Lasers, nerfed

[BwapTED]

Some guys have expressed concerns that man-portable laser weapons might be too powerful (for game balance that makes for fun combat) in CT.

What about restricting these weapons to firing every other round?
They don't have the massive industrial diamond heat sinks used by starship laser arrays, with overflow to the ship's heat fuel tank sinks (assuming ships can use ''fuel'' as part of a heat management system).
Laser rifles and carbines may melt and burn if fired continuously without a minimal cool-down period between every shot.

 

[nobby-w]

They're not too bad under standard CT rules - Gauss rifles are way more overpowered. Under Striker they have very high penetration and get the 'Exploding round' rule, which does make them pretty much an insta-kill against most types of armour up to TL13 battle dress.

The main problem with Striker is that the rules effectively equate penetration with damage. If your weapon has a penetration of 3 it gets +3 on the wound roll. if the penetration is 9 then it gets +9. I did a couple of house rules to nerf high-penetration weapons:

• For any weapon considered to be 'armour piercing', such as lasers, Gauss Rifles, HEAP rounds from snub pistols and DS rounds from ACRs, I capped the + DM to half the penetration.
• I removed the 'Exploding Round' rule from lasers.

This shaves off the worst of the OP weapons under Striker, although Striker combat is still appreciably deadlier than CT due to the multiple hits rules.

 

[Condottiere]

Upgraded shotguns with advanced ammunition at short range.

 

[Blue Ghost]

They're not too bad under standard CT rules - Gauss rifles are way more overpowered. Under Striker they have very high penetration and get the 'Exploding round' rule, which does make them pretty much an insta-kill against most types of armour up to TL13 battle dress.

The main problem with Striker is that the rules effectively equate penetration with damage. *snip*

Our chief complaint about the laser weapons in Traveller was that they weren't "man portable" enough. We did start a thread about "low grade" laser weapons with disposable "ammunition" battery packs used by merc units. I'll see if I can scrounge up the thread and post a link here.

All my combat has been done wither with CT, and afterwards with the MT penetration/damage mechanic when it came in 89 or 90. And I don't recall anyone ever complaining about it being too hard (nor too easy) to kill or score damage with a laser carbine or rifle of any kind.

I do recall a lot of angst regarding how powerful the Gauss rifle was. My own concern increased when T4's version rolled around in the 90s, and suddenly the tech for the main weapon had been changed and augmented for some reason, seemingly making it that much more ridiculous; i.e. you had to be behind a wall o steel for any kind of protection against it.

 

[mike wightman]

Isn't that intentional though?

There is a big difference between merchant crews with their slugthrowers and lower TL laser weapons vs the mid TL gauss weapons, ARLs and advanced lasers vs the high TL plasma and susion weapons and yet another laser weapon upgrade?

Armour at the various TLs tries to keep pace, but you design weapons to go through the armour of your likely opponent, so a TL6-9 merchant crea is goinf to struggle a lot vs TL10-13 weapon systems.

There is a reason by TL15 troops are in battledress to survive on the battlefield.

 

[nobby-w]

Isn't that intentional though?[ . . . ]

By TL15, ACRs have 5 tech levels of obsolescence and Gauss rifles have 3. One tech level of obsolescence is enough to give the IRA access to M1 Garand rifles and armour piercing ammunition in the 1970s, and most irregular forces having access to relatively modern assault rifles for the better part of half a century.

Shaka Zulu's forces had a lot of firearms, mainly obsolete muzzle loaders that were about one TL below the capabilities of the British forces at the time, and they still gave the British a run for their money. A lot of the indigenous forces in the NZ Maori wars were quite well armed as well (do a web search on Te Rauparaha if you want a rollocking good story).

All of these examples happened within an era where the world was dominated by a large imperial or quasi-imperial power, so I also don't buy reasoning based on the Imperium controlling the market.

By that analysis, ACRs could be expected to be widely available on the grey market by TL11, Gauss Rifles by TL13 and X-Ray laser weapons and 1-2 gen PGMP's by TL14, so the disparity in tech levels doesn't wash with me. I don't really see a disparity of more than one tech level¹ surviving in anything resembling open market conditions.

If you assume a practical maximum tech level in the 12-13 range for most regions, though, I can see Gauss Rifles being less prevalent on the open market, but there would certainly be a demand for them.

What doesn't resonate with me is a TL 11 free trader crew in a TL 13 universe armed with TL 6-7 weapons when significantly better kit has been available for millenia.

