Damage Rating Conversion Chart

[Fred]

SP = Structural Points. The vehicle's Hit Points, so to speak.

Threshold was the term used to signify the damage threshold of the shield before it would have bleedthrough. If you fired an aether gun doing 5 ADR at a power armor with a shield with a threshold of 3, the shield would be powerful enough to block 60% o that attack; the remaining two points would hit the power armor's... well, armor. So, more powerful weapons were power likely to still do damage on units that were lightly shielded since their shields could only block so much at one time.

 

[CadetNewb]

@Fred - That helped a bit, and though I like the upsides of your system, the downsides are still bothering me. The nuances between two different units in the same category, like I mentioned before, aren't easily expressed using this system. Abnormals who have their abilities skewed and those which straddle two different classes in your system aren't covered. Though you're right that a person submitting them can add all that detail into the article itself, that puts the burden on not only them to do so, but the reader to go through the article, and there's not always a lot of time on hand. I like numerical based DR systems because they're not only precise enough to give nuances between things in the same class, but also allow a person to quickly get an idea of how tough something is or how much damage it does at a glance.

That's a very convenient feature.

Thinking more about it though, we may be better off having our cake and eating it too. This may sound far fetched Fred, but what if we had your narrative system accompanying a numerical DR system as a guideline of how the combat itself would actually play out? A numerical DR system is great for getting down small details, comparing things to each other and allowing people to take in what something is at a glance, but is utterly awful at giving people a good idea at how it would actually play out in RP. Meanwhile, the narrative system you've come up with is the exact opposite. If you like the idea, give me a benchmark, and I think I can come up with a Numerical DR System that's made to fit your Narrative Combat System.

I would suggest 'test conditions', with the time it would take to either penetrate the armor and potentially incapacitate the pilot of a Daisy when firing into its strongest point, the chest. Energy Barriers on or off is up to you. The same goes for everyone else here too - if you like the idea, tell me your opinion on how long it would take to penetrate the armor in this scenario.

@Nashoba - thanks a lot, that was giving me a fair bit of trouble.

 

[Fred]

You work from a flawed premise. That of hit points being acceptable in our roleplay environment; which every GM ruling - typically based on common sense - will most often disregard and for good reason: ships treated as bunch of HPs do not work. Rather you end up considering how it was hit, and where, and so forth.

Not to mention that, to begin with, the SP are tied to ship size class, and sometimes they fluctuate a step higher or lower. So, that nuance argument of yours is a complete nonissue; the change - as far as you are concerned - will pretty much end up into an equivalency of what you were looking for anyways.

Therefore, the numerals in this system are more or less useless. You say you rely on them; these days, I do the very opposite: I ignore them because they've become submission tax. You won't see me support the "submission tax", especially when the arguments in favor of it are so poor as to claim they are 'convenient', 'time saving', 'at-a-glance'. Really? Really?! Someone goes through the pains of creating a wiki entry and once it ends up being in use, rather than doing your homework and getting an impression on what vessel/device/vehicle/thing it happens to be... you just want to skip to the numerals? Ugh, I'm kind of moved to disgust - I just can't believe you made that argument. It's not convenient, it's lazy.

Besides, I don't know what's more "at-a-glance" than "medium starship" which brings about a lot of similar assumptions (previous system: SP 20, Shield 20/2). The starship is more lightly armored? You mention it as a quirk. "Medium-sized starship; quirk: has thinner stealth armor" - that'd be just like saying SP 15 instead. Except hit points are futile, why put a rule there that most people will break by GM prerogative? The answer: you don't. It's why it's called a perogative.

Read the damn articles. We don't write them just for the heck of it. You don't go and try to revise them and see them make more sense because the numbers are more important. The very fact that you've put so much effort into revising the wording of several articles just proves me right, and you know it. If I wouldn't know better, I'd say you're balking at this just for the sake of balking.

As for test conditions? No matter how fair we might want to be, Wes and I are going to have wildly differing opinions on how our flagship designs function. How much would it take an Himiko-class to destroy a Plumeria? How much would it take to do the reverse? But you know what? That's fine. There's really no point in fighting against it. It's not something we'll ever fairly control, hit points, or not.

