Question about Characters with Battlesuits

[Myrmidon]

With the directives keeping us in our homes, I have decided to move the game I'm running online to FG (pause for applause) and have begun creating the characters in GCS and importing them into FG. The campaign a sci-fi setting at TL10. One of the characters has a Heavy Battlesuit [UT184]. What would be the best way to incorporate that in FG? Since the battlesuit has so many built-in items and affects the character's combat capability (especially melee damage, carrying capacity, and DR), I was thinking of creating a separate character sheet for the PC in the battlesuit. Is this the best option? Is there a way for the player to swiftly move in and out of the armor?

[Gigermann]

I've always thought of a Battlesuit as a "vehicle"—I'm not sure how that would work in FG, though

[Jaxilon]

So you got me interested and I think I would have gone as an item although I can see how vehicle would make sense.

My Mod Maker creates it as an Item of armor and when you equip it you get the defensive load out on the Defenses tab of the Combat tabs.

This did show me an issue I need to look into however because the version for combat battlesuit coming from GCA looks just like the books whereas the suit from GCS needs a bit of love. Specifically the Lifting & Striking strengths are showing up as defensive values.
I have an idea of why but i'll have to dig into the code.

I'd like to know why the stat blocks are not the same for the same.

For example 'Commando Battlesuit' from GCS has DR 75|30 whereas the same item in GCA has 105/75. It is the middle of the night however, so maybe my brain has already gone to sleep.

I'll try to look into it tomorrow.

[Jaxilon]

Doing a little digging I think there may be some data updates needed to GCS ultra-tech:

Heavy Battlesuit is $ 20,000 I think it should be $ 200,000 according to the book. Or am I missing something? I typically play in lower tech so I'm not up on it as much as some.

Also, the DR values don't seem to match GCA or the GURPS Ultra-tech book.

I do need to modify Mod Maker to go farther when it comes to building these but that is going to take more time than I have this morning.

[Myrmidon]

I figured out how to get the item lists from GCS into FG through the Mod Maker, which is so awesome! Thanks, Jaxilon! And I think you're right; several of the battlesuits seem off.

Does FG apply the ST mods when the armor is equipped? It doesn't seem to, though it is entirely possible I am doing something wrong.

(Edit: added note about battlesuits.)

[Jaxilon]

I figured out how to get the item lists from GCS into FG through the Mod Maker, which is so awesome! Thanks, Jaxilon! And I think you're right; several of the battlesuits seem off.

Does FG apply the ST mods when the armor is equipped? It doesn't seem to, though it is entirely possible I am doing something wrong.

(Edit: added note about battlesuits.)

I don't believe it does but I wasn't really looking for that when I was in the rules code. I was more concerned with getting it to keep track of weapon modes and showing or hiding them from the combat tabs. Ronnke might know the why and when of that since he's way more versed in the ruleset than I am and is better aware of what core features may or may not come through.

I have to revist the Mod Maker for these suits because they are a bit of a special case I didn't account for. That's why you see the extra fields in the DR area. They don't belong there. I'm not sure what to do with them yet. I might just have to toss them into the notes field.

[ronnke]

Does FG apply the ST mods when the armor is equipped?

It does not.

[Myrmidon]

We did a little test run last night, and one of the characters was hitting his encumbrance limit (that low ST will come back and get you) pretty quickly. However, he does have a stealth exoskeleton equipped, which gives +4 to Lifting and Striking ST. Is there a way to modify ST manually and have it propagate through? We couldn't figure out a way to do so. Or would we just have to go in manually and change the numbers for encumbrance?

[Jaxilon]

As far as I know there is not. When you alter the ST on the character sheet it does not update the 'THRUST' & 'SWING' base damage so there's the first clue there is no code to go through and update everything for all the weapons and gear.

That's not to say it will never be done but at least for now the answer is no. In addition to that logic, logic still needs to deal with the gear carrying an attribute modifier and I'm pretty certain that doesn't exist either within the ruleset.

The best bet is probably to update the ST and Thrust/Swing fields and then remove items and redrag them to the inventory. You could use the Party sheet to do this if you like, that way you can easily keep track of what items you are working with.

Of course, that still doesn't do anything for the ST modifier from the battlesuit. That's something that needs to be added to the ruleset if it's going to happen.

[Jaxilon]

I've done some tweaking to how these suits and armors are processed but before I go releasing an update would you mind checking some of these?

I've taken the additional attribute modifiers and put them into the Notes field so they should be quite easy to read/use although clearly they are not die rolls.

Here's a copy of just Ultra-tech armors. It cleans up the extra data in the DR field that shouldn't have been there and instead places those things as informational in the Notes.

Let me know please if you see any issues with these.

Edit: ignore the missing weight - I've since fixed that as well.

Edit2: When I look at "Commando Battlesuit" for GCA vs GCS things are quite different:
For instance, what I see from GCA does NOT include the 'lifting' and 'striking' bonus modifiers. That's directly in GCA itself so am I missing something here?
Also, as previously mentioned the DR values are not the same. (see attached image - left side is GCA, right side GCS)

33029

BAH! I see it now - in GCS it shows the 'Features' of this item as 'Gives a DR bonus of +75 to the full body" AND "Gives a DR bonus of +30 to the torso" combined that is +105 DR. So, now I have to hit the book and see what is what on this. Either way there is an issue because I don't see GCA spliting this down into a 75+30 type of scenario, it just says "full body". Furthermore, applying the armor inside GCA gives a 105/75 dr to every part of the body.

So, I may not be able to make these two things jive.

[Myrmidon]

I looked through a couple of these this morning. It's nice have the extra stuff in the notes. They look good. Thank you for all the work you put in on that!

With regards to the DR, that is pretty tricky. I'm not sure of the best way to import it. I think that it would be least confusing if it listed the total DR for the item for each area. For example, for the Heavy Battlesuit, the location could be "torso|other", and the DR could be "150|100". That way the player just has to think: "I got shot in the leg; that's other than the torso; my DR there is 100."

One other nit-picky thing: the Lifting and Striking ST are +20. The "=" being used now could be confusing.

As I fiddle around with it more, I'll let you know what I find. Our first game on FG is tonight. I hope it goes well!

[Jaxilon]

As you say, "=" has been removed.

Here is an update of items that provide Armor DR from GCS Ultra Tech for you to poke at. It has Weight and so on. I can't help yet with the stat block differences between GCA and GCS. I'll think about that.