[Playtest Focus] Vehicle Hits, Armour and Damage
- Thread starter MongooseMatt
- Start date
I know a lot of you guys are looking at a different way of scaling, such as, the 3-plus or 3-die scaling, but honestly, I still think it is completely unnecessary.
You'll excuse my Business Process/Strategic Transformation side here, but the return on the investment for adding another operation (multiplying or dividing damage) is nil.
We're not dealing with massive values here, and the only effect is adding the time of a simple mental operation, while introducing significant risk and issues around the problems of armour/damage still being in line.
You'll see with the common element among modern & successful RPGs, is the move away from this different multipliers (e.g. SDC vs MDC) that is common to legacy systems, to having the same mechanic to treat vehicles, people, ships or otherwise.
The only multiplying / dividing needed across "tiers" is the simplification of the dice rolled, not the actual armour or damage values. For that, we have 1 simple system that was almost perfect in MGT1:
Personal/Vehicle scale armour & damage, div 10 = Spacecraft scale. Thats it!
Now you can have TL, type of material, and all that affect the size/weight/space/maximum value, without any problem what-so-ever!
Examples:
Titanium/similar armoured TL7 tank? 70 armour! Which is = 7 in space scale!
Bonded Super Dense TL15 tank? 150 armour! Which is = 15 Bonded Super Dense armour in space scale.
Orbital Defense Pulse Laser? 2DD damage! Which is = 2D damage pulse laser in space scale.
Nuclear Missile? 4DD which is = 4D Missile in space scale.
Some maniac mounting a particle weapon or a railgun on a tank? 3DD damage! Which is = 3D particle turret that we have and love in space scale!
Why oh why do we need to make things more complicated! The above allows for complexity, without being complicated. Elegant, simple and avoids a whole slew of problems (AP scaling, weirdness when comparing certain weapons, infantry being so inferior when a battle armour trooper meets a jeep, or infantry FGMP magically having 10 times "weaker" fusion than the one mounted on the tank etc...)
You'll excuse my Business Process/Strategic Transformation side here, but the return on the investment for adding another operation (multiplying or dividing damage) is nil.
We're not dealing with massive values here, and the only effect is adding the time of a simple mental operation, while introducing significant risk and issues around the problems of armour/damage still being in line.
You'll see with the common element among modern & successful RPGs, is the move away from this different multipliers (e.g. SDC vs MDC) that is common to legacy systems, to having the same mechanic to treat vehicles, people, ships or otherwise.
The only multiplying / dividing needed across "tiers" is the simplification of the dice rolled, not the actual armour or damage values. For that, we have 1 simple system that was almost perfect in MGT1:
Personal/Vehicle scale armour & damage, div 10 = Spacecraft scale. Thats it!
Now you can have TL, type of material, and all that affect the size/weight/space/maximum value, without any problem what-so-ever!
Examples:
Titanium/similar armoured TL7 tank? 70 armour! Which is = 7 in space scale!
Bonded Super Dense TL15 tank? 150 armour! Which is = 15 Bonded Super Dense armour in space scale.
Orbital Defense Pulse Laser? 2DD damage! Which is = 2D damage pulse laser in space scale.
Nuclear Missile? 4DD which is = 4D Missile in space scale.
Some maniac mounting a particle weapon or a railgun on a tank? 3DD damage! Which is = 3D particle turret that we have and love in space scale!
Why oh why do we need to make things more complicated! The above allows for complexity, without being complicated. Elegant, simple and avoids a whole slew of problems (AP scaling, weirdness when comparing certain weapons, infantry being so inferior when a battle armour trooper meets a jeep, or infantry FGMP magically having 10 times "weaker" fusion than the one mounted on the tank etc...)
FallingPhoenix
Mongoose
Infojunky said:
Ah...apparently I did miss that part somewhere.
Perhaps I misunderstood the question... but how is it not explicity clear that armour changes with scale?
A traveller in Combat Armour, with say some subdermal armour = 25 ish armour.
The g-carrier TL15 top of the line has 6 armour in the front... 6.
The ships in the book have between 2 and 4 points of armour.
Obviously the ship's 4 points, is different than the vehicles 6 points, which is different than the traveller's 25 points.
The damage scales, but the armor does not.
As long as the armor is subtracted from the damage after the scaling, it's no problem.
Vehicle weapon with 1d damage hits Traveller in armor protection 12. Result on d6 is 4.
If you scale it first, then that's 40-12 = traveller in a world of hurt.
If you scale after subtraction of armor, Traveller laughs.
The issue is that while it may be obvious that is how it should work, the text does not say anywhere (I have not checked the September revision completely, so maybe it has been updated...)
In fact, under the table where damage scaling is tabulated, there is the text
Armor seems to me to be a "modifier for damage".
So there, my traveller in combat armor can laugh at the vehicular cannon.
He can also shoot his autopistol through a far trader most of the time. (It won't do damage, because we round down after scaling, but it did penetrate the armor...)
I know this should be wrong, but it isn't by RAW.
The rules need to specify when armor is subtracted from the damage - before or after scaling the damage. Likewise, AP ammo, and what happens when using it against another scale. [does personal scale weapons firing AP ammo slice through vehicle armor as easily as it does through personnel armor? The rule as is is not clear and should say.]
As long as the armor is subtracted from the damage after the scaling, it's no problem.
Vehicle weapon with 1d damage hits Traveller in armor protection 12. Result on d6 is 4.
If you scale it first, then that's 40-12 = traveller in a world of hurt.
If you scale after subtraction of armor, Traveller laughs.
The issue is that while it may be obvious that is how it should work, the text does not say anywhere (I have not checked the September revision completely, so maybe it has been updated...)
