Now You're Shunting With Power

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welp, Star Wars Squadrons came out a while ago and it's kinda great. It not only brings us a much needed spiritual successor to the classic X-Wing/TIE Fighter PC space simulators from the 90's but shows some small degree of proof that EA can actually make a good game that isn't a thinly veiled guise to violate your wallet, intelligence, dignity, and probably you personally if they could figure out a way.   

The game also brings back the ability to shunt power from one system to another letting you prioritize  one system while taking a hit to others. This was an amazing game play feature that defined the original game. It let you adjust the ship you were were flying to not only be better able to take on the current challenge but also to suit your personal preference.  Need to chase down that pesky TIE? You can risk lowering your shields to up your speed. Need to get close to a capitol ship? You can trade firepower to up your shields to better survive the barrage of incoming turbo-lasers. It even made replaying mission more interesting as you could try out different power settings and see what works or purposely gimp yourself for extra challenge. It was also very true to the source material as angling your deflector shield and having an astromech droid divert power were a common troupe.  

Now while Spaceships already has a design switch option that allows you to angle your force screen (GURPS Spaceships, pg. 32), it doesn't have an option to simulate shunting power from one system to power up another one. Of course this is not without good reason as this does add a good deal of paper work to keep tract of and some extra math while designing ship. However if you're not afraid of a little extra crunch (and if you're following this blog there's a good chance you're up to the challenge, do you even crunch bro?) and want to add a little more more variety for the space jockeys in your sci-fi campaign to play around with then I give you a new design switch option: Power Shunting.

 

Power Shunting   

Many sci-fi series depict the heroes carefully husbanding power from one system to another in a critical moment, boosting its effectiveness at the expense of one that is less important in the current situation. This design switch lets you simulate that troupe. You can only shunt power between high-energy systems and must have at least two usable power points available. All powered system start at level 0, which is the baseline power level. Pick a system you want to boost and select a level you want to boost it to from level 1 up to level 4. Multiply that system's effects or stats by the amount shown in the column that the system you are boosting falls under. You then have to drop another system down to a negative level equal to the level you raised the boosted system to, from level  -1 to level -4,  and multiply its effects and stats by the amount shown in its corresponding column. If you have three or more boost compatible high energy systems plus enough power points to power them all and you boost a system two or more levels you can choose to spread the drained levels across them rather than just lowering the level of one system.   

If you have more high-energy systems then power points to use on them all, you can also use a power shunt to provide some level of power to these systems. For every level you drop a powered system, raise the unpowered one up one level treating level -4 as being unpowered.   

Different kinds of systems are affected in different ways when feed more power. There are three ways a system can be boosted. Systems are either affected in a linear way, by the square root of the increase in power, or by the cube root of the increase. Though there are some systems that can be affected in more than one way, for example increasing the engine power of a craft in atmosphere will increase its thrust linearly but it's top speed will only increase by the square root of it.

Because of this the shunting chart shown below is broken down into three columns with each one corresponding to one of the ways a system can be affected by a power shunt.
 

Power Shunt Chart
Power Level: This column shows the range of settings you can set a systems power level to; from a level of -4 up to a level of +4 with a power level of 0 being the normal operating level for a given system. Each level represents an power increase or decrease of 25% with a level of +4 being a doubling of power and a level of -4 being no power.

 
Colum 1: Square Root
These systems are affected by the square root of the set power level.

-Kinetic energy weapons or beam weapons if you are using the square root of destruction optional rule (Alternate Spaceships, Pyramid 3-24 Alternate GURPS, pg. 9).

-Top speed of jet and ornithopter powered aircraft.


Column 2: Cube Root
These systems are affected by the cube root of the set power level.  

-Beam weapons if you are using the standard rules.

-Top speed for helicopters and surface water and underwater craft.


Column 3: Linear
These systems are affected by a one to one increase in the set power level.  

- Contragravity lifters.

-For any types of propulsion and FTL systems not covered in other columns.

-Shields.

-Factory and Mining/Refinery output.
 
 
Power Level       Square Root      Cube Root        Linear    
-4                       ×0                      ×0                      ×0
-3                       ×0.5                   ×0.6                   ×0.25
-2                       ×7                      ×0.8                   ×0.5
-1                       ×0.9                   ×0.9                   ×0.75
0                        ×1                      ×1                      ×1
+1                      ×1.12                 ×1.1                   ×1.25
+2                      ×1.22                 ×1.14                 ×1.5
+3                      ×1.32                 ×1.21                 ×1.75
+4                      ×1.4                   ×1.25                 ×2         



On a sheet or paper or spreadsheet write down the power level column as you see above and set up a different column for each high powered system that can be power shunted then under them multiply their base effects by the multipliers under the column the column that corresponds to the given system.

