Vehicles Damage issues

[Infojunky]

Ok there are some issues with damage scaling in the vehicles.

Softskin vehicles virtually immune to person scale weapons if they have any armor, case in point the Ground car with it's 5 armor can take at most 1 point of damage from a PGMP....

Maybe there should be some consideration between Softskin and armored vehicles...

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I been using PGMPs against vehicles just fine. 1D x 10 damage, heavy weapon mounted on battle suit.

 

[Infojunky]

I been using PGMPs against vehicles just fine. 1D x 10 damage, heavy weapon mounted on battle suit.

RAW, you are forgetting to divide by 10 there Shawn..... Which is why i brought up the issue...

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I been using PGMPs against vehicles just fine. 1D x 10 damage, heavy weapon mounted on battle suit.

RAW, you are forgetting to divide by 10 there Shawn..... Which is why i brought up the issue...

I was treating the mounted weapon the same as a mounted weapon on a vehicle. A person can't carry such a weapon and use it without... but you know this. If you're going that RAW route, what about adding the effect then?

 

[Infojunky]

I been using PGMPs against vehicles just fine. 1D x 10 damage, heavy weapon mounted on battle suit.

RAW, you are forgetting to divide by 10 there Shawn..... Which is why i brought up the issue...

I was treating the mounted weapon the same as a mounted weapon on a vehicle. A person can't carry such a weapon and use it without... but you know this. If you're going that RAW route, what about adding the effect then?

PGMP is a personal scale Heavy Weapon, thus falls under a personal weapon so on the personal scale it does 1DD or 1d6x10 (No effect because its a destructive weapon). Against the Ground car is gets the vehicle damage divisor of Dam/10 or 1d6, plus said Ground car has 5 armor, thus one needs to roll a 6 to do 1 point of damage to said car (1 point out of 14)

Related the non-Destructive effect "Heavy" Weapons are also under Dam/10 which effectively makes the car immune to them.

My point here is Softskin vehicles such as the Ground car and most civilian vehicles should be vulnerable to personal weapons to one extant or another...

And as this is a playtest I figured I would bring it up.

And Shawn the idea of treating Battledress as vehicles isn't all that bad of an idea.....

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

PGMP is a personal scale Heavy Weapon, thus falls under a personal weapon so on the personal scale it does 1DD or 1d6x10 (No effect because its a destructive weapon).

Technically, it's no longer destructive when divided by 10. So Effect gets added to it (for the car to go boom when hit) in my universe then.

So what if civilian vehicles could be treated as personal scale, too. Then no division is applied, and no Effect. And I still get to use my boom stick at 1DD (personal scale).

As-is, the 3D machinegun is looking like a problem when compared to my boom stick. If I was a power-gamer, I'd just use the 3D weapon.

 

[Infojunky]

PGMP is a personal scale Heavy Weapon, thus falls under a personal weapon so on the personal scale it does 1DD or 1d6x10 (No effect because its a destructive weapon).

Technically, it's no longer destructive when divided by 10. So Effect gets added to it (for the car to go boom when hit) in my universe then.

Shawn I won't disagree with you there, Just as this a playtest, so letting the author see the wonky bits as written is the job....

So what if civilian vehicles could be treated as personal scale, too. Then no division is applied, and no Effect. And I still get to use my boom stick at 1DD (personal scale).

That might indeed be the quick fix....

As-is, the 3D machinegun is looking like a problem when compared to my boom stick. If I was a power-gamer, I'd just use the 3D weapon.

Yep....

 

[Nerhesi]

Vehicle weapons and armor need a once over because there are some crazy weapons.

Also that PGMP issue is wonky - most battle armoured troops can barely hit 40 an meanwhile a Ferrari is more armoured

Perhaps just lowering the vehicle armor to be more realistic (like 1 vehicle scale). Not in favour of adding another rule and clarification on how suddenly DD is no longer "DD" so you can add effect again.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I'd rather not have scaled damage at all for weapons. Just have weapons do the same damage whatever they shoot at.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Remember you are scaling upwards, so Effect will count.

However, yes, the Ground Car (and similar vehicles) probably has too much armour.

This problem can be approached in two ways (damage vs. Armour) so would be _very_ interested in hearing what people think both should be.

 

[Nerhesi]

Remember you are scaling upwards, so Effect will count.

However, yes, the Ground Car (and similar vehicles) probably has too much armour.

This problem can be approached in two ways (damage vs. Armour) so would be _very_ interested in hearing what people think both should be.

