Approved Submission [Mechanic] Damage Rating Revision

[Eistheid]

Submission Type: Narrative driven damage guidelines.
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=fred_s_damage_rating_revision

Notes: Much of default the form doesn't really apply since this isn't a typical setting submission. I hope you don't mind me removing those components.

This is probably going to take some work to get finalized. I will however be more than happy to fill in blanks and update this as we go along. Additionally post-approval I'll be happy to update old DR values as needed, likely including both systems for a while to smooth over the transition.

A final note, the article will probably need to be moved to a new page location as I believe the current one is just WIP storage.

As has been determined the final call of what is done comes down to GM fiat. As such it is best to view this as intended: A set of guidelines to help players and GMs understand the effects of what they're working with rather than hard rules that must be adhered to.

 

[Wes]

I've been asked to review this and hopefully will be able to complete that within the next week.

Until then, can we please cut down on the arguing? If you've said your thoughts and opinions already, thank you, there is no need to continually rephrase them. If not, post your thoughts once and then let me figure out this thing.

Here's what articles will look like if we approve this:

• Articles will have a section for RP stats
• All RP stats should go in the designated section, not scattered throughout the article.
• We can call the current stats SADR v2 (SADR = Star Army Damage Rating)
  
• The new stats will be SADR v3
• RP stats sections can have both SADR systems
  
• Fred will be the czar of SADR v3 - we will set up a request thread where he can assign ratings
• Damage ratings will no longer be required as part of submissions - get approval first, then request ratings from Fred
• If you still need SADR v2 rating they can be requested from me.
• Article creators should not submit RP stats. It feels like 80% of arguments in the NTSE forum are over stats.
  
• Phase-in dated for putting SADR v3 on articles is 1 January 2017
• Goal for all articles having SADR v3: 1 July 2018
  
• Phase-out for SADR v2 is 1 January 2019 - at this point we'll start removing SADR v2 info from articles
• Goal for for removal of all SADR v1 (Old 1-10 Damage scale) and SADR v2: 1 July 2019

 

[Doshii Jun]

Roger Wes; my hands are now off it.

 

[Fred]

Thanks @Wes

Changelog: I went and made https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=fred_s_damage_rating_revision&rev=1456422128 the current version, that way we're able to make edits to it now.
I have the entire transcript of the previous version in a NotePad for reference if I need to borrow vocabulary from there.

I noticed that it's not in any namespaces. V2 is in Guides. I don't know how to change this.

Added a first line that says what iteration it is, and a link back to Version 2.

* * *

This said, I've been thinking about how it might get applied in our wiki articles. My benchmark for this will be the Plumeria-class article.

My goal for this was to make any description of the SADRv3 as 'in-universe' as possible. Ideally, I don't want a Damage Capacity section for this.

One possible application is in the Statistical Data / General section, where I thought it might read so:

Take 1: joining it to Type under parentheses

Class: Ke-S3-2C and Ke-S3-2D series Plumeria
Type: Nekovalkyrja Medium Gunship (Destroyer)
Designers: Hanako and Ketsurui Fleet Yards, First Expeditionary Fleet
Manufacturer: Gemini Star Fortress
Production: Over a hundred fifty have been built thus far.
Fielded by: Star Army of Yamatai
​

Take 2: adding a 'Category' line. (or 'Defensive Category' / 'Defensive Profile' ? )

Class: Ke-S3-2C and Ke-S3-2D series Plumeria
Type: Nekovalkyrja Medium Gunship
Category: Destroyer
Designers: Hanako and Ketsurui Fleet Yards, First Expeditionary Fleet
Manufacturer: Gemini Star Fortress
Production: Over a hundred fifty have been built thus far.
Fielded by: Star Army of Yamatai​

Or if we must really spell it out, Take 3: just spelling out how its categorized under SARPv3. Anyone looking out for the DR value will obviously understand that. Doing this, I also too note of a problem: we have the Plumeria's 'class', but also the SADRv3 'class'. It may be necessary to find a different term for 'class' in the SADRv3 article for smooth transition.​

Class: Ke-S3-2C and Ke-S3-2D series Plumeria
Type: Nekovalkyrja Medium Gunship
SARPv3 Class: Destroyer
Designers: Hanako and Ketsurui Fleet Yards, First Expeditionary Fleet
Manufacturer: Gemini Star Fortress
Production: Over a hundred fifty have been built thus far.
Fielded by: Star Army of Yamatai​

I'm in favor of Take 1. Though it does make me think that the SARPv3 might need a section saying where the information can be found on an article.
​

After that, we could have specific sections (armor, shields) make mention of it. The Plumeria has no 'Shield' section in its article that I can see, so, I'll use Armored Hull as an example:

The Plumeria's armored hull is classified as matching the defensive profile of a Destroyer.

