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Damage Rating Conversion Chart
- Thread starter CadetNewb
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Archander
Inactive Member
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I very well could be, but I'd like to point out something that seems to be glaring at this point.
The current DR system that's in place assumes a weapons DR based on it's destructive capability within a predetermined amount of time as opposed to per shot which the new system is moving toward.
So with that being said, there was a disclaimer that took into account the differences between single shot weapons and automatic weapons which allowed for slower fire weapons to have the same DR as weapons that spews a grillion shots a second. For the old system, since it was supposed to be a baseline anyway for ease of defining weapon performance across a broad spectrum, this worked to a degree in the sense the constant in the equation was time.
For example: Player A has an ADR 3 weapon that fires 50 shots a second and writes a post the GM decides is only "average" and thus gives the outcome of 50% effectiveness. Given that the DR of the weapon is spread out over 10 seconds, Player A, assuming their weapon has the ammo to constantly fire for 10 seconds, just fired 500 shots with 250 of them hitting their target (with the other 250 making swiss cheese out of whatever is around the target) equating to a whopping 1.5 Damage to Armor Scale. Now if the numerical sense if fudged a bit, we can assume the GM had enough sense to look at that and adjust accordingly based on the narrative. Player A wouldn't be awarded a kill for their average post, but like wise the GM wouldn't say the effectiveness of a 500 shot barrage would equate to someone firing a .45 at an Abrams tank either.
With the new system, which is geared more toward narrative values, adjustments to weapons ARE NECESSARY to get the weapons to have their intended effect as the constant is no longer damage done over 10 seconds but is per shot. They have to move up (or mostly down if the weapon relies on ROF instead of pure damage) to preserve the feeling of damage over time as opposed to one shot one kill. Of course, balance is something that has to be taken care of in order to keep things from feeling like people are sniping with machine guns.
It seems to me that, and I mean no offense when I say this, common sense has to come into play at some point because a change in the DR system is going to have to mean a change in the designation or class of A LOT of weapons in order for it to maintain the same feel.
The current DR system that's in place assumes a weapons DR based on it's destructive capability within a predetermined amount of time as opposed to per shot which the new system is moving toward.
So with that being said, there was a disclaimer that took into account the differences between single shot weapons and automatic weapons which allowed for slower fire weapons to have the same DR as weapons that spews a grillion shots a second. For the old system, since it was supposed to be a baseline anyway for ease of defining weapon performance across a broad spectrum, this worked to a degree in the sense the constant in the equation was time.
For example: Player A has an ADR 3 weapon that fires 50 shots a second and writes a post the GM decides is only "average" and thus gives the outcome of 50% effectiveness. Given that the DR of the weapon is spread out over 10 seconds, Player A, assuming their weapon has the ammo to constantly fire for 10 seconds, just fired 500 shots with 250 of them hitting their target (with the other 250 making swiss cheese out of whatever is around the target) equating to a whopping 1.5 Damage to Armor Scale. Now if the numerical sense if fudged a bit, we can assume the GM had enough sense to look at that and adjust accordingly based on the narrative. Player A wouldn't be awarded a kill for their average post, but like wise the GM wouldn't say the effectiveness of a 500 shot barrage would equate to someone firing a .45 at an Abrams tank either.
With the new system, which is geared more toward narrative values, adjustments to weapons ARE NECESSARY to get the weapons to have their intended effect as the constant is no longer damage done over 10 seconds but is per shot. They have to move up (or mostly down if the weapon relies on ROF instead of pure damage) to preserve the feeling of damage over time as opposed to one shot one kill. Of course, balance is something that has to be taken care of in order to keep things from feeling like people are sniping with machine guns.
It seems to me that, and I mean no offense when I say this, common sense has to come into play at some point because a change in the DR system is going to have to mean a change in the designation or class of A LOT of weapons in order for it to maintain the same feel.
Fred
Retired Staff
That's entirely true. Especially considering we're not dealing with hitpoints anymore.
Syaoran
Retired Staff
I skimmed over some of this and while not sure if you guys solved it but some things are being interpreted wrong. The Damage rating page clearly says here that a weapon of the same class as the armor that it hits kills it genrally in about -10 hits- not one. So a LASR will not kill a mindy in 'one attack' which as Archander mentioned is not actually 1 shot anyway. Same with the HPAR against a Daisy.
