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 

 

 

 

High-Tech/Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Have a seat while I blow you off your feet.

Blast Resistant Seating

Blast effects from mines, IED (Improvised Explosive Device, i.e. home made boom-booms) and near hits from artillery rounds have been found to have a much greater effect the people inside a vehicle even if the blast fails to penetrate the vehicles armor then GURPS assumes. 

Well, they're having a blast.

This is largely because advancements in blast protection has lead to situations where a vehicle survives where it would of been blown to scrap in the past leading to the crew being killed anyways. So now we're finding that even if the blast can be mitigated enough to prevent complete destruction of the vehicles, the shock waves can still be transmitted through the hull into the spine of the poor crew doing nasty, nasty, neurological damage. 

So if you're ok with some extra crunch and want more gritty realism, use the following rule:

 

Blast Damage Through Armor

If a blast fails to penetrate a vehicles DR, use the rules for HESH rounds found on GURPS High-Tech pg. 170 but change the cutting damage to crushing. If using the Lasting and Permanent Injury rules from GURPS Martial Arts pg. 138 (and if you're going gritty you should be heh!) use the Skull Wounds Table. 

So there you go, another way for you, the GM, to make your party dead, dead, dead!

...

Oh right... wait... *slaps forehead* We're trying NOT to kill our PC's.... what was a I thinking?! 

Thankfully after they figured out that concussive blast were turning our troops brains into scrambled eggs they quickly figured things out. If you isolate the chairs they're sitting on from the hull by putting them on a shock absorber style damping system you can can reduce the G forces being exerted on the crew member by a factor greater then 10, turning an impulse that would crush internal organs and slam your brain into the top of your skull into something that might break some ribs and bruise you badly instead. Still sucks buuuut given the alternative I know which I would choose. 

Soooo, you might be wondering, how good are these things? Take a good look at the photo below.

This Styker flipped over and rolled several times after it got hit and an IED. Despite the level of damage you see, no one was killed or even severely injured. So pretty damn good it seems. 

Mobius Protective Systems Advanced Protection System

So as a counter to the Blast Damage through Armor rules, might want to equip your combat vehicles with some of these things. So here's the rules.

Blast Resistant Seating

Blast Resistant Seat (TL 8). These seats isolate the person sitting in them from the frame of the vehicle they are in and uses shock absorber like dampeners to help dissipate the energy from shock waves and impacts. Provides DR 15 vs collision damage (see Whiplash and Collisions Basic, pg. 432) and shocks damage from none penetrating blast damage. Increase DR to 20 at TL 9, 30 at TL 10, and TL 50 at TL 11+. $1,500, 44 lbs. 

If you are adding the seats to an already stated vehicle such as a TL 8 Humvee (GURPS High-Tech pg. 242) or a TL 9 Wheeled ATV (GURPS Ultra-Tech pg. 225), add +24 lbs and +$1,300 per seat to the vehicles states. This will come out it's normal payload limits.

Ultra-Tech Ultra-Gear: Energy Converging Armor

Force fields are a stable of Sci-Fi. They let you throw around bigga-joules worth of firepower across the screen and give a hand wavy way of letting ships survive the impacts.

Of course some setting realize that if  force fields are a thing, there are other things you can do with them. For example some works like Star Trek use force fields as "structural integrity fields" to reinforce a ships hull against high G maneuvers. Others use them to show off significantly advanced aliens by having elevators and walk ways made out of force fields, some will have entire structures  made out of "hard light".

Though one fairly obvious clever use of force field tech seems to go unnoticed is using them to reinforce actual armor. In fact the only settings that pop to my mind or the energy conversion armor from Macross and Bonded Superdesne armor from Traveller.

Oh.... and there is one other setting... what was it again? Oh yeah, Luke Campbell's work in progress RPG setting VergeWorld. Go check it out. Oh and to convert numbers into something more familiar to GURPS players a Row Shift follows the 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 progression, a weapons penetration stat is just GURPS average damage and so on.

But with that plug out of the way, I mean if you can reinforce a crafts frame with an integrity field why not also boost it's armor? Well ask why not no more since below you will find my take on how to SWAG your armor!
 



Energy Converging Armor (TL10^)
Energy Converging Armor (ECA) is a tech level 10^ development that uses an advanced soliton wave amplifier generator (SWAG) that sends out rapid pulse of  powerful electromagnetic waves to to reinforce specially modified laminate armor. Against kinetic attacks this effect increases the effective hardness the armor helping it shatter incoming ballistic rounds or resit deformation against collisions or explosions. Against energy weapons, the electromagnetic field helps shunt the beams energy over a wider area decreasing its penetrating power.

