Starship armor damage

[James McMurray]

We had our first starship combat tonight (chapter 2 of Ragged Edge) and there was some confusion over armor damage. First, I knew I'd read about it but we couldn't find it in the book. Then, I came here and found a description of it:

Armor Damage
Also when you attack a vessel the offensive rating +1 for each 5 points over the defence divided by 5 is also the amount of an opponents armour that they have removed allowing you to wear down larger vessels protection.

It seems like that sentence needs some parenthesis or commas or something. Can someone give me a page number and/or the formula for determining armor damage? The way we did it made the starfuries fight take forever (it didn't help that the 2nd level characters couldn't hit DV 18 with any regularity, even after locking on).

Thanks!

 

[Shadow Queen]

if the damage roll goes over the armour then by say twenty thats 20 pts of damage then roll on location

hoe thats right NEO????

 

[Neo]

We had our first starship combat tonight (chapter 2 of Ragged Edge) and there was some confusion over armor damage. First, I knew I'd read about it but we couldn't find it in the book. Then, I came here and found a description of it:

Armor Damage
Also when you attack a vessel the offensive rating +1 for each 5 points over the defence divided by 5 is also the amount of an opponents armour that they have removed allowing you to wear down larger vessels protection.

It seems like that sentence needs some parenthesis or commas or something. Can someone give me a page number and/or the formula for determining armor damage? The way we did it made the starfuries fight take forever (it didn't help that the 2nd level characters couldn't hit DV 18 with any regularity, even after locking on).

Thanks!

There is no page number sadly, as armour damage was an idea used in the playtest that for whatever reason was removed with the final release.

However, that siade, since I mentioned it on these forums a few people have adopted it for use in play.

Basically the formula is this...

You take the Offence Rating of the weapon, and add +1 for every 5 points your attack was over the opponents vessels DV (round down), and then divide that total by 5 and this is the amount of armour damage caused by the attack.

So for example say you have a ship with a 40 offence weapon. And you attack the opponent and beat his defense by 4 (no bonus there, +0) divide the 40 +0 by 5 = 8, so the attack would have reduced the enemies armour by 8 points.

Another idea we threw around in my own playtest sessions for this was to only apply armour damage on a critical...but its upto your own personal preferences of course.

 

[James McMurray]

Ah, ok. that would explain why we couldn't find it.

We'll definitely be using it though, because without it starfuries have to crit to hurt each other.

 

[thedarkelf007]

I've been running the Ragged Edge as well, and found the extra damage and armour degridation to be quite handy.

 

[Mick]

basicly when come down to it the space combat sytem need a total rewrite, and this time some playtesting would help

 

[Neo]

basicly when come down to it the space combat sytem need a total rewrite, and this time some playtesting would help

It was re-wrote "these" are the new rules and it was playtested, I was among one of the groups that did it, so you may wish to choose your comments a little more prudently

 

[James McMurray]

Neo, can you explain why the final version made it near impossible for dueling star furies to hurt each other?

 

[Neo]

Neo, can you explain why the final version made it near impossible for dueling star furies to hurt each other?

Hello James

In all honesty I can't say, playtest groups test the manuscripts and provide thier reports, but what actually gets changed, edited or implemented we never actuallu become aware of until the book is released. As such there are some issues we raised that for whatever reason (preference, oversight, design, time?) did not get altered.

People far too often blame mistakes on playtesting, or lack thereof when in the vast majoritive of the time it isnt due to that at al as we have invariably raised same or similar points during testing. Indeed from what I have seen of the other groups they are all proficient in the task and experienced testers to begin with. I should also note Mongoose does not blindly accept "everyone" who asks to become a playtester, there is a screening process in order to ensure testers quality. But people should also remember we testers also have zero control on what gets changed as per all our playtesting reports, so only Mongoose would know for certain why somethign was or was not left unchanged or removed etc...

Fleeting fighters into a Wing helps (Join Battle Group Order, see pg 213 B5 2e RPG) to combine fire. Indeed there was discussion on this very point in another thread on these board just after the release of the B5 2e rules and I pointed out as much there including the armour damage rules.. of course I didnt realise they hadnt made the final release at that point heh..

I think the oversight may have come from a little bit of Wargamer mentality.. in that when you think of fighters you think of a flight of multiple fighters, not just one or two..hence the battle group order. But in an RPG environment one on one or a couple at a time is more plausible in occurence and under those circumstance the rules struggle to allow them to hurt each other, the Armour damage rules helped offset that.

 

[James McMurray]

Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to blame anyone. You just seemed the closest to the source so I figured I'd ask.

We knew about combining fire as a wing, but that doesn't help any when you're trying to kill one solo craft with another. We decided to implement the armor damage rules as they were presented here.

Thanks!

 

[Neo]

Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to blame anyone. You just seemed the closest to the source so I figured I'd ask.

We knew about combining fire as a wing, but that doesn't help any when you're trying to kill one solo craft with another. We decided to implement the armor damage rules as they were presented here.

Thanks!

No worries James, my clarification regarding playtesting and its place in scheme of a books production process, was more of a clarification for the sake of Mick and others who think when something doesnt work to thier satisfaction it must be due to poor playtesting

Im glad I could help with the Armour Damaging rules, if you have any other queries, please, don't hesitate to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

 

[James McMurray]

Ok, here's a question I've been hunting for an answer to for a little while: In what major cities do detectives outrank patrol officers?

 

[frobisher]

Ok, here's a question I've been hunting for an answer to for a little while: In what major cities do detectives outrank patrol officers?

London (in fact anywhere in the UK).

 

[James McMurray]

Shoulda specified America.

 

[Shadow Queen]

well theres FBI, NCIS, US Marshels, Texas Rangers ...........

 

[James McMurray]

I'm sorry, those fall outside of the "cities" boundary.

 

[Shadow Queen]

fbi are in the citys, as are the NCIS, US navy ports

 

[James McMurray]

But they don't have patrol officers, nor are they tied to a city. I'm sorry, but your rules lawyering of the answer has been denied. Please play again.

 

[Shadow Queen]

Ok, here's a question I've been hunting for an answer to for a little while: In what major cities do detectives outrank patrol officers?

in all citys, then the ones i mentioned step on there toes

 

[James McMurray]

I thought detectives always outranked patrolmen too. That's definitely what TV and Film tells us. But they don't, not even in New York where lots of those gritty crime drama detectives boss around the poor uniformed patrolmen. So far the only large city I've found where Detective and Patrol Officer are actually ranks instead of job descriptions is Austin.