Everything About Ultra-Tech Weapons

Everything About Ultra-Tech Weapons

In this episode I would like to discuss Ultra-Tech weaponry. Most of the past posts were devoted to low-tech games, so it is time to shake things up. After all, I like both fantasy and sci-fi genres, and I grew up reading Heinlein’s novels. So, let’s open up GURPS Ultra-Tech and check the weapons chapter. In addition to that, I will talk about some fan-created content.

First things first, let’s talk about Ultra-Tech’s reputation. Some call it the worst GURPS book for the fourth edition alongside GURPS Magic. People will tell you stories of dysfunctional rules, inflated numbers, guns turning people into thin red mist, and disgustingly powerful shaped charge warheads. Is it true? Well, yes and no. From what I’ve gathered, many complaints stem from the GM thoughtlessly using Ultra-Tech as a gear catalog, simply telling the players to pick anything they want. If you open the book you will actually see a gear catalog, but even the introduction tells the GM to comb through the book and decide what is allowed and what is not. The first chapter is devoted to different technological advancement paths and suggested arrays of gear appropriate for certain genres and settings. It even has suggestions on how to retroactively change something that ends up being too powerful in the game. So, my most commonly given advice in this case still remains – read the book.

I will link some of the posts regards to this topic – one written by me where I compare damage and armor, and the rest by Mailanka, where he describes in detail how to pick and choose what technologies to allow and to ban.

- Ultra-Tech: Armor and Weapons Adjustments, Version 2

- Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 1 - Your Technological Concept and Core Activity

- Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 2 - Choose a Tech Level

- Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 3 - Choose Available Technology (Part 1: Familiar, Convenience and Standard Sci-Fi)

- Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 3 - Choosing Available Technology (Part 2: Miraculous Technology)

- Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 4 - Customize your Technology

- Ultra-Tech Frameworks: Step 5 - Putting it All Together

Other complaints about ultra-technological lethality often bring up situations such as armor being ineffective against weapons. The examples given usually compare military-grade LC1 weapons with civilian LC3 armor. License Class is a thing you always have to keep in mind when GMing an ultra-tech game. I have compared the damage output of weapons against armor on my blog and found that this problem is much less prominent than memes would tell you about. Although, I did find some outliers that do indeed deal way too much damage, and I will talk about them later. Also, using the Body Hits rule from GURPS High-Tech (p. 162) makes things significantly better. I’ve heard that Armor-as-Dice works well too, but I haven’t tried that one yet. But even if you get shot, ultra-tech medicine is so advanced, that you’ll be back on your feet in no time.

And now let’s finally get to the weapons, starting with the beam weapons. First, we have dazzling lasers that appear at TL8. These lasers deal no damage, but cause temporary blindness. Typically, they are used as crowd control weapons or to cause accidents. There’s only one dedicated dazzler weapon – the dazzler carbine. The rest of the table is devoted to various flashlights that have the dazzle mode. Speaking of dazzle mode – all high-energy lasers that I am going to talk about soon can be outfitted with the dazzle mode. However, while the normal dazzlers work as cone attacks, high-energy lasers in dazzle mode do not – they must hit face or eyes. After that we have blinding lasers. These ones use up more power but cause permanent blindness. Interestingly enough, there’s not even a single example of a dedicated blinding laser weapon. The table provides only statistics of a military ladar used to blind and a high-energy laser used in the blinding mode.

Finally, we arrive to our first damaging weapon – the high-energy lasers. These deal tight-beam burning damage with various armor divisors and additional modifiers that depends on the laser’s subtype. High-energy lasers appear at TL9, but only as mounted weapons or bulky sniper rifles. Portable TL9 laser weapons are chemically-powered, requiring the user to wear a backpack with corrosive chemicals. That’s dangerous. And here we have the first editing mistake of this chapter – the laser sniper rifle says that its chemical pack has the same statistics and vulnerabilities as a chemically-powered laser carbine, but the laser carbine becomes a thing only at TL10 as a solid state laser with no chemical pack mentioned. Your laser weapon selection is limited at TL9, but TL10 gives you access to all laser weapons, except for the laser crystal. Speaking of the laser crystal – I don’t think Beam Weapons (Pistol) skill is appropriate for it. GURPS High-Tech introduces a new skill – Guns (Wrist Gun), and I would also create the Beam Weapons (Wrist Gun) skill for such weapons.

The common traits for all high-energy laser weapons are:

-          Tight-beam burning damage;

-          Deal less damage than projectile weapons, particle beams, and plasma guns;

-          Very high Accuracy;

-          No recoil;

-          Silent;

-          Invisible;

-          Rain, fog, smoke, snow, and similar conditions grant extra DR against lasers;

-          Passes through non-laser-resistant transparent objects, increasing armor divisor to (10);

-          Cinematic lasers can be reflected by mirrors.

For the latter, I suggest using rules for the Sunbolt sorcery spell. Also, Accuracy is arguably way too high. I think that reducing it by a third, or maybe even halving it, rounding up, might be a good idea. If you allow Gunslinger in your games, be very careful, as you’re basically giving laser weapons a free +12 to hit or something like that. I have never allowed it in my games.

The default high-energy lasers that you see on the table are infrared lasers. These deal tight-beam burning damage with an armor divisor of (2). They can barely function underwater, basically becoming melee weapons.

The other options at TL9 are blue-green and ultraviolet lasers. Blue-green lasers deal the same damage, but drain double energy per shot, have halved rate of fire, but double the range. The most important thing about blue-green lasers is that they can be used underwater. Their underwater range is not great, but they still become viable underwater weapons. There is also a more realistic, but time-consuming approach to calculate the underwater range of a blue-green laser based on the murkiness of water on page 8 of Pyramid #3-26. It is not mentioned, but I think it is safe to assume that a blue-green laser beam is visible.

