High-Tech: TL 8 Lasers

Pew Pew Pew: Real Life Edition.

Yes you read that right, today I'm actually tackling something that's now TL 8 modern tech!

Now that things have calmed down at work a bit (for now at lest, the calm before the storm >.>) so I think it's time to get back into things.

To help ease myself back into blogging I decided to tackle a quick but quirky topic: How to stat up TL 8 lasers!

State of the Blog

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates as of late.

We're down people at my job and they're using me to plug all of the holes so days off have become just about nonexistent for me as of late. Add this to the fact that as it gets warmer my already really busy jobs gets twice as bad and I'm both mentally and physically exhausted.

This has left me with little energy left over to focus on being creative for my blog and so... the lack of content for the time being.

The good news however if that we should be getting someone by Sunday so hopefully things will calm down a bit more me and I'll be able to get some much need rest and recovery and get back at it.

Though even if things don't slow down for me any time soon I am still working on posts, just at a trickling pace so either way new content is coming, it's just a matter of how soon I can get it out heh.

Just hang in there guys, I'll be back at it soon.

Like most proud ethnic kekistanis I too have to supplement my kek farming by working under the oppression of normie scum.

SATNUC: Lances of Star Fire

The business end of a very bad day...

Back in good ol' 3rd Edition, one of the most glorious bits of overkill ever put to print for the system was the SATNUC. A cross over from the Ogre universe,the SATNUC was self guiding submunition  similar in concept  to the (sadly canceled) Brilliant Anti-Tank munition with one major difference; rather than a self forging penetration, it uses a shaped charge micro-nuke! Of course in the gaming universe this bit of ridiculousness originally existed in there are AI controlled multi-thousand ton tanks armed out of pure win and awesome this kinda weapon does make some sense... in others.... not so much... But gawd damn was it a fun bit of tech!
 
Of course when for 4th edition came out, sadly this little gem was left out. But hey... that's what you guys have me for! Follow me after the jump where I cover not only my take on what SATNUCs should look like in 4th ed but I also throw in a shaped charge version of the mininuke and a design system where you can craft your very own custom SATNUCs and shaped charge nukes!

Gauss Weapons, Reloaded!

Not going to lie. I want one!

I've long said that I was going to get around to tackling gauss weapons on this post and its about time I make good with my word!

In today's (late GURPSday) post I take a look over the gauss weapons in Ultra-Tech and see if I can give them a good dose of updating!

Ultra-Tech Quickie: Batteries, Recharged!

A few months ago I did an article covering how much energy power cells hold in real world units and included a few hypothetical suggestion for different kinds of power plants. I also took a shot a handling batteries to give players some more long term storage options at the price of having a lower power output.

Behold, the power of the future!

The stats I posted for them were based on work done by laser wunderkind Luke Campbell since his work match my own research as well as the fact he had more knowledge on the subject then I do. They do their job fine and are about as realistic as you can get, well as well as you can with predicting the future. However they just were kinda.... kinda off with how GURPS does things.

While I'm not afraid to stray into house rule territory if I have to, I try to stay as RAW as possible since I know how some GM's can get. Some just don't like veering off of what's published so if my rules at lest line up with that it increases the chance that my stuff will get the okay.

Well, I've been doing some diving into what info I could get on the early versions of Ultra-Tech to see if I can find any nuggets I could use. While I have yet to find a smoking gun, I have found enough things that seem to point to the fact that originally there were going to be both power cells and batteries in the book (and in fact this makes sense since some of the things listed don't make sense having the duration they do with just normal power cells).

Now granted that's useful and all but... there was no data on how these batteries would work. Then it hit me. A lot of Ultra-Tech was inspired by what was done in Transhuman Space and that setting had both batteries (confusingly called power cells) and power cells (called power packs). So I took a look at these settings assumptions and it clicked!

So here's my second, more GURPSy attempt at stating batteries.

In general Ultra-Tech Batteries hold 10× as much energy as a the same sized power cell of the same TL. For example a TL9 C power cell holds 90kJ of energy so a TL9 C battery would hold 900kJ.

