I've recently saw a video about the Terran Trade Authority books (late 70s). This is just the sort of book that would've captivated me as a young child. I loved this era of sci-fi spaceship art: Usborne's "Computer Spacegames" was a treasured book, and I liked the covers of the Maplin catalogues here in the UK.

The TTA books have a delightfully anachronistic timeline in retrospect. There is an an official TTA RPG that Stewart Cowley co-wrote, but I was disappointed with the forward shift in timeline, and the replacement of some technologies with more "fashionable" ideas of the 2000s - for example the Dune-inspired space folding warp drive became an Alcubierre drive.

I love converting things to GURPS Spaceships, so here's my attempt at the SSF 21D Cutlass.

Technology notes

TL9 up to the 2040s. TL10 with the introduction of force screens and contragravity.

McKinley Ion Ultradrive - treat as a VASIMR drive in low thrust mode.

deVass Warp Generator - treat as a Jump Drive, limited to safe jump points outside of gravity wells, and requires a charge-up time of one day per light year of jump. The jump itself takes one day per light year. Maximum jump distance of 5 light years.

Defense Shield - treat as a Force Screen, with a dDR of one SM smaller than that of TL 11, and must have the energy switch.

Gravity Resist Projector - treat as contragravity.

Synthetic Steel - treat as metallic laminate

Plastisteel - treat as advanced metallic laminate. High-density plastisteel is hardened AML.

Various advanced Plastisteel variants such as flexible, articulated or layered are treated as nanocomposite.

SSF 21D Cutlass (TL10)

SSF 21D Cutlass

Manufacturer: Various
User: Terran Defense Authority
Year: 2050
Role: Local Defense Interceptor
Crew: Pilot, Gunner, Astrogator
Armaments: 1 OPA-8 Particle Accelerator; 2 Laserlances; Missile Launcher (4 Mk II missiles)

The SSF 21D Cutlass was produced for the Mars War, a military variant of the 2023 Law Enforcement Cutlass.

The Cutlass has a robust 300-ton streamlined hull, 45 yards long. As the hull was designed prior to the introduction of gravity-resist generators, it has wings for aerospace operations. The hull is 14mm high-density plastisteel at the front and center, 7mm in the rear.

Two propulsion systems are installed. Two Avery nuclear thermal ram-rockets provide 300 tons of thrust for combat maneuvering and aerospace operations; or 750 tons when the variable choke venturi tubes are employed. An ion ultradrive is used for interplanetary travel.

At a cruising speed of 10 mps, the Cutlass can travel 1 AU in 29 weeks (13.5 weeks acceleration, 2 weeks cruising, 13.5 weeks deceleration).

Statistics

dST/HP: 50/70
HT: 12
Space Move: 1G/1.8 mps
Space Hnd/SR: -1/5
Air Move: 10/1,250 (2,500 mph)
Air Hnd/SR: 3/6
LWt.: 300
Load: 0.4
SM: +7
Occ: 4ASV
dDR: 16/16/8 (Hardened); 15 (energy force screen)
Range: -
Cost: $49.54M.

Special rules
Pulsed Thrust. The thrust of the nuclear thermal rockets can be doubled. For every one minute of pulsed thrust (in space, this is one fuel tank of fuel, 0.45 mps), make a HT check for the ship. On a failure, the rockets become disabled. 

Semi-Rapid Fire beams have a RoF of 3 (20-second), 10 (1-minute), 30 (3-minute), or 100 (10-minute).

Structural Reinforcement is an optional rule from Eric B. Smith’s spreadsheet.
Armour and Volume rules from Pyramid 3/34.

Systems

Front Hull

[1-2] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (total dDR 16; hardened)
[3!] Weapon Battery (one fixed mount 10MJ semi-rapid fire particle beam; two fixed mount 10MJ semi-rapid fire improved lasers)
[4] Control Room (C7 computer; comm/sensor 6; three control stations; Emergency Ejection (Lifepod))
[5] Smaller Systems (three at SM+6): Habitat (1 bunkroom); Weapon Battery (one fixed mount 20cm missile launcher); Tactical Comm/Sensor Array (comm/sensor 7)
[6!] Half-size Systems: Force Screen, Early (dDR 15; Energy); Structural Reinforcement
[core] -

Central Hull

[1-2] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (total dDR 16; hardened)
[3-6] Fuel Tanks (15 tons hydrogen each for Nuclear Thermal Rocket (ram-rocket); 1.8 mps total delta-V)
[core] Power Plant, Fusion Reactor (2 Power Points)