Correction: 10 hits for ships, 5 hits for armor and PAs
Correction: 10 hits for ships, 5 hits for armor and PAs
Archander
Inactive Member
Within the same article of the old system, there's two different and drastically opposing views to the effects of damage.
The first is attributed to the potential of the weapon, given over 10 seconds. The second, assuming that effectiveness is per hit, would take 10 hits (5 for Armor).
Taking the Plumeria example, there's no way in hell one shot from a Plumeria would kill anything equal to or above its Armor Rating, because the Old Rating System clearly and implicitly says it takes 10 hits to kill. Behind the scenes, there is a narrative that both Wes and Fred have pointed out to say, an unshielded Super Eikan would be completely wasted if the Plumeria fired on it.
So the obvious conclusion everyone should have at this point is that whatever existed in the way of what the old DR system represented, as a failed attempt to be a baseline, should be disregarded completely in terms of effectively hashing out the new system. The only thing that should matter, which will dictate the placement of a weapon going forward, is its intended effect with the new standard being PER SHOT not 10 SECONDS/10 HITS (5 for Armor).
The first is attributed to the potential of the weapon, given over 10 seconds. The second, assuming that effectiveness is per hit, would take 10 hits (5 for Armor).
Taking the Plumeria example, there's no way in hell one shot from a Plumeria would kill anything equal to or above its Armor Rating, because the Old Rating System clearly and implicitly says it takes 10 hits to kill. Behind the scenes, there is a narrative that both Wes and Fred have pointed out to say, an unshielded Super Eikan would be completely wasted if the Plumeria fired on it.
So the obvious conclusion everyone should have at this point is that whatever existed in the way of what the old DR system represented, as a failed attempt to be a baseline, should be disregarded completely in terms of effectively hashing out the new system. The only thing that should matter, which will dictate the placement of a weapon going forward, is its intended effect with the new standard being PER SHOT not 10 SECONDS/10 HITS (5 for Armor).
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Syaoran
Retired Staff
Well that's assuming it actually meant 'hit' entirely literally. Based on the language of the article, I'm more inclined to believe that 'hit' is supposed to mean 'attack'. However you can't just entirely disregard the old system either way. Because the designers of the weapons used the old system and they were trying to convey a certain level of potential damage when making them. So the design of the old system should be kept in mind when considering the new system. Especially since the old system it was not easy to pull a one shot one kill(no matter how you look at it based on what it says), if you base the new Damage system on individual hits, it needs to be balanced so that it's not taking out things of equal rating in one shot. Even in real life if you have armor "Rated for high powered rifles" that means it can stop said high powered rifle round, not "if can stop everything weaker than that but not that". That's just a simple matter of logic.
Also it should be noted that there is no ship in the setting 'above' the damage class of a Plumeria. its weapons are way above its own 'armor class' because it's a gun ship. So yeah a plumeria can roast a Super Eikan, but it's not about the plumeria's armor it's about the plumeria's weapons. If the super Eikan fired on an unshielded Plumeria it would likely be roasted as well. Because it like he plumeria has some super powerful weapons.
Well maybe the Amatsuotome is above the damage rating of the Plumeria, but that thing is literally 2km long.
Also it should be noted that there is no ship in the setting 'above' the damage class of a Plumeria. its weapons are way above its own 'armor class' because it's a gun ship. So yeah a plumeria can roast a Super Eikan, but it's not about the plumeria's armor it's about the plumeria's weapons. If the super Eikan fired on an unshielded Plumeria it would likely be roasted as well. Because it like he plumeria has some super powerful weapons.
Well maybe the Amatsuotome is above the damage rating of the Plumeria, but that thing is literally 2km long.
Fred
Retired Staff
I've reasonable expectations of killing a person with a knife, especially if I stab said person in the right place. I've significantly less assurances of being able to do the same on a Rhinoceros. So, yeah, the Plumeria's main gun can be ruinous on a Super Eikan, especially if it strikes something vital; but it'll be less perilsome to the Amatsuotome.