The key substance that makes up the .5-meter-thick hull of the ship is Yamataium. The frame of the ship is Zesuaium, while armor plates are made of Xiulurium-coated Zesuaium and Yamataium. Please note that the Plumeria has one window, at the forward end of the wardroom. It is made of transparent Zesuaium. All interior passageways and rooms are surrounded by Yarvex sheeting and protected from scalar fields by the internal gravity systems.
​

There's an extra line in there mentioning 'defensive profile'. I pondered putting it before, or after. I chose before.

Putting it before felt like it'd give the reader a ballpark of what to expect, and the following paragraph fleshes out what makes it special.

Putting it after would be like: It's like so and so, which makes it kind of like a Destroyer. It looked like it'd sound too much like I was trying to summarize the text. But no, that felt like it was more of a disservice. But the text is important, it's what described and fleshed out the initial impression. I didn't want to do that.​

Moving on, the Weapon Systems:

• 1 Light Anti-Capital Main Weapon Array
  
• 2 Medium Anti-Starship Positron Accelerator Cannons (1 per pylon)
• 4 Heavy Anti-Mecha Dual Gun Turrets
  
• 11 Light Anti-Armor Quad Cannons
  
• 1 KFY Graviton Beam Projector on the ship's ventral stern.
• 2 torpedoes on underbelly hard points (typically Ke-Z1 Series Heavy Anti-Starship Torpedoes)

In this case, I removed all the SDR/ADR values to show final result (during the grandfathering period, they and the Damage Capacity section would stay). I pondered keeping the model numbers of the weapons that had them listed, but not all of them had that nomenclature, so, to reduce clutter and standardize, I removed them all, prioritizing the weapon's purpose, which is incidentally how well it does according to the SADRv3.​

As to how it would be inserted in a weapon's article, I'll take the Ke-S3-W2901 Positron Accelerator Cannons as an example:

These cannons function as deadly antimatter railguns, firing massive 2000kg compressed positron shells at near-light speeds. Each railgun fires a subspace pulse (to provide shield penetration effects) which is used to provide short-term encasement to a packet of compressed positrons (which are suspended with electromagnetic fields until leaving the cannon). The positrons annihilate electrons they come in contact with, thus destabilizing and destroying molecules, and creating a surge of energy through the target. This weapon deals extremely heavy damage against any starship. Smaller starships or starships without high-end armor will likely be completely obliterated.​

Anti-matter weapons should not be used in atmospheres.​

• Purpose: Medium Anti-starship
• Area of Effect: Point of impact and splash area
• Range: About 804,672 km (500,000 miles)
• Rate of Fire: One burst every seven and a half seconds.
• Payload: Self regenerating.

So, here, 'purpose' is actually the section that conveys the kind of lethality the weapon packs. I removed the 'Damage' section to show the result after the grandfathering period. Until then, though, both values should be able to coexist (though they might give people mixed signals, as Doshii Jun alluded to).​

 

[Zack]

This seems to be vastly over-complicating everything.

Moving down to 15 categories from 21 is great, that means you can neatly map everything over from the existing DR system.

But we could also just reduce every ship's SP value by 4x, and their shield values by 2x and end up with the exact same results.

The new revision plans seems to head in the direction of uncoupling DR ratings from things like ship speed which is not the direction I would like to see SARP moving in. I think we should be moving towards a more point-buy system for ships which is a lot easier to get by incrementally improving what we have now. Better rules are more streamlined, and more integrated and it looks like this is moving in the direction of more complicated and more uncoupled from what other rules we already have.


After all, if the goal is to improve the NTSE by having people request a DR value, then we could just start doing that with the system we have now. There is no need to design a new system.

