[Playtest Focus] Vehicle Hits, Armour and Damage

[MongooseMatt]

Hello!

If possible, I would like you chaps to focus on the vehicle area of damage scaling (some thoughts already here - http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=136&t=112459).

Basically, we need to find a happy/sweet zone for Armour and Hits of the vehicles in the Core book that we are all more or less happy with. Some oddities are present at the moment (this was always going to be an issue for playtesting), and I would like to resolve it as a matter of priority.

So, if you can, run some combats with vehicles such as Ground Cars with Armour ranging between 1-5, and then armoured vehicles like the APC with Armour 5-15, and let me know what you are happy with.

This will also give us a good indication of whether the Hits levels are sound and whether the critical hit system is properly functional!

 

[Nerhesi]

Matt - I will just sum-up current problems and test results, which are inherent to any tiered system:

Hard "caps", lack of realism, extreme effectiveness/ineffectiveness when you introduce tiered systems, examples:

(A) A pistol/small arm being unable to penetrate a car's body, but penetrating battle dress and combat armour. Battle dress or combat armour coming in lets say in the high teens and high 20s armour. Meanwhile a car that has 3, 4 or 5 in vehicle scale, effectively has more armour than a TL14/15 highly advanced suit of powered armour/battledress.

(B) Vehicle weaponry doing damage that is way out of whack. The smallest vehicle scale weapon, lets say a Vehicle machine gun or so is doing 1D. Thats 10 to 60 against personal scale. So this 1940s era machine gun is easily penetrating and killing TL14 Combat armour troopers!

(c) Meanwhile those poor TL14 Combat armoured troopers can barely scratch a car with their TL14 PGMPs! It may have up to 5 armour!

(d) So a vehicle weapon from 1940, can defeat a powered armour from 5000 AD, but armour from 5000 AD can't defeat a vehicle weapon from 1940!

(e) A 1940s era tank with a basic cannon (1DD vehicle scale) will sometimes not penetrate a 1940s tank armour, but will annihilate the existence of any battledress without a second thought! 1DD translates into 100 to 600 personal scale damage. This basically means it 4-5 times more powerful than TL15 FGMP!

(f) Finally, and this is a big one from the previous version too. Why does my 300 ton TL 14 ton have less armour than a small spacecraft would? I use the same materials... infact I may use the same materials for my personal armour suit! It shouldbn't be magnitudes in difference.

You will find that these are all inherent to the Tier system Matt. The more Tiers, the more complexity is encountered and the more we find illogical situations arising from the Multiply by X, Divide by X scenario. We find it completely unnecessary.

Solution:

If we just keep two Tiers, Personal and Spacecraft, then we can keep Vehicle as Personal scale. Battle Dress suits topping out at 30 or so, with vehicle being able to go much higher. Then you can easily say "hey! A sports car is balanced at 5 armour, that SUV is maybe a 10 or so, Combat Armout 15, that armoured car at TL10 is around a 20! That TL12 APC is around 30, that TL14 Small tank is around 100, that TL15 Super Darrian Grav tank is 150 - it's just a small craft that used for ground support!"

And your weapons will be perfectly balanced too - your PGMP is still logically effective against cars and troops. Your vehicle scale weapons which can do anywhere between 1DD and 3DD in personal scale now make perfect sense. They can hit for 10 to 180 damage, and it is much easier to balance due to the lack of abstraction across environments.

Your Spacecraft - to non spacecraft is also perfectly aligned. Your 3DD kingly weapon is also 3D in spacecraft terms. Your 150 armour Darrian TL15 vehicle armour is really nothing more than a TL15 fighting small craft that is tailored for ground warfare - that 150 armour is just 15 spacecraft armour! Alignment from a logical and system functional perspective!

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

What if we considered BattleDress as a VEHICLE scale armour? That is the main reason it takes until TL13+ to get introduced, it takes that long to adapt Starship-grade armour into something that a person can wear (internal servos and possibly even gravity assist built in).

I agree that most of the issues seem to be between Vehicle and Personal scale. but at the extreme high end of Vehicles you are getting into the Starship scale as well. As was stated, what is REALLY the difference between a 40 ton battle tank and a 40-ton spacecraft? They SHOULD use the same armour and likely mount the same weapons.