While expensive and needs a power source to work, this system can triple or more the protection a given layer of armor provided once powered.

This system must be integrated into the armor that uses it and can not be added on later.

There are three types of ECA.

Standard (also called light) ECA: Triples the DR a given laminate armor provides, drains 0.35kw per pound of armor per second of activation (Uses 1pp per 2 armor system if using with Spaceships). 5 times the cost of the base armor.

Heavy (or reinforced) ECA: Provides up to six times the DR, drains 0.7kw per pound or armor (Uses 1pp per armor system if using with Spaceships). 50 times the cost of the base armor.

Advanced (or layered) ECA: Provides up to 12 times the DR, drains 1.4kw per pound of armor (uses 2pp per armor system if using with Spaceships). 100 times the cost of the base armor.

In all cases the base armor must be either be advanced nano-laminate, diamondoid laminate, or Hyperdense laminate.


See this post on how to power the armor.

See this post on how to add advanced nano-laminate, diamondoid laminate, or Hyperdense laminate to Spaceships.

If less power is available or the operator needs to conserve power, the amount the ECA increases armor can be reduced to a minimum of of 1.5× the armor base DR.This lowers the power drain by a proportional amount.

Example: A unit equipped with 3,000lbs of  Heavy ECA is starting to drain their power cells a little to much so they drop the increased protection it grants from six times as much to just two times as much. This reduces the power drain from 2.1MW to 2/6th as much or 700kw.

It takes a ready action to turn off or on ECA or to adjust it's protection level.

Ultra-Tech Ultra-Gear: (Semi) Passive Support

In many ways the age of robotic exoskeletons is starting to become a reality. Powered exoskeletons are starting to come on the market for the medical field being used to assist in physical rehabilitation and to help nursing staff lift patients  as well as trails for ones to aid search and rescue and emergency response teams.

Sadly the one area that development is seemingly starting to drop off with many projects being canceled in the last three years is exoskeletons for military use and the reason is simple; inadequate power sources. Battery power just isn't there yet. While a hospital bound suit can get away with maybe two hours of operation on a single charge or can just be plugged into the wall, military suits can't be tethered in the field and are going to need to work for at lest 24hrs if not more to be practical. Even further some powered exoskeleton development teams worry about the more explosive properties of lithium-ion batteries being a danger on the battle field. On the other hand while internal combustion engines that can power a suit for a day can be made small enough to be practical,the noise they make along with their IR signature (if not an outright fire hazard) make it them hard to use without compromising a units position in ways that non-powered infantry would not be.

Powered exoskeletons are also very expensive do to their complexity so that's not helping things either.

Now that's not to saw that powered exoskeletons are never going to happen and in fact hybrid designs that use upcoming fairly quite micro-turbine engines to recharge a suits batteries when stealth isn't needed are being looked into at the technology matures and might renew interest in the near future. But for now, powered exo's are no longer as around the corner as we might have hoped. That's not to say that these limitations have not spurred some rather interesting work around, adversity is the mother of all innovation after all!

One area that has seen some innovation is the concept do to these limitations are in the concept of a passive exoskeleton. These don't let you carry more, move faster, or make you super human, in fact you're just as slow lugging around 100lbs in a passive exoskeleton as you are without one, in fact you might be slower as you have to lug the weight of the exoskeleton as well! What they do is through the use of smart load redistribution and shunting of the force of the weight towards the ground, they greatly reduce the metabolic impact of carrying said load by around a third. In other words you can carry a given load with greater comfort, for long and with less chance of injury! And all without needing a single double A battery! I think anyone reading this who has had to lug a full combat load across bad country can see the benefits of such a system! This of course potentially makes them much cheaper do to not needing on board computers to keep the suit from killing it's user and motors to power it.

Of course being a passive system there is a limit to how much such a suit can help out so some engineers decided to split the difference between a powered and passive exoskeleton and developed the concept of the quasi or semi-passive exoskeleton. A semi-passive exoskeleton uses the same basic concept of a full passive one but uses a limited power assist to help reduce the effects of carrying a heavy load much further then a passive suit could with current prototypes have the metabolic impact of lifting loads reduced by up to 80%! This of course is going to make them more complex and expensive then full passive exo's and they are gong to need a power source but they are going to be nowhere as expensive as a full powered exoskeleton and the power drain for exo's that can support a roughly 40kg load has been brought down to a little as two watts meaning that even modern batteries can power one for the better part of a day. 