Rear Hull

[1] Armor, Advanced Metallic Laminate (dDR 8; hardened)
[2-3] Nuclear Thermal Rockets (0.5G acceleration each; ram-rocket)
[4!] Ion Ultradrive (0.0002G acceleration)
[5-6, core] Fuel Tanks (15 tons hydrogen each for Ion Ultradrive; 30 mps total delta-V)

Design Notes: The source material states the Cutlass has a thrust of 1,500,000 lb - this is 750 tons. The Cutlass is implied to be able to launch from the surface of Mars, so it needs an acceleration greater than 0.38G. Using NTR drives, this means the Cutlass cannot be greater than SM +8 (1,000 tons); or SM+7 if we also want it to operate in Earth’s atmosphere.
I don't know why Cowley decided on two high thrust rockets when the painting clearly has three.

The stated armour thickness of 14 cm is a problem if plastisteel has the same density as steel: it would mean the ship would have to be almost entirely comprised of armour. I decided to treat this as a “typo” and make this 14 mm thickness.

The illustration depicts the Cutlass as having a streamlined, winged hull - which ties in with the original hull being designed prior to the invention of contragravity. I added the ram-rocket feature to the NTRs on the basis of what appears to be air intakes.

I have seen this question asked on Steam, on the official form, and here on Reddit, and no-one seems to have a good answer.
At some point in a game, Gold and Manpower infrequently plummet. Manpower to 0, and Gold to some huge negative value like -200.
I am not at war. The Army does not need reinforcements.
The only thing I can think of is that colonized provinces sometimes spread to a neighbour province, and I can't tell if that coincides, since there is no message that tells you this happens. And I can't fathom why such a thing would cost over 200 gold and all your manpower.
This happens in every game I have.

I'm not quite understanding the balancing of Wound Potential in Army Forge.
Here's the example:
For a "hero" unit with Tough 3, it has a maximum Wound Potential of 133% (so, 4 wounds).
If we give it a Pistol with 2 Attacks, that's fine (2 potential wounds).
If we also give it an upgrade option for an additional weapon with Blast or Deadly, that's a balance error (5 potential wounds).
But if we make the the Blast or Deadly weapon into a Weapon Attachment to the Pistol instead, the balance check passes with 3 potential wounds maximum

I thought that you could fire weapon attachments alongside the weapon? But this implies that its either-or ?

Hey everyone, I've been using Thinking with image generation, and I noticed that seems to create some intermediary images that are not displayed when the responses finishes.
It occasionally seems to show an intermediary image "by accident" and they are sometimes better than the final image.
If I'm fast enough, I can right click and show that image in a different tab so I can save it later (it has a long file name with letters and numbers and dashes) -- before that image is removed and replaced with the final image.
But usually it hides these intermediary images. Is there no way to find out exactly what its thinking steps are and what other images it created on the way?

hi everyone, I'm really enjoying the image generation in Go, it's capable of some awesome things (such as a fairly convincing circuit diagram of a CyberDeck from Cyberpunk 2020). But it takes a few minutes for the result.
I don't need the extra generations from a Pro account, but will a Pro account also increase generation speed? In which case I might upgrade.

A year or so ago I liked using desktop ClipChamp to add the various built-in animations for line swirls, explosions, fire, glowing circles, and all that stuff, to my tabletop miniatures videos.

After a haitus, I've come back to making a new video, and all these animations are gone.
All there is are these useless carton animal stickers and even more useless GIPHY stickers.

Everytime I think ClipChamp can't get any worse, Microsoft find some new way to make it more awful. I still have to use it though, because it the easiest-to-use way of transitioning together all my video segments, quickly rotating segments, etc.

Is it just me that the animations have disappeared for, or is it everyone?

Any icheckmovies users here? I tried logging into my account last week, and on the login screen nothing happens when I put in my username, password then press the blue "log in" button, just no reaction.
I have cleared my cache, cookies, turned off my VPN, tried both Chrome and Edge. I have tried on a few other devices (tablet, phone). Nothing works. I requested a password reset, no reply. I emailed icheckmovies support, no reply. Nothing in my junk/spam folder either.
The "log in with Facebook / log in with twitter / log in with google" buttons are also dimmed-out and do not react to any mouse clicks.
Is the site dead or something?

With dynamic lighting, the bright and dim areas blur into each other.
Is there a way of making the bright and dim areas discreet so we can quickly see, well, which squares are in dim light and which squares are in bright?