Ultraviolet lasers are space weapons. They deal half damage, but have triple the range of the infrared lasers. It is visible in the atmosphere, where its range is quite short.

At TL11 we gain access to polychromatic rainbow lasers. If you have an older revision of GURPS Ultra-Tech, some of the rainbow lasers are assigned to TL10 – this was errata’d later. Rainbow lasers improve the armor divisor from (2) to (3). They are visible, and can be used in atmosphere. In trace atmosphere and vacuum the beam defocuses – divide range by 10 and remove the armor divisor. Their underwater range is doubled compared to the infrared lasers – whole two yards. At TL11 they compete with blasters. Compared to them, they have worse penetration, but better range, accuracy, and rate of fire.

In addition to the rainbow lasers, at TL11 we have x-ray lasers. They improve the armor divisor even further – to (5), and gain the surge modifier. They have range that is measured in miles even for pistols, but only in vacuum. In a standard atmosphere it only has Range 7/20. Is it visible in the atmosphere? I don’t know, the description does not say anything. X-ray lasers cannot be used underwater at all.

At TL12 we have gamma-ray lasers, also known as grasers. I’ve seen multiple people misspell them as greasers though. Grasers inflict tight-beam burning surge damage with an armor divisor of (10). They have even higher range than the x-ray lasers, but they are still hindered by the atmosphere. However, their range is still decent for close-assault situations – 70/200 yards. Now remember I told you that I found some weapons that deal way too much damage? A few of them belong to the graser category. So, I suggest you to adjust the damage values as follows:

-          Graser Pistol: 3d(10) -> 2d+2 (10)

-          Heavy Graser Pistol: 4d(10) -> 3d(10)

-          Holdout Graser: 2d(10) -> 1d+2(10)

-          Dinosaur Graser: 8d(10) -> 7d(10)

-          Graser Carbine: 5d(10) -> 4d(10)

-          Graser Rifle: 6d(10) -> 5d(10)

These changes should make them not as overwhelming against armor of appropriate TL and LC.

All lasers, except for chemically-powered ones and rainbow lasers, can also be turned into pulse lasers. Alternatively, they can have a pulse mode integrated into them, allowing switching between normal and pulse lasers, but that costs a lot. Pulse lasers have double range, but their armor divisor is one step lower. Damage becomes crushing explosive instead of burning. The description says nothing about dropping the surge modifier for x-ray and gamma-ray lasers, but I think that crushing explosive surge damage sounds a bit off.

Next up we have the electrolasers. These weapons inflict minor burns linked with an HT-based affliction with an armor divisor of (2). Failure to resist stuns the victim. Works both on humans and electrical machines. As for normal lasers, smoke or fog gives extra DR. However, humidity imposes a penalty on rolls to hit. Electrolasers cannot be used underwater at all, according to GURPS Fathom Five from Pyramid #3-26. The beam is visible and as loud as a silenced pistol. In vacuum or trace atmospheres, electrolasers only deal minor burning damage without the affliction. Also, it is not specified whether this is tight-beam burning damage or not, but I assume this is tight-beam burning. Optionally, electrolasers can be outfitted with the lethal setting that causes a heart attack on a failure by 5 or more. However, there’s no cost modifier or anything, so I guess this is a free feature. I can see situations where a character can only get his hands on a civilian model without the lethal setting and use his Armoury skill to hack it into a lethal electrolaser. In general, this is a non-lethal police weapon, and lethal setting could be used for assassinations. There is an underbarrel electrolaser, which is a nice option. What annoys me is that underbarrel attachments in this book are given weight, but they do not affect the weapons ST or Bulk parameters. GURPS Ultra-Tech treats electrolasers as non-superscience weapons, but I remember reading somewhere that this was based on outdated assumptions and the current understanding of technology and science makes these weapons impossible. But don’t quote me on that.

Next up we have the microwave weapons which are divided into two categories – microwave area denial and microwave disruptors. Both appear at TL9. MAD weapons project a cone of microwaves that deliver an HT-based affliction by heating up the skin to 130F. These agonizing weapons are used as crowd control. I believe that this should somehow interact with the Temperature Tolerance advantage, but there’s nothing about that in the text.

Microwave disruptors project a cone of microwaves that disrupts electronics. This is an HT-based affliction that causes shutdown or unconsciousness. This is an area contact agent, so it ignores DR unless it is Sealed. Note that most of the gadgets have electronic components, including weapons, so this is a good disarming tool. Also, do not forget that gadgets can be made rugged, making them more resistant to EMP disruption.

GURPS Fathom Five from Pyramid #3-26 adds that all microwave weapons have their range divided by 1,000 underwater.

Next up we have the neural weapons category that consists of neural disruptors and mindrippers. Both of them only affect living creatures with a functional nervous system. Using a neural weapon designed for terrestrial life may cause inadvertent effects on aliens, and vice versa. Neural beams are silent and invisible. Neural weapons are superscience weapons.

Neural disruptors appear at TL11. They create conical beams that cause HT-based afflictions with effects that depend on the setting. They are contact agents, ignoring unsealed DR. The available settings are agony, ecstasy, neural stun, paralysis, and seizure. The first two can cause heart attacks on particularly bad resistance rolls. At TL12 we have an additional death beam setting that causes a heart attack. You can also have a multi-setting neural disruptor. If we look at the weapon table we notice that the semi-portable version of these weapons have Rate of Fire of 10. Do you know how rapid fire works with cone or area attacks? It doesn’t. You’re going to see this in Ultra-Tech a couple more times later. But anyway, I think it is safe to assume that it was intended to be Rate of Fire 1, because otherwise it just does not work. And it isn’t even mentioned in the errata. Personally, I don’t think that neural disruptors would cause any balance problems, so I would allow them without any adjustments.