It sort of works in a LBB1-3 style universe where the kit is assumed to have not been significantly improved on (i.e. a Laser Rifle isn't that much more powerful than the TL5-7 kit) but from LBB4 onwards, it's obviously rendered obsolete by the high tech kit such as Gauss Rifles and PGMPs.

¹ Maybe two tech levels at the outside, but I'd like to see a good story about how the region came to be such a backwater while much higher tech forces are cruising around on its borders.

 

[Condottiere]

I've been giving this some thought, but there is a fundamental difference under what situations these weapons tend, or were intended, to be used for.

On a one to one confrontation, at short range, civilian weaponry should be able to deter or stop your opponent.

In a furball, you may want to have paramilitarized weaponry, with larger capacity, higher rate of fire and more stopping power.

On the open battlefield, the latest military hardware, inclusive protection.

 

[nobby-w]

Our chief complaint about the laser weapons in Traveller was that they weren't "man portable" enough. [ . . . ]

Under LBB1 encumberance rules, a laser rifle and its power pack was quite heavy, enough to put most characters into being encumbered. This could be an issue, although I tended to view laser rifles as largely being sniping weapons. Laser Carbines are still quite heavy, though.

I do recall a lot of angst regarding how powerful the Gauss rifle was.[ . . . ]

They are quite OP in CT, Striker and MT. On one occasion I saw a Gauss Rifle do 36D of damage in a single attack with Striker under a minor variant of the Integration with Traveller rules.

I approached this by nerfing the more powerful weapons in various ways discussed elsewhere in the thread. My approach to this was to re-balance the system rather than come up with contrived excuses as to why the party couldn't get hold of the weapons.

In practice it didn't really matter as much as folks think, because the base 'Integration with Traveller' Striker damage system was so OP to begin with. Even a moderately armed group of NPCs would pose a significant threat to most parties. The balance issues were prevalent enough that one had to consciously nerf the NPCs so as not to kill off the group's characters all the time.

 

[nobby-w]

[ . . . ]On a one to one confrontation, at short range, civilian weaponry should be able to deter or stop your opponent.[ .
. . ]

I think that the notion of a 'civilian' defensive weapon is peculiar to a regulatory environment. In some cases, certain weapons may be barred from civilian ownership, or capabilities may be restricted by regulations. Modern examples aside, regulations did restrict what peasants or other social classes might carry throughout many medieval or even ancient jurisdictions.

However, this distinction is by no means universal. In many cases there is no distinction. For example, in most countries any Tom, Dick or Harry gould go out and buy state-of-the-art firearms up until the first half of the twentieth century - often without needing any special permits. In other cases there could be regulation that essentially barred the notion of civilians owning weapons for defensive purposes at all, so there is no legal notion of a 'civilian' weapon.

In the published OTU material, it is stated that the Imperium isn't prescriptive about these matters unless they involve weapons of mass destruction.

Ergo, I'll argue that the notion of 'civilian' weaponry is peculiar to the jurisdiction, and in many cases it isn't a market in its own right. In such cases you're either buying something that's primarily intended for military use (legitimately or otherwise) or adapting a weapon that's not primarily intended for fire combat into the role. Some may be better than others.

 

[Blue Ghost]

nobby; it's why I didn't allow Gauss rifles for the first few years we played. Then one day my friend borrows my Book 4 Mercenary book, and just starts reading the various weapons, and he about had a heart attack. Seriously, I thought they were way OP'd then. To me the laser should have been the bad boy, but that's just my personal cinematic scifi thinking kicking in.

Further, IMTU, weapons of various TLs were usually available, unless the world's write up prohibited it by law. So, you could find a spear or a cudgel at the local TAS arms store at a high TL world, but they would be made out of high tensile alloys or polymers. Similarly you could buy the TL8/9 assault rifle on Efate, but, if you spend a few hundred or a few thousand extra credits more, you could buy the high tech version that could put a dent in stuff like combat armor (given that TL ammo was also available).

The reason this is pertinent to LASER weapons is that, to me at least, in an empire like the Imperium, there didn't seem to be any logic behind a TL 10 laser carbine built on an Imperial run world and a TL 15 version one or two jumps over run by some local planetary government. If they were both from near compatible TL worlds; i.e. there was trade and exchange going on between the two markets.

YMMV

I'm going to try and scrape up that other thread.

p.s. it also depended on the scenario. If you're trying to mimic a classic scifi book or film where your high tech guys are fighting low tech natives, then the TL difference makes a lot of sense. But if you're doing strictly OTU, then, again to me at least, the TL rule DMs seemed more problematic.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Here was the thread I was looking for;

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=5442&highlight=laser+rifle+battery

 

[aramis]

Real world, Lasers are little more effective than slug throwers. We can make effective combat lasers now; we don't because they have no better performance and higher mass and cost.

