[Playtest Focus] Vehicle Hits, Armour and Damage

[Infojunky]

Is there going to be a conversion guide for the supply catalog and vehicles supplements?

There is going to have to be.....

 

[MongooseMatt]

The problem I keep hitting is the scaling factor, instead of manipulating the resulting damage why not manipulate the base dice? My initial thought is a 3x scaling. As such the damage from an Assault Rifle is 3d at the personal level would do 1d at the vehicle level, and scratch the paint at the Starship level (The reverse is a 1d6 Beam Laser at the Starship scale, does 3d6 at the Vehicle Scale and 9d6 at the Personal scale).... This saves lots of effort in game and eliminates any ambiguity.

It needs (or should) to be 10x because of the granularity needed

each scale. In your example above, what do you do with a 4D weapon? You can apply it to damage, but no one wants to divide by three during the game.

10 is the logical multiplier and divider because a) everyone can do it quickly and b) it provides a good spread of damage dice before you get to DD weapons.

Note this is just a back of the envelope idea right now, but it looks like it could work, though I suspect that it would mean that Heavy MBT's are going to have Starship Scale Weapons and Armor, but we all were going that direction anyways....

Or vehicle scale, but Destructive...

 

[MongooseMatt]

Is there going to be a conversion guide for the supply catalog and vehicles supplements?

Sorry, not with you - to convert what?

 

[-Daniel-]

Is there going to be a conversion guide for the supply catalog and vehicles supplements?

Sorry, not with you - to convert what?

I believe he is asking about 1st ed to 2nd ed conversions. I could be wrong though, but that is how I read his comment.

 

[IanBruntlett]

I believe he is asking about 1st ed to 2nd ed conversions. I could be wrong though, but that is how I read his comment.

I would like that a lot. Not sure how it would affect sales. Having PDFs that help convert from MgT1 to MgT2 would mean that my old books are still usable. It also may make it easier to have a MgT1 gaming group transition to MgT2. Then the old books could be passed on as the new books bought.

 

[Infojunky]

The problem I keep hitting is the scaling factor, instead of manipulating the resulting damage why not manipulate the base dice? My initial thought is a 3x scaling. As such the damage from an Assault Rifle is 3d at the personal level would do 1d at the vehicle level, and scratch the paint at the Starship level (The reverse is a 1d6 Beam Laser at the Starship scale, does 3d6 at the Vehicle Scale and 9d6 at the Personal scale).... This saves lots of effort in game and eliminates any ambiguity.

It needs (or should) to be 10x because of the granularity needed

each scale. In your example above, what do you do with a 4D weapon? You can apply it to damage, but no one wants to divide by three during the game.

Ok, a 4d personal scale weapon, would do 1d+1 on the vehicle scale... The concept is to reduce the math to counting dice instead of final numbers.....

10 is the logical multiplier and divider because a) everyone can do it quickly and b) it provides a good spread of damage dice before you get to DD weapons.

Note this is just a back of the envelope idea right now, but it looks like it could work, though I suspect that it would mean that Heavy MBT's are going to have Starship Scale Weapons and Armor, but we all were going that direction anyways....

Or vehicle scale, but Destructive...

Yes, what I kinda meant....

 

[Nerhesi]

Note this is just a back of the envelope idea right now, but it looks like it could work, though I suspect that it would mean that Heavy MBT's are going to have Starship Scale Weapons and Armor, but we all were going that direction anyways....

Hey Info

Do you see how we're making all sorts of arbitrary delineations just because of a delineation that wasn't needed in the first place (x10 or /10 damage for vehicle tier)

So now we will need a separate kind of vehicle (MBT), to address the gap that is "why aren't some vehicles as tough/powerful as small craft?" - Now I will ask, why I can't have a TL14 or TL15 Bike-sized MBT? I can make a 10 displacement ton TL15 fighter... why can't I make a 2-displacement ton tiny Bike made from the same material? I'm not conflating as to go down all the way to combat armor or battle dress that is 15-starship scale armour, no - I'm just saying the clearest delineation is "guy in flexible suit" vs "machine that has 1+ seats". Not size of use of such machine.

