01234567890123456789+01234567890123456789+01234567890123456789+01234567890123456789 drafts.txt 9 August 1998 This is a collection of sections I am not quite satisfied with yet, phrases and parts of paragraphs that are supposed to remind me of something I intend to write, and bits of other people's posts that I agree need thought. Examine my creative processes at work. Send demands I finish some section or other. Score points by beating me to writing them.... _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p7a: Wheels - with minor alterations, these rules could apply equally well to skids and tracks - although half-tracks and ski-tracks might be a little tricky... _________________________________________ Vehicle Design p18a Variable Frame Strength _________________________________________ Instead of selecting one of the fixed strengths, select a weight multiplier. If it is less than 1, multiply the cost and hit points (p20) by the same factor. If it is greater than 1 multiply the cost and HP by its square. Exceptionally heavy frames can increase volume, but like armor this is usually ignored. For wooden frames volume is weight/50 cf, for other kinds of frame use weight/500. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Structural Field (TL11): a forcefield which reinforces vehicle structure - adding to hit points and hence HT. Usually found on huge vehicles, but sometimes credited with allowing small craft to withstand enormous G loads. Fields that stiffen existing hull armor are also common in SF. Purchase these as force fields of the appropriate DR, limited to some multiple (often x 10) of the existing hull DR. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p22 Armor. Ablative armor. Unless you want to track individual holes, the damage to ablate armor really should be a function of weight or area. Use for every square root of (surface area) points of damage inflicted 1 point of DR is lost. _________________________________________ Vehicle Design p22a Armor _________________________________________ Durable Ablative (TL7) is ablative armor constructed of somewhat tougher materials and designed to resist minor chips. It has 1.5 times the weight and double the cost of standard ablative, but subtracts 1/5 the armor DR from each hit before determining how much armor is ablated. It is automatically fireproof. Hyperdense (TL11) armor is made of collapsed matter - collapsium, neutronium, superdense matter - created by artificial gravity or enhancing the strong nuclear force. Treat it as metal armor, with the same weight per unit DR. Hyperdense armor has negligible thickness, anything under DR 100 trillion is less than a millimeter thick and has negligible volume. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ >Molecular Bonded Shell This is a relative of the General Products hull, or monowire for that matter, belonging to the 'single molecules are really strong' school of science fantasy. It's certainly common enough in fiction to deserve a GURPS equivalent. How about a new armor type: Monosheet (TL9): The two dimensional analog of monowire, a monosheet is a layer of material linked into a single molecule, which cinematically makes it incredibly strong. Anything can be given a monosheet coating, which is invisibly thin, transparent, weighs 1 milligram per square foot, gives the object coated a DR or 750 against everything, and negates any armor divisors, including that of monowire. Monosheets cannot be layered directly on top of one another, but composites of monosheets on tissue thin layers of plastic or gold foil can be built up. Composite monosheet armor weights 0.000005 lb/sf per point of DR. [Gah, I hadn't quite realized just how insanely strong monowire was until now, if you want the same shear strength as monowire relative to metal raise that DR from 750 to a few hundred thousand. I lowered it to make monosheet coated automobiles competitive with light tanks] _________________________________________ _________________________________________ > Whoops... how else would you protect a GEV skirt? Four options: * I accept that the GEV skirt is thinly armored and live with it, one more reason why hovercraft make poor tanks. * I add armored skirts ('skirt' used in the sense of 'track skirt', VE23) for partial protection. * I read the 'semi-rigid' from VE9 and '... it is possible to completely armor ... GEV skirt subassemblies' from VE23 as a rule that allows me to attach rigid armor plates at the ordinary weight and cost to the skirt. * I assume that the RO41 rule applies to approximately human-sized robots with vital components only inches from the armor, not to tank-sized GEVs with nothing but air behind the armor. Probably either none necessary - OK you penetrate the GEV armor and totally destroy the empty air behind it - or impossible even for that much - underside and fans. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ > >1. Sealed Sections (p24a): How does this relate to Compartmentalization? > At the moment, it doesn't, it is more limited, though I wouldn't be > really surprised if it comes out heavier. Compartments are pretty vague. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p27a Appendix. Component Surface Features. Most surface features can be added to individual components in the same manner as component armor. Some are more useful than others - armor and separate sealing for quarters make sense, radical stealth, well.... _________________________________________ p29a Harnessed Animals _________________________________________ Other applications of muscles as motive power work similarly. In general use a harness efficiency of 0.015 for anything not actively uncomfortable, 0.02 for anything ergonomic. Some examples - skis, rollerskates, wheelchairs, pushing your car. _________________________________________ Propulsion and Lift p31a Wheeled Drivetrain _________________________________________ Adaptive Suspension (TL7) allows the wheels to change the point of ground contact. Double the weight and volume of the drivetrain and add $500 x wheel area to the final cost. The vehicle must have at least 4 wheels, most have 6 or more. Adaptive Suspension includes All Wheel Drive, All Wheel Steering and Improved Suspension, and gives a net +0 to Speed Factor, +1 to gMR, and +3 to gSR. The vehicle uses column II of the Ground Pressure Table (p130) and takes no off road penalty for small wheels if it has them. _________________________________________ Propulsion and Lift p32a Hydroreactive Jets _________________________________________ Hydroreactive jet (TL8): These are essentially underwater rockets burning an active metal dust using the surrounding water as oxidizer and reaction mass. The major difficulties are the formation of oxide layers on the metal fuel, reliable ignition systems, and abrasion from the solid fuel and exhaust. Single use short endurance systems are the main focus of TL7 research - for use as torpedo propulsion. Fuel is stored as metal dust in ordinary tanks at 16.3 lb/gal 8 Hydroreactive jet 0.075 x thrust 0.22 AlD 9 Hydroreactive jet 0.050 x thrust 0.16 AlD ________________________________________ Propulsion and Lift p37a Ducted Rockets, Water Rams, and Environmental Reaction Mass ________________________________________ Alternative reaction masses can also be drawn from a surrounding fluid instead of a fuel tank. For 5% of its weight, volume and cost, an engine can have the plumbing necessary to use surrounding water (or other liquids). For 5%, plus (1.5 x gph used) lbs at weight/50 cf and $50 x weight it can be fitted with a compression system necessary to use a surrounding atmosphere of greater than trace density. Recompute performance using the alternative reaction mass rules (p37a); remember to halve thrust if the engine operates underwater (p32a). _________________________________________ Propulsion and Lift p31a Magnetic Sails _________________________________________ A magnetic sail is a superconducting loop that interacts with the local magnetic fields and charged particle winds - primarily the solar wind, but also planetary and the galactic magnetic fields. Detailed discussions of the system in GURPS are available at two sites: http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/Roleplayer/Roleplayer29/MagSails.html http://www.io.com/~ftp/GURPSnet/Vehicles/Construction/MagSails To design a magnetic sail, select a radius R in kilometers. The sail weighs 6820 x R lbs and costs $100 per pound. Volume is usually unimportant, powered up the sail self repels, hoop stresses inflate it into a rigid circular loop kilometers in radius, but depowered it can be reeled in and stored in weight/50 cf. Inflating the sail requires 1.5 x 10^12 x R x [1 + 0.2 log(R)] kWs of electrical energy, though since it is superconducting it isn't lost and you get it back when the sail is deflated. An inflated sail deflects charged particles providing anything in the center of the loop PF 1,000,000 against charged particle radiation (cf p.00). Performance as a drive depends on the local environment. Thrust in the solar wind is 1200 x R^(4/3) lbf at 1 AU during periods of quiet sun. It can be 250 times higher if the sun is very active, and varies with inverse distance from the sun^(4/3). It also falls off with relative velocity, the sail can never accelerate the vehicle outward to a higher speed than the solar wind (about 1,000,000 mph or 0.25 AU/day). Near a planet with a magnetic field a magsail may provide more thrust, but navigation is much trickier. Magnetospheres typically extend 10 to 100 planetary diameters. In the Sol system the magnetosphere of Jupiter provides a thrust of about 600,000 x R^(4/3), the other gas giants, Earth about 30,000 x R^(4/3), Mercury about 6000 x R^(4/3) and the other worlds none. If thrust exceeds surface gravity it is theoretically possible for the magsail to take off and land at the magnetic poles. In interstellar space a magsail can be used as a brake, producing drag against the interstellar gas. The deceleration time is 5.03 hr x (Lwt/T) x cube root of (c/vf) x [1-cube root of (vf/vi)] where T is the nominal thrust at 1 AU, vi and vf are the initial and final velocities in the interstellar medium and c is the speed of light. Peak deceleration will be 5060 x (vi/c)^4/3 x (T/Lwt) Gs. If you want a lower peak deceleration, it will take longer. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Compare Magsail energy to ramscoop. _________________________________________ Propulsion and Lift p37a Orion Magsail (TL8) _________________________________________ A variation on the Orion concept using pulse units optimized to generate charged particles and a magnetic sail instead of a pusher plate. To build the system install a magsail larger than 15 km x square root(kT). Use the usual thrust bomb statistics, but double cost and reduce the thrust to 85,000 x kT x pulse rate lbf. _________________________________________ Propulsion and Lift p37a Nuclear Pulse Propulsion _________________________________________ The best available data on Orion is in the Aug 79 issue of JBIS. A more recent nuclear pulse proposal, Medusa, is in the Jun 94 issue. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Gravitic Battery (TL14): a gravitic battery can store and release gravity within a closed volume. In storage mode it reduces the felt gravity within to any desired value and stores the difference. Stored gravity can later be released to increase felt gravity. Gravity is stored or consumed in units of lb-G-sec, at a rate of Lwt x G modification each second. A vehicular gravitic battery is built into the hull, weighs 0.001 x maximum transfer rate in lb-G-sec/sec and costs $1000 per pound. Impulse Battery (TL14): related to the gravitic battery and inertial brake, an impulse battery stores momentum. The units of impulse (or momentum) can be expressed several ways - 1 lb-G-sec = 21.9 lbm-mph = 1 lbf-sec. The battery weighs 0.001 lb x maximum transfer rate in lb-G-sec/sec (or looked at another way, per lbf of thrust) and costs $1000 per pound. For a surface vehicle this is not terribly useful, since constant thrust will drain the battery, but a spacecraft doesn't lose momentum to drag, so if it uses the battery to accelerate and decelerate it will need thrust only for its maiden acceleration. For double statistics a combined gravitic-impulse battery is available. This is much more useful on a planet, where stored gravity (reducing the felt gravity aboard) can be used as the source of thrust. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p39a Stardrives There is no reason hyperdrives must require vacuum or free fall or distance from a planet to function. Those which do not blend into teleportation - the limiting case as time in hyperspace goes to zero - and 'starships' begin to look more like parachronic conveyers than rocketships. A particularly interesting variant is one in which the ship never leaves hyperspace. It sails up to and docks with a gate at the spaceport as a detachable extradimensional space (cf p94a). This can also lead to rather different ship designs, depending on the nature of the hyperspace. The same sort of thing works for conveyers as well. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p40a Lifting Gas Aerogel (TL8): It is possible at TL7 to manufacture aerogels light enough to do bouyancy tricks, the TL8 versions can be assumed to be slightly lighter and sufficiently gas tight to hold hydrogen for significant periods. An aerogel is a semi-solid lifting gas, you still need a container or gas bag for overall shape control, but small holes will not leak significantly. The hydrogen filled aerogel is also difficult to burn (use a Fire number of 4 and assume it burns at the same rate as wooden structures). Aerogel is DR0, HP 1. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p40a Pulp Lifting Agents Vacuum balloons. A serious drawback to a material vacuum balloon is anything that puts a hole in it, or even hits hard enough to dent it and set up a stress concentration, can cause it to suddenly implode. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Possible addition: A better treatment of turrets and related structures. I would advocate some sort of "turret drivetrain", capable of spinning a turret to it's new direction and stopping the rotation within one second. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p47a Speed of Light. Round trip time delays are noticable at 0.1 seconds. By the time they reach a second or so conversation is starting to become difficult, and much beyond that impossible. Time delay problems can happen to FTL communications, though the distance at which it does depends on the signal signal. Note FTL signals need not travel at a simple multiple of the speed of light; many fictional systems allow real time conversation with anyone to set up the plot, but weeks when communications might be useful to the main characters - bogonic phason storms contaminate the local ultrawave subspace or something. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ There are two basic types of communicators, broadcast and tight beam The range of a broadcast communicator is determined by both the transmitter and the reciever. Multiply the transmitter power by its directional gain, divide the the range squared to get power per unit area, multiply by the area of the reciever and check to see if that exceeds the detectable power (minimum is about a femtowatt). If it does, the signal is detected. Much of the subtlety of radio communications is in that directional gain. An omnidirectional antenna radiates power equally in all directions, so the gain in all directions is 1. Omnidirectional transmitters have shorter effective ranges, but you don't have to have any idea where the receiver is to send a message to it. This is handy if you are sending to a lot of receivers, or to unknown locations. It is actually rather hard to construct an omnidirectional antenna, most have preferential directions in which the signal will be concentrated - making it stronger in those directions and weaker in others. Beamed transmissions get a directional gain equal to the reciprocal of the fraction of a sphere they transmit to. Coverage is normally expressed in solid angle (steradians). 4 pi steradians is a complete sphere, the pattern for an omnidirectional antenna. For a conical beam with apex angle theta the solid angle covered is 2 pi (1-cos(theta/2)) steradians. Other patterns are also used - ground transmitters for example often try for a plane parallel to the ground, no point transmitting power into the ground or up into the sky if you can help it. The downside is you have to point the beam in the direction of the intended receiver. The higher the gain, the narrower the beam, and the more accurately you will need to point the antenna; rolls against Electronics Operation (Radio) may be required. A particularly narrow beam may also require stabilization (VE p.00) to aim from a moving vehicle. Usually that isn't a problem until directional gain exceeds 15 or so. Ground absorbs radio, though it can diffract around small obstacles like hills. In principle this should limit ground ranges to the horizon, and it would if the Earth didn't have an atmosphere. Radio signals detected more that slightly over the horizon have bounced off the ionosphere - how well the ionosphere reflects them depends on the signal frequency, the location of the transmitter and receiver, the time of day, the solar weather, and a host of other factors. When a radio is designed, decide if it operates in a frequency range that reflects well off the ionosphere. If it does range can be measured along the ground and over the horizon, otherwise the signal will not be detectable more than a few miles over the horizon. Of course sometimes this is a desirable feature. Note an over the horizon radio attempting to communicate through the ionosphere - say with something in orbit - should be treated as having 1% of its actual power, to account for the signal lost or distorted passing through the ionosphere. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Tight beams. anything down to 60 degrees can be treated as standard radio. Smaller angles than that require fancier antennas and add weight. Some transmitters will have several antennas for varying the beam width, but antennas are not easily reconfigurable. Tightbeam technologies like lasers can be treated as having beamwidths of (? milliradians, microradians?). You can put a diffuser lens in a laser beam and spread the signal over a larger angle, but this will cut the range a LOT, call it $50 for the optics. For neutrinos this is harder, but with gravitic/deflector technology maybe... _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p47a Tight Beams. For detection purposes assume a tight beam transmitter has 1/10 the range of the same power omnidirectional transmitter outside the intended cone. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ All sensors: any powerful sensor needs to either be used quite slowly, or must have powerful processing software. The complexity of the required software is (scan-10)/2, base cost $500 for complexity 1. If you don't have a sufficiently powerful processor, give the sensor a split scan -- one number (based on the sensor) for identification, the other number (based on the processor) for initial detection. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p50a Option--Polychromatic (TL7): These imagers are able to distinguish colors independently, allowing the benefits of contrast enhancement, and with a suitable Expert System (Spectrophotometric Analysis/Average) can provide more information. A PESA with this option can usually determine the chemical composition of the surface of anything in the image. p51a Option--Spectroscopic Lidar (TL8): A ladar with this option has a rainbow beam and a dispersive detector, allowing it to probe the chemical composition of anything the beam passes through or bounces off of. Double cost. _________________________________________ Instruments and Electronics p52a Passive Acoustic Imaging (TL8) _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ > >6. Chemical Sensor Arrays: Consider adding "down-graded" versions without > > the Discriminatory Senses. > > Well OK, but really keeping the discriminatory senses and dropping the > human equivalent part might be a more plausible downgrade. Do both; the suggestion above was for Robots compatability... > >7. Robots and Vehicles Sidebar (p201): How would you go about mimicking > > the robot sensor and communications packages using GURPS Vehicles (+ > > Additions)? > > I tried to make sure the Audio, Chemical Sensor, and Imager options more > or less did that when the parts were selected separately and added together. > Though in some cases that wasn't plausible. You want predesigned modules? > Actually that might not be a bad idea, and could restore the Human Array > from the 1st edition. ...and would make it that much easier to design a robot using V2 rules... _________________________________________ Instruments and Electronics p56a Navigation Systems _________________________________________ Avionics: These assist an aircraft to At TL6 altimeters, roll and pitch indicators and landing gear proximity warnings give a +2 toward negating penalties for takeoff or landing in bad weather, darkness or other low visibility conditions. At TL7+ radio assistance gear, glide slope, short range radar and so on, is added to the traditional equipment giving a +4 toward negating penalties and a +2 to rolls for sustained flight near the ground or any takeoff or landing manuvers. If the airport is properly equipped this will also provide navigation data accurate with within feet for a few miles around the airport, providing a further +4 to landing rolls. At 5 times the cost "precision" instruments are available, for a further +1. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ > > * Terrain-Following Radar (5 lbs, 0.1 cf, $2,000, 0.25 kW). > That is a pretty military gadget. Which civilians need to fly that low? Well, it could be useful for purely automated landings. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ *IFF* (TL6): Replace with: *Transponder* (TL6): A specialized transceiver used to identify the vehicle. When the transponder receives a coded radio signal, it returns an identifying signal with the range of a medium range radio. Civilian aircraft (and in the future other vehicles) may be legally required to carry a transponder to support traffic control systems. *IFF* (TL6): Stands for "identify friend or foe." It is a reprogrammable transponder used on military vehicles. An IFF can be programmed to respond to any interrogation code, and give any reply. This is also of interest to those who sometimes wish to change the response hide their identity. IFF Interrogation (TL6): Any properly equipped radio or radar can interrogate a transponder or IFF. The reply is compared to a list of friendly ones, and if it matches the target is classed as a "friend". If there is no reply, or an incorrect one, the IFF reads the target as "foe." For obvious reasons, the military will change its IFF codes on a regular basis! This modification adds $500 to the cost of the radio or radar. Navigation Systems Table 6 Transponder 10 0.2 $500 neg. 7 Transponder 5 0.1 $1000 neg. 8 Transponder 2.5 0.05 $500 neg. 6 IFF 20 0.4 $1000 neg. 7 IFF 10 0.2 $2000 neg. 8 IFF 5 0.1 $1000 neg. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ >Realistically, any radio could be configured to behave as an IFF -- the >standard IFF is just a long-range radio. A radio being used as an IFF is not >available for communication. This is relevant for ground combat, where the >range of a standard IFF is not necessary. Hm, OK it probably would work better as modifiers for both communicators and sensors that a separate system. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p57 Any communicator may be configured to act as an IFF, add $1000 at TL 7, halved at each additional TL; alternately, IFF software is Cx1, $1000, TL7, for a computer. The standard IFF is a medium-range tight-beam radio. It would be possible to make an IFF which could also be used as a regular communicator, but it cannot be used in both modes at once, so normally this is a dedicated device. ________________________________________ Instruments and Electronics p58a Point Defenses ________________________________________ Conventional CIWS or point defense systems are built from a Gunner program, a targeting sensor and a suitable weapon; and use the rules for shooting at missiles or shells on p197. The same rules will work against torpedoes if you have an underwater weapon. Gunner software includes sensor operation For a defense that doesn't have to aim - turns on a jammer, a stasis field safety switch, launches a decoy - the software requirement is a bit easier. Cx4 Threat Evaluation software has an effective skill of 14 rather than 12 ________________________________________ Instruments and Electronics p59a Countermeasures _________________________________________ Decoy Gasbag(TL6): an inflatable structure matching the visible and radar profile of a large spacecraft. Design these as a gasbag with the surface area of the craft it mimics. It takes 1 minute to inflate and 15 minutes to deflate reusably. The obvious tactical use is a small drone craft with a duplicate of the carrying ship. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Anti-jamming Circuits* (TL7): Added to any sensor system, these completely protect against any jammer for which they are specifically programmed. Any specific models of deceptive, area or active jammers of any TL can be defended against, as long as their characteristics are known, but only active or area jammers of lower TL are automatically covered. The drawback is that any deceptive jammer programmed against this model of anti-jamming circuits gets a +6. The ability of jammers and anti-jamming circuits of the same TL to work against each other if and only if specifically programmed to do so is a major driver in the short lifecycle of ECM equipment. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p60 Electronic Warfare Table. Decoy reload statistics should be divided by 5. Decoy dischargers come with a single shot, but for double the weight and volume can be given a slow autoloader for RoF 1/2. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p60a Computer Table. Optimized. Change cost to x2. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ I think there's a slight glitch there - capacity and requirement increases tenfold at each level, not twentyfold. So: 1 1 2 10 3 100 4 1000 > and computers have available 1 2 2 20 3 200 4 2000 > half points available if robot brain, add 50% if high capacity. > If this is accurate, I'll be able to keep track of capacity while > using a mix of complexities, which has been fairly irritating thus far. Unless you're running an awful lot of stuff, you can usually ignore programs of Complexity two below that of the computer. > As an aside, can I add high capacity several times, to increase the > number of high complexity programs the computer can handle? I would say not; high capacity is already pretty cheap, given that it packs 50% extra performance in the same space. There's a limit to how much power you can get in a given space at a given TL. You can do better by applying the high- performance, expensive stuff (genius, biocomputer, and a neural-net that spontaneously awakens each increase Comp by 1 and hence multiply processing power tenfold) but past a certain point you have to build a bigger computer. You can do this either by increasing the size of the machine, or buying several computers each with Datalink. I often use this trick, especially when building robotic combat vehicles - you can get some substantial benefits from splitting the vehicle's required functions between several computers. _________________________________________ Software _________________________________________ Archives Data formats Games Scientific Audio/Music Desktop publishing Graphics Screen Savers Children's Development tools Languages Security CAD Editors Mathematics Usenet Communications E-mail Multimedia Utilities Compression Emulators Networking Virtual Reality Databases File Management Object Oriented Visualization _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p64a Interface Environment ________________________________________ Instruments and Electronics p62a Data Storage ________________________________________ *Text* (TL1): Actual written text on paper or other surfaces. Ancient texts (clay tablets, cased scrolls) are very heavy: 50,000 lb, 500 cf, and $2 million per gig. Handwritten books (TL3) are 1000 lb, 20 cf and $1 million per gig, printed books (TL5) are 200 lb, 4 cf and $5000 per gigabyte. To build a library add a Hall or Conference Room. *Mass Storage* (TL7): Extremely large databases or program libraries require additional memory to store. At TL7 fast access mass storage requires $1000, 5 lb and 0.1 cf per gigabyte. Each TL above 7 increases the storage capacity by a factor of 10. *Dense Storage* (TL7): Information densities can be much higher if a few minutes delay in accessing stored data is acceptable. TL7 microdots are already a factor of 100 better, and holographic and molecular memories have incredible potential. Dense storage requires a reader ($1000, 5 lb, 0.1 cf), plus the storage medium itself. TL7 microdots are 0.05lb, 0.001 cf and $20 per gigabyte. Holographic memories hold a million times as much data, and might appear at TL8 (certainly by TL10). Molecular memories (perhaps late TL8 if they are DNA spin-offs, TL13 if they are nanotech developments) hold a trillion times the data (0.025 nanograms per gigabyte...) _________________________________________ _________________________________________ I use the expert software rules for skill bonuses from neural interfaces. This defaults to +2 for a skill 12 program (+1 per additional level). However, I use the house rule of +(program skill-user base stat)[minimum +2] as the bonus. This requires characters with high statistics to purchase (or steal) extremely powerful programs in order to realize a significant bonus. I have a more complex method, but this is the one I generally use (especially for NPC's and the like). Also, I disallow many actions if the character's implant computer does not have a specific program that allows them to perform an action. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Tabulate p66a Heavy Equipment End-loaders, dipper shovels, draglines, hoes, dump trucks, pan scrapers, steamrollers, dredges, rock crushers, cement plants, pile drivers _________________________________________ _________________________________________ 1) today's military systems are incorporating circuts inside of the war machines they build. Said circuts will not only tell if an item is not working, but also how long it has been since changed. It can keep a status log of usage without needing to involve a lot of paperwork. In short, systems designed along these lines will take less maintenence time than what GURPS implies. [damage control software] [central maintenance processors and aircraft] _________________________________________ Miscellaneous Equipment p71a Fuel Transfer and Processing _________________________________________ *Fuel Production Microbes* (TL8): With genetic engineering microbes can be created to produce just about any fuel. Use the methane digester statistics, but multiply the output by the ratio of fuel heats of combustion (e.g. if 1 gallon of gasoline can be replaced by 2 gallons of methane, producing a gallon of gasoline requires twice as much raw material and twice as much digester). _________________________________________ Miscellaneous Equipment p71a Sea Anchors _________________________________________ Sea anchors are drag systems, basically parachutes deployed underwater, intended to prevent bad weather from broaching the ship or blowing it onto underwater obstructions. The effect is A sea anchor has a radius of 0.09 x square root (Lwt), weighs 1 x radius^2 lbs and occupies weight/40 cf when packed. If for some reason you want to move with a sea anchor deployed, add to Hdr and recompute performance. ________________________________________ _________________________________________ Cryogen Storage Normal recharging is by refilling the tank, each refill has half the weight of the cell and costs $0.02 per pound. Quadruple weight and cost for a system with a liquefaction plant that can refill from the air when electric power is supplied. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ *Launch Catapult* (TL6): A device that provides a boost to an aircraft at the beginning of its takeoff run, to hasten it reaching stall speed. Decide on the weight of the aircraft launched (maximum, in tons, anything down to 1/10 that weight can be safely launched) and the speed added (in mph, maximum of 20 mph x (TL-5)). Catapult weight is 100lbs x tons x mph, volume is weight/50, cost is $5/lb and power required is 1kW x tons x mph^2. Halve weight and power at TL7, quarter at TL8+. The earliest catapults are purely mechanical, by the end of TL6 most use steam or compressed air, by late TL8 most are electromagnetic. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ From: theherald@juno.com (Michael Layne) Aircraft hook-on equipment for parasite fighters. (Most of the weight and cost would be aboard the "mother ship", but there would be "hook-on" equipment mounted on each fighter. Besides the Curtiss Sparrowhawk fighters which operated from the Akron and Macon in the 1930s, there were operations carried out in the 1950s with the infamous F-85 Goblin (whose designers made a few bad rolls when checking for "bugs"...) and with F-84s hooking onto modified B-36 bombers. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ * Rules for flexible/inflatable vehicles (from rubber boats to inflatable space habitats). _________________________________________ _________________________________________ I don't recall any solution for inflatable vehicles, but tents might be simulated by a modular, extra-light or super-light structure and flexible armor. The stowage volume would have to be a house rule, perhaps weight/50 or weight/20 (measure a few real tents if you want to be sure). > I can see some other potential uses for this > sort of rule: Rubber rafts, survival bubbles, dummy dropships... I've > considered the modular vehicle rules, but that gives no volume savings. A vehicle stowed in a hangar or cargo hold gets a severe volume 'penalty'. If this doesn't apply to disassembled modular stuff, that is a hidden saving. > I've also considered including "cargo space" in one of the modules, and > having one of the other modules slide into it. Sort of works, but not > really. > Will Rhodes For starters, only the innermost container could get furniture. _________________________________________ Heat Management _________________________________________ thermal management (insulation, ultrahot and cold environments, space temperatures, evaporative cooling, radiator area, fuel freezing points...) _________________________________________ _________________________________________ It's a complicated problem, check the GURPSnet archive for some attempts at handling heat, mostly to duplicate Mecha overheating, but some of the ideas are adaptable. Basically you need to know the thermal resistance of the hull (and rules for insulation as a surface feature to allow you to adjust it), that and the temperature difference (outside to inside) will get you a heat flow through the hull. Once you know that, you need to install some equipment that can pump heat out of the vehicle at least that fast and you are all set. For up to a few hundred degrees heat pumps are around the stats for engines of the same power, and use a fraction (perhaps 1/4) of the power they pump. For really high temperatures you'll need lots more complex equipment, and levitating in the sun you can forget it, you can't build a radiator unless you can have a part hotter than the environment, floating in magma you can at least radiate to the sky. > My best approximation is to use reflec coatings on > the exposed surfaces, a deflector screen, and to make > a note that the crew usually leaves the air conditioning > on "high." But this doesn't seem to adequately > represent the heavy weight of shielding systems > necessary. Any suggestions? Actually deflectors trapping a layer of a few meters of vacuum makes excellent insulation, for most environments that and the air conditioner might be enough. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ On Wed, 8 Apr 1998, wrote: > Given the limitations of existing materials, the only way to get > radiation hotter than the surface of the sun would be to use > a laser. For efficiency, you'll want the laser at a significantly > shorter wavelength than its surroundings - I wouldn't use anything > less than an ultraviolet laser in the sun. The laser would be > powered by heat leaking into the vehicle. Yeah, that's David Brin's contribution to SF mythology. You can't do that, second law considerations, think about the entropy gain involved in converting the heat inflow from the sun to something as ordered as a laser beam. You break even at the bandwidth of a true blackbody spectrum, which means you really have to heat something up hotter than the sun. You *might* be able to build a radiator in which you pump heat into a confined plasma, and direct the light in a narrow beam using conventional optics, but you can't build a refrigeration laser. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Good insulation will reduce the rate at which you need to do this. A heat-pump that could work within the Sun (c. 6000+ K) would be power-hungry and very high-tech, but it should be theoretically possible. (Of course, either you have to find hull materials that can withstand those temperatures or do the whole thing with force fields somehow.) My own answer is that the requirement shouldn't be based on DR, but on the TL and type of materials used. To survive in such an environment, you need two things: 1) To be able to keep the interior of the vehicle at a livable temperature. 2) To stop the surface of the vehicle from boiling away. #1 isn't too hard to do, even with current technology. I did some calculations, but I doubt they'll be of too much interest. Sample results: A tank (surface area 500 sf) operating on Venus (750 K) with an internal temperature 300 K will do quite nicely with 4" expanded polystyrene insulation and a 100 kW heat pump. To keep such a vehicle going on the surface of the Sun (~ 6000 K) requires about 8' EPS, with a 100 kW heat pump. This is bulky, but not that heavy or costly. Higher-tech insulators will presumably be less bulky, and they don't have to weigh much; vacuum layers work nicely for insulation. If you have enough DR to survive the _pressures_ in those environments, you probably have enough armour to insulate against the temperatures in combination with a reasonable heat pump. The only problem is that EPS will decompose at those temperatures, and whatever the heat pump's made out of will also have to be able to cope. So what you need is an insulator that can survive the exterior temperature; as long as you've got that, you should be able to bulk it out to satisfy #1 without too much trouble. This is why I'd base survivability on armour type (metal/laminate/ ablative/composite/etc, TL and cost bracket) rather than its actual DR. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ >At TL 7, tungsten can survive ~ 3000 K. Improvements Graphite is an even higher-temperature substitute and should be good to almost 4000K. The sun isn't really an oxidizing environment, though you might need to protect the graphite from reacting with the hot hydrogen around it and turning into a hydrocarbon. Its hard to stay heat-shielded when your hull is turning into methane. A Ti3SiC2 surface coating would probably help. >in materials science might boost temperatures up to >4000 or 5000 K, but my guess would be that's about as >high as you can get; beyond that, you need to use >forcefields, and your heat pumps also need to use force >or EM rather than exposing physical parts directly to the >hot material. Exactly what DR your force screens need >is a judgement call; I think about (T/10) would be a >reasonable figure (so DR 600 to survive in the Sun) but >modify this according to just how easy you want to make >it. What I've ended up doing is trying to estimate the amount and rate of thermal energy entering the vehicle from the emissivity of the surface (i.e. if its mirrored and in a primarily radiation-heated environment, a surface that reflects 99% of the light should be cooler than a dark surface), the temperature, and the surface area. I then say circulating gas coils pick up the heat and carry it to a big plug of chilled material, preferably something that undergoes several phases changes before becoming a gas. As a gas, it gets dumped into the sun and carries away the heat dumped into it. Its just a little math intensive and you run out of heat sink after a while, so I might try DR = T/10. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Options for "fold away" seats, that give some percentage of their space back as cargo space when folded. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ General rules on crew facilities modifications for non-human passengers. p76 Quarters. Empty space may always be added, though it just adds room, for additional furnishings take the luxury option or link several luxury quarters together. A typical rather minimal terrestrial apartment will break 3000 cf counting the utility and common spaces. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Air Mask (TL6): for 1/10 the weight volume and cost, and half the power consumption, air system options can be installed as air masks (helmets, tubes etc. - the design is fairly species specific) located at a specific seat or station. The version with no options (the bare Air System) provides the wearer with 10 minutes of breathable air, which may be enough in an emergency. Air masks can be installed on vehicles that are not sealed if simple contact with the atmosphere is not as bad as breathing it. Bottled Air/Air Supply/Solid reactants ________________________________________ Crew and Passengers p77a Air Supply ________________________________________ A vehicle with a crew will need an air supply of some sort. If the vehicle isn't sealed and operates in a breathable atmosphere air normally flows through it freely enough this never becomes a problem, though if the vehicle is very large and lacks Environmental Control air quality at the vehicle core may be poor. Air supply is an important issue for sealed vehicles. Just the air in the crew or passenger spaces of a sealed vehicle will support life for several hours. If the vehicle can be unsealed and aired out every few hours no particular life support is required, otherwise something will be needed. Air System (TL5): A basic air system provides environmental control and the ability to completely exchange the air in the vehicle with the outside air in only a few minutes. A wide range of options are available to allow hostile outside environments to provide breathable air. Multiply statistics by the number of people the vehicle is to support. Option -- Air Purification (TL6): Removes high levels of particular toxic gases from the air. Though intended for alien atmospheres that would be breathable but for an undesirable gas other uses are possible; a CO/CO2 scrubber could be useful in a fire-fighting vehicle, or a military system might remove the simple poison gases. Option -- Air Scrubber (TL6): Removes respiratory waste products from the air within the sealed vehicle. Stores air for later use. In addition to the system itself - regulators and scrubbers to prevent buildup of waste gases, the vehicle must install the air storage tanks (100 lb, 2 cf and $100 per person-day stored). The system includes compressors able to refill the tanks from the surrounding air in a safe environment, add other options to do so in hostile atmospheres. Option -- Bottled Oxygen (TL7): Stores liquid oxygen instead of compressed air. Instead of air tanks, install 0.3 gallons of LOX tankage per person-day of air supplied. Includes oxygen liquefaction equipment able to refill the tanks in a safe atmosphere. Option -- Filters (TL5): Filters remove particulates - including aerosols, dust, smoke, nuclear fallout and bacteria - from the air. In contaminated environments filters must be replaced every two days at 1% of the system cost (and 5% of system weight and volume). Option -- Gills (TL7): Consumed oxygen is replaced from the surrounding water by a small electrolysis plant. Note that unlike true gills, the water does not need to be oxygenated. Option -- NBC Kit (TL7): A sophisticated filter and neutralization system that removes fallout, nanotech, chemical weapons and disease organisms (including viruses which pass standard filters). It includes an overpressure system, and a host of detectors to warn of these hazards. The filters and chemical traps must be replaced periodically in contaminated environments as Filters above. Option -- Pressure Differential (TL6): The air system is designed to operate in nonstandard pressures (Dense or Thin atmospheres). It can breath in air up to 100 bars total pressure, and down to pO2 0.02 bars. Primarily for alien environments, but also useful at high altitudes on