves his minions to turn and give pursuit. This leads to our next possible complication: We can have a chase of “three.” The fighter minions will chase Chad, and Chad will chase Hasslehoff.

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver

In principle, Chad could just abandon Mr. Fobsworth, but he’s close enough now that they should be able to recover without too much loss of ground. Chad chooses an emergency action and dives to shout advice at Mr. Fobsworth

Note: It would be interesting to see how this would play out if he didn’t. We can break up groups, of course, and ultimately, we may need to; it adds additional complexity to the abstract system of chases that’s more intuitively handled by maps and tactical combat, but I think it couldhandle it. My main question is, if you feel behind, how would you rejoin a group?
The escort are now chasing Chad, who is their quarry, so after he chooses his result, they choose their own, and that’s a reverse.
Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls

The Escort needs to special rolls.

Mr. Fobsworth needs no special roll.

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

Once more, the gunner minion opens fire, and given Chad’s proximity, has a good chance of hitting! He’ll shoot at Melvin, who’s already in trouble.

• Gunner 14
  
  
• Passenger on a vehicle: -1
  
  
• ROF: +1
  
  
• Range -7
  
  
• Target SM +3
  
  

He will hit on a 10 or less, and rolls an eight, which hits twice. Mr. Fobsworth has a dodge of 8, and rolls a 14… Uh oh. Both shots hit for a total of 58 damage (after DR). After an HT check (the Sopwith is flammable) that fails with an 11, Mr. Fobsworth’s biplane bursts into flame. So he’s tumbling, on fire, and with a damaged craft, but at least he’s not dead yet. He will need to roll every turn to remain functional, however.

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

Chad, as leader, has Pilot-18, Handling +1, a speed bonus of +6 and a -5 because he’s in the midst of an Emergency Action. Hasslehoff has Pilot-16, Handling +0, and Speed bonus of +6. The Escorts have a skill of 1, Handling of +1, and Speed of +6 and -10 from their reverse. This is thus a quick contest of 20 vs 22 and 20 vs 10. Chad rolls an 11 (success by 9) and Hasslehof rolls a 5 (success by 17)! Hasslehoff is able to pull away by 1 band, from Medium to Long. The second chase has Chad rolling a 10 (success by 10) and his pursuers by 9 (success by 1). That means that Chad can pull one range band away from them too, pushing them out to Long.

Turn 4: Long between Hasslehoff and Chad and Long between Chad and the Escorts; Mr. Fobsworth has control of his craft, but must make an HT roll every turn.

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

Hasslehof keeps moving. Mr. Fobsworth chooses to “depart” from the fight, and goes for a Stop, to land in a nearby field.

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver

Chad chooses to Move and Attack Hasslehof. We’ll allow this because Hasslehof is expanding the range between them. Chad, per the dogfighting rules, also may not attack the Escorts, as he moved away from them.

The Escorts did not win the contest and may not open fire on Chad. They choose a stunt (-2) to try to regain position on him.

Note: Is this all legit? I’m not sure. GURPS Vehicles and Spaceships both talk about “aspects” and that might allow for clearer way to explain who is facing who.
Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls

The Escorts must make their stunt roll (both of them), on a 12 or less. Amusingly they both roll a 12 and a 15, which means no bonus for them and they’re out of control.

Chad opens fire on Hasslehoff. Make it count, Chad!

• Chad has a Gunnery of 16
  
  
• ROF +2
  
  
• SM +4
  
  
• Range -11
  
  

He needs an 11 or less to hit. He rolls a 9, which means he hits twice. Hasslehoff needs to dodge and he has a dodge of 9. He rolls a 13 and is hit both times. The Vickers do a more modest amount of damage (6d+2) and the Junkers J.I is well armored, so after DR, the total damage is 11, out of Hasslehof’s considerable 65 HP. This is not a “Major wound,” so the vehicle will not catch fire. Nonetheless, there are now some holes in the canvas wings and some dings in the armor. Those Junkers are tough!

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

The gunner opens fire on Chad

• Gunner 14
  
  
• Passenger on a vehicle: -1
  
  
• ROF: +1
  
  
• Range -11
  
  
• Target SM +3
  
  

He will hit on a 6 or less, and rolls an 8.

Melvin needs to roll a 9 or less to keep his plane functional long enough to land. He rolls a 15. Rest in Peace, Mr. Fobsworth.