Mindrippers appear at TL12. They act in a similar way, but cause coma. Plus, they scan the brain of the victim and upload it into the gun to be emulated later. This is the only way to perform brain scans at a distance, but this is TL12 superscience after all.

The next big category is particle accelerators. The first subtype is charged particle beams, also known as blasters. They appear at TL10 as heavy mounted blaster cannons, and their handheld forms come into being at TL11. Compared to TL11 lasers, they have better penetration, but worse range, accuracy, and rate of fire. Blasters inflict burning surge damage with an armor divisor of (5). The beam is visible, but nothing is said about it being silent. In trace atmosphere or vacuum, blasters have their accuracy halved and range divided by 5. So, it’s better to use x-ray lasers in space at TL11. Just like the lasers, blasters are recoilless. Blasters also can have a stun setting that works similarly to an electrolaser, but works in any environment and has a better armor divisor. Also, it does not simply stun, but cause unconsciousness. It doubles the cost though, so this setting is very expensive. GURPS Fathom Five from Pyramid #3-26 provides mechanics for committing suicide via firing blasters underwater.

Now let’s close Ultra-Tech and take a look at GURPS Ultra-Tech Design Notes by David Pulver, quite a controversial article. It introduces another type of particle accelerators – neutral particle beams. The heading says that these appear at TL10, but the text says that they appear one TL later than charged particle beams, implying that they should be TL11 devices with their handheld versions appearing only at TL12. In atmosphere, they act as normal blasters, but they do not have their range reduced in trace atmosphere or vacuum. There is nothing about the cost, so I guess they cost as much as normal blasters. However, the neutral particle beams are also described by David Pulver in his Blaster and Laser Design article in Pyramid #3-37. According to that article, neutral particle beams really should belong to the same TL as charged particle beams, and they deal burning surge radiation damage with no armor divisor. They can be switched to fire a blaster beam with identical stats, but using half the power. I think that this version is better, although the lack of the armor divisor is suspicious. In addition, the article allows the stun setting to be applied to the neutral particle beams too. GURPS Fathom Five from Pyramid #3-26 mentions that neutral particle beams can be used underwater, but their range is divided by 1,000.

Back in Ultra-Tech, antiparticle beams, also known as pulsars, appear at TL11 as heavy mounted pulsar cannons, and their handheld forms come into being at TL12. Pulsars inflict crushing explosive surge radiation damage with an armor divisor of (3). That’s what the text says, but the table omits surge and radiation. If we look in the Basic Set, you cannot even add these modifiers to crushing attacks. So, this is either an exception or an editing mistake. Personally, I keep the entire damage modifier soup, I think it fits well. Ultra-Tech doesn’t say that, but the Blaster and Laser Design article says that in air, a pulsar’s range is limited to 1,000 yards divided by the pressure in Earth atmospheres. It also confirms the surge and radiation modifiers. Just like blasters, pulsars are just an expensive form of suicide when used underwater.

The next category is sonic weapons that is comprised of sonic nauseators, sonic screamers, and sonic stunners. All of them require an atmosphere to function, with their range depending on the air pressure. In trace atmospheres or vacuum, they only work if pressed directly against the victim. Sonic weapons can be built specifically to be used underwater instead of air. Their range is doubled in that case. GURPS Fathom Five from Pyramid #3-26, however, says that this only applies to sonic stunners – sonic nauseators are useless underwater. It does not say anything about sonic screamers, which probably means that they can be built for underwater use.

All sonic weapon categories suffer from the aforementioned rapid fire cone attack problem. You should replace Rate of Fire 10 with Rate of Fire 1.

Sonic nauseators appear at TL9. These weapons project an invisible beam that is inaudible to everyone but the target. This is a hearing-based affliction that requires an HT roll to resist. Failure causes partial loss of hearing and moderate pain. A failure by 5 or more causes deafness, retching, and makes the victim shit his pants.

Sonic screamers are superscience weapons that appear at TL9. They project a cone of sonic vibrations that inflict corrosion damage and deafness. These weapons are banned in my games. Corrosion damage of this magnitude erodes armor away in no time, making screamers one of the most dangerous weapons. Also, since this is a cone attack, it corrodes all armor at once, not a single piece. Screamers are a big no-no for me, even though I like the concept. I also have to nitpick – the tactical screamer is not listed as a superscience weapon in the table.

Sonic stunners are non-superscience weapons that appear at TL10. These ones fire a more narrow beam that acts as a normal attack rather than a cone. It does not require the victim to be able to hear, and does not ignore DR. However, this HT-based affliction has an armor divisor of (5). If it hits a limb or extremity, it disables it. If it hits anything else, it causes unconsciousness. The weapon description says that it disables the nervous system, so I assume that it may affect aliens differently, just like the neural disruptors.

The next category on the list is plasma weapons. This one consists of three (yes, three) categories – plasma flamers, plasma guns, and plasma lances. All of them are superscience weapons that use non-standard power cells. While plasma weapons deal high damage, they also are counteracted by laminate armor. This is a bit messy, because, for example, Ultra-Tech says that clamshell armor is laminate, but does not say anything about its DR being doubled against plasma weapons and shaped charges. Some battlesuits explicitly say that they are laminate and have double DR against these weapons. However, the Ultra-Tech Armor Design article from Pyramid #3-96 pretty much confirms that clamshell armor does have double DR against shaped charges and plasma bolt. So, generally speaking, whatever works against shaped charges also works against plasma weapons.