For Example: Let's say you have a SM +5 space fighter that has two linear systems, a hot TL 11 reactionless thruster and a TL 11 deflector screen and one cube root system, a 10MJ major battery. It's stats would be be affected as below:

Power Level      Hot  Reactionless    Deflector Screen     Major Battery       
-4                       0                                      0                            0                     
-3                       0.5G                                5 dDR                    2d+2 (2)                  
-2                       1G                                  10 dDR                    3d+1 (2)                  
-1                       1.5G                               15 dDR                    3d+2 (2)                 
0                        2G                                   20 dDR                    4d (2)                      
+1                      2.5G                               25 dDR                     4d+2 (2)                     
+2                      3G                                  30 dDR                     4d+2 (2)                
+3                      3.5G                               35 dDR                      5d-1 (2)                
+4                      4G                                  40 dDR                      5d (2)             


Longer Term Effect
While in most combat situations keeping track of how long you shunt extra power into a system is not needed; however if you are doing this during a long chase or similar situations you do risk straining or even blowing out a system if you run it a higher output then i';s normally rated for for too long.

You can run most systems for a minute or get off 10 shots in succession (at a weapons full ROF) without any issues but for every minute or 10 shots afterwards you need to make a HT roll. On  success the system is fine.  On a failure, the systems safeties kick in and shut the system down for 1d minutes per minute/10 shots the system was used. On a failure of 5 or more the system is damaged in the shut down procedure and will not work again until repaired (see Damage Control, GURPS Spaceships pg. 64). On a critical failure the power was too much for the system to handle and it blew out completely. It is a total wash and needs to be replaced.

If you let the system rest for 30 seconds per minute/10 shots it is boosted it cools back down to normal uses and can be used for 1 minute/10 shots without needing a HT check again.


Hotshotting and Power Shunting
If used, these rules also replace the normal hotshot rules (GURPS Ultra-Tech pg. 133). It is assumed that the more robust power supplies as well as the fact that the weapon can tap into the vehicle's cooling system allows it to fire at a higher output far more safely then you could with a small arm.

Survivable Spaceships Quickie: I'll Try Spinning! That's a Neat Trick!

I don't think I need to convince anyone that the spaceships in GURPS Spaceships need more ways to stay alive in a fight and in fact I have already covered this topic before here and here.

Of course those were rather conventional ways of protecting a ship from over all damage. In today's post I cover two more ways to protect your ship, specifically from energy weapons, that are a bit more out there. 

Not today good sir! In this post we're gonna cover how NOT to taste that rainbow! Also, have you played Children of a Dead Earth yet? If not, why come? 

Yeah, that's the theory in a nutshell... or at lest a spinning one

Rotating Your Defenses (Rotating Armor)
During the 80's there was a real look into using DEWs (directed energy weapons, lasers and other pew-pews) to shoot down Soviet ICBM's as well as what could be done to protect them from said DEWs.

It was figured that it would take a laser just 10KJ per square centimeter to kill a typical Soviet ICBM but if you spun the armor on the ICBM so the laser couldn't dwell on one spot, that went up to 30KJ or more as the effective area the laser dwelled on increased and the spot hit had some time to cool. Quiet an effective increase. Of course there was a down side to this, the mechanisms needed to make the armor spin would add more mass meaning you would need to use thinner armor if wanted the same weight and the added complexity would increase cost. Thankfully the spinning also increased the effective slant of the armor against other attacks making up for the thinner armor against more physical attacks along side the increased effectiveness it has against beam weapons.

Another down side if the fact that spinning armor act like a gyroscope making it much harder for a ship to turn.

Adding a system of rotating armor cost as much as a given system of armor one size larger. It offers it's normal dDR against most types of attacks  but its dDR is treat as if it was an armor system three SM larger against burning, lasers, particle beams and other beam weapon types (with the exception of plasma guns). A ship that spins its armor is at +1 to it's SR (to a max of 5) but is also at -1 to it's Hnd.

Example:  A SM +7 ship is given a system of Nanocomposite armor. It gives its normal dDR of 15 against most attacks but against an enemy beam attack it's spinning armor effectively spreads the beams focal point out giving the ship and effective dDR of 50 vs lasers and other beam weapons! But do to the added complexity of adding a spinning mechanism to the armor, the system costs $5M rather then $1.5M. While spun its Hnd drops to -2 but its SR stays at 5.

