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Closed Damage rating based on size?

These suggestions have been dropped by the suggestor or rejected by staff.
D

Deleted member 6093

Damage rating should be based on combat role and effectivenelss, not size.

My reasoning:
Smaller ships, within reason, could have higher damage tiers based on combat role.
Bigger does not universally equal better.
Star wars is not a good point of reference for starships either.

I will admit, I'm more of a Hard-Scifi fan, but even this seems to be a bit weird.
 
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I think this is all about how we adjudicate DR. DR is just about armor and achieving a kill if I understand right. A bigger ship wouldn't universally be better say a massive civilian freighter probably won't have a higher DR than a smaller warship. That said warship to warship, I don't see why size can't be a good shorthand for DR.
Frost made a good point in Discord that we might be better off using armor thickness/pentation instead of size.
I think in the end it's less pure size but a combination of factors. Armor thickness, redundant systems, structural integrity, and stuff like that. I don't know if I suggest a change in DR but at least making note that a civilian ship or a ship that wasn't made from the ground up to be a combat ship probably won't have the same DR as a Military vessel.
That said, DR doesn't really prove combat effectiveness. It's not really one to one like that. Ships still have to consider their specific role in a fleet. A carrier isn't going to be a match for a smaller gunship in a stand up fight, but that carrier has fighter wings that they can send at the gunship and kill it before it gets close enough to use its weapons.
DR is just a question of what happens once the attack successfully penetrants all of the ships defenses and stuff.
(minor edits)
 
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The Damage Rating System really is fine the way it is. It is a guideline anyway, not a rule per se. It is used to give people an idea of what kind of damage can be done or taken. At the end of the day, there are a lot of things it doesn't take into account - IBW being one "Idiot Behind the Wheel", for example, Mindy's lethality could be changed by something like a Rixxakor getting in it to pilot it. Plus there are some people who use the system religiously, while others like me think of it more as just a rough idea of scale. The RP really decides something, but it is nice, although not needed, to give a nice raw guideline. (Yes, I'm still very much for the abolishment of the DR System, as that story and roleplay should always trump such things!)
 
I'll agree, the DR system really kind of exists to give a rough idea of how much stuff ought to hurt when it shoots you or how much a thing ought to get hurt when it gets shot. Also, the main determinants of determinants of durability (redundancy, armor thickness, and barrier generator strength) tend to generally increase as a vessel or station increase in volume so this feels like it'd be a pretty redundant change.

That said, I personally find the DR system and the weapon Limitation system useful, since they mean we're not totally just pulling all of the numbers out of nowhere and things are more or less internally consistent.
 
Deleted User said:
I dislike DR as well.

I agree!
Click to expand...
Then let those who do use it, use it. Those who don't, don't. Speaking from experience, I tried to engulf myself in it at one point, but because of my creative-driven mind, I came to a point where I was like we might as well start naming ship classes by the Tier, making everything generic. There are people though with very analytical and logic-driven minds that need this kind of system for their guidance. While in the future there might be a DvR4 arising from the thoughts of the community, I think right now, people should focus on roleplaying rather than reinventing the wheel. Change can be good, but the change I think (and some may not share this, and I'm ok with that) the site needs is that there needs to be a surge of roleplay on the site.
 
yeah lets look at DR like pirate laws.
that's kinda why I don't like adding numbers it starts telling my brain to think too gamey about it. (I'd say just category and light medium heavy but that's still a change) In the end it does help to have a baseline to set shared expectations but this isn't like table top wargaming so idk pirate laws

Sub systems and capabilities tend to be more interesting than flat numbers.
What does this system do, what can't it do? What situations does it shine in? What situations is it limited in?
And honestly with ships it's kinda the same. Ships aren't interchangeable bigger doesn't mean better it also doesn't mean worse. Better or worse are subjective based on the mission.
 
I write combat RP a lot, especially when I have players (check out my interest check for a "new" jp plot with combat! I have to plug it somehow!) and have relied on DRv3 when my POV and the player's POV were not the same about shots taken or received. It is imperative that people that write combat get to keep DRv3. Fred made it and writes combat a bit like me, or at least I tried to learn from how he writes it. But if you're not writing combat that needs DR, don't worry. It ain't broke to those that do, I promise!!

The only change I think DR needs after using it a lot is adding "distance". Shooting someone with tier 3 point blank will be different than from 20 feet away and I don't think DRv3 accounts for that?
 
Honestly, DRv3 was my try to make a big move away from hit points, while having some sense of what a weapon still does. It saw development pains, controversy, adaptation, and then various degrees of acceptance or adoption. I'd say that the feedback I got is generally consistent between "not needed", "much better than DRv2", "necessary evil" and "really great"... so, this thread seems like the typical spectrum of reactions.

So, all I can really share about it is the context of my worldview on it.

If I say "Anti-Materiel Rifle", most people are going to think about a big rifle that's a threat to a tank. That's the evocative vernacular I was aiming for.

So, in the near-end of the classic Robocop movie, when Murphy rolls his car next to the OCP building and gets the big anti-materiel rifle out to destroy the ED-209 in a single hit, it's supposed to be the natural conclusion that "Oh, this is a Light Anti-Mecha weapon. It killed a mecha in a single hit."

I relate with Andrew in thinking its unnecessary, because a large part of DRv3 is meant to be self-evident. But this is a sci-fi setting where people design stuff, and I think it's helpful to be able to place a gun, call it a "Medium Anti-Personnel weapon" and have a general idea of how well it'll do against most people, and how well it'll do against power armor.

If we put Robocop in as a 'light power armor', having an entire police force mow down at him with their larger caliber guns is something Robocop can endure much better and much longer than anyone else could, but DRv3 informs that you can expect a Medium Anti-Personnel weapon to wear down a defense equal to 'Light Power Armor' eventually.

Is something in the light mecha category because of its size, armor plating, thickness of it - I didn't delve into that in DRv3, because it's not its job. DRv3 is not there to tell you how to design stuff. The actual nitty-gritty of the weapon or armor is up to the submission to sell (i.e.: even sheet-thin zesuaium armor will make small-arm fire behave much differently against a light power armor using that for protection; or effective range of the weapon like Ametheliana alluded to).

So, really, they're more ballparks of expectations... which can be useful because we're a lot of different people, with different mindsets and expectations... and it can be nice to have a baseline. Thankfully, it seems to have lived up to its context as 'in-character common sense' more than the ill-fitting straightjacket previous versions were used for.
 
This suggestion doesn't seem to be what the community wants based on the votes so I will close it. Thanks everyone for your feedback and thoughts.
 
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