Plasma flamers appear at TL9. Flamers are messy in Ultra-Tech. They are described as Jet weapons, but their table only partially agrees with it. I suggest giving them a proper flamethrower treatment, replacing their Rate of Fire 1 with Jet and allowing them to use proper flamethrower rules from GURPS High-Tech, including the ability to play them over an area with All-Out Attack (Jet). Flamers deal burning damage with no armor divisor. Just burning, not tight-beam burning.

Plasma guns appear at TL10 as heavy weapons, becoming lighter at TL11. They deal burning explosive damage with an armor divisor of (2). However, the description says that ionized plasma projectiles short out electronic circuits, so I guess this was supposed to be burning explosive surge damage instead. I know, Ultra-Tech is messy in some places, but we’re only scratching the surface here. Unlike all other beam weapons, plasma guns actually have recoil! This is easy to forget. There’s one more thing that you might have caught in the description – before the plasma bolt is launched, the gun produces a laser beam to create a tunnel in the atmosphere for the bolt to travel. This seems to imply that prism smoke from page 160 of GURPS Ultra-Tech will cause plasma bolts to explode upon contact with the smoke, protecting the target hiding behind the smoke. That’s something to keep in mind.

Plasma lances do not exist in Ultra-Tech. They appear as a special type of warhead in the GURPS Ultra-Tech Designer’s Notes, and as a single statted up vehicular weapon in the Modular Mecha article in Pyramid #3-51. Plasma lances have very short range, but they deal very high burning explosion damage with an armor divisor of (10). They are disgusting, and I love them.

The next category is gravity weapons. This is a completely superscience category that consists of force beams and graviton beams.

Force beams appear at TL10. They project blunt force in any medium, completely silent and invisible. Force beams deal crushing damage with the double knockback modifier. Optionally, they may be outfitted with the kinetic stun setting that also adds the no wounding modifier. Nothing is said about the cost increase, but I would price it as a 10% price increase. While seemingly less lethal than other weapons, force beams have a hidden strength – knockback. Damage from collision treats rigid armor as flexible, so if you have to fight an impenetrable combat walker, you can actually harm the enemy by smashing him against the walls. These are excellent weapons, I love them, and I allow them in my games.

Graviton beams appear at TL11. They project oscillating gravity fields that crush or vibrate enemies to death. While they deal relatively low damage, they ignore DR, unless it is provided by a force screen, but even force screen have their DR divided by 100. The concept sounds cool, but I am really not a fan of weapons that flat out ignore defenses. I ban them in my games, and I suggest you to exercise caution with them.

Now, there’s only some very exotic weapons left. All of them are ridiculously powerful, so I forbid them in my games. Be very careful with them. Disintegrators are superscience weapons that appear at TL12. They deal huge corrosion damage ignoring non-cosmic DR. Force screens have their DR divided by 10, and stasis webs block them completely. Optionally, they can have a selective effect, disintegrating only certain materials. Also, they can be set to affect an entire hex, dealing large-area injury to everything inside. Needless to say, this is way too powerful. There’s also reality disintegrators that ignore even force screens, unless they are reality-stabilized.

Conversion beams turn a portion of the enemy into antimatter. They deal corrosion damage with an armor divisor of (10) and have follow-up burning explosion surge radiation damage with no armor divisor. Seems more manageable than disintegrators, but I still wouldn’t allow them.

Ghost particle beams are vehicular weapons that appear at TL11. On a direct hit, they produce an internal burning explosion that ignores DR. Reality-stabilized force screens protect with one fifth of their DR. On a miss, they produce a normal explosion that does not ignore DR.

Displacers simply send an entire area into another space, time, or dimension. Sure, this is cool, but this is also an instant ban. I have no idea why they have Accuracy of 18.

And the last category is mind disruptors. These are superscience weapons that appear at TL12, but in GURPS Psi-Tech it is said that you can assign them to any TL. These beams carry a Will-based affliction that ignores DR. Mind disruptors cannot affect anyone with IQ 0 or the Digital Mind advantage, but Mind Shield provides a bonus to resist. Like neural disruptors, they come in four different settings that can be combines in a single weapon – hypnagogic beam, death beam, insanity beam, and psionic neutralizer.

After all that, GURPS Ultra-Tech gives us four options that can be applied to beam weapons. All of them are superscience. Superscience power cells increase the number of shots fivefold. Gravitic focus facilitates very long range space combat. I would suggest you to be careful when allowing it for handheld weapons. The next two options are field-jacketed beams and FTL beams. I strongly recommend you to forget about their existence, as they really upend the internal balance and make beam weapons the superior choice in absolutely any situation. This is a big “no” for me.

Lastly, we have a sidebar about hotshots and overheating. I really like this rule, as it makes malfunction and rate of fire more important, while also allowing beam weapons to increase their damage – something they lack compared to slugthrowers. The gatling option is a nice way to differentiate between different weapon models too.

That’s it for beam weapons in GURPS Ultra-Tech, but there is one very important Pyramid article – Blaster and Laser Design from Pyramid #3-37. This article allows you to design your own beam weapons. However, it does not provide rules for some of the beams, such as plasma rifles. And this is where we have enough fan-created content on the various blogs. Let’s look through all of it.

First, let’s inspect the biggest resource: Generic Universal Roleplaying Blog, which we will go through in the chronological order.

The first relevant article is Plasma Guns, Re-Energized! This is a great post that expands the design system, allowing you to create plasma guns. It also presents some optional rules. The one I find interesting is a more realistic treatment of plasma guns, where there’s no laser beam to burn through the atmosphere, and the plasma is launched in something of a vortex ring. In that case, it should not be blocked by prism smoke, I think, but range is significantly shorter. I even think that these options can coexist in the game world, if prism smoke is a problem. This post also corrects the formulas to devise ST and Bulk values for all weapons in the design system, presents a way to scale weapon DR and HT and possible time of sustained fire with TL, and describes a way to adjust ST values for hotshotted plasma guns. A great post, I recommend you to read it even if you’re not designing your own plasma guns and using the ones from Ultra-Tech.