Of course the down side to batteries is that they have a limited ability to discharge that energy as power. Divide the batteries kilo Joules of storage by 900 to see how many kilo Watts it can discharge at. For example since a C battery holds 900kJ it can discharged it at a rate of 900kJ/900 or 1kW. If the item you are trying to power has a greater kilo Watt requirement then a given battery can provide then use a bigger or more batteries till it that requirement is met.

Note that realistically that at TL11, energy density gets as high as it can probably get without super science. The TL12 examples  shown below would need hyperdense materials to be practical.

Battery type  TL9                      TL10                       TL11                           TL12
AA                    0.0001kW/0.9 kJ          0.0004kW/0.36 kJ        0.0016kW/14.4 kJ             0.0064kW/57.6 kJ
A                       0.001kW/9 kJ               0.004kW/3.6 kJ            0.016kW/144 kJ                0.064kW/576 kJ
B                       0.01kW/90 kJ               0.04kW/360 kJ             0.16kW/1,440 kJ               0.64kW/5,760 kJ
C                      1kW/900 kJ                   4kW/3,600kJ                16kW/14,400 kJ                64kW/57,600 kJ 
D                      10kW/9,000 kJ              40kW/36,000kJ            160kW/144,000 kJ            640kW/576,000 kJ 
E                      100kW/90,000 kJ          400kW/360,000kJ        1,600kW/1,440,000 kJ       6,400kW/5,760,000 kJ
F                      1,000kW/900,000 kJ     4,000kW/3,600,000kJ  16,000kW/14,400,000 kJ    64,000kW/57,600,000 kJ 



The number before the slash is the batteries output in kilo Watts and the number after the slash in the batteries energy storage in kilo Joules. Divide the listed energy storage by 3,600 to get how many kilo Watt-hours the battery will provide.

Musings on Things that Affect Beam Weapons Accuracy

Ever felt that it was odd that making a Fine (Accurate) Laser rifle only gives it a +1 bonus to Acc when it s has a base Acc 12 compared to conventional rifles Acc of 5? Or have you wondered what happens when you add a stock to beam pistol or remove the stock of a beam rifle or securely mount one?

Or how about if you wanted a laser carbine rather then a rifle, shouldn't it have a lower Acc then a full rifle?

Well, in today's post I go over how I feel these questions should be handled. Just keep in mind that nothing here is official so if you want to stay 100% RAW for you game then it's best to skip these optional rules.



Fine and Very Fine (Accurate)
Given the greater range of accuracy beam weapons have compared to conventional fire arms it doesn't make sense that a Fine or Very Fine beam weapons should only get a partly +1 or +2 to their Acc.

By taking a look at the range of Acc score conventional projectile weapons get and by what amount a +1 or +2 bonus effects them I was able to deduce what the same rate would be for the different beam weapons.

Acc Bonus
+3 for Fine, +6 for Very Fine         All beam weapons but these shown below.
+2.5 for Fine, +5 for Very Fine     Blaster, Ghost Particle, Neutral Particle, and Pulsar.
+2 for Fine, +4 for Very Fine        Electrolaser,  and Plasma Gun.
+1.5 for Fine, +3 for Very Fine     Flamer, Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, and Screemers.
+1 for Fine, +2 for Very Fine         Plasma Lance.

When adding these modifiers to your weapons stats, round up the +2.5 for Fine (Accurate) to +3 for Blaster, Ghost Particle, Neutral Particle, and Pulsar but round down +1.5 Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, and Screemers to +1. You might be wondering why I bothered writing down the like that and that's because I wanted to show you how the math works out.

Stock, Stockless and Mounted
Adding a stock to a stockless weapons, such as the default for pistol form weapons, increases it Acc by the same amount making it a Fine (Accurate) beam weapons. This will infact bump up its Acc to the Acc of Configuration on size bigger (i.e. a pistol will have the same Acc as a carbine). Likewise removing or collapsing the stock of a beam weapon that has one, such as the default for carbines and bigger, subtracts and amount from its Acc equal to the bonus it would receive for being Fine (Accurate). Mounting a beam weapon so its fixed tight and securely to a weapon mount, also increase its accuracy. Mounting a beam weapon increases its Acc by the same amount as making it Fine (Accurate) and removing an already mounted weapon from its mount reduces its Acc by the same amount. Cannon are already considered mounted, if removed from their mounting treat them as support weapons.