In fact, under the table where damage scaling is tabulated, there is the text
Armor seems to me to be a "modifier for damage".
So there, my traveller in combat armor can laugh at the vehicular cannon.
He can also shoot his autopistol through a far trader most of the time. (It won't do damage, because we round down after scaling, but it did penetrate the armor...)
I know this should be wrong, but it isn't by RAW.
The rules need to specify when armor is subtracted from the damage - before or after scaling the damage. Likewise, AP ammo, and what happens when using it against another scale. [does personal scale weapons firing AP ammo slice through vehicle armor as easily as it does through personnel armor? The rule as is is not clear and should say.]
FallingPhoenix
Mongoose
Nerhesi said:
So you only want two scales instead of three scales?
-Daniel- said:
What I (and others) would like, is only one instance of where a multiplier for damage is used. That is between Space-scale and non-space-scale. The sole purpose of this multiplier is to reduce dice - it is not an artificial multiplier used to differentiate scales.
You can still have 3 scales for to-hit modifiers (0, -2, -4) and 3 scales for speed (walking/running vs vehicle speed band vs space thrust value).
FallingPhoenix
Mongoose
So, if vehicle damage is not scaled differently from character damage, how many dice are we looking at for a top-scale, high damage vehicle weapon?
Fusion Gun Z looks like a good candidate. Is 9D a good representation of the damage this weapon should do? That seems to be the high end I've seen in other places as being able to hold that many dice at once.
Fusion Gun Z looks like a good candidate. Is 9D a good representation of the damage this weapon should do? That seems to be the high end I've seen in other places as being able to hold that many dice at once.
FallingPhoenix said:
Top scale vehicle damage would be 30D or 3DD (same thing). This would be equivalent to particle beam that you have on a ship.
Or 4DD/40D if you consider a vehicle have the equivalent of a ship scale barbette (logical). This would be the equivalent TL14+ super tank.. like a darian sphere tank
Nerhesi said:
This is the problem - at no point should we be thinking about rolling 40 (!) dice.
The scaling system between ships and personal will work, I don't think there is any debate there. And I think vehicles could easily be lumped into personal (to give just two scales) if we stuck to air/rafts and speeder bikes. The problems arise when great hefty super-grav tanks start rolling across the horizon.
Aside from a few tweaks on the mechanics (such as when Armour is deducted, good point, well made), I think this system is working very well and is smooth - on a purely mechanical level. everyone can add or take off a zero, after all.
The issues are quantitative - actually getting it to work with realistic vehicle values. This is what we are looking at right now. In the next update, allied with the draft of the Vehicle Handbook, I am hoping this will be more or less sorted - at least to the extent that you will all be comfortable with it and we will just be chasing errant vehicles (if this bicycle rams a grav tank, it has a 10% chance to cause critical damage - that kind of thing...).
msprange said:
Agreed - and 40 dice is just 4DD
So the problem is solved with just a simple system for simplifying dice, without the need for an artificial scale in between!msprange said:
And I am sure we'll be able to handle that super hefty-grav tank with 2 scales. If spacecraft scale is just Vehicle or Personal divided by 10, we can easily work out the TL thresholds to make sure that super hefty grav tank of TL15, doesn't have any more armour than that super awesome TL 15 fighter!
Nathan Brazil
Banded Mongoose
Why don't you simply treat Battle Dress as a "Vehicle"?
1.Give it a Vehicular Armor Rating, Does not have to be high, a value of 2, 3, or whatever the sweet spot is doing it this way.
2.With scaling damage, personal weapon damage is divided by 10 which sort of works out to the current personal protection values of 22 and 25.
2.Give it Hull Rating. Around 8 like a Ground Car. Again sweet spot. Damage which penetrates hits the Battle Dress Hull generally.
BUT
in the meantime other Criticals will be scraping off the Battle Dress weapons, sensors, etc. The occupant will only get hurt on an occupant critical hit, which generally means they take less personal damage. At the end, the occupant will likely be alive in a nonfunctional suit.
BECAUSE
under the current playtest RAW, I do not see "Vehicle" occupants in other vehicles dying simply because Hull reaches 0. The Battle Dress simply stops functioning.
Just some ideas on resolving Battle Dress as far as damage goes in this dicussion. To some extent, it seemed Mongoose was going that way in previous edition Sup 5-6 Vehicle Handbook. That is what I got out of it.
1.Give it a Vehicular Armor Rating, Does not have to be high, a value of 2, 3, or whatever the sweet spot is doing it this way.
2.With scaling damage, personal weapon damage is divided by 10 which sort of works out to the current personal protection values of 22 and 25.
2.Give it Hull Rating. Around 8 like a Ground Car. Again sweet spot. Damage which penetrates hits the Battle Dress Hull generally.
BUT
in the meantime other Criticals will be scraping off the Battle Dress weapons, sensors, etc. The occupant will only get hurt on an occupant critical hit, which generally means they take less personal damage. At the end, the occupant will likely be alive in a nonfunctional suit.
BECAUSE
under the current playtest RAW, I do not see "Vehicle" occupants in other vehicles dying simply because Hull reaches 0. The Battle Dress simply stops functioning.
Just some ideas on resolving Battle Dress as far as damage goes in this dicussion. To some extent, it seemed Mongoose was going that way in previous edition Sup 5-6 Vehicle Handbook. That is what I got out of it.
-Daniel-
Emperor Mongoose
Why shouldn't a tank have more armour than a fighter? Not sure I followed this last point of yours. :|Nerhesi said:... we can easily work out the TL thresholds to make sure that super hefty grav tank of TL15, doesn't have any more armour than that super awesome TL 15 fighter!