 

[Eistheid]

Looking at what has been said above by @Fred I would also like to add that even if a ship is listed as having SP 20, you would still have to read the article anyway. If the ship is at SP 20 with Durandium armour it is going to react in a very different manner to damage than an SP 20 ship that is sheathed in Zesuaium, even though those seem to be in the process of being phased out. Taking a quick glance at the SP value and making a judgment based on the number you miss out on the nuance of what it is made of and as such would be prone to misrepresenting damage. After all a kinetic slug would have a very different impact on a Zesuaium shell compared to a Durandium hull.

 

[Nightowl]

I do see both sides of the issue. There really is a need to have a general "guessimate" of how tough items/enemies are, hence the need for some kind of comparison system, either the "hard numbers" kind that Cadet is suggesting, or the "intended use" system that Fred was proposing.

Fred is also right in that a "hard numbers" system is actually limiting in a RP system. Damage is very situational and is usually RPed out.

Cadet, sometimes, there simply are *no* numbers to describe something. For example, how many "SP" is an Abrams tank in real life? Or the Challenger 2 in the Gulf War that took 14 RPGs and an ATGM and still came out intact, that a "hard numbers" system say should have been cooked? I do know that you like to clarify things and it helps. However, some things simply can't be easily pigeonholed by numbers.

As for the sharpshooter thing, as someone RPing one, you have to know that against heavy vehicles, you can't do one shot kills or even kill at all, you have to accept that. Instead, your role becomes support. Your job isn't to blow up the enemy, it is to harass him so badly that your teammates have a safer/easier job. Try to sling solid rounds into the enemy's joints or go for his handheld weapons or even smack a round into his head/sensor when he is trying to take a swipe or aiming at a teammate to distract him. If you have support, you can be the one lasing for fire support instead of your more engaged teammates. It's the Star Army, not Star Rambo. Work as a team.

 

[Moogle]

On another note, a lot of people ignore the DR system completely because it's just sort of numbers gamey and pointless (See also: DnD). If it were a better measuring stick (say, for an odd and not very useful example that 1 is "you can puncture a soda can" and 35 might be "you can blow up a tank") then maybe people would use it more.

If anybody else has made this point I'm sorry but my reading comprehension sucks.

 

[Wes]

For clarification purposes:

Was SDR 2 the same as ADR 10 this whole time?

Yes.

The old DR system before the current one apparently did have MDR and even ran off of a 1-10 system, but details on it are sketchy.

The old 1-10 DR system did not have different levels of damage. Everything was on the same 1-10 scale from a child's slingshot to a starship main gun. On the old system, it was vaguely exponential.

What's an SP? I never got that. And threshold?

An SP is a structural point. For example, a Mindy has typically something like 8 armor structural points, so it would take two ADR 4 attacks to deplete its points and destroy it.

Threshold is the minimum amount of damage that it takes for any damage to make it through the shields. So, if a ship has a shield threshold of 3, then an SDR 4 attack would only send 1 point of damage to the ship.

 

[Nashoba]

SP is Structure Points, how must stuff something has. Or how much damage it takes to destroy it.

Threshold is how much a shield stops. For example a shield that has threshold of 3 SDR gets hit by a 5 SDR weapon, the ship will only take two points of damage. Of course the shield looses three points of its SP, once the shield has hit 0 SP, the shield is gone. Until it can be restored.

 

[CadetNewb]

@Fred @Eistheid @Nightowl - you kinda got some parts but missed others of what I was saying. Or maybe I wasn't clear enough. Hell, Fred's pissed even.

I don't support using the numbers being used as actual HP points, but as a loose guideline used to compare one thing to another. Having the system be actually robust enough to do so is great, hence why I suggested combining DR systems, but isn't the intended goal. As for why I like having the option to simply look at the numbers, it's not that I completely ignore the article. I read them, but since I sometimes enjoy doing some war-game scenarios where I'm trying to manage different, contrasting groups rather than just individuals. I'm not going to re-read the articles. Instead, in such cases, I'll want to just grab a frame of reference, and quick. I'll have multiple tabs open and be quickly going back and forward between different things to put together a big picture and theorize how things will work out in whatever scenario it is. Not only that, but as someone who makes tech, I actually appreciate having those numbers to use to set something I'm working on apart from others of its class in addition to all the writing I do - it's another tool on my table. Further reinforcing how something is unique in regards to how different it is in comparison to others of its class is something possible with the current system, but much harder to capture with the one Fred proposes. Hard numbers can't be beat in that regards. They're hard numbers. Again, they SHOULDN'T be used as HP to determine how combat goes, but they do a good job of showing, down to the smallest percent, how different things relate to one another. Relativity. Comparisons. Stuff like that.