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

Chad has Pilot-18, Handling +1, a speed bonus of +6 and a -2 for moving and attacking. Hasslehoff has Pilot-16, Handling +0, and Speed bonus of +6. The Escorts have a skill of 1, Handling of +1, and Speed of +6. This is thus a quick contest of 23 vs 22 and 23 vs 20. Chad rolls a 12 (success by 11) and Hasslehof rolls a 7 (success by 13)! Hasslehoff wins, but is unable to pull away. The second chase has Chad rolling a 9 (success by 14) and his pursuers by 9 (success by 11). They continue to pursue him, but neither gains or loses ground.

Note: We’re in a proper chase. If we treat this as a dogfight, then Hasslehof can fire at Chad and Chad can fire at the escorts. I find it interesting that, given the scenario, we find ourselves breaking those rules, which suggests that Dogfighting either isn’t complete or should be treated as a companion to Chase, which is more likely.
But let’s treat it like a dogfight.

Turn 5: Long between Hasslehoff and Chad and Long between Chad and the Escorts; Hasslehoff has 54/65 HP.

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

We’re going to treat this as a proper dogfight now, presuming that Hasslehof turns to get Chad in his sights and that Chad’s maneuvers have gotten him behind the escorts, or at least out of their line of fire.

That means the escorts must choose first, and they choose to Move, trying to gain on Chad.

Chad chooses to Stunt move against Hasslehof

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver
Hasslehof chooses to Move and Attack against Chad.
Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls

Hasslehoff opens fire on Chad.

• Hasslehoff has a Gunnery of 18
  
  
• ROF +1
  
  
• SM +3
  
  
• Range -11
  
  

He needs an 11 or less to hit, and rolls a 13 and misses.

His minion opens fire too, but needs a 6 or less to hit and rolls an 8.

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

Chad stunts at -6, needing a 12 or less to get behind Hasslehoff. He rolls a 9 and succeeds.

The escorts have no special rolls.

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

Chad has Pilot-18, Handling +1, a speed bonus of +6 and a +3 from his stunt. Hasslehoff has Pilot-16, Handling +0, and Speed bonus of +6 and a -2 from move and attack. The Escorts have a skill of 14, Handling of +1, and Speed of +6. This is thus a quick contest of 28 vs 20 and 25 vs 20. Chad rolls a 10 (success by 18) and Hasslehof rolls a 7 (success by 13). Chad wins by 5, and can close to Medium. The second chase has Chad rolling an 11 (success by 14) and his pursuers by 7 (success by 13). Chad remains out of their arc of fire.

Turn 6: Medium between Hasslehoff and Chad and Long between Chad and the Escorts; Hasslehoff has 54/65 HP.

Step 1: Quarry Chooses Maneuver

Hasslehof is once again quarry, and makes a Move.

The Escorts also seek to gain the advantage on Chad and Move.

Step 2: Pursuer Chooses Maneuver
Chad has Hasslehoff right where he wants him and makes a Move and Attack.
Step 3: Resolve Pursuer Rolls

Chad opens fire on Hasslehoff.

• Chad has a Gunnery of 16
  
  
• ROF +2
  
  
• SM +4
  
  
• Range -7
  
  

He needs an 15 or less to hit, and rolls a 8 and hits 4 times. Hasslehoff has a dodge of 9 and rolls an 11 and is hit. If we hit on the sides, we do a total, after the DR of 15, of 25 damage. This is not enough to ignite the Junker, or to even force it to make any sort of check. If we had attacked “from above,” the Junker only has DR 5 from the “top,” and the Chase rules don’t really seem to have any model that allows us to choose where we attack (another item that suggests we need to work out facing). If we had, we would have dealt 65 damage, which would have forced the Junker down and possibly destroyed it.

Step 4: Resolve Quarry Rolls

Neither quarry has any special rolls to make, though the gunner minion can fire at Chad. He needs a 10 or less, and rolls a 7, hitting twice. Chad has a dodge of 10 (skill 18 = 9, +1 combat reflexes, +1 from handling) and rolls an 8, dodging both hits.

