Damage vs. vehicles -- TL14 gravtank

[apoc527]

So, I raised a similar issue with Hammer's Slammers, and even though it's not as bad with Military Vehicles and the basic vehicle combat rules (by the way--the expanded vehicle rules, at least the ranges, would be really nice to have in basic Traveller--that would seem like a good plug in for the Campaign Guide whenever it comes out), it still seems like actually killing these tanks is virtually impossible, even with Fusion Z guns (28d6, no AP).

28d6 averages 98 damage, versus 86 frontal armor (yes, I know that you probably don't want to shoot a tank head-on, that's where the armor is strongest, but just go with me here) results in 12 net damage each time. That's 3 single hits. Assuming 2 of those are Hull hits, and that eventually you'll start getting all 3 of them to Hull and Structure (once the rest of the tank is rendered slag), it's still going to take a LONG dang time to destroy a tank. Perhaps that's perfectly fine, but even at TL7, a TOW missile will destroy a tank in 1 hit much of the time. 8d6 AP (or even Super-AP) isn't really capable of doing that...TL7 tanks are even tougher, Hull/Structure wise, than the gravtanks.

Anyway, is this just a limitation of the system? It might matter--if I want the PCs to help out an insurgency on a backwater planet and they need to take out a few tanks, it would be nice if the rules were there to help out.

The "issue" is the damage table that converts rolled damage into "hits" in the vehicle (and starship, but that's less of an issue here) combat system. I understand why that is there--*most* vehicles have just a few points of Hull & Structure. But it seems to break down against tougher and/or larger vehicles, making them way TOO tough, IMO.

What are some possible fixes? Maybe weapons over a certain number of dice do "extra" damage to vehicles. For example, if we say that "small arms" basically cap out at 5d6, then for every 5 dice of damage (or fraction thereof) after the first 5 dice, the weapon deals additional Hull & Structure damage against vehicles. Maybe it multiples the Hull/Structure damage by 1+whatever the above math works out. An example (and I'm just thinking off the cuff here).

For example, an 8d6 missile does 2 Hull per "single hit", 4 hull per "double hit" and 6 hull per "triple hit." By contrast, a Fusion Z gun doing 28d6 does 28-5=23/5 rounding up = 5 and 5+1 = 6, so it does 6 times the normal hull damage. So a single hit is 6 Hull, double is 12, and triple is 18. That might be too ugly.

Anyway, you get the idea. OTOH, all you really need is a critical hit on a power system to destroy the vehicle (and let's be realistic--in WW2, tanks did not get utterly destroyed by enemy tank gunfire--if they exploded, it's because ammunition or fuel was hit). Maybe we're better off looking at those kinds of rules instead.

 

[BP]

Not following - are you referring to inability to stop/neutralize a tank - or to obliterating it?

 

[apoc527]

Making it explode.

Stopping the tank is fine too. Perhaps I'm reading too much value into getting a vehicle to Structure 0. The thing will be a lifeless burning hulk long before that happens under the rules. That said, I like booms.

 

[BP]

Gotcha. My take on the explosion rules (at least form HG) is that the item is blasted to nearly unrecognizable bits.

So internal damage can result in big bad-da booms and lots of glitzy pyrotechnics, without total obliteration. So structure and hull may be intact but the item non-function to a greater or lesser extent.

I would have liked some collateral damage rules for destroyed status though...

 

[apoc527]

Core book at page 68. Exploding vehicle does 4d6 to all targets within 6 meters and 2d6 out to 12 meters. But only when structure hits zero.

I just think that the system is great for Hull/Structure < 10 or so, but becomes a bit broken beyond that.

 

[apoc527]

Here's a few options:

Use the "Destructive" quality from Hammer's Slammers. Apply it only to plasma and fusion guns (if you want to differentiate, call Plasma guns Destructive and fusion guns Super-Destructive). This would specifically make these weapons very nasty against heavily armored vehicles as the Destructive quality removes armor pretty fast.

Use the rule from Hammer's Slammers where Armor is reduced by the number of damage dice of the weapon when an "Armor" hit is rolled on the damage table. For armor that boils off in one or two hits, combine the above too rules (probably not recommended).

At this point, the sheer amount of damage rolled is going to result in rapidly destroyed tanks. Consider the expanded damage table in Hammer's Slammers. Using that (or not, for that matter) will allow for huge amounts of damage.