Earth. Environmental Systems Table 5 Air System 100 2 $100 0.25 6 Air System 50 1 $200 0.25 7 Air System 25 0.5 $1000 0.25 8 Air System 10 0.2 $500 0.25 9 Air System 5 0.1 $250 0.25 10+ Air System 2.5 0.05 $125 0.25 6+ Air Purification x1 x1 x2 x2 6+ Air Scrubber x2 x2 x2 x2 5+ Filters x1 x1 x2 x1 7+ Gills x2 x2 x4 x2 7+ NBC Kit x1 x1 x5 x1 6+ Pressure Differential x2 x2 x2 x2 5+ Regulator +x1 +x1 +x1 +x0 _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Over-rated engines Internal combustion engines, gas turbines, conventional jets and the like can be built to run at power much higher than they can reasonably survive. An over-rated engine has 1/5 the weight and volume, and 1/10 the cost of a normal engine, but for every minute (or fraction thereof) it is operating it must make an HT roll or burn up. This is normally used for missile powerplants or jet assisted takeoff units, though it might be useful for recharging energy banks occasionally. ________________________________________ Power and Fuel p84a Fuel Conversions ________________________________________ Most combustion power plants can be modified to burn alternate fuels. If the engine normally burns gasoline multiply: To convert to Engine stats Fuel volume Hydrogen 1.5 Methane 1.1 Propane 1.1 1.5 Alcohol 1.18 1.18 Av Gas 1.0 Hydrazine 1.1 Multifuel 1.25 1.0/varies Ammonia 1.1 2.9 If the engine normally burns hydrogen multiply: To convert to Engine stats Fuel volume Methane 0.8 0.45 Propane 0.8 0.33 Ammonia 0.8 0.65 Fuel cells convert well to ammonia or hydrazine Fuel Table Fuel Weight Cost Fire Equiv Oxy Dmd Diborane 3.75 0.89 1.37 Pentaborane 5.34 0.68 1.71 Hydrogen Cyanide 5.67 1.93 0.88 Nitromethane 9.51 2.37 0.39 Methanol 6.59 10 1.75 1.04 Methylhydranize 7.26 1.27 1.33 Carbon Monoxide 6.84 3.79 0.41 Acetylene 5.09 1.03 1.64 Ethane 4.75 1.10 1.71 Ethylene Oxide 7.26 1.24 1.34 Ethanol 6.59 $1 10 1.34 1.44 Dimethylhydrazine 6.59 1.21 1.48 Benzene 7.34 0.85 2.37 Aniline 8.51 0.84 2.38 Ammonia 5.67 2.05 0.84 Hydrazine 8.34 1.62 0.44 G 6.0 $1.5 11 1.0 D 7.5 $1.2 9 1.1 Av 6.5 $2 13 0.9 J 6.5 $3 13 H 0.59 $0.1 13 3.13 0.49 LNG 3.53 1.34 1.48 LPG 4.2 $0.5 13 Note the diesel weight change, this is an errata for p90 as well. ________________________________________ Power and Fuel p84a Monopropellant Fuel Conversion ________________________________________ Internal combustion engines and gas (but not MHD) turbines that normally operate on gasoline or diesel can be modified to generate gas pressure from the decomposition of a monopropellant. Halve the power output of the engine, multiply fuel consumption by 5.2 and convert it to rocket fuel. Monopropellant engines do not require air, and are generally more reliable since spontaneous decomposition doesn't need a starter or electrical system. Rocket Fuels Table Ethylene Oxide 7.26 $2 12 0.77 Hydrazine 8.34 $5 13 0.89 'Rocket Fuel' 10.00 $2 13 1.00 Hydrogen Peroxide 12.01 $10 13 1.06 Nitromethane 9.51 $2 14 1.30 Tetranitromethane 13.68 $5 14 1.32 ________________________________________ Power and Fuel p84a Oxidizer Conversion ________________________________________ Combustion engines normally consume oxygen from the surrounding air, but they can be modified to run on a closed cycle using oxidizer from a tank. This is most common for fuel cells, but possible for any engine. First determine the amount of liquid oxygen required to burn the fuel by multiplying the fuel volume by the oxidizer demand of the fuel. If you are using an oxidizer other than liquid oxygen multiply by the equivalent volume from the oxidizer table as well. Finally add the hardware necessary to vaporize the oxidizer. A TL6- vaporizer adds 2 lb, 0.04 cf and $5 per gallon per hour of oxidizer consumption to the power plant. Halve that at TL7, quarter it at TL8+. Vehicles designed to operate in a reducing atmosphere may carry the oxidizer and burn it with atmospheric fuel. Most reducing atmospheres can be treated as either natural gas or hydrogen for such purposes. Use the same modifiers but the fuel tank (not the oxidizer tank) can be omitted. If there is enough demand costs could be the same as normal engines, otherwise expect to pay a lot more for a bizarre custom job. Oxygen Demand Table Fuel Demand Fuel Demand H 0.49 LPG G or D 2.01 Ethanol 1.44 Av or J 2.37 C (per cf) 14.0 LNG 1.48 Wd (per cf) 4.5 Oxidizer Table Oxidizer Weight Cost Fire Equivalent Trinitromethane 13.68 1.04 Chlorine Trifluoride 15.24 11* 1.42 Chlorine Pentafluoride 14.99 1.21 Chlorine Dioxide 13.66 13 1.09 Nitrogen Trichloride 13.74 3.14 Fluorine 9.25 12* 1.28 Oxygen Difluoride 12.74 0.84 Nitrogen Trifluoride 15.74 1.11 Tetrafluorohydrazine 13.83 14 1.18 Hydrogen Peroxide 12.00 $10 13 1.25 Nitric Acid 12.91 $60 6* 1.21 Nitric Oxide 10.58 9* 1.28 Nitrous Oxide 10.25 8* 1.98 Nitrogen Tetroxide 12.08 $5 10* 1.16 Liquid Oxygen 9.50 $0.1 9* 1.00 Liquid Ozone 14.24 $10 14 0.57 Liquid Air 7.17 $0.1 8* 6.30 _________________________________________ Nuclear Refueling _________________________________________ *Refueling Reactors* cut the fuel rods concept and the antimatter cost on p85. Fission reactors are designed to be refueled with fresh fissionables, at a cost of $40 per kW-yr at TL7 or TL8, $4 per kW-yr at TL9+. Fusion reactors are not designed to be refueled, but can be with a major overhaul. Antimatter reactors are refueled at the costs for antimatter on p90. RTG and NPU units must be replaced entirely. Fissionables can be safely stored by adding 10% to the reactor statistics per year of fuel stored. Additional antimatter storage is covered on p90. p85 Fusion. Fusion fuel and it's tankage require 0.0005 lb/kW per year of operating time. If a reactor is to operate for more than 200 years, add the additional fuel weight to the reactor weight. It may also be subtracted for operating times shorter than 200 years. p86 Antimatter. Drop the internal fuel and years of operation. Treat these as unfueled statistics and see p90 for antimatter costs and storage. Consumption is 0.0004 grams AM per kW-year at TL11, half that at TL12+ _________________________________________ Power and Fuel p86a Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion _________________________________________ OTEC powerplants extract energy from the temperature difference between the warm surface water and the cold deep water of the ocean. The basic components are the onboard machinery - pumps, heat exchangers, working fluid and the actual turbine - and a long pipe for obtaining cold water. The machinery weighs 200 lb, occupies 4cf and costs $2000 per kW generated at TL6, half that at TL7+. The pipe has an area of 1000 sf x square root of (kW) and should be purchased as structural material. Count the pipe area when computing Hdr of the vessel. Actual thermal efficiency is lousy, 2% or less, but the heat input is essentially free. In normal operation OTEC platforms move slowly (0.5 mph) so their waste heat doesn't reduce the temperature difference and lower efficiency even further. _________________________________________ Power and Fuel p86a Osmotic Power _________________________________________ When a semipermeable membrane separates solutions of different concentrations solvent flows from the less concentrated into the more concentrated to try to dilute it until the water pressure difference equals the osmotic pressure. This is well developed as the reverse process, where salt water is put under enough pressure to get water to flow to the fresh side as reverse osmosis desalination. As a powerplant the most direct approach is to dam a rivermouth twice. The outer dam base is semipermeable and fresh water flows out of it into the sea, maintaining the surface of the fresh water reservoir below sea-level. Power is generated hydroelectrically at the upstream dam by letting the river fall into that lower surface. The fresh to seawater osmotic head is about 240 meters. There actually are a couple better sites, the Jordan to Dead Sea head is 3000 m. You can do similar things in any desert with evaporation ponds. A more compact system flows water through a semipermeable tube surrounded by a pressurized vessel of seawater. Osmotic flow keeps the sale water side at the higher pressure, energy is extracted by flowing the pressurized water through a turbine and salinity is maintained by a pump driven by the turbine exchanging the water. 0.8 pressure x water flow efficiency. Membrane is $75 per m^3 0.04 m^3/m^2 per day (1 gal/ft^2) typical ($285 per 1000 gal per day), 2.6 kW per 1000 gal _________________________________________ Surface and External Features p91a Concealment and Stealth _________________________________________ Magnetic Passivation (TL7): any metallic parts are carefully demagnetized and electrical equipment is arranged to minimize the net field, providing a -2 to magnetic detection attempts. 7 Magnetic Passivation 0 $30 0 _________________________________________ Surface and External Features p95a Special Tires _________________________________________ Fireproof Tires (TL8) The tires will not burn. Add $100 per tire to cost Radial Tires (TL7) The tires add 0.25 to gMR. Add $100 per wheel. Tire design options dry traction, wet traction, handling, design life. puncture resistance, cost. Radial vs bias ply and changes in suspension design (and drop the radial gMR improvement?) _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p97 Strength. Multiply limits by 2 at TL5, 4 at TL6 and 8 at TL7+. Historically counterweight ST doesn't exceed 700. _________________________________________ Weaponry p110a Advanced Mechanical Artillery _________________________________________ With the development of good machining tolerances and decent spring steel at TL5 it becomes possible to build some impressive mechanical artillery. Of course these are also the enabling technologies for cheap gunlocks and rifled cannons. Leveraged Catapults (TL6): are distant relatives of the compound bow, using a network of pulleys and cables to amplify the force of a suddenly clutched traction engine. Design them with the conventional guns sequence: 'Bore size' must be at least 10 mm. Mechanism may be breechloading, manual repeater or autoloader. Malf is Crit. KE DAM = B x P x TC where TC is 0.10 at TL6, 0.32 at TL7 and 0.90 at TL8+ 1/2D = 250 x square root (B) x P x TC Max, Acc, SS and Loaders are determined as for conventional smoothbores. Weight is B x B x P x R x TC where P is 0.25 if low and 0.05 if extra low. and TC is 2 at TL6, 1 at TL7 and 0.7 at TL8+. ROF is as the mechanism, maximum 1. WPS is B^3 x D with other statistics as for guns. Power is 150 kW x WPS x P (and NOT multiplied by ROF) Cost is $100 x weight. Rotary Slings (TL5): are basically flywheels equipped with a mechanism to grab and throw a projectile. Design them with the conventional guns sequence: Bore size must be at least 10 mm. Mechanism is effectively a powered mechanical system. Malf is 16 (TL5) or Crit (TL6+). KE DAM = B x T, where T is 0.1 (TL5), 0.3 (TL6), 0.9 (TL7) or 1.25 (TL8). 1/2D = 400 x square root (B) x T Max and Acc are as for conventional smoothbores. SS is as for smoothbores, plus 2. ROF is selected to be between 1 and 20. Note rotary slings lend themselves to volley fire by mounting several wheels on the same axis, treat such multiple mounts as a permenantly linked at no cost and use the autofire rules for the entire volley. WPS is B^3 x D, other ammunition statistics as for conventional guns Weight is 150 x WPS x ROF lbs. Volume is 7.5 x ROF^2 or Weight/50, whichever is larger. Cost is $25 x weight. Power is WPS x ROF x T where T is 1.25(TL5), 12.5(TL6), 100(TL7) or 200(TL8+). Before a rotary sling can fire, it must be run up to speed. This requires 2 minutes if the power supply just meets the firing power requirement, but can be done more quickly if excess power is available. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p100 Fine and Very Fine Weapons. Add "If the selected weight variable W (p106) exceeds 1, divide cost of making the weapon Fine or Very Fine by W-1." _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p105 Half Damage. The S cutoff is way too sharp. How about S = 40 * B, which also gives some of the reduction to range that's been discussed for needles. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p106 Weight. Add "x W" to the end of both formulas and insert "W is normally 1, but can be selected to be any value from 0.6 to 1.67 (representing variations in manufacturing techniques)." _________________________________________ 108 Nuclear Explosives. The rules overstate the radius of destruction. 113 Explosives I suspect the relative scaling problem with explosive damage may be because it is linear in energy, while all the other forms are proportional to the square root of energy - explicitly for beams, through momentum otherwise _________________________________________ Weaponry p110a Variant Conventional Guns _________________________________________ Spring Guns: This term is used for at least 3 entirely different mechanisms. The oldest is a booby trap trigger system, the spring has nothing to do with the gun design. 'Gas driven' springs use the rules for Air Guns. Spring guns using actual springs or elastic bands can either use the rules for mechanical artillery bolt throwers, or the rules for low or very low power airguns with the power consumption met by a clockwork energy bank. Air Guns (TL4): These guns use compressed gas or high pressure steam as the propellant. Design them as conventional guns, then double the cost, halve the KE damage, 1/2D and Max range, and add a power requirement of 150kW x WPS x L x P x ROF which must be met either by a steam engine (p82) or a compressed gas energy bank (p87a) Light Gas Guns (TL7): Gun performance depends on the properties of the propellant gases. Light Gas Guns try to take advantage of this. They have 2 barrels, a piston is fired conventionally down the larger forcing the low molecular weight gas filling it into the smaller firing barrel at a higher velocity than the speed of the piston. Design the weapon as a 20mm or larger conventional breechloader, then half the RoF; quadruple the weight, volume, cost, WPS, VPS and CPS; and multiply the KE damage and 1/2D range by 5. Scramjet Gun (TL8): Instead of a solid propellant, the gun barrel is filled with a combustible fuel, which is ignited by the passage of the specially shaped projectile. Quadruple gun cost and double the KE damage and 1/2D range. Divide WPS and VPS by 2 and multiply the CPS by 4. _________________________________________ Weaponry p110a Varient Conventional Guns _________________________________________ Early Liquid Propellants (late TL5): The liquid propellant principle is an internal combustion cylinder that ejects the piston, it can be invented well before TL8. Build them as conventional guns, then double the gun cost and halve WPS and CPS. Designs are limited to low or extra low power at TL5 or TL6; at early TL7 hypergolic liquid fuels become available and allow full power designs. At TL8+ use the existing rules - triple cost, improved Malf, halve WPS and CPS, and selection of amount of propellant used at firing rather than when designing the gun. _________________________________________ Weaponry p110a Ammunition _________________________________________ The *DS *FSDS *CR *DU and *HD rounds should be described as multipliers applied to the base AP round, this compresses the table, ensures they are consistant with each other, provides an easy mechanism for adding new technologies and is much less confusing to look up (APFSDSHD is starting to strain my ability to tell appart from APDSHD at a glance) Incidentally the effects of *FSDS over *DS should be an improvement in flight stability (better Acc or 1/2D), not an increased armor divisor. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ > IIRC, spearguns are essentially a special form of air-rifle. Has > anyone done rules for air-powered weaponry? > Gas-powered weapons can be found in the expansion notes on the website; the difficulty is in the spear itself... > Rules for abnormally-shaped ammunition would be useful too - the > same problem applies to trying to make a gun that fires tranquilizer > darts... _________________________________________ _________________________________________ From: Rasmus Juul Wagner Electric stunner weapons. Tasers. Guns firing powercells! _________________________________________ Weaponry p119 Missile Endurance _________________________________________ Depending on the assumptions used, several different END functions can be computed from the performance rules. One I like on theoretical grounds yeilds: sAccel = SPD^2/(900 x D x Lwt) and END = (Mwt/Pwt) x (5.4 D / K) x (100/SPD)^2 Where D is the diameter and K is the performance characteristic for solid rockets of the same TL (0.21 at TL7). If SPD is in something other than air (e.g. a torpedo), multiply sAccel and divide END by the relative density (750 for water). Anthony Jackson's missile rules (in the archive as missiles) are also good, particularly for exoatmospheric missiles. _________________________________________ Weaponry p119a Reactionless Missiles _________________________________________ With the introduction of reactionless thrusters and powercells, missile performance envelopes change drastically. Divide Mwt into two parts, the thruster and the cell. Thrust is thruster weight divided by the specific thrust of the engine (1 lb/lfb at TL9 for example). Cell capacity is (Cell Wt/0.000055) x [(TL-6)/2]. END is cell capacity/(thrust x thruster specific power (0.5 at TL9)). SPD is the square root of (900 x D x thrust), divided by the square root of relative density out of air. Note: some extreme reactionless thruster technologies can allow torpedo speeds in the range of earlier missiles. Such torpedos may use kinetic warheads - compute damge using the normal missile rules. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ From: Barbarian One thing I'd like to see concerning weapons is a system to design dropped weapons: spike droppers, oil slicks, gas clouds, etc. I've got just such a system worked up, but it's pretty specific for Autoduel right now and could use a bit of polish (AND playtesting by others) before it's ready for primetime. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p124a Neural Weapons. Clarify Nerve burners by adding 'on a failed HT roll' to the first sentence. At TL10 a new technology evolves for directly interfacing with the nervous system without physical contact. The implications of this technology are not well explored _________________________________________ Performance p131a Water Speed _________________________________________ Planing Hulls. Boats designed so dynamic pressure lifts the hull above the displacement plane, trading part of the frictional and wavemaking drag for induced drag. At low speeds this actually wastes power, but high speed planing designs can travel somewhat faster than conventional hulls. Design a planing hull as if it had mediocre lines and compute speed normally. If water speed exceeds 3 x [sixth root of Lwt] the boat planes significantly, recompute top speed as 50 mph x square root of [Ath/Lwt]. Hydrofoils. Boats supported by the dynamic lift of underwater wings. Design a hydrofoil as a displacement hull with wing subassemblies. Include the foil area in Hdr calculations and double the draft (maximum +10 feet) unless the foils are retractable or folding. If the boat reaches the foil takeoff speed, 0.866 x square root of [Lwt/foil area] it rises out of the water; recompute top speed as 100 mph x square root of [Ath/Lwt] and subtract 2 from wSR. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ From: Erik Manders Subject: hydrofoil addenda Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:24:04 +0100 (MET) Currently, hydrofoils are defined as having a cf equal to 0.15*body cf, covering all foils and struts. Isn't this a bit large? That's almost the size of a pair of wings, and every foil I've seen is much smaller than a wing. Having such a fixed large size also causes other inconsistencies, see below. How can the various hydrofoil configurations be defined? From reading Vehicles, I get the idea that David only considered the `conventional fully submerged' design used on the USS Plainview (? could be High Point, haven't got my notes with me). Currently the commercially most commonly used configurations are tandem and conventional surface piercing foils. There are apparently very significant differences between the surface piercing and fully submerged types with respect to control and handling. The next question I have is a bit more general. How are externally folding subassemblies handled? What I'm thinking of here is the mechanism in the Boeing Jetfoil and the related US Pegasus class, where the foil assemblies tilt forward and backward externally to reduce draft. Draft for hydrofoils itself is also badly covered in Vehicles. While draft for foilborne hydrofoils is covered, no rules for the draft of hullborne hydrofoils with fixed/lowered foils is given. Maybe 2 or 3 times normal is correct? Another question I have is about propulsion systems. Some hydrofoils, notably the Boeing types, have hydrojet propulsion with the propulsors located in the hull. In these cases there are water intakes at the rear foil with ducts leading up the rear struts. How are intakes like this handled mechanics-wise? Any ideas on size guidelines? The biggest questions I have are about performance and handling. The first is about takeoff speed, the speed a hydrofoil's hull comes out of the water and the boat becomes foilborne. The current hydrodynamic stall formula in the Addenda doesn't appear to work with the default foil size and area (far too slow). Taking foil wing area as 5% of the foil assembly area works better but this appears to be a botch. Making the foil area as a whole smaller and using the wing lift multipliers might work better. Hydrofoil foilborne speed calculations are not explicitly covered, but water speed could be ammended to say that foilborne performance should be calculated separately. Curiously enough, using the current (large) foil area in these calculations appears to work, but I haven't done enough checking to be sure. Some of the travel hazards of hydrofoils are not covered in Vehicles 2. Apparently one of the greatest hazards of foilborne travel is a foil broach. This occurs when a portion of the foil supporting the boat suddenly broaches and stops producing lift. The outcome can easily be a capsize or back flip, especially at high speed. These things need a lot more kicking around and reality checking, but something should be done about them, either in Vehicles or in the Addenda. I'm going try do some designs tonight. Suggested reading about hydrofoils: http://www.erols.com/foiler/basics.htm This site is run