Expanded Configuration List 
A weapons form factor has an impact on its inherent accuracy, longer weapons simply provide a superior sight picture.

Below I expand the Acc range for beam weapons to give the same range that conventional projectile weapons have as well as give some rules of thumb for how to determine which configuration you should use for a given beam weapons.

Sub Compact/Beamer: This configuration should be used for  either small "holdout pistol" style beam weapons or tool shaped beam weapons (like the ever awful dustbuster phaser from Star Trek: The Next Generation) up to about pistol sized. Bulk should be no more then -1.

Acc                    Beam Type
3                        All beam weapons but these shown below.
2                        Electrolaser,  and Plasma Gun.
1                        Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, Screemers, Flamer and Plasma Lance. 


Pistol: Pistol from weapons should be small weapons that could be fired with on hand and be -3 at the most.

Acc                    Beam Type
6                        All beam weapons but these shown below.
5                        Blaster, Ghost Particle, Neutral Particle, and Pulsar.
4                        Electrolaser,  and Plasma Gun.
3                        Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, Screemers, and Flamer.
2                        Plasma Lance.




Carbine: These are rifle from long arms with a built in stock as default though attaching a stock to a pistol from weapon effectively makes it a pistol carbine . In general they can be anything from pistol sized up to a bulk of -5. 

Acc                    Beam Type
9                        All beam weapons but these shown below.
8                        Blaster, Ghost Particle, Neutral Particle, and Pulsar.
6                        Electrolaser,  and Plasma Gun.
4                        Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, Screemers, and Flamer.
3                        Plasma Lance.



Rifle: A larger, fulled long arm beam weapons. Bulk should be up to -7

Acc                    Beam Type
12                      All beam weapons but these shown below.
10                      Blaster, Ghost Particle, Neutral Particle, and Pulsar.
8                        Electrolaser,  and Plasma Gun.
6                        Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, Screemers, and Flamer.
4                        Plasma Lance. 



Support: A support configured beam weapon can be any sized up to a large rifle up to cannon in sized and in fact cannons are just mounted support weapons. They can be any bulk -6 and up.

Acc                    Beam Type
15                        All beam weapons but these shown below.
13                        Blaster, Ghost Particle, Neutral Particle, and Pulsar.
10                        Electrolaser,  and Plasma Gun.
7                         Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, and Screemers
9                         Flamer.
6                         Plasma Lance. 


Cannon:  A mounted support configured beam weapon and such and be anything with a bulk of -6 and up.

Acc                    Beam Type
18                       All beam weapons but these shown below.
15                       Blaster, Ghost Particle, Neutral Particle, and Pulsar.
12                       Electrolaser,  and Plasma Gun.
9                         Sonic Stunners, Nauseators, and Screemers
12                       Flamer.
8                         Plasma Lance. 

Ultra-Tech Quickie: MOAR DAKKA Revisited

Got a super quick one for you guys today.

A little while I put up a blog post covering my attempt to give a greater range of detail when it came to giving a beam weapons a high ROF. It worked pretty well and the attempt has been really well received by my readers but it did differ a bit from RAW and I was never fully happy with that. Not so much as I think the RAW value is better but the fewer paces into house rule territory I can keep my blog the more universal my post will be and the more people can benefit from them.  Of course, lacking official design documents sometimes I'm forced to do so and at first that's what I thought I was going to have to settle with my ROF rules. That is until I decided to take another crack at it and it just hit me. Once again I was overthinking things!

Alrighty, that being said, below you will find what G should be for a given ROF up to 20 with the this version of the ROF rules.

ROF            G
1                  1
2                  1.01
3                  1.0225
4                  1.04
5                  1.0625
6                  1.09
7                  1.1225
8                  1.16
9                  1.2025
10                1.25
11                1.3025
12               1.36
13               1.4225
14               1.49
15               1.5625
16               1.64
17               1.7225
18               1.81
19               1.9025
20               2

For ROF greater then 20, G can be figured as 1+(ROF/20)².

Now you might be going, "Wait, this still doesn't explain why a semi-automatic generator and alight automatic generator both have a modifier of ×1.25?!"