I have yet to hear a single reason for why we need x10 or /10. I'm not opposed to "tiering" - but damage/armour doesn't need to be tiered. It was never an issue. We can have DD weapons without Tiering. If we are worried about a ton of dice, introduce a simple "DDD" or something. But you don't need to introduce an arbitrary divisor/multiplier!

I apologise for any emotion that leaked through here

 

[Infojunky]

I have yet to hear a single reason for why we need x10 or /10. I'm not opposed to "tiering" - but damage/armour doesn't need to be tiered. It was never an issue. We can have DD weapons without Tiering. If we are worried about a ton of dice, introduce a simple "DDD" or something. But you don't need to introduce an arbitrary divisor/multiplier!

Ok, I am starting to agree with you, the Tiered damage goes back to the Destructive damage debate. And the buckets of dice that crept in with the CSC.

Look at this, every weapon that did more than 10 dice of damage got converted to Destructive with dice rolled divided by ten then rounded. (Note there is room for some granularity in there with the rounding method)

Going back to the status-quo of Ground scale and Starship scale doesn't seem so bad from here at this moment in the light that while some ground scale weapons can damage Starships, they only can do so at non-starship ranges (Dog-fighting is one of them)

I apologise for any emotion that leaked through here

No Problems you were defending your opinion, both politely and stridently. And that helps this process.... Hint, you Grav Bike question kicked me back to looking at both the Vehicles Handbook and the CSC, which got me thinking weather the vehicles scale was necessary.

Note Looking at the vehicle hand book, and if the vehicle scale gets dropped then you will need at least 3 times the Hull+Structure hits than are provided as it took 3 personel hits for each vehicle hit....

 

[Nerhesi]

Absolutely in agreement with you regarding the buckets of dice. And to reiterate, I have no issue with "tiering" in such manner that we're just not messing around with damage and armor divisors/multipliers. Lets add to hit/targetting modifiers, rules for grouping 10 dice into 1 die (DD, and even DDD), etc

I think its very elegant to keep the scales as is (MGT1) as you gents (designers) had it before, but with the due diligence and the clarity we have in MGT2. Random examples below:

Cloth Armour - 5
Smart Car - 7
Cloth and Flak Jacket - 10
Car - 10
Combat Armour - 15
Armoured Car - 20
Power Armor + Cloth underneath - 25
APC - 30...40?
Battle Dress - 30ish
Modern day MBT - 40..50?
Battle Dress TL14 with subdermal armour, cloth underarmour, dispersion over-armour, extra armour skirt/plating - 50
High Tech G/Carrier - 70ish?
High Tech Plasma/fusion tanks (around 20dton vehicle) - 100ish
Darrian Sphere uber tank (70 spaces, aka 35 dton cargo space VEHICLE) - 150 (15 in starship scale). 30DD which is equivalent to a 3D starship scale.

A simple, linear scale that showcases the range from cloth to a vehicle using bonded-superdense and being perfectly in-line with starship scale armour and weaponry.

Our problem previously was that Darrian super tank was using a 30DD weapon! Great, it's now 3DDD or simply have a text box with a simplification rule for rolling 1 die instead of 10. Problem solved, no exceptions that create inconsistencies.

 

[Wizard]

Absolutely in agreement with you regarding the buckets of dice. And to reiterate, I have no issue with "tiering" in such manner that we're just not messing around with damage and armor divisors/multipliers. Lets add to hit/targetting modifiers, rules for grouping 10 dice into 1 die (DD, and even DDD), etc

Fully agree with Nerhesi. For an exercise, lets take some of the armour values from page 94 and apply the vehicle scale to them (divide by 10, drop fractions):

Jack TL1 = 0
Mesh TL6 = 0
Cloth TL7 = 0
Cloth TL10 = 0
Flak Jacket TL7 = 0
Flak Jacket TL8 = 0
Combat Armour TL10 = 1
Combat Armour TL12 = 1
Combat Armour TL14 = 1
Vacc Suit TL8 = 0
Vacc Suit TL10 = 0
Vacc Suit TL12 = 1
Hostile Environment Vacc Suit TL9 = 0
Hostile Environment Vacc Suit TL10 = 0
Hostile Environment Vacc Suit TL11 = 1
Hostile Environment Vacc Suit TL13 = 1
Hostile Environment Vacc Suit TL14 = 1
Battle Dress TL13 = 2
Battle Dress TL14 = 2

This illustrates the relationship between personal armour and vehicle armour when the scaling factor is 10. It just doesn't feel like there is enough range here. To double the range you would need a scaling factor of 5, which makes the in head calculation a chore and isn't desirable in my opinion, and hence I believe you are just better of with no scaling at all since it keeps the maths simpler.

