The Brotherhood of GURPS Bloggers Who Blog Too Much is always coming up with new themes to help tie our little community together and to challenge us to think up things we otherwise might not of considered. For this month, the topic of cold came up and well this being January... I'd say it was a fitting topic.
So what did I come up with? Well, the theme is cold and do love figuring out how to stat up weapons so let's see if we can find a way to stat out a Freeze Ray in GURPS!
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Ultra-Tech Quickie: More Blaster and Laser Design System Tweaks
One more quick round of tweaks to fix up a few more issues I have with the Blaster and Laser Design System.
Inner Focus
The design system as is give you the ability to mount larger focal arrays to your beam weapons, giving your weapon a greater range at the expense of making the weapon heavier and more expensive to buy. It also gives you a pretty good selection of range options to play with. But, what if you have a very specific range in mind when designing a given a weapon that isn't covered by it?
Well, the solution is actually pretty simple. Just think of whatever range multiplier you want to give Rf under the Range formula first then take the cube root of that multiplier to use for figuring F under the formula for figuring a weapons Empty Weight.
Example: Let's say we want to give a laser sniper rifle we're building a 3.2 range multiplier. This would give us a F of cube root of (3.2) or 1.47 which we'll round up to 1.5.
What Size Is My Lens?
So, ever wondered how big the focal array for me beam gun would need to be? Wonder no more. The below formula gives you the weapons focal array diameter in centimeters.
Focal Array Diameter: (D×F)/Rb
D is the weapons dice of damage.
F is the weapons Range multiplier.
Rb is 0.8 for pulsar, 0.9 for freeze ray, 1.1 for force, 3.2 for blaster or neutral particle beam, 4 for laser, 5.6 for rainbow laser, 10 for graviton, 200 for X-ray laser, or 600 for graser.
Example: A 5d laser rifle with a 2× Range multiplier has a (5×2)/4 or 2.5cm focal array.
Do You Have the Strength Part II
Two posts ago I gave a quick cut around of showing you to get the ST of your beam weapons without showing off the whole formula. It was designed around weapons that have Rcl 1, which is the case for most beam weapons. But what about the few that have Rcl 2 such as plasma guns or my take on Star Wars blasters?
So here's a version of my quick formula for Rcl 2 weapons. Like with my last one this will only work for weapons that have Rcl 2, which means, yes, you can use it for stating most fire arms. Once again keep in mind that since I rounded off the numbers a bit there will be a few break points were things don't 100% line up.
Pistols/Mounted
Remember to add an M after a Mounted weapons ST.
ST= 12×(Gw/10)1/4
Gw is the weapons loaded weight if a pistol or empty weight if a mounted weapon.
Rifles
Remember to add a dagger (†) after the weapons ST.
ST= 9×(Gw/10)1/4
Gw is the weapons loaded weight.
Inner Focus
The design system as is give you the ability to mount larger focal arrays to your beam weapons, giving your weapon a greater range at the expense of making the weapon heavier and more expensive to buy. It also gives you a pretty good selection of range options to play with. But, what if you have a very specific range in mind when designing a given a weapon that isn't covered by it?
Well, the solution is actually pretty simple. Just think of whatever range multiplier you want to give Rf under the Range formula first then take the cube root of that multiplier to use for figuring F under the formula for figuring a weapons Empty Weight.
Example: Let's say we want to give a laser sniper rifle we're building a 3.2 range multiplier. This would give us a F of cube root of (3.2) or 1.47 which we'll round up to 1.5.
What Size Is My Lens?
So, ever wondered how big the focal array for me beam gun would need to be? Wonder no more. The below formula gives you the weapons focal array diameter in centimeters.
Focal Array Diameter: (D×F)/Rb
D is the weapons dice of damage.
F is the weapons Range multiplier.
Rb is 0.8 for pulsar, 0.9 for freeze ray, 1.1 for force, 3.2 for blaster or neutral particle beam, 4 for laser, 5.6 for rainbow laser, 10 for graviton, 200 for X-ray laser, or 600 for graser.
Example: A 5d laser rifle with a 2× Range multiplier has a (5×2)/4 or 2.5cm focal array.
Do You Have the Strength Part II
Two posts ago I gave a quick cut around of showing you to get the ST of your beam weapons without showing off the whole formula. It was designed around weapons that have Rcl 1, which is the case for most beam weapons. But what about the few that have Rcl 2 such as plasma guns or my take on Star Wars blasters?
So here's a version of my quick formula for Rcl 2 weapons. Like with my last one this will only work for weapons that have Rcl 2, which means, yes, you can use it for stating most fire arms. Once again keep in mind that since I rounded off the numbers a bit there will be a few break points were things don't 100% line up.
Pistols/Mounted
Remember to add an M after a Mounted weapons ST.