Well I got a theory on this one. The semi-auto generator and the light auto generator are the same thing, semi-auto beam weapons are just locked out of full auto mode by the developers. So why bother with such a heavy generator? Well, with modern pistols the ROF of 3 is only what most people can pull off with a semi-auto and some people can pull that trigger really fast! So a semi-auto beam weapon can actually use the Fast-Firing rules (High-Tech pg.84)! Use the rules as listed but Rcl does not go up (except for plasma guns, they use the rules as is),

For my own beams found on this blog I'm going to keep to my own ROF rules just because of some feed back I got and to keep things consistent though this more updated version will still find it uses for another project I'm working on.

Ok guys, I hope you find this all useful. Don't say I don't give you options heh.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: I'm Ah Chargin' Ma Lazor!

I recently came across a blog called Concrete Lunch Gaming that gave me a small shout out. It's a pretty cool blog that covers a range of games including GURPS but what  had caught my eye was that he had just recently bought a collection of OG Traveller books. While I've never played any incantation of the game, most of you probably have realized that I do have an interest in it, especially its Fire, Fusion and Steel books, which is pretty much that games equivalent to GURPS Vehicles (big surprise, me being into a crunch heavy tech book), and I was inspired to give look over the few Traveller files I have on my computer. Good thing I did because when I was looking over a file going over High Energy Weapons (another thing you guys might of guessed is that I also like me some plasma weapons heh) inspiration hit me again!

In Traveller plasma weapons are really powerful but have a very, very low rate of fire. That made sense, if you spread out how long you need to generate your power you can reduce the size of things like the power supply and you got more time to bleed off waste heat meaning you can pack more punch into a smaller package and here I had another way to reduce the weight of heavy energy weapons. While this won't let you drop the weight quite as dramatically as a disposable beam weapon, you also don't need to toss away the whole thing every time you need to fire it. So I figured I might as well keep follow up on my last post with some new ways to keep energy weapon weight down.

So without any further ado, I give you a new modifier for the Blaster and Laser Design System from Pyramid 3/37 Tech & Toys II.


High Energy Beam Weapons
By spreading the time it takes to generate a energy beam or bolt over a longer period and therefor reducing the power load (the power supply has less wattage it needs to regulate, the cooling system has more time to vent waste heat and so on), it is possible to reduce the size and cost of a given beam weapon (the main beam generator however would still have to be full sized). The trade off is of course, you now need to wait several seconds between firings.

To design a High Energy Beam Weapon, build the weapon as normal  but replace G with the following:

G is changed to  0.7 for a 3 second charge delay, 0.6 for a 5 second charge delay or 0.5 for a 10 second charge delay.

Unless you switch the weapon off, after firing the weapon will automatically begin charging up again. While charging the weapon will either have a visual indicator on it showing how much longer till it charged or will transmit the information to your HUD. While charging you are free to do other actions. Once charged the weapon will either flash,  send a message to your HUD or admit an audible tone or transmit one to any headphones you are wearing. If you are in the middle of battle or other high stress situations and do note have a clear line of sight to an indicator, you can figure time remaining by making an IQ based Beams Weapon role.

If you have to power down the weapon without firing it, the built up energy needs to be discharged first. This takes just as long safely discharge the weapon as it takes to charge it expect for plasma weapons since they need to cool and vent the plasma. It takes plasma weapons 4 times as long to safely discharge, during which it will vent the cooled plasma as hot gas. This gas is vented away from the operator and is generally cool enough to be safe but can cause minor burns if your hand is held to close to the vents (treat as moderate pain, does 1d-4 burn if held against it for a full second).

Now let's this this modifier in action! Since Traveller inspired me, what better way to show this off then by trying to adapt the PGMP-12 to GURPS. Sadly this won't be an exact match since GURPS makes very different assumptions so I went for a middle ground and tried to capture the feel as much as possible.


PGMP-12  (TL10^)

The Plasma Gun, Man Portable Model 12 is a heavy high-energy plasma weapon meant to be used by heavy battlesuits that is  capable of penetrating 61mm of RHA equivalent by firing a 216 kilojoule plasma bolt.

