[TML] A little tinkering with Lasers

[hal at buffnet.net]

>I was fiddling with the formulas and looking at ways to make 
>differences between military weapons and civilians weapons for ships. 

>Don't really think that the Imperial navy is comfortable with 
>everybody having access to the equivalent of a 5 inch gun. They 
>might not mind 40 mm guns, but they have to draw the line somewhere 
>and not enough military ships mount spinal weapons for that to the 
>boundary.

>Plus, I tend to think out loud.

 

>Garry

If it makes you feel any better?  While using first Edition GURPS TRAVELLER
and GURPS VEHICLES, along with a spreadsheet in Excel, I created a bunch of
Laser turrets to match up with the GURPS rules for which I had some minor
issues.  I noted that the way GURPS had crafted the component parts of
various things such as staterooms, the Bridge, med bay, etc - was to note
that each "module" had X components in it spread throughout the ship itself
rather than in the "space" of the module itself.  Thus, if a Module was
said to take up 3 spaces (roughly 500 cubic feet's worth of volume), some
of it might only directly take 1200 cubic feet, with the remaining 300
cubic feet being in the "power plant" region (ie engineering).  This
philosopy works when everything is inside the hull proper, but doesn't work
when dealing with turrets.  Why?  Because with turret weapons, if it takes
one space of volume (ie 500 cubic feet), and 80% of it is directly hardware
associated with the physical weapon itself, but the other 20% is supposed
to be added to the ship's engineroom - then you have a problem.  Why is
turret space equal to 100 cubic feet being allocated to the Engine room
proper?

With that thought in mind, I redesigned the laser weapons such that the
fusion power plant was inside the turret itself.  Each laser had its
"mini-powerplant" built right into the weapon itself.  When I did my write
up for the lasers (fictional company titled CDI by the by), I made it a
selling point of the sales pitch.  "These weapons come with their own
mini-fusion plants that are useful for those times when the ship itself has
suffered an engine hit.  The generators are capable of providing emergency
auxillary power.  In the event of a crash landing, it is also possible to
salvage the mini-generators for use with planetary survival."

But the best thing of all as far as I as the GM/designer was concerned, was
the use of the Point Defense lasers.  Specifically designed for attacking
incoming missiles, under the first edition rules of GURPS TRAVELLER and
even Second edition rules, they gave the anti-missile gunner an edge in
shooting down incoming missiles.  Once GURPS STARSHIP came out - where you
could change a full power ship's laser into a point defense laser - my
built in designed advantage went out the airlock.  But one of the selling
points of the point defense laser was that it was not capable of inflicting
much damage on a civilian ship, and had no chance of damaging a military
grade ship (with armor better than civilians).  This made it easier for the
civilian ships to get permits for lasers in self-defense mode.

Using the rules even more, I had created Meson Spinal Mounts that more
closely emulated the rules from High Guard than the newer rules found in
GURPS TRAVELLER.  Why?  I had noted at the time I was creating stuff for
GURPS TRAVELLER first edition (back in the day when all there was was GURPS
TRAVELLER, no support books at all) that they weren't using the rules for
custom creating hulls that you could use in GURPS VEHICLES.  So I designed
ship hulls first off.  But then I noted that there were no Meson Spinal
mount rules as yet that made sense, so I looked closely at the spinal mount
volumes in High Guard, and then decided that they usually had "small
spinals, medium spinals, and Large spinals" and worked with that.  Using
MAYDAY, I noted too that the Spinal Mounts were long range weapons - which
required a high "accuracy value" in GURPS.  The odd thing is?  GURPS
TRAVELLER had already instituted the concept of "Accuracy through
firepower" - ie the more pulses you can throw towards your enemy, the
higher the odds were that you'd secure one hit out of the many pulses.  So
- I designed a Meson spinal mount that threw out a LOT of pulses towards
its target.

Net effect?  A single "pulse" from a meson gun could penetrate a ship's
hull if it didn't have a meson Screen.  Simulating the High Guard effect
where the larger Spinal mounts could do X hits per mount "letter" size, my
GURPS Meson mounts could do multiple hits as well.  In the Current GURPS
rules - it is designed such that it hits (or misses!) with one HUGE wallop.
 Spinal Screens have almost ZERO chance of screening the incoming attacks
(thus being unable to simulate the Spinal Screens function in High Guard!)

My advice to you?  Tinker all you want ;)

If you can create something that makes more sense to you as the GM of your
Universe (or makes sense to the guy who is running the universe your
character is in) go for it.  Sometimes Game Designers make decisions that
you don't much like and disagree with.  The Meson Guns and the cheesy
Turret Module rules were my pet peeves with GURPS TRAVELLER.  

               Hal