ST= 12×(Gw/10)1/4
Gw is the weapons loaded weight if a pistol or empty weight if a mounted weapon.
Rifles
Remember to add a dagger (†) after the weapons ST.
ST= 9×(Gw/10)1/4
Gw is the weapons loaded weight.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
PC Master Race: Upgrading your Ultra-Tech Computing Experience.
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| Behold my slightly higher resolution graphics console peasants! |
So if goes without saying that if you have a tech Savoy PC in your game then you're gonna want to give them some sweet upgrade options to play with.
Follow me after the jump to see how far you can upgrade your Ultra-Tech computing experience as you climb that computing ladder to join the ranks of the glorious PC master race.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Ultra-Tech Quickie: Do You Have The Strength?
As I said in my last post, the formula for figuring a beam weapons ST stat that is listed in the Blaster and Laser Design System in Pyramid 3/37 is a little wonky. While it works reasonably well for most small arms, as you get bigger and bigger you start to see the ST requirement skyrocket at a much higher pace then an equivalent sized projectile weapon.
To give you an example, let's take a 250lbs auto cannon with Rcl 2 and a 250lbs. beam cannon with Rcl 1.
The auto cannon would have ST 28M.
The beam cannon, according to the Blaster and Laser Deisgn System, would have the square root of (250) × 2.4 or ST 38M!
In GURPS terms that means you need to be almost twice as strong to handle the recoiless beam gun as you would need to be to handle the very much has recoil auto cannon!
Now the thing is it's against my policy to publish the actual rules for figuring out what a guns or beam weapons ST is since it can't be found on the forum or really divined by reverse engineering it but at the same time I can't keep dancing around this subject and just adding more pre-made charts makes things harder to use on your end.
So I decided on a compromise.
I'm going to give you guys a simplified formula to figure out what a beam weapons actual ST score should be and need to stress this will only work for weapons with Rcl 1.
For pistols the formula is ST = 10 × (Bw/10)1/4
For rifles the formula is ST = 7 × (Bw/10)1/4. Don't forget to add a dagger (†) mark after it.
Bw is the weapons loaded weight.
For cannons, ST can be ignored. Since mounted weapons, are well mounted, and not being held out as like a lever; so long was whatever its mounted to is strong enough to hold it, the whatever is also strong to use it. Basically adding a ST score to a mounted beam weapons makes a much sense as adding one to an equal sized radar mast. A mounted beam weapons ST should be noted as N/A.
However if you still want to give your beam cannons a ST score then just use the same formula as for pistols but use the cannons empty weight, not loaded weight, and add a M after it.
Do note that I did round off the numbers used above to make the math easier and neater so do keep in mind that there will be a few break points the ST scores generated by this formula will not 100% match with the official one.
Alright guys, Here's hoping I can keep this ball rolling heh.
To give you an example, let's take a 250lbs auto cannon with Rcl 2 and a 250lbs. beam cannon with Rcl 1.
The auto cannon would have ST 28M.
The beam cannon, according to the Blaster and Laser Deisgn System, would have the square root of (250) × 2.4 or ST 38M!
In GURPS terms that means you need to be almost twice as strong to handle the recoiless beam gun as you would need to be to handle the very much has recoil auto cannon!
Now the thing is it's against my policy to publish the actual rules for figuring out what a guns or beam weapons ST is since it can't be found on the forum or really divined by reverse engineering it but at the same time I can't keep dancing around this subject and just adding more pre-made charts makes things harder to use on your end.
So I decided on a compromise.
I'm going to give you guys a simplified formula to figure out what a beam weapons actual ST score should be and need to stress this will only work for weapons with Rcl 1.
For pistols the formula is ST = 10 × (Bw/10)1/4
For rifles the formula is ST = 7 × (Bw/10)1/4. Don't forget to add a dagger (†) mark after it.
Bw is the weapons loaded weight.
For cannons, ST can be ignored. Since mounted weapons, are well mounted, and not being held out as like a lever; so long was whatever its mounted to is strong enough to hold it, the whatever is also strong to use it. Basically adding a ST score to a mounted beam weapons makes a much sense as adding one to an equal sized radar mast. A mounted beam weapons ST should be noted as N/A.
However if you still want to give your beam cannons a ST score then just use the same formula as for pistols but use the cannons empty weight, not loaded weight, and add a M after it.
Do note that I did round off the numbers used above to make the math easier and neater so do keep in mind that there will be a few break points the ST scores generated by this formula will not 100% match with the official one.
Alright guys, Here's hoping I can keep this ball rolling heh.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Ultra-Tech Quickie: MOAR DAKKA!
As my readers are probably aware, I love the Blaster and Laser Design System from Pyramid 3/37 Tech and Toys II. I really do and see it as the gift that keeps on giving.
Though as much as I do love it, I don't quite see it as quite perfect...
Though as much as I do love it, I don't quite see it as quite perfect...