 

[Fred]

Further work done on this:
- Still strongly considering changing the term 'Class' in the article to 'Category' to not conflict with the use of 'Class' in submissions.
- Pondering changing Anti-Vehicle to Anti-Mecha for more consistency. We refer to them as being so a lot around the SARPwiki (and SADRv2)

@Wes @Doshii Jun I tried compiling a listing of KFY weaponry to provide as benchmark examples:

Based on the Daisy Power Armor:

LASR - Heavy Anti-Personnel:
In roleplay, the weapon never really seemed to rise to the occasion of being an actual Light Anti-Armor weapon; in general it was dwarfed by other weapons in the Daisy's repertoire. However, it boasted a very high rate-of-fire that did encourage the belief that it could deal significant damage through sustained fire. It also was always considered excellent in going through Mishhu carapace (which I currently rate also as Heavy Personnel-tier defense). Omitting the SLAG grenade for the moment.

Forearm Pulse Energy Weapons - Medium/Heavy Anti-Personnel: This one seems in an odd-place stat-wise, the description is essentially different from how it's been roleplayed into (even by the creator); but the weapons are essentially built-in NSPs that have better performance than the handheld models. Their 'heavy' lethality comes from switching to the 'grenade-like' burst mode.

Atmospheric/Space Plasma Rifle - Light Anti-Armor: The Plasma Rifle was the workhorse weapon for the unit, generally useful in most circumstances. While it had a respectable rate or fire, was energy-fed, and fired plasma, it was decently effective against most targets. However, a Daisy itself could sustain several shots of this rifle, which discourages me from calling 'Medium'. Omitting SLAG for later.

SLAG Grenades - Light Anti-Armor: The era of SARP in which the SLAG was implemented actually didn't express much in the ways of actual Anti-Armor grenades. Since our only real SAoY reference for the havoc a grenade could cause was the NSP on heavy setting, that was kind of the benchmark. The SLAG as roleplayed had a tendency to knock Power Armors around, but rarely actually destroyed them. In the interest of adding value to the attachment, I made it a step above Anti-Personnel. It has value over the Plasma Rifle for its Area-of-Effect capabilities (context: HEI and SLEX rounds).

50mm Gauss Bazooka - Light Anti-Mecha: This is the Daisy's heavy demolition weapon, the weapon of choice for bashing down airlock hatches and giving a bad day to Mishhu Mecha like the Rippers.

Based on the Mindy Power Armor:

Aether weaponry, such as the Mindy 2's forearm weapons or the Aether Beam Saber-Rifle.

• Rapid-Pulse - Light Anti-Armor : always defined as really dangerous, but rarely ever as immediately deadly, I placed it at Light Anti-Armor like the Plasma Rifle because I viewed it as about as deadly while not being equal to the beam mode, which had the tendency to F- things up much more in plots.
• Beam - Medium Anti-Armor : historically, even if you were sheathed in heavy zesuaium plating, taking a direct hit from this weapon was always very bad news for a Mindy or a Daisy. Bigger things tended to feel significantly less vulnerable, hence why I docked it down from thinking of it as 'Heavy'. Still a very powerful tool considering how diminutive the Mindy is.
• Sword - Light Anti-Mecha: the hull-cutter, likely the claim to fame the Mindy once had as being an anti-starship armor. I have no trouble beleiving it could chop off a Ripper legs in one swipe, or that it could believable carve into a bigger tank/mecha.

Black Spiral Positron Rifle "BSPR" - Heavy Anti-Armor: The BSPR appeared as a very feared weapon wielded by Black Spiral's Black Mindy armors. Fell into disfavor compared to the saber-rifle because it wasn't useful in atmospheric environments and required a two-handed grip to handle. A similar design was eventually adopted for the M7 SARAH's shoulder cannons.

Shoulder-fired 35mm Autocannon - Heavy Anti-Armor: I thought that was the weapon we saw on the Mindy II's art, but I can't find it anywhere - I only see the 50mm version that should be the analog to the Daisy's bazooka. Mrmm.

Offensive Mini-missiles - Heavy Anti-Armor: Probably our Power Armors' closest way of emulating the Macross Missile Massacre, we have less missiles, but they are decidedly quite deadly to power armor and a threat even to larger units.

Based on Super Eikan Heavy Cruiser:

Front-facing Super-Heavy weapons - Light Anti-Capital: In previous calculations I established that the Eikan "super-heavy" weapons were Class 11. They're probably a stronger version of the Plumeria's positron acceleration cannons.

Aether Shock Array - Heavy Anti-Capital: The Eikan also seems to have the strongest possible lethality on its aether shock array.