The weapon system weighs at total of 50.8 lbs and is composed of three major components; the main firing unit which houses the bolt generator and D cell power cartridge magazine that powers it, the back mounted support systems which houses the power supply and cooling system and the main lead cord which houses the power cord and cooling line which attaches these systems to the firing unit and a articulated weapon harness the helps counter recoil and folds the firing unit up against the support system when not in use (reduces ST to 7† , see Ultra-Tech pg. 150-151).

The PGMP-12 is a high powered weapon but as a trade off has a very low rate of fire, taking a total of five seconds to charge a new round. During this time, hydrogen is siphoned out of the D cell power cartridge along with some energy which is used to charge the weapons pilot laser which starts to heat the hydrogen into a plasma as well as run the cooling system over the next five seconds. An electromagnetic field is used to trap the ionizing hydrogen until it reach near fusion level of pressure and heat. Once this stat is reached the pilot laser is allowed to escape the barrel and ionize a path for the plasma bolt to follow and the magnetic filed is dropped allowing the plasma to enter the barrel were a line of magnetic accelerators boost the plasma to over eight thousand meters a second giving the plasma extra kinetic punch and extended range.  

The weapons high power does limit its use in built up areas areas however, the blast effect from its impact can be lethal to unarmored targets up to a yard away and can cause at lest minor injures up to around 28 yards. Because of this, the weapon is generally only issued when extremely heavy fighting is expected.


BEAM WEAPONS (RIFLE) (DX-4, other Beam Weapons-4, or Guns (Rifle)-4)
TL Weapon      Damage                  Acc  Range          Wt            ROF     Shots    ST   Bulk  Rcl  Cost               LC  Notes
10^ PGMP-12  6d×4(2) burn ex sur  8    1,200/3,600  24.2/1D    1/5        5(5)      11†  -7      2      $77,000/$100 1    [1, 2]

[1]The listed weight is for the loaded firing unit and articulated weapon harness only, the back mounted support unit and power/cooling cord weighs 26.6lbs with a total system weight of 50.8lbs.

[2]The power/cooling cord is armored and has DR18/6* and has HP8. Use the higher values against cutting and piercing attacks and the lower values against everything else. The armor counts as flexible.



 

Stellar Dynamics PGD-1 LAMP

While relatively realistic, using a cubed progression for energy weapons means it gets hard to build man portable anti-armor beams weapons, in fact a single shot laser with just the same damage an a AP 50 cal round weighs in at a hefty 64 lbs!

So for today's post I take a crack at fixing this problem. It's not elegant and gives you only one shot but it gets the job done!

Spaceships Quickie: Power Cell Energy Banks

           

If you ever built a ship in GURPS Spaceships there's a good chance that you've run into the frustration of trying to balance how many Power Point using systems you have and how many Power Point generating system you can cram into he hull with out compromising something. This can especially become a problem for warships were you usually have to cut something armor to stuff in another power plant or have to cut the number of weapons systems.

Well frustrate no more my most awesome readers! For in today's post I give you guys the one system I think we can all agree should of been in at lest on of the Spaceships supplements:

Power Cell Energy Banks!

Psi-Wars Blaster Grab Bag!

Totally not Star Wars! Honest!

You might have noticed I'm a bit of a fan of Mailanka Psi-Wars project. For those who haven't taken a look at it, Psi-Wars is a massive project that is both a setting heavily based on the feel and tone of Star Wars but change slightly to better suited for role playing and a massive proof of concept project designed to teach GMs both new and old some best practices for designing a setting based around an intellectual property that you like.

While I'm done a post that was inspired by the setting already, a few days ago I was contacted by Mailanka over on the GURPS discord server asking if I wanted to design a few blasters for him and given that stating up energy weapons is pretty much by bread and butter, I couldn't reply yes fast enough. 

So if ya want to see what kind of crazy pew-pews I came up with, follow me after the jump! 

Ultra-Tech Quickie: Liquid Cooling System For Beam Weapons

Just like this, only more future!

Back in February I took a more detailed look at an highly optional  way to handle sustained fire with beams weapons that brought Ultra-Tech a bit closer to High-Tech in that regard.

Of course for that post, the whole reason for taking that deeper look was pretty much just to give justification for a more detailed look at stating up gatling beam weapons.