Spin your ship's armor so you don't end up like this guy. You do NOT want to be this guy! Also play Children of a Dead Earth! 

But wait! There's more!

You can also cool your armor to increase it's protection as well!

Really Cool Armor (Actively Cooled Armor)
Another effective way to deal with beam weapons is to find a way to bleed off the thermal energy they deposit in the armor. In fact this is in fact the key feature of types of ablative armor that has been proposed for energy weapon defense, as the armor ablates it carries a lot of heat with it.

Well if this works, why not just run the ships cooling system through its armor? Well nothing, well outside of the fact that coolant used to handle normal ship functions isn't hardcore enough to handle the intensity that military grade energy weapons hit with, it would boil off way before it could shunt enough heat to save the armor. So what we need is a more hardcore level of coolant. How hardcore? Well molten tin has been suggested as possible candidate, Ultra-Tech examples might use more exotic materials.

Like this. But Bigger. And using molten metal instead of water. But you know what?
This thing would let you run Children of a Dead Earth at a butter smooth frame rate!

Other then that, the idea behind this system isn't that different from a water cooling loop you might used to cool your PC,  it's just a heat pump on a larger scale.

Actively cooled armor coolant can be used just as normal coolant as well, each tank of it extends a ships operational time by 10 times at TL 9, by 15 times at TL 10, by 20 times at TL 11, and by 30 times at TL 12.

Each system of actively cooled armor needs a fuel tank system of armor coolant to work. Each tank treats a given armor system as having the dDR of a ship five SM larger (if you also add rotating armor, increase this to eight SM larger!) against burning, lasers, particle beams and other beam weapon types (with the exception, once again, of plasma guns). Of course this is only for as long as the tank of coolant holds out! How long a tank can protect a system of armor depends on how powerful the attack is and the TL of the coolant. Against a weapon with the output equal to a major battery of the same SM as the armor system, a tank of coolant will last 10 shots at TL 9, 15 shots at TL 10, 20 shots at TL 11, and 30 shots at TL 12. Against larger or smaller beam weapons, increase or decrease how long a given tank last by the ratio of the attacking beams output against what the output for a major battery of the same SM as the armor system that is being hit. If you have more armor systems then tanks of coolant then divide how many shots it can survive by the number of armor systems its protecting, round down. If you have more tanks of coolant then armor systems then increase the number of shots by the difference, also round down. Armor coolant costs $1,000 a ton.

Example: If we decided to instead add a tank of armor coolant to protect our TL 10  SM +7 ship, its dDR 15 of nanocomposite armor would now give dDR 100 vs. beam weapons, dDR 300 is it also rotated! This is of course only so long as its coolant holds out! Being a TL 10 ship, its coolant can hold out against 15 100MJ shots, or 45 30MJ ones. This could of course be increased by adding more tanks of coolant. A single SM +7 tanks of coolant costs $15,000 to fill. 

Spaceships Ultra-Quickie: Even More Survivable Spaceships

Yeah, it's been a while. I tried back when I posted my lost article to get back to blogging but sadly things didn't go to well.

Welp, I'm taking another shot at getting the ball rolling and hopefully I can make it stick this time heh.

So I figured might as well start off with a quick lil' post to easy back into things while I finish up some of more complex ideas.

For this quick post I'm gonna take another crack at making ships and vehicles you make in GURPS Spaceships a little more survivable.

Military Grade Armor (TL10+)
The stats for Nanocomposite, Diamondoid, and Exotic Laminate represent the type of materials that would be used in either civilian level vessels or "unarmored" style ships that are more like modern navel destroyers. This is usually do to cost since higher grades of armor materials are far more expensive. However, higher grade materials are available if cost isn't a major factor.

Military grade armor doubles the dDR that a system of  Nanocomposite, Diamondoid, and Exotic Laminate give buy cost 4 times as much. This armor also counts as laminate and doubles its dDR against shaped charge and plasma based attacks.

Do to the cost most large ships and vehicles are not going to be able to afford to cover the whole ship in the best armor and instead will only either only cover the sides likely to be hit in combat (such as the front hull for tanks or for ships meant to attack into their forward arc while approaching the enemy) or you can use my optional rules here to simulate adding armored belts to protect only specific sections of a ship.

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!

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.