Step 5: Resolve Chase Contest

Chad has Pilot-18, Handling +1, a speed bonus of +6 and a -2 from his move and attack. Hasslehoff has Pilot-16, Handling +0, and Speed bonus of +6. The Escorts have a skill of 14, Handling of +1, and Speed of +6. This is thus a quick contest of 23 vs 20 and 23 vs 20. Chad rolls a 9 (success by 14) and Hasslehof rolls a 12 (success by 8). Chad wins by 5, and can close to Short, though by that point speed matters more than range for penalties. The second chase has Chad rolling an 11 (success by 12) and his pursuers by 7 (success by 13). Chad enters their arc of fire.

Postscript

I’m going to stop here. If Chad fired from short, he’d have a -6 rather than -7, and would probably hit 4-5 times, and get Hasslehoff under his 0 HP, forcing him to check for functionality and probably falling out of the sky. It seems obvious by this point that Chad could keep away from the escorts, and would inevitably take Hasslehoff out, unless the gunner in the back got a lucky shot into him. Stacey is saved! Probably!

It’s interesting how fragile the biplanes really are, unless well armored, and also interesting how much of a difference a few points of armor makes. That’s primarily because anti-air fire relies on volume rather than power, and this will likely be true of Psi-Wars as well.

It would have been nice if Melvin hadn’t crashed when he did. I wanted to dive into what happens when people break up into even more complicated fights, like if Melvin had tried to distract the escort. GURPS Vehicles has its own dogfighting system, and suggests that you break such fights off into their own sub-fights, which is, by implication, what Action also suggests (mainly when it discusses weird mixed chases).

I have to say, the multi-chasing here works pretty well, though I think some additional detail and discussion is needed, clarifying what exactly is going on and what you’re meant to do; I think I was able to figure it out well enough, but a novice might have a hard time understanding how the rules work just from the description in GURPS Action.

I must admit, I found the fight a little tedious towards the end. There’s quite a few subsystems that I see that amount to “roll against X until finished.” Was Chad going to catch Hasslehoff? Yes. He has +2 pilot and +1 handling. Roughly once every 2 rolls, he’s get a range band improvement. The only real obstacle was a chance shot from someone else that might take Chad out first. I’d rather see diverse skills and tactics come in play. In standard GURPS combat, depending on who you fight, you might dramatically change tactics. Against a high defense, low-skill opponent, you favor feints, but against a weak-but-dexterous opponent, you might favor beats, binds and close-range grappling/trapping. With slips, you can shift in front of an opponent and start backing them into a tactically interesting spot, while they try to set up some feint + combo to take you down before that can happen, or stall for time. I don’t see that sort of thing here in Dogfighting.

Now, with biplanes, I might throw up things like cloud cover, artillery fire, and high terrain that you have to dodge around. We don’t really have anything like that written into Chases or Dogfights, but nothing that forbids it either. This is harder with high-flying modern dogfights, but that’s not especially pertinent to Psi-Wars: we can introduce asteroids for terrain, nebulas for clouds, ion storms, solar winds, blah blah blah.

I’d also like to see some tactical options beyond “I fly, I shoot.” Where defensive evasion like in GURPS Space? That would give Chad a choice between throwing the escorts off and closing in on Hasslehoff. Multiple weapon systems would also break up the tedium: if missiles use a different “subsystem” to guns, then depending on your opponent, you can change tactics. It’d be nice if you could “win” with Gunnery or with Pilot or with some other skill. GURPS Spaceships gives the option of contributing with sensory skills or engineering or tactics. It might be nice to introduce those, particularly so you can have a variety of dogfighters, but I’ll get into that in another post, I think.

This fight showed that you can “dogfight” with a biplane. The main difference between biplanes and modern jet aircraft are that the latter are faster and have missiles. I don’t think I mind missiles so much. They need to be reigned in so they’re not the ultimate tactic (Psi-Wars dogfights should be primarily blaster-based), but they offer an option for an alternate sort of tactic (Dodge blasters, jam missiles) if handled correctly. The speed difference doesn’t seem to matter so much, other than that you can get a lot closer to your target with a biplane than with a modern jet fighter, mainly because speed makes a bigger difference. Could I slow down Psi-Wars fighters? Maybe. Do I need to? I’m not so sure.

It doesn’t surprise me that the Chase/Dogfight rules handled this well. The Chase rules were built to handle everything from foot chases to bicycles to speed boats to cars to jet fighters. It’s also clear that it sort of serves as a sort of abstract movement system for vehicular combat, which is what we’re really talking about, only we only have some of the tools to handle, as GURPS Action mostly deals with personal gun combat, and not, say, how tanks handle in a fight.