On a side note, one of the reasons I came back to Traveller, after all these years, is that I was after a RPG that can do the whole "People - Vehicles - Spaceships" combat thing. It's something I need for the campaign I am planning. The whole multiply/divide by 10 concept looked promising at the start, but now after trying a few combats out and further analysis, I have to say it does seem to have some shortcomings.

In the end I don't mind how the "People - Vehicles - Spaceships" combat mechanic works, as long as it does work. What I mean by works is that it allows me to tell stories that somewhat reflect reality so that player expectations of how things should work in the real world determines actions rather than rules that bend reality. It doesn't have to be a simulation, just something that feels right and plausible.

 

[First Age]

I think its very elegant to keep the scales as is (MGT1) as you gents (designers) had it before, but with the due diligence and the clarity we have in MGT2. Random examples below:

Snip excellent list...

Super stuff, thanks.

 

[Infojunky]

Ok Try this one for size;

Starships seem to be averaging 1 hit per 5 dTons

Vehicles seem to be averaging 1 hit per Space (i.e. 1 per 1/2 dton)

these are general numbers,

1sp =1 hit i.e. Floater
2sp =2 hits i.e. Grav Bike
4sp =4 hits i.e. Buick Sportwagon/SUV etc....
8sp =8 hits i.e. Air/Raft, 2.5ton truck, 20ft workboat etc....

One question here is where do we start building/rating things in the starship scale? 10 dTons?

 

[MongooseMatt]

I would like that a lot. Not sure how it would affect sales. Having PDFs that help convert from MgT1 to MgT2 would mean that my old books are still usable. It also may make it easier to have a MgT1 gaming group transition to MgT2. Then the old books could be passed on as the new books bought.

To be honest... with the likes of CSC, the new edition is the conversion document. Put another way, the conversion document would be the same text as the actual book...

 

[allanimal]

Finally got a chance to test out some vehicle rules and vehicle combat last night.

It seems most issues stem from the interface between the vehicle rules and normal combat rules, and the transition between them. They were not as smooth as we thought they would be. In most cases, clarifying statements in the rules would help.

I've detailed the issues we ran into and clarifications we think are needed in this thread: http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=136&t=114348

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Ok, a 4d personal scale weapon, would do 1d+1 on the vehicle scale... The concept is to reduce the math to counting dice instead of final numbers.....

With this idea (straight out of the old D6 system), you can easily divide by 3. 3d goes to 1d, 4d goes to 1d+1, and 5d goes to 1d+2. Every die is, in effect, three pips. To go the other way, multiply the die by three and then add dice equal to the plusses (e.g. 4d+2 is 12d +2d = 14d).

Also, you could limit the conversion completely to the damage roll, so you never had to multiply or divide armor by 3.

 

[Nerhesi]

With the new csc beta release, we can see how this problem is escalated.

Again, I don't think any multiplier are required. Multiplier are actually the opposite of simplicity, requiring more calculation on the fly. What is worse, is that seem to have thrown design for a loop because of the crazy weapons and inconsistent value we now seem to have. Examples:

TL15 G-carrier, 6 armour, 20 hull.
TL13-15 Fusion Cannon variants - 2DD.

20-120 dmg versus 6+20. Instant annhilation of multiple vehicles.

1970s tank using regular "Cannon". 1DD.
10-60 damage. So that tank is more often than not annihilating the TL15 vehicle.

That's using base ammo - if APDS ammo is used, gone! That 30 AP vehicle scale!!

Artillery weapons for the 1940s are oblitering whole squadrons of these TL15 vehicles!