Based on Sharie Battleship:

Double-Pronged Aether Shock Array - Heavy-Anti-Capital: since the assembly for the Sharie seems obviously much more massive, I'd surmise the Sharie boasts other non-lethality-related advantages to its weapon.

28 x Superheavy Turrets - Heavy Anti-Ship: Since that was the only unknown weapon system on the Sharie for me, I used everything else I knew to help me determine how it'd do, and figured out they'd likely hit as hard as a Z-1 Torpedo. (reasoning in the Quote below)
Since the previous known turret type made by KFY is an Heavy Anti-Mecha/Fighter mount (the ones on the Plumeria/Eikan), this turret is actually very powerful in comparison to the smaller models.

4x Torpedoes launchers - Heavy Anti-Ship : fires Z-1 warheads, which we established previously with the Plumeria.

Trying to figure out armament with that 8-equal-class-weapon-on-a-ship idea from before. Pardon the sawdust. *cough*
Counting on the weapon systems I already knew:
1x Class 15 (2) (or 128/64)
28x Class X
4x Class 12 (4/8) (or 32/64)
100x Class 9 (100/64)
100x Class 7 (100/256) (or 25/64)
Now I have to figure out X.
So, total without superheavy turrets was around 265/64, leaving me 247/64 for the 28 turrets.
So, each superheavy turrets would therefore be ~8.8/64, or 4.4/32, or 2.2/16, or 1.1/8
Basically, I found out I can make them hit about as hard as a Z-1 torpedo relative to all a Sharie can carry if it has a proportional loadout equivalent to a Plumeria's, so X is equal to Class 12.
Again, based on something I find a little iffy, but it's a baseline that at least appears to be consistent. I expect it'll invite railing that the fractions involved are difficult ~sorry, making Cadet happy is still WIP

Let me know if that's acceptable. I know I have a tendency to undershoot Wes' preferences.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Bumping for update.

 

[Fred]

I don't want to go too far and bury @Wes in too much information.

The two posts I made above weight heavily in two things this needs to go forward:
- knowing how it'll apply in articles
- giving baseline admin-approved Yamatai examples to lay down a benchmark

 

[Wes]

Those examples seem good to me. We can always make minor adjustments later if we need to.

 

[Fred]

Understood.

@Wes can you also address the information in this post, please?

 

[Fred]

Changelog:
For you @Wes
Class section completely overhauled with Yamatai only examples. Yamataian weaponry tends to be at top-heavy extremes, so, I had to juggle to find inbetweens.

For Power Armor aether weaponry, my focus was on the Saber-Rifle. While piddling in that, I'll admit I grew annoyed with how convenient the Mindy/Kylie's arm projectors were. The Saber-rifle is the quintessential aether weapon. A dedicated full-sized handheld weapon, that's either battery powered, or needs to be cabled back a-la-Ghostbusters-proton-pack. By contrast, the forearm weapons feel a bit like their cheating: they're smaller and practically do all the same things. If I could revise, I'd remove the beam functionality from the forearm projectors to make the Saber-Rifle more powerful by contrast. Just sayin'.

I note that the 'gauss/autocannon' weapons for the power armors are a bit inconsistent. The Kylie introduced a shoulder-deployable autocannon. Which I think is heavy anti-armor. But it's 50mm, and so is the Gauss Bazooka. There's no way the Gauss Bazooka is weaker than the smaller shoulder version that can burst-fire shots. Ultimately, I decided only to talk about the bazooka.

We have a good lineup of standardized turrets up to the point where "I can hurt starships" and then it jumps up to the Sharie's aether turrets, which I fancy are almost like docked Yui destroyers. I find that KFY vessels tend to have the one overpowered weapon, 2 strong usually fore-facing weapons, and then a plethora of much weaker weapons. This seems to hurt the capital vessels because there's essentially nothing that's at tier 11 and 13 to continue the progression. For instance, the Eikan is brim-full of turrets that makes it a big threat to fighter, frigates and destroyers... but when facing enemy heavy cruisers, they've only got their spinal weapons. Yamatai's space military seems to thrive on smaller starships (whom often try to measure up to being able to harm bigger ships) or fighting smaller starships; I think that's an advantage the Nepleslian warships may have over Yamatai's - fewer but bigger turrets on their bigger boats.