Taking the example of the TL14 gravtank, if we just assume the SECOND rule (armor reduced), we can assume that most of the time, armor will be damaged by 28 points on every hit (doing three single hits). Sometimes armor will be reduced by 46 points, and sometimes armor will just be taken off immediately. Regardless, each subsequent hit will do 28 or more damage, added on to the 12 we calculated above.

So...

1st hit: 12 damage = 3 single hits = probably -28 armor
2nd hit: 40 damage = Triple Hit, Internal Triple Hit (armor would be destroyed utterly by that)
3rd hit: 96 damage = Two Triple Hits, Triple Internal hit (x2, I suppose)

So, Hull and Structure won't disappear all that fast, but the tank will become a worthless hunk of metal pretty quick.

Maybe come up with a way to determine extra powerplant explosion damage based off size and call it good?

 

[BP]

Core book at page 68. Exploding vehicle does 4d6 to all targets within 6 meters and 2d6 out to 12 meters. But only when structure hits zero.

I was referring to collatoral damage from components aboard ships - like 'Jump drive is destroyed'.

This could result in collatoral damage to crew, P.P. or jump fuel. Adjacent systems would be too much detail I think. I'm thinking something based on the Effect of the hit role.

As to vehicles - a similiar system might be in order - like drive system destruction resulting in fuel hit...

 

[apoc527]

Another idea, since now I've paged through Civvie Vehicles too and there are a lot of high structure/hull vehicles in there. My favorite is the pasenger jet--totally impossible to destroy with less than a dozen Sidewinders. See my issue? I want a quicker way to blow up vehicles that is still fair. I think vehicles as a whole are too flimsy at low sizes and too tough at larger sizes.

I'm not worried about the smaller vehicles. That issue solves itself because a PGMP fired at an air/raft will blow it up.

For larger vehicles though, I still take issue with the current damage mechanism. Vehicles take about 1/3 less damage than PCs due to the damage table. But really it's a lot less than that because the damage table behaves strangely. It's not cumulative, so high damage weapons end up wasting a lot of their firepower. On the other hand, I like the system damage it allows for. What if Hull/Structure damage was always taken on every hit AND you rolled on system damage table with the Hull/Structure results simply being additional hull degradation?

Because damage is split up into chunks of three, this might work:

Multiply vehicle/robot Hull/Structure by 3.
Each hit simply subtracts from this total (after armor) AND you roll on the damage table to get more system damage (and potentially even more Hull/Structure degradation).

Example using tanks: about 30 Hull and 30 Structure. This becomes 90 each. I'd want to use the Hammers Slammers Destructive quality for plasma/fusion guns, but that's just me.

So, Fusion Z gun does 98 average damage vs 86 initial armor and destroys 28 armor per hit.

1st hit: 12 Hull damage plus 3 Single Hits, armor becomes 58
2nd hit: 30 Hull damage plus a bunch of internal hits, armor is 30
3rd Hit: 68 more damage, Hull 0, Structure 70. More system hits. Armor is 2.
4th hit: 96 Structure damage. Tank explodes.

So depends what you want. That's an extreme example because of the firepower of Fusion Z, but actually I quite like it. Nothing else can take that level of punishment from that weapon better except starships.

To be consistent, all rolled Hull/Structure hits would need to do triple damage. So 3/6/9 instead of 1/2/3.

 

[apoc527]

The same thing can be done with sub-2000 ton starships too but I think it breaks down quickly when you bring in the Barrage rules.

One last fix: instead of 50:1 for starship to vehicle/character scale, I'd do more like 10 or 20 to 1.

 

[BP]

...My favorite is the pasenger jet--totally impossible to destroy with less than a dozen Sidewinders. See my issue?...

Are you absolutely sure about this? Perhaps you could be missing some subtle or not explicitly stated mechanic.

I have often done this - only realizing my mis-interpretation after numerous re-reads and helpful (or confused/irratated ) posts on this forum...

Again, I don't have these books - I'm more interested in starships and less in ground pounding and combat. But, even though I've questioned the mechanics in various places, I find they are overall pretty decent in most respects.

 

[apoc527]

I will go home and test it out tonight to be sure it's that bad. But I think it will be.

The other motivating factor, honestly, is just a FASTER resolution system. I don't need to break up the action on every damage roll by then having to allocate hits via the vehicle hit location table.