The next one is Plasma Guns, Re-Energized! Addendum. This one gives us even more options for plasma guns – built-in optical sight, new optional Beam Weapons specialties, a less-lethal diffuse option. My favorite is the plasma blaster option that allows you to create plasma shotguns. This post also expands the design system to include plasma flamers and plasms lances.

Better Living Through Superior Firepower is a nice post with many plasma weapons created with the aforementioned design system.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: More Options for the Blaster and Laser Design System well, gives us more options. This post describes how to:

-      Make weapon models for TLs lower or higher than the TL of the weapon’s introduction, allowing you to create prototypes or next-gen versions of weapons. This is excellent.

-          Make cheaper, but heavier weapons. This is great too.

-          Integrate chemical power packs into the design system. Less useful, but very neat nonetheless.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: MOAR DAKKA! significantly improves the way the design system handles rate of fire.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: MOAR DAKKA Revisited somewhat revised these rules. I highly recommend using either one of these.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: Do You Have The Strength? yet again fixes the wonky ST formula from the design system article. Personally, I use a different formula that I came up with myself, but this one is good too.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: More Blaster and Laser Design System Tweaks makes focal arrays more granular.

Freeze! introduces a new beam weapon type – a superscience freeze ray. This weapon becomes a thing at TL9. Freeze rays deal fatigue freezing damage with linked binding to represent the victim icing over. It also provides all the necessary numbers to integrate it into the design system. Pretty cool, eh?

Ultra Tech Quickie: Rattling and Gatling provides more detailed rules for using and designing gatling beam weapons.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: Liquid Cooling System For Beam Weapons expands the aforementioned gatling rules even further, introducing rules for liquid cooling.

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quicky: Turbo Beam Cooling has another cooling option which is... cool.

Stellar Dynamics PGD-1 LAMP may at first seem just as an example of a designed weapon, but it also has rules for disposable one-shot weapons with a backblast that can be integrated into the design system. Very nice.

Ultra-Tech Quickie: I'm Ah Chargin' Ma Lazor! is yet another expansion of the design system, introducing weapons that have to be charged up for some time before firing. Essentially, fractional rate of fire weapons. Very nice.

Musings on Things that Affect Beam Weapons Accuracy is exactly what it says on the title. It’s worth a read if you want to adjust accuracy values for beam weapons.

High-Tech: TL 8 Lasers expands the design system, allowing you to create TL8 lasers.

Ultra-Tech: New Laser Options provides more detailed rules for different wavelengths of lasers, lasers and eye safety, and, most importantly, introduces a new beam type – high-output pulse laser. This one appears at TL10, deals disgusting amounts of piercing damage, but has very low range. I really like this one, especially considering that the author provides all the necessary data to design such weapons, as always.

Ultra-Tech Ultra-Quickie: Electrolaser Design adds one of the missing beam types to the design system – the electrolasers.

Ultra-Tech Firepower: MAD about Disruptors adds microwave weapons to the design system.

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Ramblings on Ultra-Tech Missile and How to Make them I Guess designing missiles is something that has been missing and something that is necessary if you want to make a wide range of different rocket launchers.

There’s another GURPS blog that touched upon this topic – Hard Maths. There are fewer posts, but they are pretty good.

Equipment Locker: New Beams for Blaster and Laser Design expands the design system with new beams – electrolaser, sonic screamer, sonic stunner, neural disruptor, mind disruptor, plasma flamer, plasma gun, and disintegrator. Electrolasers and plasma weapons are covered in much more detail on the previous blog, but the rest of the beams are new. Very nice!

Equipment Locker: Beam SMGs and Beam Staffs has two new configurations for the beam weapon design system – SMG and staff.

Equipment Locker: Prismatic Muskets described low-tech beam weapons. Cool!

Equipment Locker: Sonic Disruptors introduces a new beam weapon type – sonic disruptors. Basically, sonic screamers, but better. I would be very careful with these. Again, there are all the numbers required to plug them into the design system.

Equipment Locker: Lightning Guns, Galvanised gives us yet another beam weapon type – electrobeam. Basically, this is a lethal electrolaser that deals actual damage. Unfortunately, no numbers for the design system.

Equipment Locker: Boser Weapons gives us another beam weapon type – boser weapons. These deal corrosion incendiary damage with an armor divisor of (10) and are not superscience. I would be very careful allowing these, they look way too powerful to me. But the concept is very cool!

That’s it for Hard Maths. Of course, I have to show off some of my own creations.

Ultra-Tech: Hardlight Guns is a post that describes superscience TL11 weapons that focus hardened light. The idea was to have a weapon that can readjust its focal array to deal different types of damage. The numbers are probably way off, this was a low effort post from a long time ago.

Ultra-Tech: Singularity Beams is a post with a new beam type integrated into the design system. Singularity beams harness the energy of a miniature black hole, pulling the target towards the shooter, dealing corrosion damage, and irradiating it. I would be careful with these, corrosion damage is no joke.

And that’s it for beam weapons. All the expansions for the design system might seem overwhelming, but I really like it. I even wrote my own program to automate weapon creation with all these expansions integrated.

Download link - version 0.28

Forgot to mention – there’s also a very well-known Pizard’s website that houses not only GURPS Animalia that I use frequently, but also a weapon design system for both beam weapons and more conventional guns. I haven’t delved deep into it, but check this one out!