The GG should be the deadlier weapon, because it's able to dump more energy on target at range than a laser small enough to be man-portable; the diffraction limit of the laser makes it pretty limited.

 

[nobby-w]

nobby; it's why I didn't allow Gauss rifles for the first few years we played. [ . . . ]

The reason this is pertinent to LASER weapons is that, to me at least, in an empire like the Imperium, there didn't seem to be any logic behind a TL 10 laser carbine built on an Imperial run world and a TL 15 version one or two jumps over run by some local planetary government. [ . . . ]

That's about it. I am happy with a sci-fi setting where lasers, gauss rifles or ACRs (or whatever tech you fancy) are standard issue weapons for infantry, and whatever tech gets used in this application is going to be reflected elsewhere within a generation or two. I wasn't really happy with contrived reasons why they're not widely available, even if they're imported.

For my money, the issue is one of the balance of the system rather than trying to rationalise whether the party should be allowed to have access to a given tech. If the weapon is overpowered, the solution is to fix the balance issues with the system rather than to find contrived excuses as to why the party can't get it. A super weapon that costs half a million credits and is only available to Imperial forces is a pointless object. If it can't be introduced to the game without upsetting balance then you can't use it in the majority of cases. Either it just sits in a paragraph in Book 4 and never gets used, or you have to re-balance it so it can be used in the game.

For example, at the moment I am running a FATE space opera game. It's set in a homebrew 'verse that's quite a bit more pulpy than the OTU. Try to to imagine a sort of classic space opera setting with bits of star wars and cyberpunk rolled in. In this setting, high tech weapons (blasters, accelerator guns and laser weapons) are the mainstream technology and are widely used by pretty much everybody. Slug throwers are used in niche applications but are largely regarded as obsolete. When I designed the setting I deliberately telescoped the relative power of the weapons so that the variance is much less extreme than it is with Traveller. That way, Blasters are the prevalent technology and a sort of default weapon but are not overpowered, and even the most powerful small arms are not so powerful that they unbalance combat.

 

[McPerth]

Well, laser rifles are quite letal in Traveller, and so?

That's their mission, as weapons they are, and so I find it logical they are. I'd even say they are not enough so (5d damage, what means on average they will not kill a man, whose average damage capacity is 6d).

Sometimes we seem to forget taht weapons are made to damage or kill people, and we can expect higher TL ones to be more efficient on it...

OTOH, I don't see it too more powerful than the standard rifle, as claimed in the OP:

• their modifiers are not so better in CT (adventageous DM is for Dex B, distance modifiers are not too better than rifles, and armor DMs are only really adventageous against them if mesh or cloth are worn)
• there exists armor that is specifically against them
• smoke not only canceals, but also protects from them
• they are quite heavier than rifles
• they are quite more expensive than rifles
• while they can shoot more times per Power Pack than a rifle per round, once spent they need time to recharge, while a rifle just changes the clip
• cannot have bayonet attached if worst comes to worst, and I guess it's more delicate if trying to use it as a cudgel...

On the plus side:

• they have no recoil.
• they do 2d more damage (but in any case, likely result is the same: incapacitation of the target, but not killing it.
• the fact of being recharged means that you only need power, so making a unit so armed more supply light, as it needs no ammo.

So, I moslty expect them to be used on troops expected to fight in zero -G (where the weight problem is lessened and the no recoil is a true advantage) and those that need not to depend on supplies (commandos, etc), as a power plant may supply ammo for them.

 

[Blue Ghost]

That's about it. I am happy with a sci-fi setting where lasers, gauss rifles or ACRs (or whatever tech you fancy) are standard issue weapons for infantry, and whatever tech gets used in this application is going to be reflected elsewhere within a generation or two. I wasn't really happy with contrived reasons why they're not widely available, even if they're imported.

For my money, the issue is one of the balance of the system rather than trying to rationalise whether the party should be allowed to have access to a given tech. If the weapon is overpowered, the solution is to fix the balance issues with the system rather than to find contrived excuses as to why the party can't get it. A super weapon that costs half a million credits and is only available to Imperial forces is a pointless object. If it can't be introduced to the game without upsetting balance then you can't use it in the majority of cases. Either it just sits in a paragraph in Book 4 and never gets used, or you have to re-balance it so it can be used in the game.