That's why I want a numbers system to follow AFTER Fred's system as well.

@Moogle - I agree on this as well. I wouldn't use a numbers based DR system to determine how an RP goes. And as you say, if it's good enough that I could, that's great. However, and as I said above, it's besides the point I'm trying to make; the numbers allow you to measure and compare things closely to each other in a clear and non-ambiguous manner, something not present in Fred's system. I can, very literally, find out that Armor 1 is X percent tougher than Armor 2 in most situations. Or that

 

[Eistheid]

After reading what you have written @CadetNewb I now have a better idea of what it is that you want the SP to represent and what you use it for. I can empathize with the desire for a system that streamlines the process of setting up thought experiments and wargame scenarios to explore ideas, however from what I have seen in this thread as well as on IRC is that most people don't want to deal with the hard numbers of a system and would rather simply state that a weapon is intended for a purpose.

So if you want assistance with implementing a system to help you work through theoretical scenarios on the fly, I would be happy to help after the proposed narrative system is put into place to make the lives of GMs, Players, and Tech Authors a little easier.

To further help with your goal, perhaps instead of doing away with the current system's values they could be left in place even after the new system's ratings have been implemented so that you still have the easy reference while working toward a more comprehensive system based on harder numbers to help you and anyone else who might be interested in having such a resource.

As well... I would suggest that only the narrative scale be made mandatory on tech articles going forward, and that should it be desired hard numbers be worked out with the tech author during the approval process to give the submission a numerical identity.

To emphasize my stance again: I would be happy to help figure out a numbers based system to be added in optionally to go along side the narrative based system, after the narrative system has been implemented.

 

[OsakanOne]

For clarification purposes:

Yes.

The old 1-10 DR system did not have different levels of damage. Everything was on the same 1-10 scale from a child's slingshot to a starship main gun. On the old system, it was vaguely exponential.

An SP is a structural point. For example, a Mindy has typically something like 8 armor structural points, so it would take two ADR 4 attacks to deplete its points and destroy it.

Threshold is the minimum amount of damage that it takes for any damage to make it through the shields. So, if a ship has a shield threshold of 3, then an SDR 4 attack would only send 1 point of damage to the ship.

Does this mean weapons below a threshold set (ADR>SDR) are unable to harm the larger opponent? Or do they require more firepower/only do infantesimally small damage?

 

[Wes]

Yes, weapons that are on the personnel scale, except for PDR5 (ADR 1), cannot hurt armor-scale objects. Likewise, armor scale weapons, except for the strongest ones, don't hurt ships.

 

[Fred]

@CadetNewb you say you want numbers, but the revision page has numbers. A scale going from 1 to 15 (which is not unlike how there was ADR stuff from 10 SP to 50 SP, and SDR stuff from 10 SP to 50 SP). Ships, in fact, are now divided in 6 broad slices as far as resiliency goes:

10 Light Starships
11 Medium Starships
12 Heavy Starships
13 Light Capital Ships
14 Medium Capital Ships
15 Heavy Capital Ship

And the measure is all about contrast. Say I fire a Heavy anti-starship weapon at a rank 12 structure - a heavy starship; some light cruiser like the Urufu. It's equal, so, it's kind of like a knife piercing someone; some wounds are flesh wounds and survivable, some will go for vital spots but perhaps be blunted by the ribs/shoulderblades, others will manage to sink through a tender spot in the abdomen/between the ribs ... so the performance of the knife can vary, but it doesn't change that as a weapon, the knife has the potential of being truly life-threatening. Same deal with the Urufu; it its shields are down, a heavy anti-starship weapon is something that has to be taken seriously.

Do you give the human body hit points? No? Same deal here. You want numerals, but they aren't compatible. They aren't meant to be. It's not the point. Your guesstimate should rather go "this is a shielded light cruiser (12), it's being attacked by this other vessel with 1 heavy anti-starship (12), 2 medium anti-starship weapons (11) and half-a-dozen heavy anti-mecha turrets (9). So, the spinal gun is life threatening, wherever it hits, something will blow up. The medium guns will put in serious hurt and can definitely poke holes in the hull. The turrets are less of a danger, but will still harm the shields and chew at the hull."

You want at-a-glance stuff in the wiki page? The Urufu can have a block of text saying:
Category: Heavy starship
Shields: Standard

And then once you get to weapons, you just write down a "list of content" for it.