Fidelity to the old system is hardly a concern to me. The old system was meant to support the roleplay which was going on then, and it failed to do so - it's not my concern to perpetuate an earlier mistake coming from me wanting to artificially inject into the setting more exchanges before one side or the oter would expire. It was inspired from Star Trek, it was gamey, and people (GMs) are mostly disregarding this in favor of what suits them/dramaturgic imagery/common sense. It became a submission tax for peole introducing new elements to the setting as well; a near-useless one at that (and, mind you, I'm it's creator). I'm targeting for the version presently being discussed to be more faithful to how GMs actually do things.
In the end, the question the DR guidelines were supposed to answer; a newbie roleplayer asking "How effective is my tool?" was never answered correctly. Now, it has a chance to be.
Ah, so, in real life, the Rate-of-Fire of a weapon matters but not the caliber of its bullets?
Fidelity to the old system is hardly a concern to me. The old system was meant to support the roleplay which was going on then, and it failed to do so - it's not my concern to perpetuate an earlier mistake coming from me wanting to artificially inject into the setting more exchanges before one side or the oter would expire. It was inspired from Star Trek, it was gamey, and people (GMs) are mostly disregarding this in favor of what suits them/dramaturgic imagery/common sense. It became a submission tax for peole introducing new elements to the setting as well; a near-useless one at that (and, mind you, I'm it's creator). I'm targeting for the version presently being discussed to be more faithful to how GMs actually do things.
In the end, the question the DR guidelines were supposed to answer; a newbie roleplayer asking "How effective is my tool?" was never answered correctly. Now, it has a chance to be.
I'm addressing this late. My response:
Ah, so, in real life, the Rate-of-Fire of a weapon matters but not the caliber of its bullets?
Archander
Inactive Member
Firstly, if you attack with something and you don't hit, you don't automatically do damage just because you attacked, so I disagree with that first point. As for the point of regarding what a weapon designer's intended effect for their weapon, they created weapons with a certain feel in mind based off the idea that their weapon was going to have X effectiveness within a certain amount of time. That means mathematically, all those shots together equal the destructive power of a weapon that fires a single shot for the same amount of Damage.
The new system should still be able to reflect that weapon's feel based on the description of the weapon, regardless of the numerical labels it carries from the old. If the weapon was capable of putting down something of its equal class in a single shot, one of two things should happen: Looking at the ROF of the weapon to make sure it's not flinging 50 decisively lethal shots in a short time span (balancing issue), or lowering the class/designation of a weapon to reflect its intended effect (information aesthetic adjustment). Voila! The weapon fits perfectly in the new system, GMs have options because the can see clearly when a weapon is purely destructive, or wears down a target over time.
It's a simple case of Quality vs. Quantity.
I would just like to point out I mentioned Armor Rating and not Damage Rating, mainly to highlight that even with the Plumeria carrying a weapon beyond its armor rating, the old system states a weapon on equal footing takes 10 hits. Plumeria we could argue is a SDR3 maybe even SDR 4 class ship wielding an SDR 5 weapon. Jumping up one class in the SDR rating scale, again based off the old DR article, doesn't equal to a power increase of a magnitude of 10. Narratively speaking however, which is what the new system is trying to evoke, does however to a point.
TL;DR - The old system wasn't what it needed to be from a narrative standpoint and swings too much in the favor of power gamers and min/maxers.
Fred
Retired Staff
That's a strange way to put it. Thing is, right now we're trying to approach this matter in terms of demonstrating its usage, and we're making conversions. Past the grandfathering stage, new submissions probably won't face that problem. It's not balancing so much as simply converting to meet the mental image intended for it. i can tell you, in real life, a submachinegun doesn't care how it balances against a pistol - it does what it does, and that's the end of it. Because of the SMG's high rate of fire, not only can you kill someone really quick if you're accurate, but you can also significantly crater into an automobile - or at least much more than a pistol would.
Damage per Shot is what we're addressing. Rate of Fire, like in real life, is a possible damage multiplier that gets interpreted on the spot by the GM.
Actually, all it did was make fights longer because I was trying to make SARP more like Star Trek, when it actually was more like Babylon 5/Macross/Starship Operators/Martian Successor Nadesico.
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Syaoran
Retired Staff
@Archander Of course if you don't hit it doesn't do damage. If you think the old system implied that or that I implied that you're vastly off point. And you're really missing the point that weapons -shouldn't- be putting down things of equal class in one shot. for instance, yes you stab a human in the right spot or shoot them in the right spot, they die. But human bodies are no where -near- rated to take a stabbing or a bullet. You can killed by someone punching you in the right spots.