 

[apoc527]

Well, this is amusing...for several reasons.

First, I discovered upon getting home that a TL7 airliner has 132 Hull and 132 Structure. This makes it over 4 times tougher than the gravtank we were talking about earlier. Now, of course, the airliner has 2 armor, so it's not really tougher than the gravtank, but it's kind of funny.

It also made my experiment look to be a daunting task. I wanted to see how many Light Tac Anti-Air Missiles (9d6) it took to blow this thing up. I don't have an answer for you, but I can tell you that when I rolled my first 9d6 damage, I did 29 after armor, which resulted in a Triple Hit, Double Hit, and Single Hit. The Triple hit took out both points of armor. The Double AND Single hit both went to Drive. Heh. Drive disabled. One missile. So, I guess our TL7 airliner is crashing.

Now, the irony is that it will probably be largely intact when it hits the ground. Let's assume it gets going about 1000 kph when it hits the ground--that's 100d6 damage. Call it 350 (which is very, very probably close). Vehicles generally take about 1 "hit" per 3 damage, so that's about 115 "hits" -- not even going to take off the Hull. Of course, with 115 "hits" to distribute, it's going to lose all "external" systems, but then the Hull absorbs the rest, so all the Internal systems will be ok.

Now, I suppose there's GM common sense--a crashing plane blows up--but I think I've made my point.

The Hull/Structure-roll-on-the-damage-table mechanic is completely broken for any vehicle above 10-20 in these stats. It also shows that the mechanic of Hull/Structure based entirely on size of the vehicle to be a little bizarre. The jetliner may be large, but it's made of aluminum. It's also pressurized. They are pretty strong (really, they are), but I don't think they are as strong as the rules make them seem. Let's say I park my Boeing 767 on the ground and start shooting missiles at it. It really will take dozens before I can even start doing damage to internal systems.

Anyone else see the problem here?

 

[justacaveman]

I treat Laser and Plasma weapons as AP, and Fusion weapons as Super-AP. This makes the heavily armored vehicles easier to kill, but does nothing to fix the large aircraft problem. Maybe assigning a new quality to aircraft called "Flimsy". Vehicles with this quality would take 1d6 additional hits whenever struck by an explosive weapon. I'll have to test this out to see if it helps.

 

[BP]

Hmmm...

Perhaps you are not picturing the hull/structure damage in the same context as what the authors intended...

Consider, even when a plane is 'blown' out of the sky, the hull can still be found 'intact' in large chunks. As can the structure (ribbing). These parts generally aren't vaporized.

From a roleplay standpoint the plane was down with a single hit. So the hull/structure really doesn't matter (as a game mechanic).

While explosions from missiled aircraft look very impressive and comprehensive, the fact is huge complete parts generally fall from the sky - it's the fuel vaporizing that mostly makes the 'explosion'. Even after high speed impact with the water large parts of downed planes have been recovered intact.

Just something to consider. Not saying the system might not be flawed - in starship combat a single torpedo can have three seperate 'hits' each on a different system - sorta a stretch to the imagination if one hit is say to a turret on one side of the ship, a second to the opposite side of the ship (in relation to the torp) and the third internal.

 

[apoc527]

If having 0 Structure meant "atomized," then yes, I'd agree that I was misinterpreting the rules. However, 0 Hull is required before internal hits can happen, so 0 Hull should happen quickly against that kind of vehicle.

Moreover, 0 Structure does not mean "atomized"--it means "destroyed." That should happen fairly frequently. Pick virtually any WW2 movie. Find a destroyed tank, one that has the turret sitting at an odd angle. I'd call that "destroyed" --> 0 Hull, 0 Structure. If that tank still has Structure left under these rules, then I'm not clear on what the difference is.

I think that 0 Structure is still going to leave chunks of vehicle--just not repairable chunks.

So, IMO, the system is still rather borked. Justacaveman's idea is a good one, but then we're making "special rules" to fix obvious flaws in the system.

And let's also discuss the purpose of all this: I am looking for an RPG friendly vehicle combat system--not a simulationist wargame. That makes every little system damage hit less important to me--I want to know if the jet fighter chasing the PCs can continue the pursuit or if it must break off. I want to know if the PC's air/raft still flies or if it's going down. I submit that those examples are probably perfectly attainable within the current rules.

What will always bother me though is a super-indestructible jetliner. Maybe the Airframe configurations ought to have reduced Hull/Structure along with their reduced Mass?