by the International Hydrofoil Society and has very good info. Hope you can help out, Erik Manders ________________________________________ Performance p134a Ceilings ________________________________________ Aircraft propelled by engines that impart a fixed power to a column of air - including propellers, fans, helicopters, jets and air rams - have about the same top speed in air of any density, since drag and thrust vary together. Since stall speed increases as density falls there is a minimum density at which the vehicle can fly equal to (Stall Speed/Air Speed)^2 times that of the standard atmosphere. On Earth it works out to a maximum operating height of 25 miles x log (Air Speed/Stall). For other worlds refer to Atmospheric Density (p165a). _________________________________________ _________________________________________ In your "v2ad_ch10.txt", you wrote: >Performance >p134a Ceilings Of course, most helicopters have a stall speed of 0 - these formulae therefore won't work for them. For what it's worth, my sometimes faulty memory says an AH-1F has a maximum velocity in level flight around 150 knots, and a theoretical service ceiling of around 22,000 feet. Both of these are engine-limited: the turbine's performance maxes out before transmission or the aerodynamics of the design, although it's a race at the top. I say theoretical ceiling because the AH-1 isn't equipped with oxygen, and the crew will pass out long before reaching 22,000 feet. _________________________________________ Vehicles In the Campaign p145a Professional Skills _________________________________________ Astrogation deserves mention. I divide it into Interplanetary, Real Space Interstellar/Relativistic and [Drive Type] FTL subskills. The Battlesuit/Diving/Exoskeleton/Vacc Suit/Walker-Handler Operation skill cluster really should be consolidated into a single skill, possibly with with specializations. Something needs to be done with the skills needed for operating Aerial Sails and Lighter than Air crews other than the pilot, both of which are akin to Seamanship. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Orbits plane change Vesc Vcirc Velliptic East rotation Transfer to bombing orbit _________________________________________ Vehicle Action p164a Orbits _________________________________________ A spacecraft near a massive body usually orbits around it. There are several important types of orbits: Low Orbits: are those near the surface, up to a few hundred miles high. This is the endpoint of Ground to Space transfers, requiring a delta-v of 176500 mph x square root of (M/R) to reach from the ground. The orbital period (the time to circle the planet once) is 1.40 hours x the square root of (R^3/M). Synchronous orbits: are those with periods equal to the day length of the planet they circle. Viewed from the ground something in such an orbit hangs stationary in the sky, provided the orbit is circular and above the equator. In an inclined orbit the satellite appears to move north to south and back, crossing the equator twice a day; in an elliptic orbit it traces out a figure 8 in the sky. For a planet rotating with a day P hours long a circular synchronous orbit is 3155 miles x cube root of (M x P^2) from the center. Side note: this must be greater than the radius of the planet, if it isn't the planet is rotating too fast for gravity to hold it together. Inclined orbits: a launch from the ground necessarily puts the spacecraft into an orbit inclined relative to the planetary equator at an angle equal to the latitude of the launch site. For many applications some other inclination is desirable, for example true synchronous orbits must have zero inclination, transfer orbits between moons at different inclinations may require plane changes, and satellites designed to provide polar communications or photo coverage will need highly inclined orbits. The delta-v necessary to change your orbital inclination is Hohmann transfer orbit: the minimum energy course between two coplanar circular orbits. The delta-v necessary to leave a circular orbit and enter the transfer orbit is After .25 x P (1+R2/R1)^1.5, where P is the period of the starting orbit (1 year for a vehicle leaving Earth) and R1 and R2 are the distances from the sun of the starting and ending orbits, the vehicle arrives at the other orbit, and must make another burn providing delta-v to enter it. Hohmann transfers require a particular geometry - the position of one planet at departure be 180 degrees away from the position of the destination at arrival. For concentric circular orbits the time between launch windows is S = (Pi * Po)/(Po-Pi) where Pi and Po are the periods (year lengths) of planets. For a round trip you will need to wait a while at the destination for the next launch window, Tw = S (J-(2*Tt/Pi) where J is any integer (2 for the minimum wait), and Tt is the Hohmann orbit transfer time equal to O.1768*Pi*(1+ao/ai)^1.5 where Pi is the inner planet period, and ao and ai are respectively the semimajor axes of the orbits of the outer and inner planets. For scheduled flights rather than single missions its the difference in departure times between the inner and outer planets that matters rather than the wait time, obviously this will be Tt + Tw = Tt - S(2Tt/Pi) + J * S. Low acceleration transfer: is the minimum time transfer with an engine with acceleration low compared to the gravity of the central body. which goes to the limit t = 6.2832 (R1/P*a) * (1-R1/R2)^0.5, where a is the acceleration approaching zero (valid approximation where a << R2/P^2). Careful, units matter here. Lagrange points: _________________________________________ Topics to be addressed _________________________________________ CONCEPTS NEEDING RULES Demolish! Estimate! Snowplows and Graders Anchors and Sea Anchors Fix maintenance intervals Realistic heater power consumption Fishing nets and fishing gear Weapon nets/electrified nets Beanstalk parameters Nuclear shaped charges and other tricks Landing aids, glide slope Deflector shaped nuclear weapons One shot beam warheads Catamaran and mast heights Microfilm Electric stun powercell/capacitor round Charts Taser reel Propeller limits 30mph Vertical Axis/Cycloidal Propellers Acoustic Daylight Ground speed x3 for bicycle records? Shrapnel Damage Data storage Invisibility Paint Total conversion beams Reentry rules Propeller limits 30mph p108 Cost per Shot Free design of communications ranges Satellite Relay data and com switching 10,000 channels, 360 lbs Thermal Insulation 0.001kW/ft^2K / 2TL per lb/sf insulation Traveller G compensation (TTL-9)G 1lb 0.2kW / cf Sample Mission delta-v requirements Hydroplaning Vmph = 225 x sqrt (kW/Lwt) = 50-65 x sqrt (T/Lwt) Nuclear explosives realistically should half damage every 2^(3+log(kT)) yards _________________________________________ Other References to consider _________________________________________ AUTODUEL ROBOTS p104 Dropped Weapons CH2 Brains and Programs p112 Controlled Skid p59-62 Descriptions of Programs p112 Jumping p113 Excessive Speed UT p33 Typical Programs MECHA p91 ST and Reach p99 Baroque Weapons V1E p100 Transformable Mecha p81 Minesweeper p106 Core/Shell Mecha p138 Jumping _________________________________________ _________________________________________ pME91. Strength and Reach. I suggest for distributed battlesuit systems only, add the wearer ST to ST rolls. This can go over the body maximum ST safely, but *does* still incur the penalties over the arm maximum. _________________________________________ Possiblities From AJackson file _________________________________________ Chapter 1: frame, etc p17 Rotor Volume. Helicopter rotors need area based on lift, not volume based on size. ive rotors a volume of power^(3/2) / 5000. If you _really_ care, make lift equal to (power^2/3) * (rotor area ^ 1/3) * 20 * (multiplier for rotor type). p18 Living Metal (TL 13+) and Biomechanical structure (TL 9+) Living metal is pretty cinematic to begin with, but these rules don't make any sense -- how can a living metal _frame_ reconstruct portions of the vehicle which are not living metal? Apply the living metal multiplier to _all_ components made of living metal, not just the frame. In addition, nanites require a source of replacement mass, a power source, and are not entirely massless. Multiply weight and volume of living metal components by 1.25, add a power requirement of 1 kW/ton for biomechanical structures and living metal which is not engaged in repair. For living metal which is engaged in repair, multiply by 10 for regular regeneration, 600 for fast regeneration, and 36000 for instant regeneration. If a biomechanical structure loses power it will lose 10% of its HP per day and eventually die; living metal will shut down, and will require at least 10 kWh/ton to awaken. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p23a Armor Volume Armor does have some volume; use weight/500 for metal or laminate armor, weight/50 for wood or nonrigid, weight/100 for other armor types. Adds volume * 62.5 lb to floatation, except for nonrigid armor, which doubles in weight when wet. If you have enough armor volume, the need to fill 'corners' of the arm or will reduce DR slightly, though for most vehicles this can be ignored. Find the volume ratio, R (total volume / internal volume); multiply DR by 3 * (R^1/3 - 1) / (R-1). [Wood 35-65 lb/cf, metals 200-500, composites and fireproof ablative 200, plastic ablative, nonrigid and reflex 50-100. As a general guideline divide armor weight by the specific volume, and if it is more than 5% of the vehicle volume go back and recompute flotation, outermost surface area for drag and the like.] _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p33a The thrust of a fan is approximately proportional to power^1/2 * area^1/4, which makes larger fans less efficient. The fans here are an average case, significantly faster and slower fans are possible. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p62a Software * Skill levels: for programs which provide a skill, +1 complexity gives +2 skill. For programs which give a bonus to a skill, +1 gives +1. Skill programs: a skill program gives an Easy skill at (C*2+4), an Average skill at (C*2+3), a Hard skill at (C*2+2), and a Very Hard skill at (C*2). Neural-net gives +1 to Mental, AI gives +2. Increased DX (per robots) adds to Physical skills. * Running at higher Complexity: many programs can be allocated more resources than they normally use. Running at +2 complexity will generally cause the program to work as if written at +1 complexity. * Running at higher speed: give a program +1 complexity to run in and it can also accomplish tasks in 1/10 normal time. This is generally only useful on mental tasks, physical tasks require the system being controlled to also be adapted. * Gunner program: Gunnery programs add Acc to skill even on a snapshot. The skill of the Gunnery program should also be used as a general 'recognize foe' skill. * Program: Image Enhancement. Cx2, $2000, TL 7. Adds Complexity to your electronics operation skill levels. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p65 Arm Motor Table. Realistically, multiply weight, power requirement, etc, by the reach of the arm (in hexes). Arms generally have a minimum reach of (volume)^1/3. p66 A ST 10 winch shouldn't normally weigh 50 lb, but shouldn't retract at the listed weight either (in fact, it violates conservation of energy for it to do so). Divide weight by 10, retracts at 1 yard/sec, power requirement is .05 kW * ST. For a high-speed winch, divide ST by the multiplier for retraction speed. p66 Tractor, Pressor, and Combination beams could probably be designed as beam weapons (see weapons design). It is unclear why the base weight of 1 ton, this will be ignored. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p87 Electric Contact Power The weight for an electric contact power plant can also be used per 100' of wire or track, which is useful for maintenance robots. Maintenance robots require 1' of track per 10 cf of access space. _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p106 Weight (conventional guns) The formula for 'S' (based on bore size) has odd breakpoints and doesn't wind up working for extremely large weapons anyway. S is equal to B/100 with a minimum value of 0.25; replace with S/200 for low-velocity rounds, S/400 for very low velocity rounds. p108 Weight per Shot The listed values for P only apply to conventional ammunition, as the weight of the ammunition case drops very rapidly with reduction in bore pressure, 'very low power' rounds are functionally caseless at TL 7. For other weapon types, P is 0.4 for very low power rounds, 0.7 for low power rounds. p112 Space Combat Missiles The endurance of a space-combat missile is log(missile weight/warhead weight)*specific impulse/Gs; it is actually slightly lower than this due to structural requirements. The solid-fuel rocket stats don't actually improve past TL 8, which is not supported here. I suggest using log10(MW/WW) *(TL-3)*160/Gs -- this roughly matches solid fuel rockets at TL 7, and while optimistic at higher tech levels is far less so than power cells. p112 Space-Surface Missiles (thor strikes) An object hitting atmosphere in free movement will halve its velocity roughly every (terminal velocity)^2/16 yards; for a missile this works out to roughly 3.5 miles * (weight)^1/3, though a hardened penetrator could have 5x this range (can only be AP or APHD -- APDU will burn, no other warheads are dense enough). While the actual height of the atmosphere depends on how you compute it and is fairly high, it can be treated as being (surface pressure)*6 miles deep; the actual amount of atmosphere which must be penetrated is (apparent height)/cos(angle). A truly high- velocity impact can cause a shockwave like a conventional explosive -- treat as if the explosive damage is roughly (weight)*(speed/1000)^2 dice. Otherwise, treat as a normal missile hit. Thor strikes are generally treated as artillery or guided missile strikes from ranges of 200+ miles. p124 half damage range in space The figures for lasers are physically impossible. Divide listed space ranges for all lasers by 5. N-PAW range multiplier for space should be *10 (not *50, as errata'd). _________________________________________ _________________________________________ p128 Ground Speed As noted by M.A. Lloyd, the power requirements are totally absurd, he suggests as more realistic P(kW) = (Adr/4) x (mph/100)^3 + (Lwt/speed factor x10) x (mph/100); congregating constants this works out to (Adr * mph^3)/40,000 + (Lwt*mph)/(speed factor * 100000). This is not exactly a beautiful equation. It also isn't even correct, as the main form of static drag which a small vehicle encounters is not from the wheels (and thus weight-based), but from the drivetrain (and based on the size of the drivetrain. In addition, the primary limitation on legged drivetrains is the velocity the leg can achieve, which is mostly a function of leg ST. I am tempted to give drivetrains a ST rather than a power requirement, but haven't come up with a good method for doing so. [rolling hp = Lwt (%grade+rolling resistance) * mph/27100 where RR is almost entirely determined by the surface and to a lesser extent by the tires, about 1.0 good concrete down to 8.5 poor cobblestones, 15 or 20 for mud. Ought to dominate frictional losses in the drivetrain (many of which would depend on Lwt anyway, where does size of the drivetrain matter?)] p135 AMr However, MR is also limited to 1.0 * (speed/stall)^2. This means a winged vehicle has a minimum turning radius, equal to (stall^2)/50 yards. You can turn in a smaller area with vector thrust, however. [Where does this come from? Cosine angle of bank term?] _________________________________________ _________________________________________ From: MA Lloyd Subject: Possible tech errata ________________________________________ Mecha ________________________________________ p63 Range Determination. Retreating/Neutral. Cut the 'or the actual range whichever is less'. Its obviously cut and paste from Closing/Neutral, but the correct symmetric phrasing would be 'or infinity whichever is less'. Think about reopening a range closed to zero by a flyby last turn. Also changes VE162. p85 TL13 Antimatter should last 5 years. (VE errata sheet) p87 Leg volume, VE17 uses 0.4, not 0.6 Add extra empty space of you want more humanoid proportions. p97 Interface Web. The time to tear this out is misprinted (compare VE64). ________________________________________ Elsewhere ________________________________________ RWp67. The last line repeats at the top of the next page. ROp34. Mana Engines. Enchantment cost is 100/kW in V2e, not 10/lb. ROp52. Cyborgs retain the brain and *spinal cord* not notocord. TDp92. Solar Sail. A square kilometer of solar sail weighs only 1.25 tons, but only produces 2 pounds of thrust. UTp105. The force screens referenced on p124 are not described in the first edition, at least not on the referenced page. They are in the 2nd revised though, on p78. UT2p28. Hoverplates. Power cells are incredible, but even so best case a D-cell won't support this weight more than 4 hours, let alone 2 weeks. UT2p33. Extra ROM slots. In Robots this doubles the number of slots. UT2p59. Nauseators don't specify how much the power drops. My feeling is none, indeed it might take more energy to cause nausea than to stun nerve cells. UT2p67. I think the Force minigrenade damage has had the /5 applied to it already while the 40mm version has not. ________________________________________ V2e Questions ________________________________________ p126 Rcl changed to agree with LP in UT2, but is UT2 really right? A factor of 2 seems high. p179 Damage Effects. Should these really be every 5 hit points, or should they be every 1/2 x total hit points? p197 Evasive (guidance option)? _________________________________________ _________________________________________ GURPS VEHICLES: WEAPON AND ARMOR EXPANSION p106 Weight. Add "X W" to the end of both formulas and insert "W is normally 1, but can be selected from 0.6 to 1.67 (representing variations in manufacturing techniques). _________________________________________ _________________________________________ ERRATA not included, as of the August 02 Errata sheets Second Printing -- 1998 August 02 P. 9. Under Turrets, note that the restrictions on turret placement do not apply to space vehicles. P. 135. Change ``Aerial propellers'' to ``Airscrews'' in the list of maximum speeds -- ducted fans are also so limited. P. 139. The Roundship has two cabins with HP 400 each. First Printing -- 1998 June 27 P. 37. In the Weight column on the Solid Rocket Table, change the TL3-4 entry from 2.2 to 1. [My intent here was to split the line, 2.2 is ok for simple gunpowder, keep it for TL3]. P. 39. Under the Stardrive Table, the units for power requirements for entering hyperspace or opening a jump point are kWs (kilowatt-seconds). The other units are correctly kW (kilowatts). [that's an ENERGY requirement, not a power requirement] P. 47. In the second paragraph under Communicators (TL6), delete the last sentence (which began ``Ordinary radio frequencies ...'') and replace with ``Unless noted, communicators can't penetrate water and (except FTL) get 10× range in space.'' P. 52. Under Radars, immediately after the first paragraph of the second column, just before the Example, insert ``In space, non-FTL radars, ladars and AESAs get 10× range (and thus +6 Scan).'' P. 92. In Defensive Surface Features, under Retro-Reflective Coating, delete ``TL8-'' so that it reads ``any laser beam'' rather than ``any TL8- laser beam'' in the first sentence. [Closer but not quite. It works against visible or near visible (IR, UV, rainbow) lasers, but not x-ray or gamma ray] P. 113. In the notes, after ``C is the bore size cubed -- B×B×B'' add ``. Exception: If under 20mm, C is 400×B''. Also, add new sentence to Special Cases paragraph: ``HEAT/HEDP damage only applies to direct hits; calculate damage for near misses as if it were an HE warhead.'' P. 126. Under Special Cases of Ammunition Statistics, minimum CPS is $1,000 at TL8, $500 at TL9, $200 at TL10 or $100 at TL11+ for SICM. P. 126. In Maximum Range, under 1/2D and Max Ranges in Vacuum move the entry for neutral particle beam from the ``× 10 if...'' listing to the ``× 50 if ...'' listings, so that it follows rainbow laser rather than flamer. [Why? The current rule seems generous enough, if you really want competitive the thing to do is shorten the laser ranges!] P. 130. Immediately after Ground Pressure Table, in the sentence ``Vehicles with small wheels or railway wheels have no off-road speed'' delete the reference to small wheels, so that it now reads ``Vehicles with railway wheels have no off-road speed.'' [I'd keep it for small wheels too, otherwise what's left to encourage larger wheels?] P. 131. In the second column, the short entry for Planing needs to be rewritten to read as follows: ``Planing: If a vehicle's aquatic thrust is at least [(Hl × 5) + 5]% of its loaded weight, it gets extra speed by planing -- skimming over the water. Multiply its top speed by 2. If a hydrofoil, calculate planing, then apply hydrofoil modifier.'' [Shifted too far the other way. Multiplication by 1.4 rather than 2 seems to give better agreement with the hard chine planing motorboat stats I have here, though it might not hold generally.] P. 137. Under FTL Speed, in first paragraph, third sentence, delete the words "hyperdrive" and "hypershunt or". Then delete the entire second paragraph (that begins "For warp drives...") and replace with "For hyperdrive or warp drives, speed is based on hypershunt or warp thrust factor divided by loaded mass in tons and multiplied by X (see p.39)." [Needs the corresponding errata to p39 to define X] P. 148. Under Hazard Control Rolls, Damage, change the first sentence to read: ``Damage: Taking 5 or more points crushing or explosive damage per ton of vehicle mass from a single damage roll (or if a burst, the group's highest roll) is a hazard.'' [The parenthetical comment doesn't make sense. How does it differ from the general 'single damage roll' restrction?] _________________________________________ _________________________________________ Index after 69a Screen Generators p35 Give scramjets a separate line 8+ Scramjet (0.1 x thrust) +100 0.125J/0.8H ? p59 Deceptive Jammers. Any deceptive jammer can be used as a blip enhancer p69 Forcelocks. The insanely optimistic can omit even the flimsy emergency door and lower statistics to 3 lb, 0.06 cf and $2000 Neural stunners Neural technology is not well explored - there are some very psi-like things here at least too. Biochemical fuel cell/membranes Generalized SAP warhead conversion monomolecular dust _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________