But let’s move on to the next weapon category – fluid projectors. These are separated into two groups – sprays and vortex ring projectors. Both of them deliver aerosols or gasses, but do it in two different ways. Sprays are jets, while vortex ring projectors, also known as VRPs, create something like a smoke ring that can be bounced off walls. The ring deals minor crushing damage, but serves as a very interesting way of delivering aerosols at a distance. The fact that the underbarrel VRP weighs whole five pounds but does not affect the weapon’s ST annoys me. There isn’t much in terms of fan content; I think I am the only one who touched this topic in my VortexRing Projector Design System post. So, now you can make your own bouncy smoke ring gun. That post also has some new gasses.

And now let’s get to what’s probably the messiest part of GURPS Ultra-Tech – guns and launchers. You’ve probably heard many horror stories about them. In my opinion, criticism is overexaggerated. Things here are bad, but not that bad.

First, we have conventional and ETC guns. These appear before TL9, but since this is the Ultra-Tech book, they start at TL9. And if you compare the numbers with those found in GURPS High-Tech, you will find that many of the TL9 weapons are actually worse than their older counterparts. I guess that’s because Ultra-Tech was written before High-Tech. Then, I think there’s something off about LC here. Storm Rifle, Anti-Materiel Rifle, and Payload Rifle deal extreme amounts of damage compared to the armor values for these LC. I suggest moving the Storm Rifle and Anti-Materiel Rifle to LC 2, and the Payload Rifle to LC 1.

Most of TL9 conventional slugthrowers are assumed to use caseless ammunition, but some few use plastic cases or preloaded barrels. The description of preloaded barrels mentions extreme rates of fire that nullify recoil, but Ultra-Tech was written before High-Tech, where the rules for high-cyclic controlled bursts first appeared. I will mention this topic later again.

Let’s take a look at the ammunition table. I’ve seen people ask what the letters mean, so let’s decipher them:

CLP – caseless pistol

CL – caseless

CLR – caseless rifle

PC – plastic casing

PLB – preloaded barrel

Now, about the stats being too low – this problem was partially handled by Douglas Cole, who is an expert on ballistics. He has an interesting post series on his blog called GunDay, where he redesigns conventional firearms. I will link them all.

GunDay: GURPS Ultra-Tech Pistols

GunDay: The TL9 Pistol – Design Directions (GURPS)

GunDay: GURPS Ultra-Tech SMGs and PDWs

GunDay: GURPS Ultra-Tech Rifles

Gunday Continued: Ultra-Tech Rifles (Part 2)

But that’s the guns using the standard propellant. We have three additional options. It is not said anywhere in the book, but I asked people who know better than me, and they told me that both the gun and ammunition are made for a specific propellant in mind. So, you cannot load ETC bullets into a standard propellant gun.

The first propellant option is liquid propellant. Liquid propellant guns require a propellant bottle that must be reloaded separately. Their ammunition is smaller, meaning that they get a 50% increase in their Shots statistic. You can also vary the velocity of the round – you can fire standard rounds, low velocity rounds, and boosted velocity rounds. Boosted velocity rounds deal +1 per die damage and have increased range, but count as 1.5 shots for the purpose of draining the propellant bottle. Low velocity rounds deal half damage, have halved range, but are quiet. Each shot counts as one fourth of a shot for the purpose of draining the propellant bottle. This becomes a nightmare to track in the game!

The second propellant option is electrothermal-chemical, also known as ETC. Just like liquid propellant, ETC is available for small arms at TL9. In addition to ammunition, they require a power cell that must be reloaded separately. That can be a hassle to track in-game too. Remember that every weapon (including beam weapons) has an internal B-cell that powers its electronics, and that gatling weapons have an additional power cell to power the rotation. Still, it’s probably easier to track than liquid propellant. As written in the book, ETC guns have 1.5 times damage and range of normal guns. And this is where things get ridiculous, as even without using Douglas Cole’s improved weapons, we get extraordinarily high damage values that overpower both armor and any beam weapons of that TL. David Pulver suggests in one of his forumposts to reduce ETC damage and range modifiers to 1.25, effectively giving them +1 per die of damage. This makes things much more manageable. He also suggested boosted ETC with a 1.4 modifier, but I’m not sure what’s that supposed to mean.

The third propellant option is the infamous electrothermal-kinetic, also known as ETK. This propellant option was introduced by David Pulver in his GURPS Ultra-Tech Designer’s Notes. ETK slugthrowers appear at TL10, they get double the damage, double the range, plus the small ammo and variability settings for liquid propellant guns. They also have additional Accuracy, and require a power cell. This is ridiculously broken, again outclassing every other TL10 weapon and maybe even some TL11 weapons as well, making armor useless as a side effect. David Pulver himself pretty much admitted this to being a mistake, suggesting to reduce the damage and range modifiers to 1.6. Personally, I do things a little bit differently. I treat the nerfed ETC with the 1.25 modifier as ETC at TL9, and I treat ETC as written in GURPS Ultra-Tech as TL10 ETK. This works perfectly for me, keeping TL10 ETK guns in line with electromagnetic guns and beam weapons. Also, isn’t this superscience? I don’t see the superscience symbol in the article.

Also, what I find off about the boosted or lowered velocities and propellants in general is that damage is changed, but it does not affect ST or Recoil. Weird.

If you feel that Ultra-Tech is not enough, there’s additional conventional firearms statted up in Pyramid #3-37.

Forgot to mention that conventional firearms do not work well in space. However, they can be made space-proof, using the rules from page 7 of Pyramid #3-55. Speaking of space guns, there are also recoilless guns that compensate the recoil with either a dangerous backblast or cold plastic flakes. Recoilless rifles in the fourth edition only exist in the table at the back of GURPS Transhuman Space: Changing Times. And these ones have cold backblast. Obviously, recoilless ammunition is not appropriate for normal guns and vice versa.

