GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #5

The GURPS: Star Frontiers (SF) project is as easy as just playing GURPS Space at a TL10^, or it is a slog of conversions to get everything just perfect. I am opting (for now, since GCS is not working for me currently and I am back to GCA), to go with the former.

SF has always been a TL10 setting, with no blasters and only lasers. This also means that starships (GURPS: Spaceships) at TL 10 have engines that produce 1G acceleration per engine mounted in a ship's mounting space (a total of 20 spaces), and antimatter reactors that provide 4 power points per space used. This closely matches the SF ships in capabilities, without delving into the Star Wars-like TL11 super-reactionless drives, which grant 50G acceleration per engine space.

At TL11, this transition moves beyond the technology of Star Frontiers, and we are delving more into Star Wars technology levels. At TL12, this is Star Trek.

GURPS Spaceships will be your best bet for ship design, since the systems are simplified and streamlined. Even the space combat system in here is a lot better than in other books. I get trying to use Knight Hawks directly and converting, but another part of me wants a better system.

The Blaster Issue

TL11 is also when we get into blasters, and those have an armor divisor of (5), which is brutal, even to the TL11 lighter armors that characters wear. Since blasters do burn damage, they use the lesser of the two values on the High and Ultra Tech Armor Chart (B284-285), and remember, armors with the [3] note get higher DR values at tech levels past when they were introduced.

Star Frontiers features lasers, not blasters, which begins to push projectile weapons far off the stage and diminish their significance. So let's stick to TL10.

The TL10 Tactical Suit

A TL10 tactical suit has DR 30/15 (1.5x multiplier), and a TL11 tactical suit has DR 40/20 (2x multiplier). The first number is used only against piercing and crushing attacks, while the second applies to all other attacks.

So our TL10 laser pistol does 3d(2) burn damage, and our TL10 laser rifle does 5d(2) burn damage. We round down for character feats and combat results, so the DR 15 tactical suit protects against 7 points of damage. It still provides us with a good measure of protection against a 3d(2) laser pistol and halves the damage of a 5d(2) laser rifle.

The TL 11 Tactical Suit

Okay, let's move on to TL11 and blasters, as well as the same tactical suit. A TL11 blaster pistol is 3d(5) damage, and the rifle is 6d(5). Even with a 20 DR TL11 tactical suit, that divisor of (5) knocks the suit down to 4 points of protection, giving some protection against the pistol and almost none against the rifle.

The Battlesuit

To protect against blasters, you start to need full TL11 battlesuits at DR 140/100. With the divisor of (5), that puts the battle suit at 20 DR, which makes pistols worthless, and rifles have a slight chance of getting through. You need that heavy blaster of 8d(5) for battlesuit combat, and that is on average an 8-point penetration.

Mount a TL11 light force screen on that battlesuit (UT191), and you gain 200 points of semi-ablative DR, which will withstand a few hits before the operator is scrambled.

Battlesuits at TL10 are somewhat unusual at 105/75 DR, and you need to consult GURPS: Ultra-Tech to find a weapon that can penetrate them at that tech level, specifically the semi-portable plasma gun (UT128), which deals 20d(2) burn damage. So, halving our battlesuit DR to 37, the average of 20d is 70 damage, which fries the inside of the suit like an egg. Traveller players know this weapon well, the feared PGMP, plasma-gun man-portable.

The heavy plasma gun at this TL is also an option, dealing 3d5 (2) damage on average, for a total of 55 points of damage against the 37 DR, resulting in 18 points of penetration. Portable railguns (UT142) work, too. Battlesuit combat is out of scope for Star Frontiers and better suited to Traveller. Still, it is fun at TL10 to try to find things to crack these battlefield nuts.

But that "high-tech personal armor game" gets dodgy at TL11, and the regular adventurer armor and weapon types work better with the lower armor divisors of lasers of TL10. If you use TL10 Gauss weapons, that is an armor divisor of (3), and the armor becomes slightly less effective. Even TL7 battle rifles with APHC ammo do 7d(2) pi-, which can punch holes in DR 30 TL10 battlesuits. The armor and gun game at TL10 is still functioning within the range required for Star Frontiers to maintain that mix of weapons and provide interesting personal combat without automatic one-hit kills.

Why All the Math?

5E players are probably reading this and have their eyes glazed over at this point with all this number crunching. Hey, this was the 1980s and 90s, and we didn't have smartphones; we only had graphing calculators. And those were cool. Nerds did math, and we loved it.

Why are we going through all this trouble of matching up armors and weapons? Well, part of the Star Frontiers genre was "fun space combat," and we need to ensure that map-based battles against robots, space pirates, alien creatures, and evil space aliens go relatively smoothly. At TL10, a mix of energy weapons and projectile weapons is still feasible, the armor game feels compelling, and people aren't walking around with one-hit-kill disintegrators.

We are trying to create a "D&D in space," which is what the original game aimed to do, targeting a younger audience. The balance between energy, melee, and projectile weapons needs to be kept. For us, the universe and its adventures were a success, and we remained in this universe for decades afterward.

Hardened Armor?

There is a solution with advantages for high armor divisors, but it requires careful consideration. On page B47 under Damage Resistance, there is an option for Hardened armor, which reduces the armor divisor by one step.

This could be applied to personal armor if you found it too weak, and would increase the armor "point cost" by 20% per level. A (2) would become a (1), a (3) would become a (2), and a (5) would become a (3). This will seriously alter your DR game with high-tech weapons, and possibly unbalance combat, but it is an option within the rules. I wouldn't go overboard with this, but it is a tool in the game that can pare down those high penetration divisors.

Just call them "advanced materials" and double the cost of the armor. Make it lose 1d6 of DR per penetration (due to the hardness making it shatter easily), or adjust the balance accordingly.

Two levels of Hardening on a TL11 tactical suit would take a (5) penetration blaster down to a (2), give us a DR of 10, and even the odds a little against that 3d blaster pistol and 6d blaster rifle. That would be my limit for TL11 weapons and hardening, but it puts some "gameplay" into the armor game at those TLs and solves the "cracked like an egg" problem of high-tech energy weapon combat.

You may want to limit this to "just energy weapons" (15% instead of 20% per level) since these armors are already tough against piercing and crushing damage. GURPS provides us with tools to adjust things if they feel like they are detracting from the fun in our games.

This is what fluency in the system gives you: access to the best tricks and tips on how to optimize the system's performance. The more you learn and play GURPS, the better it gets.