Infantry suits are not even going to be compared - considering a base 1940 vehicle machine gun is going to be cutting through TL14 battle dress. The only question is do you cut through 2 suits or 4 suits trivially with one shot, depending on the ammo you use (available 1940 to 1970).

Then look at gauss weapons. They don't do DD? Excuse me? My TL7 cannon or TL5 artillery does 10 times more than my gauss and possibly many times more because it can it can use crazy ammo? I thousands of years later, we have developed gauss weaponry that does 10 times less dmg but hey, it fires slightly slower than a machine gun at further distances? Except it penetrate anything!


Guys - it's crystal clear to me here. Multipliers are bad. By attempting to save someone from rolling 10 dice vs 1, we have completely knackered the system in this small but critical area. MGT1 in this regard was leagues above and beyond MgT2 - any this is from someone who believes every other change we've done so far in MGT2 is spot on.

Sam W

 

[MongooseMatt]

This is something we are looking at right now. Funnily enough, WWII armoured vehicles is one of the base points being used!

Stand by on this, we'll get it sorted.

 

[Nerhesi]

Thanks Matt - as always, trying to help and thereby reduce the need for house rules

 

[FallingPhoenix]

If we make each die equivalent to 3 "plusses", then it's easy to multiply or divide by three, and Nerhesi's examples indicate this could give very reasonable numbers.

Examples:

TL15 G-carrier, 6 armour, 20 hull.
TL13-15 Fusion Cannon variants - 2DD.

20-120 dmg versus 6+20. Instant annhilation of multiple vehicles.

Now the fusion cannon does 6D, which might kill the G-Carrier, but will probably just severely damage it. If that's still too high, make it 1DD+1 (5D).

1970s tank using regular "Cannon". 1DD.
10-60 damage. So that tank is more often than not annihilating the TL15 vehicle.

That's using base ammo - if APDS ammo is used, gone! That 30 AP vehicle scale!!

Now the cannon with APDS is 3D damage, AP 9. Still nasty against the G-Carrier, but not devastating. And you could probably just make it 2D+1 vehicle scale or so if the 3D is still too high.

Infantry suits are not even going to be compared - considering a base 1940 vehicle machine gun is going to be cutting through TL14 battle dress. The only question is do you cut through 2 suits or 4 suits trivially with one shot, depending on the ammo you use (available 1940 to 1970).

Now the vehicle machine gun is going to be 3D character scale damage, with AP 9 if it uses APDS. Might be able to get through basic battle dress, if you roll really well.

Then look at gauss weapons. They don't do DD? Excuse me? My TL7 cannon or TL5 artillery does 10 times more than my gauss and possibly many times more because it can it can use crazy ammo? I thousands of years later, we have developed gauss weaponry that does 10 times less dmg but hey, it fires slightly slower than a machine gun at further distances? Except it penetrate anything!

And this brings the gauss weapons back into a reasonable range with the others.

Guys - it's crystal clear to me here. Multipliers are bad. By attempting to save someone from rolling 10 dice vs 1, we have completely knackered the system in this small but critical area. MGT1 in this regard was leagues above and beyond MgT2 - any this is from someone who believes every other change we've done so far in MGT2 is spot on.

Sam W

I think you're right about a times ten multiplier, but a times three multiplier is much more doable, and easy to implement with d6s. The only time you end up with an unreasonable number of dice, it's likely to be so many that you don't even need to roll, as the minimum number will kill your target (e.g. Pulse Laser vs. character is 18D (times 3 to vehicle scale, then times 3 again to character scale), unless they're wearing Battle Dress, which actually gives a good case to make Battle Dress vehicle scale armor, maybe?

 

[Infojunky]

I think you're right about a times ten multiplier, but a times three multiplier is much more doable, and easy to implement with d6s. The only time you end up with an unreasonable number of dice, it's likely to be so many that you don't even need to roll, as the minimum number will kill your target (e.g. Pulse Laser vs. character is 18D (times 3 to vehicle scale, then times 3 again to character scale), unless they're wearing Battle Dress, which actually gives a good case to make Battle Dress vehicle scale armor, maybe?

The 3 die scale works nice, but consider a 6 die scale as well.....