Blog is back on drip freed for the next few weeks because Zelda happened

 Soooo... you might of noticed I had a bit of a roll going with blog content...

Well sadly... "something" has come up that has eaten up all my free time for the foreseeable future.

 

The "something".... and yes I am mentally 12... don't at me...

 

So in the mean time things are gonna be moving a bit slow. This game has consumed my life... I dream about, I think about it work, I play it on the way to work... I... I might have a problem... but that's an issue for future me to deal with. Present me is about to see how many Zoni rockets I can merge with my tank until either the game crashes or I reach relativistic velocities!

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Experimental Melee Rules Part II: Power Weapons

Ok, looks like my last post is getting some traction. I'm in inspired mode so let's keep this content train ah-chuggin!

Power Weapons (TL 10)
Power weapons use some form of force field to increase their impact force, be it gravitational, electromagnetic, or some other energy herein unknown to modern science.

Power weapons let off a glow that can provide some light but also give their users position away when activated. They will act as a light source that is bright enough to give a modifier of LOG₁₅(damage adds) -3 or if you want more details they will be as bright as a light with a lux of 5 × LOG(damage adds). See GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses p. 13 for more information on how light levels translates into light level modifiers. 

For weapons that do cutting, impaling, or piercing damage they increase the weapons Armor Divisor by one step (to a max of 10) and add TL -3 points of damage adds, crushing attacks only get the damage adds. +13CF.

They also worsen the odds breaking for  a non-force weapon on a parry by 1.

This can be increased to TL -2 for +1 CF, TL -1 for +4 CF,  TL for +9 CF, or TL +1 for +19 CF.  
 

Power weapons need a power source to function, usually power cells.

A standard C cell will power a power weapon for TLp/divide by weapons weight in seconds. TLp is 75 at TL 10, 150 at TL 11, 225 at TL 12.

A +1 power weapon halves this duration, a +2 one cuts it by a 1/3 , a +3 one cuts it by  1/5, and  +4 one cuts it by 1/8th.
 

Legal class worsens by 1 to a max of LC 2.

DR Steps

Find your weapons base Armor Divisor (AD) on the below table and for each step your modifiers adds, move down one step on the table. For example if you have a base AD of 2 and have one step worth of AD modifiers you will move down one step and your weapons now has a AD of 3.

 

Step AD

0 1

1 2

2 3

3 5

 

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Experimental Melee Rules Part I: Updated Vibrobalde Rules

Update: Formatting issue fixed. I guess you just can't copy your text over from Google Docs and need to paste it in a simple editing tool like notepad first >.>. Like Google owns both Docs and Blogger.... you'd think they'd be integrated... but then again Google is utter trash trash. 

Update 2 Electric Boogaloo: Fixed a typo. The cost factor for upgrading damage to TL -3 was wrong (have no idea why I had it at +3) and has been changed to the correct +9 CF.

Another quick one since the inspiration hit me out of nowhere. Here's a experimental reworking of the rules for Vibroblades found in Ultra-Tech p. 164 that cleans it up a bit and makes it more modular. If you like this I'll  make other posts covering this stuff and update other options such as Super Fine and Hyper Dense and even add some new options.

Vibro/High Frequency Blade (TL 9)
Only available to weapons that do cutting, impaling, and or piercing damage (though optimized for cutting weapons). Vibro and High Frequency (or HF) technology are two means to reach the same end; to vibrate the blade at ultra high frequencies to better slice through objects. Vibro weapons use ultrasonic waves while HF weapons use high powered alternating current but otherwise their effects are identical (though HF tech has uses outside of just making blades effectively sharper).  

A downside is the vibrations make an audible humming sound when activated. Make a hearing based Per roll to detect. See below to figure out the base range that someone can hear the weapon but in most cases the sound level will be that of a normal conversation for detection purposes.

To find out the exact range you can hear a vibro/HF weapon first find out its decibel rating.

Decibels Rating equals 20 × LOG( weapon weight in pounds × TLm×Em × 10). TLm is 2 at TL 9, 1 at TL 10, 0.5 at TL 11 and 0.25 at TL 12. Em is 2 if you upgrade to TL -5, 3 at TL -4, 5 at TL -3, 8 at TL -2.

Then take the Decibel Rating and look it up on the Hearing Distance table in High-Tech p. 158 or Loudness Levels in GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses p. 21.

Characters with Ultra-Hearing can detect a vibro/HF weapon at 10× its normal range.

If your character wouldn't know what a vibro or HF blade is then a further IQ roll is needed to figure out why you hear a humming noise. On a failure you write it off as a ringing in your ear or something similar.

If a character has either enhanced time sense or perception at 20+, they can simply see the weapon oscillate.

For weapons that do cutting, impaling, or piercing damage, when the vibro/HF function is turned on  they increase the weapons Armor Divisor by one step (to a max of 10)  and only for cutting damage they add TL -6 points of damage adds.  When turned off the weapon does its base damage. +9 CF.

This can be increased to TL -5 for an additional  +1 CF, TL -4 for +4 CF,  TL -3 for +9 CF, or TL -2  for +19 CF.

Vibro/High Frequency Blades need a power source to function, usually power cells.

A standard C cell will power a Vibro/High Frequency Blade for TLp/divide by weapons weight in seconds. TLp is 37.5 at TL 9, 300 at TL 10, 600 at TL 11, 900 at TL 12.

A +1 vibro/HF weapon halves this duration, a +2 one cuts it by a 1/3 , a +3 one cuts it by  1/5, and  +4 one cuts it by 1/8th.

Legal class worsens by 1 to a max of LC 2.

 

DR Steps

Find your weapons base Armor Divisor (AD) on the below table and for each step your modifiers adds, move down one step on the table. For example if you have a base AD of 2 and have one step worth of AD modifiers you will move down one step and your weapons now has a AD of 3.

 

Step AD

0 1

1 2

2 3

3 5

4 10