• 1 Ke-D2-W3200 Light Anti-Capital Shock Cannon
• 2 Ke-S3-W2901 Heavy Anti-Ship Positron Accelerator Cannons
• 2 Ge-C1-W3300 Torpedo Launchers Ke-Z1 Series Torpedoes or Ge-Z1 Series Torpedoes damage per warhead.
• 8 Type 31 Light Anti-Ship Turrets
• 12 Type 31 Heavy Anti-Mecha Turrets - Retractable
• 10 Type 32 Light Anti-Mecha Turrets Retractable

(Not claiming these would be exact values. Damage intent is not the same as a straight up "5 SDR" value)
Then if you want an eye on what the weapon actually does, you just follow up to its description. But fortunately, just in the titles above, you can already determine just how deadly those weapons are expected to be at a glance because its purpose is already included.

If you want to be finicky with your tech submission, make it more granular changes to support how this light cruiser is actually heftier than this other light cruiser... well, it's not the numbers you need. More sweeping changes like a resistance category up or down- the NTSE mods are there to help justify (or not) these things. It's the text description that you provide which will make how the ship is built more evocative to the reader/Game Master employing it anyhow. In broader wargames, knowing that the Urufu is in the heavy starship category and how much it ought to smart from different forms of harm ought to be quite enough.

 

[OsakanOne]

Yes, weapons that are on the personnel scale, except for PDR5 (ADR 1), cannot hurt armor-scale objects. Likewise, armor scale weapons, except for the strongest ones, don't hurt ships.

In its own way, this seems somewhat ludicrous: There's no such thing as true invulnerability: there's just ridiculous endurance. A starship would not ostensibly be harmed by bullets from a personal scale weapon but if you had thousands of them all hitting the same side of the hull with a fire-rate comparable to a minigun, you would legitimately suffer damage, even if it took concentrated fire and many hours of shooting. That's a basic rule of physics.

Similarly, doesn't this mean some platforms can (with serious flaws because of it) mount weapons outside of their own size-classification? Eg: an anti-starship bomber, but it would need a sizable weapons-bay and suffer mobility as a result?

 

[Nightowl]

Not true about the intense fire Osakan, an M-134 may fire till the barrels melt but still won't be able to penetrate an MBT, you need a certain amount of over the threshold penetration before any damage can be done. This is not including external optics and antenna of course. The MBT isn't invulnerable, it's just that the weapon used is wrong/too weak. An entire rifle regiment can unload on a T-80 and it still won't blow up, anything mounted on the outside will be stripped bare though or if you are really, really, really lucky, a round might jam a drive wheel or something.

If a round simply bounces off face hardened armour, no matter how many you throw at it, it still simply bounces off.

 

[Fred]

Similarly, doesn't this mean some platforms can (with serious flaws because of it) mount weapons outside of their own size-classification? Eg: an anti-starship bomber, but it would need a sizable weapons-bay and suffer mobility as a result?

The present DR system makes it a touchy issue, where the armor-grade expects you'll pack ADR5 at best. Then balance, balance, balance... except that the power armor kind of remains king and the best a huge mecha ends up being is a Armor Grade 50 SP unit with ADR5/SDR1 weaponry at best.

Whereas in real-life, you'll see infantrymen carrying bazookas meant to threaten tanks. Obviously those same bazookas could pose harm to power armors in our setting.

Thing is, right now, SARP has power armors consider a huge tier above the anti-personnel scale. I kind of think that the power armor, in the first place, was primarily made to resist anti-personnel weaponry... but not necessarily being invulnerable to it. Following the guidelines I linked... Yamatai's M6 Daisy, for example, fits as Medium Armor (5). That means that while stuff like knifes (1) pose only a negligible threat to it, go for guns (2) and you start putting nick/pockmarks in the armor. For an assault rifle with proper caliber bullets (3), the Daisy will notice while being under fire that you start tearing/gouging/cratering at its metal hide. Pack an actual light anti-armor weapon like the LASR (4) and now the Daisy's protection might not prove reliably sufficient to stay together/remain intact; the LASR is going to quicky chew holes in it, breaking it, possibly punching through and wounding the wearer.

If a weapon one of our power armor carries wasn't meant to one-shot a power armor, it's probably because it wasn't one. It's okay for a power armor to pack something lesser that just damages another and probably can't outright kill it in a single shot.

