Hammer's Slammers - Please Share Your Opinion

[Rex]

To be fair, the 1st work of a new type of product is always the buggy one. I'm sure, such issues are being noted and shall be addressed.

However, coming out of the days of clip art, lop sided hand drawings, dot matrix printing and xerox copied pages that still had the note book lines in it, I suppose I'm just not that concerned with the Art over all, provided the book Looks good on the outside, is solid, doesn't fall apart, and is competent in the rules of the game itself.

~Rex

 

[apoc527]

Rules question (the art has been discussed to death, and let's face it, is not that important in an RPG book--see e.g. GURPS):

The tanks have armors in the 150+ range. The main 20cm powerguns do like 20d6+20 damage and are Super Destructive (meaning they kill 40 points of armor on a hit). Just so I'm straight on this:

An M2 firing at another M2 is going to do about 90 damage on average with its main gun. After 1 hit, armor is about 110, so you'll likely do no damage on the second either. After the second hit, however, armor is now about 60, meaning that on the third hit, about 30 damage will get through (in addition to armor being reduced to 20). On the FOURTH hit, you'll get about 70 damage through.

So, most tanks will take no more than 3-4 hits to destroy. That's pretty brutal, game-wise. I'm trying to recall, however, how "canon" that is. I thought I remember the Slammers killing enemy tanks in 1-2 hits, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

Any of you con-goers try out the rules in actual play? How are they? Are powerguns as nasty as they seem? (4d6+4, while ugly for a small arm, isn't THAT much nastier than CSC weapons...)

All in all, I'm very happy with it, but then I barely pay attention to the art after giving it a quick once-over. (You know what has great art? Book 6: Scoundrel!)

 

[Rex]

Rules question (the art has been discussed to death, and let's face it, is not that important in an RPG book--see e.g. GURPS):

The tanks have armors in the 150+ range. The main 20cm powerguns do like 20d6+20 damage and are Super Destructive (meaning they kill 40 points of armor on a hit). Just so I'm straight on this:

An M2 firing at another M2 is going to do about 90 damage on average with its main gun. After 1 hit, armor is about 110, so you'll likely do no damage on the second either. After the second hit, however, armor is now about 60, meaning that on the third hit, about 30 damage will get through (in addition to armor being reduced to 20). On the FOURTH hit, you'll get about 70 damage through.

So, most tanks will take no more than 3-4 hits to destroy. That's pretty brutal, game-wise. I'm trying to recall, however, how "canon" that is. I thought I remember the Slammers killing enemy tanks in 1-2 hits, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

Any of you con-goers try out the rules in actual play? How are they? Are powerguns as nasty as they seem? (4d6+4, while ugly for a small arm, isn't THAT much nastier than CSC weapons...)

All in all, I'm very happy with it, but then I barely pay attention to the art after giving it a quick once-over. (You know what has great art? Book 6: Scoundrel!)

Pretty spot on actually. Honestly even in the current world, Tanks, don't stand up long against other Tanks. You basically get freebie, THEN, some luck, then hope you are out of the way.

Power guns are supposed to be REALLY nasty. Series wise, other then out right disintegration, they are some of the nastiest weapons I've seen in a Sci Fi book. Range, practically infinite as well, makes for some pretty nasty things going bump on the battlefield.

~Rex

 

[klingsor]

I fear RPGs give us a rather rosy view of combat. In reality one hit is often all you need - and often all you get even in melee let alone with MBTs.

Though my brother has grocked this, he will very often initiate a fight while everyone else, including the GM is still talking which gives him a very useful edge. Of all of our group I think we would have made the best Mafiosi.

 

[apoc527]

Possible issue, so I wonder if I'm reading this right:

For vehicle damage, you use the vehicle damage tables, which, at most, gets you a couple triple hits. An M2 tank has about 50 hull and 50 structure (actually a bit more, but I'm rounding). That's 100 "hit points" it can absorb. If any hit over 50 damage does 2 triple hits and 1 internal triple hit, how are you ever going to actually DESTROY one of these things? Yes, it will have no armor, but you'll have to just shoot at it FOREVER to blow it up!

If I recall my Slammers correctly, it probably would take a long time to melt away the hull of one of those tanks. Thus, normally tanks blow up when either (1) their ammo cooks off or (2) their fusion bottle goes. The ammo damage is correct in the book, but the power plant only inflicts 1d6 Hull and immobilizes the vehicle. Seems like it should probably have a chance of exploding and gutting the tank, just like in the books.

Am I missing something? Does that 70 damage do more than just cause 2 triple hits and 1 internal triple hit?

 

[klingsor]

If I recall from the books either a weaker rapid fire weapon, whether laser or KEAP, could penetrate the armour by hitting in one spot or one big weapon could annihilate the tank - a 30cm power gun I think was the poster boy for this. I am not quite sure how you would model the former in Traveller though I reminded of the missile with a second follow-up missile that was an example either in the first edition of Striker or an article about it.