Despite my previously determining that the Super Eikan and Sharie's Aether arrays were equal, my mind's eye I didn't really stomach that. So, I tried to imply relationships between the weapons. A Yui's aether array is actually equivalent to one-half of a Plumeria's aether array (it's like, the Plumeria runs them like Hard Disks in a RAID setup). The Eikan's single array is stronger than the Plumeria, and the Sharie runs that paired similarily to how the Plumeria runs the Yui's array in pairs. Or somesuch. Typically, KFY aether arrays are two steps above the ship class.

Positron weapons tend to be powerful, but don't perform quite as well as aether weapons. It's the tendency that strikes me as wierd considering how anti-matter is harder to come by than aether in Yamatai. That brings up the question "why is Yamatai even bothering with antimatter weapons on their warships?" My belief is that it may be due to fighting the Mishhuvurthyar, whom favored positron and from whom the Star Army could salvage from during the war. If seizing SMX logistics yielded anti-matter, it was a way to take advantage of it (along with what was back then shield-tunneling tech).

I observed an absence of non-mini missiles. Fightercraft tend to use power armor mini-missiles and then jump straight up to the Z1. If that was expanded on, perhaps power armor-based guided projectiles could either be called 'rockets' or 'Micro-Missile'. Mini-missiles could end up on fighters, with actual missiles showing up on larger fighters.

Finally, there's the torpedoes. The Z1 is used in different ways. It's the torpedo for hurting starships if you're in a heavy fighter. It's a weapon that allows smaller ships like the Yui access to much more firepower than its size usually permits. Reading the roleplays, I never got the sense otherwise that the Z1 saw much use in the bigger ships or that its damage was as valued as the AS-7s was. Because of that reason, I decided to include the AS-7 for apocryphal purposes in an anti-capital role... which, if we're honest, was generally what it ended up doing: really messing up with battleships. It's like, the Z1 is our Photon torpedo, and the AS-7 is the tricobalt warhead (except, it's not slow as molasse). Note that I am biased, as I still planned to use the AS-7 sparingly in my plot as special ordonance - I was reluctant to just let go of the dramatic impact it had for me in past roleplays.

I also noticed that the AS-7 aether version was weaker than the anti-matter version. The Z1 is the reverse, the aether version is stronger than the antimatter version. Rather than trying to make the distinction, I just labelled them by 'torpedo casing' until further notice.​

Another thing I revisited was the lethality table.

I think we've had a few select people establish that the idea of this DR revision was sound and likely an improvement. But it's not without detractors, and the observations I was given by those more in favor to the revision was "they just don't get it, or refuse to get it - it's actually ridiculously simple and just so much better than the previous thing".

That could be a 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' thing. But that feels like a weak caveat to me. Moving on.

I went and looked back at the previous thing. There's actually scant explanation and a lot of tables. LOTS of tables. Which has me headscratch my head in incredulity, because it doesn't give credibility to the arguments of the detractors. And those detractors, they are on top of a lot of things in SARP, so I can't just handwave them away in a "can't cure stupid" fashion. They're not.

So, the problem I see is the barrier of entry, which is the quality of the text, and how easy it is to gain an understanding of that knowledge. You only have to look up in this current post to see that I'm very verbose, and that my point might be lost because I go on and on and on. Right. I'm not a native english speaker, like Doshii said, so that's likely one of my faults. Yay, me.

Part of laying the foundation for the fix was tweaking the lethality table. I added an extra column, and it mentions the damage a shielded target might receive. In rough percentile values. Potentially lethal does 50% damage to barrier shielding.

And, because I'm using a table, I get to say that barrier shielding can handle 2 potentially lethal hits for its recipient before depleting. Without having to drone on and on about how it gives you a plot-shield worth 2 extra lives, and so forth. At least now if I revise the explanation, it's going to be far easier to relate with thanks to the table.
​

Future intended changes:

Revisiting Armor to explain behavior when sustaining damage, as well as material properties.
Revisiting Barrier Shielding to explain its behavior when it takes damage, as well as how damage control/mitigation might work (which is why I have an excess value for shields in my lethality table).
Remove conversion considerations (and Plumeria example); they seem to weight the article down.
Establish how weapon qualities like rate-of-fire and area of effect are not in the scope of the SADRv3 page


​

 

[raz]

EDIT: tl;dr: New system leaves more room for arguments between the GM and players as to the effectiveness of their attacks, which is what the DR system is supposed to eliminate.