Guns also do not work too well underwater. But at TL10 they can use actively stabilized supercavitating bullets from page 8 of Pyramid #3-26.

Now that the conventional slugthrowers are out of the way, we have gas-powered air guns. This group of weapons includes various needlers, paint guns, tangler pistols, and even an ice gun that fires icicles. Again, Ultra-Tech was written before High-Tech, so I would move the wrist needler to the Guns (Wrist Gun) skill. Most of these guns can be made out of non-metallic materials to bypass metal detectors.

Next up with we have electromagnetic guns – gauss guns, mass drivers, coilguns, railguns – whatever you want to call them. They appear as heave weapons at TL9 and personal weapons at TL10. The projectiles are small – most of the gauss guns deal small piercing damage. Some damage types and Accuracy values might be off in your book; check the errata. By default, electromagnetic guns have an armor divisor of (3) and require a power cell. They also can fire boosted velocity shots and low velocity shots, just like the liquid propellant guns. If you use them as is, the only outlier is the gauss rifle, as it seems to penetrate armor of the appropriate TL and LC way too good. However, it still is worse than an ETC rifle without any tweaks. Even when used with tweaked ETK rules, gauss weapons aren’t really comparable. For that, Jason Levine, also known as PK, has devised the following changes:

1. Increase the basic damage of all electromagnetic guns by 25%, rounding up to the nearest whole die (or multiplier, for "6dxN" damage). Leave any "adds" as-is. For example, the Gauss CAW goes from 8d to 10d, while the Gauss Rifle goes from 6d+2 to 8d+2.

2. All 4mm rounds do piercing (pi) rather than small piercing (pi-). Yes, they're thin, but they're also long, and thus have considerable mass.

3. Drop the (3) armor divisor from all electromagnetic guns. Their standard ammo is fast but relatively fragile, which isn't great against armor.

4. Remove all restrictions on electromagnetic guns loading APHC, APDS, or APEP ammo -- so you can get that armor divisor back by loading one of these ammo types. The (2) armor divisor from APHEX warheads is now an improvement, not a downgrade. (See Ultra-Tech, pp. 152).

I have used these rules, and I must say that they work very well. Gauss guns become competitive to TL10 beam weapons and conventional slugthrowers. Isn’t that great?

Also, some numbers on the table are off. For example, the 40mm railgun has a loaded magazine weighing 150 pounds. This magazine holds 200 rounds, each weighing 6 pounds. The gauss minigun does not require a separate power cell for the gatling mechanism, unlike the conventional minigun. Maybe it is powered by the cell that powers the firing mechanism?

Electromagnetic guns do not work too well underwater. But at TL10 they can use actively stabilized supercavitating bullets from page 8 of Pyramid #3-26. They can be used in space with no problems, it seems.

It pains me, but there is one type of electromagnetic weapons that did not make it to the fourth edition of GURPS. The superwire weapons that fire hardened monowire segments are described in GURPS Vehicles for the third edition, but I have no idea how they would work in the fourth edition.

In terms of fan-created content, there’s much less of it. GURB has two posts devoted to gauss guns – Have Gauss, Will Travel; and Gauss Weapons, Reloaded! And I also have one electromagnetic-adjacent post with monodisk guns – guns that fire rings of monowire. This is superscience, of course.

And now I present you a very interesting post from the Hard Maths blog that is related to both conventional firearms and electromagnetic guns:

Playbook: High-Cyclic Controlled Bursts for Ultra-Tech Guns – this post backports rules for high-cyclic controlled bursts from High-Tech to Ultra-Tech. It can be applied to both conventional firearms and electromagnetic guns. The latter even get it for free! I like this a lot.

The next step in the projectile weapon evolution is the grav guns. These superscience weapons appear at TL11. Grav guns use artificial gravity fields to accelerate hyperdense slivers to a high fraction of light speed. These slivers deal impaling incendiary damage with an armor divisor of (10) and cause no recoil. In an atmosphere, the shot is preceded with a laser beam, just like for plasma bolts. And here we have the question of prism smoke again. It seems to me that prism smoke should stop grav guns. Honestly, I don’t mind that, as they are very powerful. During my number tests, I’ve found two weapons that deal way too much damage. Nerfing them slightly makes things better. I suggest the following changes:

-          Reduce the damage of the grav needle rifle from 4d(10) to 3d+2(10);

-          Reduce the damage of the sniper grav gun from 8d(10) to 7d(10).

Honestly, it might be a good idea to decease their Accuracy by 30-50% or something like that. Really, these weapons are more similar to lasers than to firearms, but have an even higher ammo capacity. With these tweaks, they should be competitive with TL10 ETK and electromagnetic guns with TL11 ammo and TL11 beam weapons.

Grav guns do not work well underwater, but they can use actively stabilized supercavitating slivers from page 8 of Pyramid #3-26. I have no idea how that would work, sounds silly.

Next up we have the gyrocs. Appearing at TL9, they fire self-propelled tiny rockets. They are very lightweight and very quiet. However, their ammo is bulky and expensive. Also, they deal much less damage when fired at a target within 10 yards, as the rockets take time to accelerate. Usually, the gyrocs have a nasty warhead with a homing system. The book even tells you that most gyrocs use homing ammunition. The description of the homing ammunition tells you that it travels at a speed equal to the gun’s 1/2D range. Gyrocs have no 1/2D. Does that mean that homing gyroc rockets reach the target immediately? Or is this a mistake? I haven’t found a way to decipher it, so I treat homing ammunition speed as one fifth of the maximum range for the gyrocs. This is very confusing.