Well given that I came up with a more detailed sustained fire system, I figured I might as well look into other ways weapons get around overheating.

So in today's post I go over a somewhat more practical cooling system and give you a super optional system for designing Liquid Cooling systems for your beam weapons.

So follow me after that jump off if you’re in the mood for some liquid cool!

Ultra-Tech Garage: Boeing F-227 Skyfire

Not only is it GURPSday once again, it's also my birthday to boot!  

So to celebrate, I got a brand new entry for the Ultra-Tech garage  that’s fresh from the factory!

In today's post we take a look at a hypothetical TL9 Naval fighter called the F-227 Skyfire and some of the air to air armaments it carries.

I got to say this write up was my most complicated work since my Power Armor Design article and it took a lot of time and research to get it done (there's a reason that this is only my second Ultra-tech Garage post heh) but hopefully it'll live up to my readers exceptions.

Also a special thanks to GURPS ubermensch, Ghostdancer (go read his blog noaw!), for braving through some math for me heh.

Follow me after the jump if  ya want to hop onto that highway to the danger zone!

Ultra-Tech Quickie: Call Me, Call Me On the Line. Call Me, Call Me Anytime.

And now for my third "Quickie"  in row, though to be fair this is kinda the first one that actually follows the concept of being a small post (the last two started out as small posts but kinda... ballooned out and I was too lazy to come up with new titles for them heh).

In this post I break down each of the communicator types from chapter 3 of Ultra-Tech so you can stat up your custom version of any size and any range. And since you can now have communicators of any size  that no longer fit the neat size category progression from the book I also updated the Communicators with Different Ranges rules so they can be used between communicators of arbitrary size.  

So open all hailing frequency and follow me after the jump. 

Spaceships Quickie: A Spaceship for any Size and for any Occasion

Since my last post covering a few optional systems for GURPS Spaceships went over so well I figured I might as well keep the ball rolling.

While the system gives you a good range of sizes to pick from, from SM+4 up to SM+15 but... what happens in you want a ship bigger or even smaller?

Well, wonder no more!

Spaceships Quickie: Surviable Spaceships

After replying to this post where I mulled over how hard it is to make an armored ship in Spaceships it got the old think box ah' turning about some ways to make ships a little more survivable.

Warheads R Us

For this weeks GURPSday I tackle the most pressing issue faced by GURPS Ultra-Tech users....

How much the diffrent warheads weigh and cost!

Aaaanddd... a maybe a few other things but baahhhh, they're not that important. 

Would you like to know more?

Ultra-Tech Super Quickie: Someone Already Beat Me to Updating the ETC Rules

Real quick one for you guys today.

One thing that I get a lot of requests for is way to update the ETC (Electrothermal-Chemical) rules from Ultra-Tech (pg. 139) which many agree are a bit wonky. Well, I've been collecting what little info on this tech that is available openly, trying to see if I can come up with a better figure.

Welp, David beat me to this. In this GURPS forum post he listed the current (well current as of  almost 3 years ago heh) values he's using for the Armorers Handbook (His and Hans inhouse weapon design system that will hopefully see the light of day some decade....The things I would do to just get half an hour with that manuscript....).

For what it's worth, my research was leading me to believe that 1st gen ETC would make rounds about 1.3 times more powerful so it at lest seems we were on the same page.

Well there you guys go, values for ETC that aren't as game breaking and more in line with reality. 

Ultra Tech Quickie: Rattling and Gatling

Ahhhh, February. The month of love.

Well, if there is one thing over here at GURB that we love, it's guns!

And what's the ultimate form of gun love? One that can fire really, really, really fast! 

In this (somewhat late) Valentine present to my readers  I  not only go over how to stat up some ultra tech energy gatling guns but I go back over how sustained fire for energy weapons worked in Ultra-Tech and bring them more in line with the more advanced rules found High-Tech.

Got nothing but love for ya guy!

Freeze!

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!

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.

PC Master Race: Upgrading your Ultra-Tech Computing Experience.

Behold my slightly higher resolution graphics console peasants!

Anyone who has ever custom built a  computer  knows that half of the fun is upgrading the bejesus out of it.

 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.

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.

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...