But all that aside, if you want to talk about favoring min maxers. Imagine what would happen if weapons of the same class as something could take out said armor in 1 shot. Then it becomes a question of why do you need armor at all if it wont save you? Why not invest in more shields that can actually stop said attack. You could try to say "Oh but what if you're in an anti shield zone?" The answer is the same thing would happen, a weapon of the class that can take out your shields will -still- kill you in 1 shot to the right place.
Also 1 shot to the right place taking out an armored target of the same class essentially makes all the advanced metals in the setting useless. What was the point of all that metallurgy and material science if you're still getting killed by a weapon of the same grade in one shot? Doesn't that seem kinda backwards logically? Don't you think they'd have designed materials to hold up to a rating of what was expected to be carried by something of the same size? At least for 1 or 2 shots? Otherwise logically it'd be way better to run around in powersuits than power armor.
I agree that the old system had many problems and logical failures, but if we complain about the logic of the old system not being proper then we need to apply proper logic to the new one, and that logic needs to account for the logic of the entire RP, not just the numbers on the weapons and armor, but the -purpose- behind them.
TL;DR - I'm not here to talk about Quality vs quanitity or about RoF equivalencies. I'm here to bring up the problems with the notion of "One shot one kill" vs something of the same rating.
But all that aside, if you want to talk about favoring min maxers. Imagine what would happen if weapons of the same class as something could take out said armor in 1 shot. Then it becomes a question of why do you need armor at all if it wont save you? Why not invest in more shields that can actually stop said attack. You could try to say "Oh but what if you're in an anti shield zone?" The answer is the same thing would happen, a weapon of the class that can take out your shields will -still- kill you in 1 shot to the right place.
Also 1 shot to the right place taking out an armored target of the same class essentially makes all the advanced metals in the setting useless. What was the point of all that metallurgy and material science if you're still getting killed by a weapon of the same grade in one shot? Doesn't that seem kinda backwards logically? Don't you think they'd have designed materials to hold up to a rating of what was expected to be carried by something of the same size? At least for 1 or 2 shots? Otherwise logically it'd be way better to run around in powersuits than power armor.
I agree that the old system had many problems and logical failures, but if we complain about the logic of the old system not being proper then we need to apply proper logic to the new one, and that logic needs to account for the logic of the entire RP, not just the numbers on the weapons and armor, but the -purpose- behind them.
TL;DR - I'm not here to talk about Quality vs quanitity or about RoF equivalencies. I'm here to bring up the problems with the notion of "One shot one kill" vs something of the same rating.
Aendri
Inactive Member
The other part to keep in mind is that SDR 5 is a whole different level from all of the other weapons in the setting. Those are planet killers. There's nothing above that rating, because it's kinda a moot point past there. SDR 5 weapons are not all equal, but they're all going to screw you up in a remarkably final way if they hit as intended, and that's what that rating is meant to indicate. It's probably better to think of it as "SDR 5+", not SDR 5. It becomes much more common sense to translate those weapons over to the new system when you start to look at it from that perspective. Two SDR 5 weapons could end up in wildly different areas of the new scale, despite having been put together in the past, in some part due to RoF/other adjustments, but also just because they weren't intended to be on the same scale in the first place.
Archander
Inactive Member
Maybe a simpler way of putting it is as I said before, to make sure we don't end up with guns that are as powerful as snipers with the rate of fire of a mini gun. ADR 5 because of ROF should not equate to ADR 5 because of pure singularly destructive power as far as the converted classification goes.
All in all it seems there's two sides to this debate with one saying the emphasis should be on a weapon's lethality being 1 for 1 when the class is equal, and the other saying that weapons shouldn't ever be destructively 1 for 1 unless it far exceeds the class of the target.
At the end of the day, GMs are going to fudge the numbers and give their interpretation regardless of the system because in the end, the narrative will always be de facto.
Fred
Retired Staff
You're taking one of the concepts for the revision and going backwards. Chicken and the egg and what not.
Say you have a medium power armor, like the M6 Daisy. Say you fire a gun at it. If it's ideal to kill a Daisy, and can do the job by striking at a vital spot like the helmet and the chestplate. Then, it's a Medium Anti-Armor weapon. We call it that, because it does its job. Just like when you grab an anti-personnel weapon and expect to kill a person with it, when you take up an Anti-Armor weapon, you should expect to kill a power armor with it.