Page 8 of Pyramid #3-26 says that gyrocs can be used underwater. At a range of 10 yards or less, they work normally, but with halved Accuracy. Outside of that distance, they have their range divided by 100. The article also introduced gytorps – underwater torpedo launchers that deal insignificant impact damage, but can still carry non-kinetic warheads. At TL10, gyrocs can use actively stabilized supercavitating rockets instead.

All gyrocs described in Ultra-Tech use 15mm ammunition. But there is a GURB blogpost about 30mm gyrocs.

After that we have rocket and missile launchers. There’s not much to say here, they launch large rockets with effects that depend on the warhead, and have a dangerous backblast. Each missile costs a lot, and this price skyrockets when you add the warhead and/or homing systems. This chapter also includes the various homing systems. Keep in mind that some of them can fit into simple bullets at high TL. And there are also brilliant weapons that are capable of autonomous target selection.

Lastly, we have hand grenades. These come in several forms – standard thrown grenades of various sizes, saucer grenades that can be bounced around corners, and limpet mines that can stick to a target or be worn defensively. There’s a lot of options, as ultra-tech grenades are smart. There are fixed delays, detonation on command, impact detonation, anti-tamper systems, sensor triggering. Great!

After that, we have a short chapter devoted to firearm accessories. By default, all TL9 and higher firearms have a multispectral laser sight, a HUD link, a recognition grip or transponder ring, and a diagnostic computer for free. If you do not like that, feel free to make them optional or even restrict them to, for example, LC 2. That way most of the characters will have proper gunfights instead of sticking out their weapons from behind a corner and aiming through the HUD link and camera from safety. Most of the accessories are described in a much more detailed fashion in the Tactical Shooting: Tomorrow article from Pyramid #3-55. This includes cost reductions, various modifications, additional accessories, rules for using guns in space, and an update to the HUD link rules from GURPS Ultra-Tech to bring it in line with the rules from High-Tech. It’s an excellent article.

From the accessories described in Ultra-Tech, I want to mention the gravitic compensator. I strongly suggest banning it, as it allows all characters to effortlessly haul around semi-portable weapons. Well, maybe you want that, but I don’t.

For more accessories, check out High-Tech and Tactical Shooting. Some of the accessories described there are appropriate for ultra-tech guns, such as basic weapon camouflage, various muzzle attachments, quality modifiers, and folding stock.

The next section is devoted to warheads and ammunition. This section contains some things that gave Ultra-Tech its bad reputation. Most of it is absolutely okay, but there are a few exceptional ammunition types or warheads. First, armor-piercing enhanced penetrator, also known as APEP is a bit too strong in small arms at TL9. I was suggested to move it to TL10 for small arms, and I think that it’s a good tweak. Shaped charge warheads are more or less okay, but I think that their cost is too low. I suggest increasing it from double normal cost to fifteen times normal cost. And, of course, the infamous high explosive multi-purpose, also known as HEMP. Just pretend that it doesn’t exist. I’ve run number tests, and even if you use laminate armor, blast foam, force shields, or any other anti-shaped charge defenses, you still are going to die in a single hit. If you insist on keeping them, at least increase their cost from double normal cost to twenty times normal cost.

There are some additional warhead options in Pyramid #3-12, Pyramid #3-51, and GURPS Ultra-Tech Designer’s Notes.

As for the fan content, GURB has got you covered. I can point out the following posts:

Sword: Bringing the HEAT – this post has rules on how to create custom HEAT warheads.

Warheads R Us – this is a long, detailed post on how to create any custom warheads of any sizes and types. Excellent work right here.

Ultra-Tech Ultra-Quickie: How Much Explosives Are In a Ultra-TechWarhead? – is something of a follow-up post to Warheads R Us.

Ultra-Tech Ultra Quickie: Frag Out! – this post provides more options for fragmentation grenades, which are quite lacking in Ultra-Tech.

Ultra-Tech Firepower: Salvo Explosively Impelled Munitions – this post details some fictional ammunition types. Very flashy.

SATNUC: Lances of Star Fire – and this post will let you create shaped charge nuclear warheads. Can’t imagine a situation where you would need one.

And we’re still not done. The next chapter is melee and thrown weapons. Ultra-Tech was written before Cost Factors were a thing, so this section reads a bit off. Basically, almost the entire physical weapons section is outdated. It was updated in Pyramid #3-51 on pages 9-10. Aside from the physical weapons, there’s some energy melee weapons – from stun batons to sonic shurikens to force swords. Nice.

In terms of fan content, I’ve only found Pressor Weapons on the Hard Maths blog.

There also are ultra-tech bows. They are described in detail in The Arrow of Progress article in Pyramid #3-96.

Remember I told you about the beam weapon designer program that I made? I also made one for conventional firearms, electromagnetic guns, and grav guns. This program used to be based on GURPS Vehicles, but then I scrapped everything and rebuilt it, using existing weapons (the ones from Douglas Cole’s GunDay posts for conventional firearms) and extrapolating and guesstimating some modifiers. This program includes all the minor accessories and details you may need for your weapon. The goal was to have a program that I could use to create my own setting-specific weapon catalog instead of the generic one in Ultra-Tech. Using all these options, you really can make different models, different brands or companies feel different. The program is not perfect – for example, it cannot create cannons, gyrocs, and missile launchers, and damage values for SMGs seem a bit off. But all these can be adjusted with the PowerMod, Arbitrary CF, and Arbitrary Weight fields. All in all, it satisfies me. And this program I can distribute, so I’ll post the download link here. Also, do not try to create non-ultra-tech guns.

    Download link - version 0.29.

I hope that this information was helpful.