All in all given the benefits I see semi-passive exoskeletons making for a good stop-gap till we can get a power source that can make powered ones more viable and given their price and low power needs. In fact do to their low cost and power needs I even see them being used to equip most military forces even well into TL 10 with powered suits still being limited to specialist roles (though still more common then in TL 9, TL 11's nano-suit might be the point where I can see cheaper down rated version being used as the stand issue military suit).

Ok, that's enough talking about them, let's see how mature TL 9+ version might work.

Semi-Passive Exoskeletons (TL 9)

Semi-passive exoskeletons use along with a effective load redistribution utilizing a rigged frame work to shunt some of the load into the ground that is further enhanced by a limited power assist. All this helps lower the metabolic impact of lugging around heavy loads by a large degree. In game terms, treat any load supported by the exoskeletons frame along with the weight of the exoskeleton as weighing 80% less when determining FP lost do to carrying said load. For example someone wearing a medium semi-passive exoskeleton while hauling a hundred pound load would be no more exhausted then if they were carrying a 24lbs load the same distane. Semi-passive exoskeletons also act as basic Load-bearing equipment (See High-Tech pg. 54).

Like the lower-body exoskeleton (Ultra-Tech pg. 181) a semi-passive exoskeleton consists of load-bearing back frame attached to a exoskeleton that goes around the hips and legs.

The full weight of both the exoskeleton and the carried load is till used to determine the other normal effects of encumbrance (Basic Set pg. 17) such as being slowed in movement speed, having a penalty to dodge, and any relevant skill penalties.

The Battlesuit skill limits both DX and DX-based skills (Basic Set pg. 192), as well as is used to don the exoskeleton which takes 18 seconds (or 3 at TL 11+ do to smart bio-plas straps). One a failed roll, the exoskeleton is still securely attached, just not in a optimum way and the metabolic effects of the load is only reduced by 2/3rds, on a failure by 5 or more or a critical failure the frame is so poorly fitted that FP lost is actually doubled instead of being reduced!

Semi-passive exoskeletons do require power to use to their full effect though they drain so little power that the often last several days on a signal power cell. They can be used unpowered but at reduced effectiveness, reduce the effective load by only 2/3rds (on a failed donning roll an unpowered frame simply acts a basic load-bearing equipment).

If attacked, semi-passive exoskeletons have HP based on their weight (see Basic Set pg. 558), HT 10 and DR 4. If rugged they have HT 12 and DR 8. Increase DR for normal semi-passive exoskeletons to 5 and the DR for rugged semi-passive exoskeletons to 10 at TL 10+.

Semi-Passive Exoskeleton, Light (TL 9): A light semi-passive exoskeleton designed for the to be used by industrial workers as well as the civilian outdoors market. Holds 30lbs. $1,500, 6.3lbs, 1B/35hrs. LC 4.

Semi-Passive Exoskeleton, Medium (TL 9): A heavier and ruggedized (see Ultra-Tech pg. 15) version of the light exoskeleton designed for heavy industrial, search and rescue, and fire fighting use. Holds 80lbs. $4,800, 20lbs, 1C/130hrs. LC 4. 

Semi-Passive Exoskeleton, Heavy (TL 9): Designed for military use (counts as being rugged,Ultra-Tech pg. 15), this heavy semi-passive exoskeleton can support a typical soldiers full loadout. Holds 150lbs. $9,100, 38lbs, 1C/70hrs. LC 3.

Multiply the weight and cost of a semi-passive exoskeleton by 2/3^rds at TL 10, 0.5 at TL11, and by 1/3^rd at TL 12. Increase power cell duration by 4 at TL 10, 8 at TL 11, and by 16 at TL 12.

Ultra-Tech Ultra-Gear: 30mm Gyroc

Who doesn't like the idea of arming themselves with hand held rocket launchers?


While Ultra-Tech gave some us some 15mm gyrocs to play with, I think it doesn't hurt to up the firepower quota a little higher.

In todays post I not only give a 4th edition take on 30mm gyrocs, but stat every type of warhead a 30mm warhead can take as well as give you guys some more upgrade options for both 15 and 30mm gyrocs.



Follow me after the jump if you are read to Gy-Roc!