The Daisy's Yama-dura armor is amazingly resilient: it can cope to an extent with everything that's less than Class 5 and be expected to protect its wearer. Anything lower will damage the armor, and increasingly less as the margin between the rating of the Daisy's armor and the weapon used against it widens. A Light Anti-Personnel weapon (Class 1) will do practically nothing.
If armor-borne weapons required multiple hits around a vital location to be fatal to the Daisy, then they probably weren't Class 5.
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Syaoran
Retired Staff
That is true yes, that an anti-armor weapon should be able to take out armor if to the right place. But that is a weapon -stronger- than Armor. Something that is not the conventional weapon for the same such armor units. the LSAR and the HPAR are both standard infantry weapons. The armor would've been redone or designed in a way that they can handle such weapons. Yes if someone with a weapon specifically designed for taking out the armor shows up then power to them. But that should not be the standard expected encounter for the armor, if it was, the armor would be made stronger, because if the armor is meaningless to what you -plan- to fight, why do you have the armor at all?
TL;DR - Anti-armor should 1 shot armor in the right place, but the standard weapon for armor should not be considered anti-armor
I was in the process of writing about how we should ignore the fluff traits of a weapon and instead label them by their intended use while leaving the specifics to simply provide an identity for a weapon system, however in the process of writing it I discovered that I actually like Fred's perspective better.
If you want a weapon to usually require more than one hit to kill something, it is as simple as dropping it a class or two below the intended target. As Fred has been saying all along a Class 5 Weapon should be expected to kill a Class 5 armor, because that is what it was designed to do.
It is why things like anti-tank weapons exist in real life, they were meant to kill a tank in ideally one shot. As armour improved they became less effective, but it could be thought as the Tanks going up a Class or two relative to the weapon. In the same way if we have a weapon that takes more than one direct hit to a vital system to put a target down, it probably shouldn't be considered an Anti-____ weapon.
I don't understand the adversity to writing weapons a class or two below a target if you want to avoid hyper-lethality with the weapons system. This is less an argument about a flaw with the proposed DR system and more a stubbornness to avoid adopting weapons outside of a category to achieve different effects.
So again, if you want to have to take multiple shots with an automatic weapon to chew through armour, drop the weapon class one or two points. It's as simple as that.
If you want a weapon to usually require more than one hit to kill something, it is as simple as dropping it a class or two below the intended target. As Fred has been saying all along a Class 5 Weapon should be expected to kill a Class 5 armor, because that is what it was designed to do.
It is why things like anti-tank weapons exist in real life, they were meant to kill a tank in ideally one shot. As armour improved they became less effective, but it could be thought as the Tanks going up a Class or two relative to the weapon. In the same way if we have a weapon that takes more than one direct hit to a vital system to put a target down, it probably shouldn't be considered an Anti-____ weapon.
I don't understand the adversity to writing weapons a class or two below a target if you want to avoid hyper-lethality with the weapons system. This is less an argument about a flaw with the proposed DR system and more a stubbornness to avoid adopting weapons outside of a category to achieve different effects.
So again, if you want to have to take multiple shots with an automatic weapon to chew through armour, drop the weapon class one or two points. It's as simple as that.
Fred
Retired Staff
Syaoran
Retired Staff
Like I said I've skimmed it, so I don't know entier specifics, but I saw the issue of LSAR killing Mindy and HPAR killing Daisy in one shot. But what @Eistheid brought up is kind of one of my concerns. Armor is genrally made -after- the weapon is made. Like I said if you make an armor rated for "High power rifle rounds" that means that it takes -more- than a high power rifle round to stop it. It's just logically weird based on that to say: "A class 5 kills a class 5". When clearly if it's -breaking- the class 5 in one shot it's -stronger- than said class 5. Not "equal to it" The weapon that can ignore said armor should be stronger than it. Not the weapons that can't breech it be weaker than it. You don't value armor by "What is stronger than this?" But "What can it stop." So an armors rating should be a measure of what it can prevent.Isn't that what I've been saying before?
Yay, someone gets it!
Edit: And honestly even then it's usually not 1 or 2 levels stronger if it's an 'anti' weapon. Anti tank rifles when they were made didn't 'just barely' punch through the armor they dis so significantly.