The article starts with this:

The Damage Rating System is intended to be used to give Game Masters and Players an idea of what to expect from the application of a particular weapon, while also giving an idea of what they can expect their defences [sic] to withstand. This reference gives GMs and Players a tool to help in the process of making informed decisions regarding their chosen equipment.

The class table really helps with that. It gives players and game masters a quick snapshot of how powerful their weapons are compared to other weapons and how particular defenses can hold up to those weapons.

The lethality table, on the other hand, is uselessly dense and is not a quick-use tool, especially not when comparing weak weaponry to strong defenses.

Currently, the DR system is really easy and exact. You compare DR to DR and see if it deducts SP. Under the proposed system, there isn't even a structural point outline or a way to measure the hit points of your thing. How are players and GMs supposed to use the new system to quickly assess their equipment capability if the lethality rules are a quagmire with a sort of "you're either dead or just kinda damaged" table?

Sure, that's cool, it's left up to the GM. But half the purpose is for players to feel confident in what they do. What you've got doesn't inspire certainty that "if I use my gun on this target, I can count on the GM playing it correctly." Because, ultimately, that's what it's for.

PS: this is you disregarding criticism that you don't want to address:

I think we've had a few select people establish that the idea of this DR revision was sound and likely an improvement. But it's not without detractors, and the observations I was given by those more in favor to the revision was "they just don't get it, or refuse to get it - it's actually ridiculously simple and just so much better than the previous thing".

That could be a 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' thing. But that feels like a weak caveat to me. Moving on.

 

[Legix]

Any time I see people arguing over the DR system, I'd like to point out that an 8 meter tall machine with a gun bigger than most cars is weaker than a man in a tin can.

DR is a joke, no matter how it gets changed. Just my two cents. And it really does just encourage min-maxing/nonsensical aspects to the RP that take away from the creative writing format and interpretation options left to players and GMs alike.

Again, a rifle bigger than 5-10 people in Power Armor is weaker than a mass-produced one that fits in your hand. This seems entirely like a stupid thing to go after and address in any format beyond removing it.

 

[Fred]

But that feels like a weak caveat to me. Moving on.

You misunderstand what I meant by that line.

The context I was broaching is that I was not yet willing to be content with the idea that it satisfied some people and didn't for others. That I'm still willing to make the idea more available to those whom aren't on board with it yet. I'm moving on to try and address the discontent over it. I may not succeed, but maybe in fixing what I thought the likely culprit - the text - I could at least shoot for making you 'less unhappy'.

You actually gave me valuable feedback. It looks like the Class table is tight. You also seem to get that the greater the difference between weapon and target, the more, or the less, the weapon will be able to harm the target.

You're telling me that the lethality table doesn't help convey that right. It's dense and unwieldy. But, earlier in your post, you say that its left as too vague.

New system leaves more room for arguments between the GM and players as to the effectiveness of their attacks

The lethality table, on the other hand, is uselessly dense and is not a quick-use tool, especially not when comparing weak weaponry to strong defenses.

Those appear to me to be mutually exclusive remarks.

I'm not returning to hit points. If I have a gun and that I shoot you in the shoulder, you're not losing a finite amount of hit points: you're wounded. And in a great deal of pain. Maybe you're bleeding, or bleeding a lot if the power-that-be decide I hit an artery. There's nothing about that result which is imprecise and no hitpoints were involved. That fits our roleplaying narrative and GM-lead arbitration splendidly.

And then, there's this:

At 0:35, Robocop begins being hosed all over by smallarms from pistols to rifles. In short scuffles, Robocop usually just brushes smallarm fire away as insignificant. But here's it's layed on and on and...
How many hit points does Robocop have? How much damage do the smallarms do? As fire poured on, he started getting seriously crippled, which a hitpoint system doesn't cover - and we're not a tabletop game, we can't go in the detail needed for a hitpoint system to support that. It's not our format. There's a reason why D&D goes for hitpoints; it's a tabletop game that usually wants the PCs to be larger than life. Wes has proven SARP is kind of the opposite; death is usually quick and brutal as we are all very mortal.

Just hitpoints don't support this. Not without a lot of fudging and not actually sticking to the resource you have. In effect, SADRv2 is useless to us in this respect, so, the GM just fudges and does his own thing.