The Destructive trait seems to address many of the "moving up" scaling issues, but there are still a lot of problems with Scaling down. As Nerhesi said, why should a TL5 (1940s) simple vehicle weapon blow away a TL10 armoured person but not the reverse?

BUT, I also agree with Matt that having a vehicle with Armour 150 seems a bit rediculous for a 'simple' game. However, if you have weapons that can deal 20DD then you have something that will defeat it. That would be 2D on the Starship scale - A pulse laser.

Should a personal weapon be able to take out a TL15 Battle Tank? Maybe not, but it should be able to scratch the paint.

I do in principle like the idea of 2 scales though.

 

[-Daniel-]

I agree with Nerhesi, the use of tiers that have to scale up and down bring odd things where the tiers cross over. As the example of some "vehicles" that are as large as some "space craft".

What would be the impact of adjusting the tier multipliers? Say make them 5x or 2x for example. Would that make the transitions from tier to tier less of a "shock". that 1d weapon goes to 2-24 or 5-30 rather than 10-120. This might allow the personal weapon to damage a car for example. Just a thought.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Maybe scale the damage by the tonnage (instead of the type) of something? A 10-ton something shoots at a 50-ton something with both being shot at by a 200-ton something and they all return fire at a 2,000-ton something.

Or has that been tried already?

Stuff have weapons that do 4D damage (for example):

 Stuff in tons         Damage Done
Bigger / Smaller      By the Bigger 
2000 / 50 = 40         4D * 40
   50 / 2 = 25         4D * 25
    5 / 1 =  5         4D * 5

Smaller stuff shooting at bigger (or same size) stuff does not get to multiply its weapon damage. The above is just a very rough sketch. A person counts as 1 ton.

A person shooting at a 2-ton car with a rifle will not do much damage to the car. The car will still run. A 3D or 4D weapon may begin to leave a dent in a car. Aim for a tire to disable the car, or aim at the window to take out someone inside if possible.

 

[-Daniel-]

Maybe scale the damage by the tonnage (instead of the type) of something?

The only issue I see with using tonnage is that it does not take into account the weapon. I mount an ACR on a jeep, its power grows, then I mount it in the door of a shuttle and it is even more powerful? I mount it on the door of a 1,000 ton cargo ship and it levels buildings?

The weapon's type has to play into the solution somehow. A .22 is just a .22 no matter where I mount it.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

The weapon's type has to play into the solution somehow. A .22 is just a .22 no matter where I mount it.

What's the terminology for that sort of thing?... The military will use, I guess, "military grade" versions of "consumer grade" weapons. The weapon is pretty much the same, but is more ruggedized.

But I'm sure a 2000-ton ship will have the stronger weapons mounted on it. The 6D and 7D stuff. So not much of a chance to ever try using a 3D or 4D weapon mounted on one to even find out my rough sketch can be easily shot through.

What about having each weapon in the TU have its own damage? Then no scaling is needed? We'll have an app for this game to do 20D and 50D rolls.

 

[Wizard]

If we just keep two Tiers, Personal and Spacecraft, then we can keep Vehicle as Personal scale. Battle Dress suits topping out at 30 or so, with vehicle being able to go much higher. Then you can easily say "hey! A sports car is balanced at 5 armour, that SUV is maybe a 10 or so, Combat Armout 15, that armoured car at TL10 is around a 20! That TL12 APC is around 30, that TL14 Small tank is around 100, that TL15 Super Darrian Grav tank is 150 - it's just a small craft that used for ground support!"

I really like this, keeps it nice and simple. It makes it easier to compare weapons versus armour, plus it gets rid of all the complexity that the 3 tier system seems to be adding to the game and all the effort needed to keep things balanced.

Plus I don't mind a tank having 150 armour, it just shouts out at me that you will need something big to take this one down.

 

[Wizard]

We'll have an app for this game to do 20D and 50D rolls.

And if you don't have an app, you could simulate 20D by rolling 2D and multiplying by 10.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

We'll have an app for this game to do 20D and 50D rolls.

And if you don't have an app, you could simulate 20D by rolling 2D and multiplying by 10.