Scaling damage I would think is the problem Matt - I'm afraid Matthew that the vehicle damage under the new system is running away a bit... Previously some massive fusion top of the line gun would do 28d6 or 30d6, but against (up to) 150 armour max (vehicle rules). Now i'm seeing the APC has 15 armour or so, yet we still have DD in vehicle scale! so weapons can do up to like 180 with 3DD!!! I think we need to be real careful with damage scaling and it running away...

Currently (MGT2) the PGMP/FGMP are doing 1d6/2d6 + effect vs vehicles.

However, the vehicle weapons do 1DD to 3DD vehicle scale!! This naturally, I assume, will be fired upon vehicles which have up to 150 armour at TL15 - allowing us to avoid that age old problem of "why is my TL15 40 ton tank, any less armoured than a spacecraft of the same size?" - seamless transition. 150 vehicle armor = 15 armour spacecraft yay!"

However... because of the way we've set up traveller and vehicle damage scales.... the battle dress PGMPs and FGMPs will now never do damage to any vehicle with above 15 or 16 armour.. thats an APV, not even a tank or an advanced grav tank!! You can't drop down armour on vehicles either, because you have vehicle weapons doing 1DD and 3DD (so up to 180!!!), and you want vehicle-spacecraft systems to be seamless, so they need up to TLx100 armour...

Hence conundrum!

Eureka (sorry - just occurred to me now) The fix: Traveler and Vehicle scale should be on the same damage values. Have two scales for damage- Traveller and Spacecraft. That way you can very easily balance the damage between personal and vehicle scale, AND still have seamless integration with spacecraft weapons and armor. You can still have 3 scales for to-hit modifiers (-2 and -4 as you aim at smaller things).

This basically grabs what worked in MGT1 (damage across vehicles and personal scale) and streamlines it with spacecraft armor/damage (divide damage done to spacecraft by 10, multiple damage by spacecraft weapons by 10)

 

[Wizard]

Eureka (sorry - just occurred to me now) The fix: Traveler and Vehicle scale should be on the same damage values. Have two scales for damage- Traveller and Spacecraft. That way you can very easily balance the damage between personal and vehicle scale, AND still have seamless integration with spacecraft weapons and armor. You can still have 3 scales for to-hit modifiers (-2 and -4 as you aim at smaller things).

Brilliant!

I was previously thinking maybe it would be best to just get rid of scaling, but then the numbers for spacecraft get too big. Prefer this suggestion.

 

[Infojunky]

Eureka (sorry - just occurred to me now) The fix: Traveler and Vehicle scale should be on the same damage values. Have two scales for damage- Traveller and Spacecraft. That way you can very easily balance the damage between personal and vehicle scale, AND still have seamless integration with spacecraft weapons and armor. You can still have 3 scales for to-hit modifiers (-2 and -4 as you aim at smaller things).

Brilliant!

I was previously thinking maybe it would be best to just get rid of scaling, but then the numbers for spacecraft get too big. Prefer this suggestion.

I don't disagree with this, the solution I was kicking around in my head was more along the lines of reducing the scaling factor. Something a 3x or 5x instead of a 10x. But that was muddled up in the range of possible damages that most person weapons have.

Look at it this way:
Pistols generally; 3d-3 average Dam 7
Rifles 3d aDam 10
Heavy/advanced Rifles; 3d+3 or 4d aDam 13
Rocket Launcher/Laser Rifle; 5d aDam 17

With the /10 in place the damage range is 1 to 2 points of damage across the range with a generous rounding after effect. Looking at those results I start to think there has got to be a simpler system.....

Try this, /3 damage dice instead of resulting damage /10. As Follows

9d in personal scale is,
3d in vehicle scale is,
1d in starship scale,

 

[MongooseMatt]

My first thought here is to much around with Armour and Hits on vehicles - there is no good reason a Ground Car should have much, if any armour. We've all seen videos of someone shooting up a car...

Conflating Vehicle and Traveller scale is not beyond the realms of possibility, but I can see some issues when we start looking at very high end tanks.

We should, as a first step, see if we can get the system working properly as is with low end vehicles (those in the Core book now) by adjusting Armour and Hits. If that works, tanks and their weaponry can be adjusted to follow (they will end up with much lower armour than in the first edition, but I am okay with that).

Anyone fancy running some combats with Armour 1 or 0 Ground Cars and Armour 5-10 APCs?

 

[MongooseMatt]

I should explain further...

The three step damage scale (and we are looking at a fourth for Capital ships, but that has not been settled yet) is desirable because it keeps numbers within a tighter range - with a 2D task system and Damage Dice in the 1-10D range, no vehicle should be going around with 150+ points of Armour. It is just, well, silly.

If we can get the three tier system moving smoothly (and yes, this was an area I very much expected to cause issues in the playtest), we will have a better game.