In SADRv3, we tell the GM "yeah, your pistols are light anti-personnel, your rifles medium anti-personnel. You're firing at a Light Armor. None of what you're using is really dealing it much hurt; your stuff does light damage and moderate damage to it, and since you're just hosing and going for quantity rather than precision, it's being all spread out. But, after twenty seconds of doing this, your target is getting seriously chewed up all around and you caused some damage over its more exposed articulations, you got it to stumble and limp as it laboriously tries to beat into a retreat."

This works.

It's also why blades were never really expressed well in SADRv2 - if I shove an axe through your brains, even if you're wearing an helmet, I still can kill you if I hit you well enough. Or, I might not if my axe hits the helmet at the wrong handle and is deflected. The helmet's HP won't matter if my next axe swing doesn't hit at the exact same place - after all, if I damaged it on the right, it's still okay from the left. This said, why is the bullet treated so differently than the sword. You'll make an hitpoint exception for the bullet, but not the sword? Right now, the sword is used and adjuciated as 'the participants mostly think a sword would make sense', and SADRv3 just does the same with every other weapon, while also taking scaling into account.

Now, if you feel that the lethality table is not the best non-hitpoint solution, and that you have something better in mind to propose... I'd like to know.

Any time I see people arguing over the DR system, I'd like to point out that an 8 meter tall machine with a gun bigger than most cars is weaker than a man in a tin can.

You're talking about the current version 2, and not version 3 which this thread is working on.
And which fixes the exact thing I quoted from you.

 

[Zack]

I'm not returning to hit points. If I have a gun and that I shoot you in the shoulder, you're not losing a finite amount of hit points: you're wounded. And in a great deal of pain. Maybe you're bleeding, or bleeding a lot if the power-that-be decide I hit an artery. There's nothing about that result which is imprecise and no hitpoints were involved. That fits our roleplaying narrative and GM-lead arbitration splendidly.

I mean, no, that is just as imprecise as HP. What you are doing here is just replacing numbers with words.

taking a few HP worth of damage is wounded, but you can still carry on. You run out of HP and you are dead/incapacitated. If you want to expand it you can tack on DnD 3rd ed rules, where below a certain point you are incapacitated and below that is death with no resuscitation. You then layer on bleeding out and you've got a very good approximation system for finding out just how dead you are when you've been killed.

Of course in the very example above, 'wounded' is just as useless as -5HP. Wounded means nothing, maybe you're shot in the chest with a .45 and that wound is survivable. Maybe you got shot in the arm with a .22 and that shot bounced into your heart and you died. Without some other system tacked on you really haven't communicated any more information than you did before.

The proper way to do what Fred is asking for regarding determining what type of damage you take when you're hit is a hit table of some kind. You can get as complex as you want here, but in basics you just roll a dice, look up a result on a table, and that is where you get hit. Of course this is a tabletop solution and perhaps not great for play by post RP.

---

Again, the proper way of making a rules change is to first figure out what you're trying to do, and then design a rules set to make that a reality. The best thing this new system is going to do is kill off turrets-everywhere type starships as SARP transitions to a low-time-to-kill game mechanic. Even so, I still think that could be better accomplished by either lowering starship HP, or by increasing the amount of damage weapons do.

While we're at it, Aether and Scalar weapons probably should just have a special classification. Instant-kill if you don't have the right shield up, X amount of damage if you do.

 

[raz]

Those appear to me to be mutually exclusive remarks.

They're not. Me referring to "the new system" and "the lethality table" are two separate, albeit related, statements. But honestly, you seem like you'd rather throw shade and give excuses for why you don't want to address community input rather than fix what you're presenting. So whatever; do your thing, it won't matter to anyone who doesn't want to use it. Seems like we'll be allowed to get submissions approved for RP without DR included in the future, anyway.

EDIT: I'm gonna put this in here for posterity, since I'm sure you didn't go back and check chat after being super rude and unjustly righteous:

raz: (Whisper) The lethality table being dense and hard to use makes the system itself less precise as an arbitration tool. That is what my two statements said. One of my points causes the other one of my points. There's that, I hope you understand now because it was pretty plain English in the first place.

raz: (Whisper) Here it is as a flow chart: Unwieldy rules -> less timely calculations that will have a wider variation of interpretations.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Of course in the very example above, 'wounded' is just as useless as -5HP. Wounded means nothing, ... Without some other system tacked on you really haven't communicated any more information than you did before.

But you did. You did perfectly with the other system -- this system.

maybe you're shot in the chest with a .45 and that wound is survivable.