Fred
Retired Staff
Yup, but this is a Damage Rating guideline, not an Armor rating one.
I do get what you say, but then, it's just a quibble with prefered nomenclature, not what it actually ends up doing.
@Doshii Jun you're my go-to gun expert. Chime in, please?
I do get what you say, but then, it's just a quibble with prefered nomenclature, not what it actually ends up doing.
@Doshii Jun you're my go-to gun expert. Chime in, please?
Syaoran
Retired Staff
It is honestly semantics but I think some semantics are important for ease of use. Most people are going to actually see equipment before they see the damage system, if they even look at it at all for more than a glance. It would save on explanations to new members mid fight if we just went with logic that was already in their head as opposed to trying to plant new logic in there.
I would just like to point out that in the case of tanks specifically, the armour did in fact come first and the weapons were designed to kill it. Since well... Without a tank to kill who would have designed an anti-tank weapon?
Instead of merely fussing on that point I will also go on to say that in reality we have billions of dollars funnelled into weapon development globally in which they take weapons and they try them against current defensive systems to make a better weapon. I would assume that SARP does the same thing with SARA tech or NAM pulling up info on Heavy PAs or Light PAs or whatever, and then they set to work designing a weapon to kill their chosen target.
We don't design weapons to rely on their ROF in real life, the ROF of weapons existing mainly to compensate for the chance that it will miss rather than an intentional use to make something more lethal. It is why modern rifles have the ability to switch from semi-automatic to fully automatic, it is also why we have magazines. We learned that while a single bullet was effective, if you miss you have to reload, as such we developed systems that allow a soldier to fire a second time for a second chance at the killing shot they need. To this end automatic rates of fire exist to give a soldier multiple chances to kill the foe in a short amount of time, essentially tossing the dice and hoping one comes up in your favour.
In this way we don't design weapons to kill with a burst of fire, or sustained fire. We design them to kill with a single hit but design in features that increase the odds of making those hits. SARP should be no different. If we design a weapon to combat a certain system it should reliably be able to kill it. If during testing or field use it is discovered that it is effective against heavier targets, or doesn't present wasteful overkill on softer targets, that is a happy bonus on the side. It should not however be considered the Class of the weapon.
The choice as to what class a weapon should be could honestly be presented as a flow chart: Will this weapon kill a capital ship/space station in one hit to a vital system? If no, will it kill a battleship with one hit to a vital system? And you continue the query down the line. Once you hit a point where you can say, "Yes this will kill the target with a single hit to a vital system" you have your Damage Class. Then you can factor in how it will preform above and below it's Class.
Instead of merely fussing on that point I will also go on to say that in reality we have billions of dollars funnelled into weapon development globally in which they take weapons and they try them against current defensive systems to make a better weapon. I would assume that SARP does the same thing with SARA tech or NAM pulling up info on Heavy PAs or Light PAs or whatever, and then they set to work designing a weapon to kill their chosen target.
We don't design weapons to rely on their ROF in real life, the ROF of weapons existing mainly to compensate for the chance that it will miss rather than an intentional use to make something more lethal. It is why modern rifles have the ability to switch from semi-automatic to fully automatic, it is also why we have magazines. We learned that while a single bullet was effective, if you miss you have to reload, as such we developed systems that allow a soldier to fire a second time for a second chance at the killing shot they need. To this end automatic rates of fire exist to give a soldier multiple chances to kill the foe in a short amount of time, essentially tossing the dice and hoping one comes up in your favour.
In this way we don't design weapons to kill with a burst of fire, or sustained fire. We design them to kill with a single hit but design in features that increase the odds of making those hits. SARP should be no different. If we design a weapon to combat a certain system it should reliably be able to kill it. If during testing or field use it is discovered that it is effective against heavier targets, or doesn't present wasteful overkill on softer targets, that is a happy bonus on the side. It should not however be considered the Class of the weapon.
The choice as to what class a weapon should be could honestly be presented as a flow chart: Will this weapon kill a capital ship/space station in one hit to a vital system? If no, will it kill a battleship with one hit to a vital system? And you continue the query down the line. Once you hit a point where you can say, "Yes this will kill the target with a single hit to a vital system" you have your Damage Class. Then you can factor in how it will preform above and below it's Class.
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