That's what I'm doing in the meantime. Anyway, the two-tier idea looks good to me.

 

[Nerhesi]

I find it fine to say a tank can have 150 armour is that at point, it is just effectively a small craft. You've hit two-birds with one-stone if I can use that here, you have seamless transition (and balance) between Personal & Vehicle scale. You also have no logical gap/leap between, as Rikki and others have put it, that 40-ton TL15 tank and the 40-ton smallcraft.

I dont think just addressing battle dress as vehicles will fix the issue because then, what is the difference between TL 15 Grav Plate Combat armor and Battle Dress at TL13? Heck the Grav Plate could be better! Etc etc...

Too many exceptions, by trying to create exceptions, rather that addressing root cause. In my humble opinion that is.

 

[Samcollins]

all for the two tiered solution

 

[Infojunky]

Ok, Just realized there is a Elephant in the Room for this discussion, which snuck in from the top tier. Said Elephant is Starship armor and it's limits. Is the Tech Level limit for maximum armor in play?

If so, it will frame how lesser scales should work as well. Notably Battledress and Combat Armor inch up into vehicular armor range.

 

[AndrewW]

Ok, Just realized there is a Elephant in the Room for this discussion, which snuck in from the top tier. Said Elephant is Starship armor and it's limits. Is the Tech Level limit for maximum armor in play?

That remains.

 

[MongooseMatt]

I want to avoid 20D weapons - we should be looking at a maximum of 10D for the most part. Tight dice ranges are easier to handle both in the rules and on the tabletop.

In principle, I am not against a two tier system, but every designer sense I have is screaming at me to have something between man and ship. I am currently still of the thought that we need the three tiers (and possibly a fourth for Capital ships, but that is not in the realm of 'normal' play, so I am not too worried about it right now).

The issues with the armoured car are easy to solve - civilian vehicles generally have 0 or 1 Armour, and we can mess around with total Hull. Simples.

The issue with the vehicle-mounted Heavy Machinegun - not an issue, even if it is mounted on a vehicle, it is still a Personal-scale weapon.

For the big 300-ton super heavy tank (or Titan from 40k, of Valiant from Doctor Who), we could have a few special cases where the biggest vehicles are done in Spacecraft scale - that is something for the Vehicle Handbook, no need to worry about them now.

Battledress...

Now, I am going to go off now and have a big argument with Mr Colin Dunn (our resident Battle Dress Fan) but I wonder... Suppose we did not just make Battle Dress vehicle scale... Suppose we (effectively) made Battle Dress a vehicle?

This would have the advantage of avoiding the issues we have met in the past edition whereby Battle Dress gets scaled up into 'heavy' and 'super heavy' Battle Dress, and the division between Battle Dress and Walkers. At some point, Battle Dress becomes a Walker (think Sentinels, War Walkers and Dreadnoughts in 40k). It would also integrate better with vehicle scale weaponry, which larger suits of Battle Dress regularly use.

So, I propose...

1. Adjust vehicle Armour and Hull to more reasonable levels (the scores they currently have were always just placeholders).
2. Be careful about anti-personnel Vehicle scale weapons (already paid a lot of attention to that in CSC!).
3. Make Battle Dress a vehicle in terms of scale and damage.

What would you all think to that?

 

[-Daniel-]

3. Make Battle Dress a vehicle in terms of scale and damage.

What would you all think to that?

Why stop there, keep going, the skill could now be Drive Walker -1 (or 2). Don't have the on the line between vehicle and armor at all.

As for the rest, sounds like it is worth adjusting for the next document then allowing us to try it in some combats and see. :mrgreen:

 

[Nerhesi]

Matthias! Lets chat.

In principle, I am not against a two tier system, but every designer sense I have is screaming at me to have something between man and ship. I am currently still of the thought that we need the three tiers (and possibly a fourth for Capital ships, but that is not in the realm of 'normal' play, so I am not too worried about it right now).

I totally agree we need something between man and ship. We control that via construction rules and weapon types and damage. You wont have 20D, you'll have 2DD or 3DD.