 

[apoc527]

One thing that can be done is to get rid of the linear increase in Hull & Structure as size increases. Such abstract concepts as toughness need not follow a simple linear relationship with size. As something gets bigger, the more internal stresses it has to deal with as a result of it's bulk. As we've discussed, destroying a vehicle is not a matter of reducing it to its component subatomic particles.

Instead of 1/4 the m3 for structure/hull, call it 1/4 for the
first 40 m3, then 1/6 for next 40 m3, then 1/8, etc.

I'll have to see what that does to the airliner.

But for damage, I really think we need to decouple Hull/Structure damage from the vehicle damage table and use something more like the the High Guard cap ship damage system.

Damage goes directly to Hull/Structure and you check for system damage. If hull or structure gets hit again, it takes half the initial damage again. Armor hits reduce armor by the damage dice of the weapon.

That would certainly solve the problem, but to maintain balance, it would be necessary to multiply the Hull/Structure values by 3, as in my earlier post. We don't want paper tanks now! I will fiddle with the numbers and see how this works out.

 

[BP]

If having 0 Structure meant "atomized," then yes, I'd agree that I was misinterpreting the rules. However, 0 Hull is required before internal hits can happen, so 0 Hull should happen quickly against that kind of vehicle.

Excellent point.

Well, I was not stating Stucture 0 = atomized, only that a plane exploding isn't atomized and there are often large enough parts intact (most of the structure) even after said parts hit the ground (which in your examples does additional damage). I would consider Structure = 0 to imply nothing to resonably retain hull or internal components against any applied outside forces.

However, the fact that no internal damage can be done to the plane (excepting meson weapons) till the extremely high hull value is lowered certainly stretches the suspenders of disbelief past their breaking points. :?

Find a destroyed tank, one that has the turret sitting at an odd angle. I'd call that "destroyed" --> 0 Hull, 0 Structure. If that tank still has Structure left under these rules, then I'm not clear on what the difference is.

Not such a good point - if you jump up and down and land on your knees atop the tank husk - I think you'd believe it has structure.

And it still has a hull - just not an intact one.

Now calling it disabled (at least from the turret standpoint) - no disagreement there!

Maybe the Airframe configurations ought to have reduced Hull/Structure along with their reduced Mass?

Sounds like that should be a relatively general mechanic actually. Any low mass vehicle is more likely to have a thin 'skin' - at least generally...

Given the internal damage mechanic that sounds quite reasonable.

Structure I could buy as being relatively high.

 

[apoc527]

I've made some tweaks to the combat system for vehicles and it turns out that things aren't nearly as broken as I thought. Are they perfect? No, of course not, but they ARE completely, 100% appropriate for an RPG.

The main thing I did (for space combat too, actually) was to "fix" the damage chart so that you didn't lose damage by actually rolling higher amounts of it. I simply made sure that the actual damage dealt (i.e. "hits") was always equal to 1/3 of the damage rolled (this is 1/4 of the damage rolled on the starship scale). This required some small changes to the damage progression of Single, Double, and Triple hits, but those were minor. The larger scale change was the addition of an automatic number of Hull (or Structure) "hits." I simply added them to the damage table to ensure that higher rolled damage always equated to more hits. Instead of requiring excessive rolls on the damage tables, I figured this was easier. If I can find someone to host my .docx file, I'll post my house rules document and you can see what I'm talking about.

So, armed with this information, I went about setting up a TL10 MBT (main battle tank) against a TL14 gravtank. Well, that wasn't even fair. The MBT hit the gravtank with a pretty good shot from its main gun, but didn't even scratch the paint. When the gravtank fired back, it reduced the MBT to 2/3 Hull (in one hit), melted its main gun, and immobilized it (triple hit on the weapon, drive, and hull).

Then I did a TL7 MBT vs a brave dude with a TL7 reusable medium launcher. He fired from the side or rear and also immobilized the tank in one hit.

So, there you go. If anything, tanks are too FRAGILE. Hahahahaha.

 

[AndrewW]

If I can find someone to host my .docx file, I'll post my house rules document and you can see what I'm talking about.

You could use the MGT-Aids Yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MGT-Aids/

 

[apoc527]

I will probably use that, but you have to be a member to download anything. I joined a while back, but it's an extra barrier to sharing it. Maybe most people who care are members already though!