Precisely. And as fanboyish as I've gotten about this game on this forum, truth be told, it is one of the reasons my older groups had put the game down in earnest a few times. I thought the laser rifle was a cool weapon, and I don't think it needs to be nerfed at all, but a better write up of the general background and its operation might be in order.

I've not read the MgT rules on the weapon, but strict interpretation of CT rules means you can potentially do 5D damage with one aimed shot per round, or 10D with two snapshots.

I think at one time our group ... I think it was one of the guys in my second or third group, said that there was no ROF for either rifle or carbine, and that you could unload essentially 500D into a target but simply holding down the trigger. I think my reaction was a firm "no". Because if you use his "simply hold the trigger" interpretation, then yeah, the weapon would need some serious reworking.

Otherwise I think it's fine for CT as is. Again, the official background and TL rules might be in order, as well as more variants on the weapon's technology;

LASER thread Links;
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=33215
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=5500
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=9983

 

[infojunky]

In this setting, high tech weapons (blasters, accelerator guns and laser weapons) are the mainstream technology and are widely used by pretty much everybody. Slug throwers are used in niche applications but are largely regarded as obsolete. When I designed the setting I deliberately telescoped the relative power of the weapons so that the variance is much less extreme than it is with Traveller.

This is a big part of the game I run too. The focus is more on knife and pistol agent sorta work. The lack od a selection of pistols and the the like is where I get sidelined at. In the end I started stealing from GURPs for weapon and armor ideas.

 

[kilemall]

Taking Laser Rifles out of the box in Striker, they are VERY lethal.

I backpedaled them so they do a range of damage, from 6D to nothing, depending on armor and where they hit. The big issue was applying the energy weapon rule bump up in addition to penetration- after some hemming and hawing, I decided the plasma/fusion family gets a 1D bump but lasers don't.

The big survival mechanism for that weapon is of course reflec. I'm sticking with the 'it's rare to get' meme but with the reboot of it primarily reflecting heat and not varying laser wavelengths.

So I have engineering and fire fighting suits that are external to other armor and much more available. They are clearly reflec-based and any laser user will ID quickly who is covered and who is not.

As for lethality, the laser rifle still does more penetration/damage then the Gauss Rifle per shot whether my system or standard rules, but the Gauss of course is all about the autofire.

Even so, the GR's penetration is worse against the commonly deployed cloth armor then the laser, and the CES is even against it. The same TL Combat Armor/BD is more protective against GR then Cloth is against rifles of it's TL.

An autorifle is deadlier against Cloth equipped targets then GRs are against CA.

It is instructive to compare the GR to the TL6 HMG (presumably the M-2 Browning), the GR strikes me as a man-portable main combat rifle with the punch of the Ma Deuce, but even so it's going to count on the autofire making the damage against best of class equipped opponents.

Of course, against unarmored targets GRs will utterly shred what they hit.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Some questions;
1) what is "CA" in terms of armor?
2) Are you using TLs as DMs? (i.e. a TL7 AR-15 gets a -DM against a TL10 cloth target)
3) What is your general argument here on Laser verse Gauss weaponry?

 

[kilemall]

Some questions;
1) what is "CA" in terms of armor?
2) Are you using TLs as DMs? (i.e. a TL7 AR-15 gets a -DM against a TL10 cloth target)
3) What is your general argument here on Laser verse Gauss weaponry?

If you are asking me......

1- CA is generally treated as Battle Dress armor, unpowered. So it has weight and doesn't give strength bonuses of various weapons, or allow the use of the cheaper versions of PGMP/FGMP.

2- no, I'm a Strikerholic, so that means any TL is built into the higher penetration or ROF or lighter or ammo count or combos of same, rather then a base TL mod.

For instance, a TL10 ACR could be construed as a TL10 AR-15 (probably the 7mm version), but it is using higher performing caseless ammo with presumably the rest of the gun set to handle the higher gas pressures, and has better range.

3- Lasers and Gauss weapons have different niches they fill, just as much as Pistol vs. SMG vs. Carbine/Assault vs. Battle Rifle. When analyzed in conjunction with the armor available at same intro TL or one above, they present similar patterns of a race of weapon advantage over armor or vice versa, with the higher tech PGMP/FGMPs and RAM GLs being the weapon systems that are exceedingly lethal compared to protection.

Overall of course the lethality gets higher per TL, especially against unarmored opponents.

 

[Blue Ghost]

CA = combat armor, I get it. Brain flatulence on my part.

I guess I'm not seeing the argument to tone down one of the key staples of the game.

Can you give an example of how you think the laser rifle or carbine might be overpowered in a combat session?