When we all say the problem is the 3-tier system, it isn't just because we have something called tiers. It is absolutely, strictly, the multipliers and divisors. These are what introduce the problems.

The issues with the armoured car are easy to solve - civilian vehicles generally have 0 or 1 Armour, and we can mess around with total Hull. Simples. The issue with the vehicle-mounted Heavy Machinegun - not an issue, even if it is mounted on a vehicle, it is still a Personal-scale weapon.

Sure - Heavy Machine gun issue addressed. But Civ Vehicles have a wide wide range of armour values, from smart car to suv to 1950 cadillac.

For the big 300-ton super heavy tank (or Titan from 40k, of Valiant from Doctor Who), we could have a few special cases where the biggest vehicles are done in Spacecraft scale - that is something for the Vehicle Handbook, no need to worry about them now.

So we make a special exception for a type of vehicle, which by the way will still have 150 armour in vehicle scale. What about the non super uber vehicles that are TL12,13, 14.. those ones that may have lik 4-12 spacecraft armour. So thats 40-120 vehicle armour, are we allowing them to have that much armour? These are not super heavy tanks, these are just advanced military forces using good material on their tanks.

Battledress...

Now, I am going to go off now and have a big argument with Mr Colin Dunn (our resident Battle Dress Fan) but I wonder... Suppose we did not just make Battle Dress vehicle scale... Suppose we (effectively) made Battle Dress a vehicle? This would have the advantage of avoiding the issues we have met in the past edition whereby Battle Dress gets scaled up into 'heavy' and 'super heavy' Battle Dress, and the division between Battle Dress and Walkers. At some point, Battle Dress becomes a Walker (think Sentinels, War Walkers and Dreadnoughts in 40k). It would also integrate better with vehicle scale weaponry, which larger suits of Battle Dress regularly use.

So Battle Dress becomes vehicles, but naturally, they would be vehicles with significant armour, so definitely 10+, and should easily be hitting 20 or 30+

So even with just 10+ armour, they're immune to TL15 FGMPs that are carried by combat armor and infantry? And why are they 10 times more powerful than combat armour?

So, I propose...

1. Adjust vehicle Armour and Hull to more reasonable levels (the scores they currently have were always just placeholders).
2. Be careful about anti-personnel Vehicle scale weapons (already paid a lot of attention to that in CSC!).
3. Make Battle Dress a vehicle in terms of scale and damage.

What would you all think to that?

I think Matt the above introduces new issues, in trying to solve the ones we pointed out. Infantry being useless against armoured vehicles completely, even with FGMPs, Powered TL12+ armour just being arbitrarily not anywhere near as good as for example an armoured car, imbalance between infantry carried heavy weapons and vehicle weapons, etc..

I agree Matt there is a "tier" between Man and Ship. Absolutely. I agree it has inherent hit penalties and bonuses (like you guys have). I dont agree that it needs a X10 or /10 damage multiplier. I honestly think that is the root of all evil (haha) and that we can control that "tier" using construction rules and by looking at weapons dice of damage.

Keeping the divisors Matt, makes us create a whole bunch of exceptions and is guaranteed to spawn even more problems because of exceptions. I prefer elegance in simplicity but I am interested in what others have to say of course. This is just my opinion and ideas based on the calculations, tests and the feasibility when I start imaging inconsistencies coming out of proposed "patching" above

 

[First Age]

I agree Matt there is a "tier" between Man and Ship. Absolutely. I agree it has inherent hit penalties and bonuses (like you guys have). I dont agree that it needs a X10 or /10 damage multiplier. I honestly think that is the root of all evil (haha) and that we can control that "tier" using construction rules and by looking at weapons dice of damage.

This feels absolutely right to me.

I couldn't make the damage work well with the 10 factor across the three tiers. Modifiers to hit - fair enough.

 

[Infojunky]

Right off the bat, I say that Soft-skin vehicles should use the same ranges of armor and hits as personal scale. This option already exists in the base vehicle design rules that the new rules are based off of, in that there are regular vehicles and armored vehicles with parallel design tracks.


With that, if the starship scale armor is limited to a number of points equal to Tech Level, does this apply across the board? My gut feeling is yes, this is consistent.

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.

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....

 

[grauenwolf]

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