This brings the first Robocop movie to my mind; just like when after spending most of the movie wading through bullet/submachinegun fire, Robocop shows major hurt when the ED-209 fires at him. Not to mention that he doesn't go unscathed when the entire police force - several with assault rifles rather than handguns - start pouring it on him. His condition clearly degrades and he has to flee lest he be put out of commission. And later, he used an Anti-Tank rifle at an ED-209 and blows it up... because he can using that type of anti-materiel rifle and firing it at the right place.

 

[OsakanOne]

Robocop? You're a man after my own heart, Fred; how romantic ♥

Anyway.. Maybe we need a rule that states if you carry a weapon above your class, you have flaws and problems -- and if you carry a weapon below your class, you get advantages someone in that class ordinarily wouldn't;

Example 1:

A frame hauling an anti-starship missile: Not to make kills (obviously) but to disable things like launch-bays, communications and weapons on the ship itself as a surgical striker. It'd have mobility problems and power problems and the weapon would be nowhere near a fast - problems a starship wouldn't have.​

Example 2:

A power-armor carrying a personal grade weapon: Could retrofit a hand-cannon to be semi-automatic and belt-feed the thing, using its powered functionality to compensate for recoil and keep the gun usable; the same gun would break the arm of any person who fired it outside of power-armor; the torsion and angular momentum dislocating the socket.
​

This way, there's a reason for carrying worse weapons than you need to and problems with carrying a bigger one.

 

[Fred]

No, no rules. You have common sense, good taste (which your latest avatars aren't, by the way), your NTSE mods, FM approval, and your GM to determine what goes and what doesn't.

This is a forum roleplay, and not some roleplaying game. The wiki is a font of informational reference and guidelines. If you want to enforce rulings, do it within your own plot if you really must specify beyond the obvious.

I'm sick of the DR system having become some mandatory ruling for all new NTSE creations rather than the helpful guideline it was supposed to have been (hence the term "submission tax"). People have gone overboard with it. Enough already.

 

[OsakanOne]

You earnestly don't approve?

I'm wounded, Fred. Truly.

Though I do agree with the rest of what you've got to say.

Lots of my submissions go cold because I get to the point of DR and my interest vanishes. DR isn't fun to write. Its not even interesting. Neither is balancing.

I just want to roleplay. All I want are my set-pieces so I can tell my story.

 

[CadetNewb]

@Eistheid - My goal is to have Fred's narrative system be on top, but only if followed by a numerical system similar to the current one. Emphasis on the word similar. The current system is far from being accurate when being used to compare similar items or even enjoyable from a gameplay perspective since it has a very clear limit on what kind of units are even effective if any GM bothers to strictly adhere to it. The system that follows after Fred's is best off being reworked. If you and Fred are willing to work together to refine the narrative system idea, I'd be all for it and may even pitch in. But at the same time, I'd want to be able to make a numerical system that complements it to give more depth within its own confines.

@Fred - if everything worked out, I wouldn't be opposed to using your system by itself and I wouldn't be wanting for something to accompany it. In addition to that, I feel like you're only skimming through my post, which kinda stings Fred. I specifically argue against the numerical system being used as an HP system. Going by your own system, how would I use it to represent a standard Daisy II with one that's been equipped with heavier but tougher Yamataium? The current system would have the former Daisy II have an SP of 8, and the latter with an SP of 10; the latter is clearly the tougher of the two, and by 20% even. Very clear and precise. Meanwhile, with the narrative system you're suggesting, they'd both be Class 5 armors, and that would be it. Even though the article would likely say that the Yamataium plating is more protective, by how much? The person writing it would then have to say, specifically, how much more protective it is if they don't want it being left widely up to interpretation by everyone.

Even then, if there's a third armor of some sort that compares itself to the second, the Yamataium Daisy II, they'd have to read that third armor's article, then the second armor's article in order to just figure out how those two compare to each other. But if they want to figure how this third armor compares to the first, the standard Yama-Dura Daisy II, then they need to read not only it's article, but the Yamataium Daisy II's article as well.

This is the point that I'm trying to make; within a singular class of the narrative system, it's very difficult to find a good, solid point of reference between multiple items. The same goes for weapons as well. With two guns of the same class, it starts getting shaky if Gun 2 is a bit better than Gun 1, but even more so if Gun 3 is a bit better than Gun 1, but not as good as Gun 2.