Maybe you got shot in the arm with a .22 and that shot bounced into your heart and you died.

That's the idea. You totally got it! Perfect!

I mean, no, that is just as imprecise as HP. What you are doing here is just replacing numbers with words.

No no, you had it right above. It IS precise. Perfectly so -- because you write it out. You use your words to make it precise. No more numbers that don't mean anything -- tell me the story of how you're wounded. That's precision.

Seems like we'll get submissions approved for RP without DR included in the future, anyway.

I can only pray this is the case, though DRv3 is a sight better than DRv2.

 

[Legix]

But you did. You did perfectly with the other system -- this system.



That's the idea. You totally got it! Perfect!


No no, you had it right above. It IS precise. Perfectly so -- because you write it out. You use your words to make it precise. No more numbers that don't mean anything -- tell me the story of how you're wounded. That's precision.


I can only pray this is the case, though DRv3 is a sight better than DRv2.

You 'member when RPing wasn't about stupid numbers and was about the story? I 'member!

I have read over this, though. Got bored and figured I would. Could make a nice addition/revision if we ever wanted to make SARP into a tabletop.

 

[Zack]

No no, you had it right above. It IS precise. Perfectly so -- because you write it out. You use your words to make it precise. No more numbers that don't mean anything -- tell me the story of how you're wounded. That's precision.


I can only pray this is the case, though DRv3 is a sight better than DRv2.

Wait, were we not RPing with words before?

Snark aside, telling the story of how you were wounded / Took damage is the exact same under either system.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I disagree, but we always have on this.

One system, v2, uses numbers to first determine damage, then it is written out somehow. Like DnD, the numbers don't tell you what happened, and your GM might not care to detail it. A player or a reader is left to wonder, or not.

V3 does not rely on math at the get-go of the fight. It offers a guide before the battle, then makes you and the GM determine just how you want it to go. That can be anywhere from the GM letting you decide through the process, to the GM deciding it entirely for you. It's not so different than DnD in that regard.

The big difference to me is that the words don't follow from math in v3, whereas they do in v2. There are hard equations in v2 from which you can (or can't, GM depending) describe damage. In v3, you have classes that suggest potential damage and a lethality table that further refines what might be possible.

" 'Suggest.' 'Might.' How is that more precise than math?"

In Pathfinder, my most dreaded moment is when I have to roll. I could be facing foes big or small, weak or strong. It doesn't matter; the math determines the story, no matter what I might narratively want or be able to work out.

It's the same in v2, but worse. The tables determine the outcome. The only part we left out of v2 was chance to hit, which I don't believe leaves a person much room to wrote more than "eeek scramble."

V3 does away with that problem. No hit points. No chance to hit. There's potential lethality, but there isn't any real math that tells the story for you.

YOU have the power to tell the story. You and your GM can decide that wow, that lucky pistol shot DOES disable that much! Or this unit and that unit are locked in a fight to the finish, but hey, what would work best for the narrative? What's the best story? You can use v3 and do that.

And tell the story precisely how it needs to be told.

If I USE v2, I can't do that. I have only math.

That's the difference. That's why I like v3.

 

[Navian]

I suggested a system that provides guidance toward possible effects and their severity. 'V3' only helps with severity, and even then, it's missing any features that enable the severity of damage to be lower at the start of combat than at the end. 'V3', as is being discussed, leaves possible effects open to the imagination; as in, it's the same as having no system in that regard.

'V2' definitely has the issue HP-like systems always have, units are untouchable until they run low at HP, and then at some point they suffer 'critical existence failure', which makes no sense from a physical or narrative standpoint. It's just a game mechanic. It's one that we ignore already since it'd be a glaring omission if nothing ever was disabled by damage unless it was by some sort of 'status effect' attack (and also if nothing was ever destroyed without being disabled first, or if it was arbitrarily decided whether something was destroyed or disabled when it ran out of HP, since that would encourage bad roleplaying in situations where it's important what state a defeated enemy ends up in).

I guess putting weapons in the right damage ballpark is the main purpose of the DR system, and it's definitely not meant to be gamed, but I'd like it to tell me what happens in a way that generates ideas. When it just stops right here it seems less useful to use than to keep in the back of my mind as a suggestion, while otherwise ignoring it. If that's what it's for, it could be written for that purpose; instead of being presented as a resolution system, it could be a ratings system that offers some guidelines.