Damage Rating Conversion Chart

[Wes]

@Aendri: Of course I know, and the condescending tone of your post made me angry. I'd appreciate it if you answered the important parts of my last post instead of the side note about eventually wanting tabletop compatibility.

 

[Aendri]

I apologize if I offended you, but that was the only part of your post that mattered, from my perspective. I don't particularly mind one way or another who it is that assigns the DR value if we end up on a narrative system likes Fred's, so the first portion of your posts was irrelevant to me, and the second part was just you agreeing with the progress that's been made, so I didn't feel like it required a response at all either.

 

[Eistheid]

The idea of having DR assigned during NTSE approval wouldn't be a bad one... After all if tech writers want to provide an example of what they think the DR should be they can include one anyway. I know that leaving out the DR until the NTSE portion would make writing tech easier for at least one person... Might help out others.

I've been slacking when it comes to making progress on this since I was hoping for input from the others involved, however with how slow things are moving I'll likely go back to working on it actively adding making suggestions on the article itself that people can look at later. Not intending on letting this fade into the past.

As for a tabletop like system... I think that would be best handled in a thread of its own. This thread is intended to address long standing issues with the present way of handling tech articles with the intention of helping Tech Authors, GMs, and Players across the site by providing a set of guidelines rather than a crunchy hard number based statistics system since the decision as to how those numbers play out is left to GM fiat anyway. To reiterate: a tabletop system seems like a side project that would allow different game types aside from the main method of roleplay on the site. As such I feel we shouldn't handle that project in this thread and instead perhaps seek support and interest in a thread dedicated to the idea of a SARP TTRPG.

Edit: Added suggestions for the Lethality section on the wiki page.

Edit 2: More updates.

 

[Eistheid]

I hate double posting like this however I'd like to draw the attention of those who have participated in this thread back to the article, and I'm not sure how else to do so.

I've tried writing up sections for the wiki article and would like to do more, and some form of input on the work done so far would be appreciated. I know a lot of you are busy so I can't expect you to sink too much time into this, but even general suggestions and feedback would help at this point.

I don't want this to die, and if I have to do the majority of the work to get it ready for NTSE, that is fine. I just don't think that I can claim to have the experience necessary to handle something like this all on my own. So if it isn't too much trouble, could I please get some advice and direction?

 

[Fred]

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=fred_s_damage_rating_revision
Just so we don't have to go all the way back to page 1 to find the link to the wiki article.

I actually think most of what you've written is good. You're a bit prone to repeating yourself and some bits seem to better belong in other sections. However, I felt it was too early to apply judgment. I wanted to see all sections addressed before a clean-up pass on it. Namely, the Shield section and the Conversion Considerations. It's unavoidable that a stopgap solution will need be applied while setting elements are gradually grandfathered in.

One thing that's puzzled me so far was that instating the changes proposed in this DR system will happen to make power armor much more vulnerable to anti-personnel weapons - absolutely no one has alluded to it, and I'm a little surprised it wasn't made an issue of.

Power Armor will be far less 'king' than it seemed to be in the past in a Police SWAT team with assault rifles can bring something down like a M6 Daisy with prolongued fire. This will affect the players too; having a teleporting enemy Mindy appear on a ship's bridge won't be the inplacable death sentences it's been presented as before - though the Mindy's payload remains no laughing matter, players may actually have a chance to defend themselves now.

 

[Aendri]

Personally, I don't think that's an issue at all. That's exactly how it should be. Sustained fire, even if it's a step or two below, should be a legitimate threat to anything. Now, obviously, there are limits. A BB gun isn't going to hurt a tank, no matter how many rounds you fire at it. But even a BB gun can reasonably expect to hurt someone wearing body armor, assuming someone gets lucky, or they just sit there and take the hits long enough.

 

[Eistheid]

That took longer than intended. I have completed a draft for every section now (at least I believe I have...)

Firstly I will say that I have yet to touch on what I had written previously so there won't be any edits to those portions yet. I'll look into addressing the repetitive nature of my writing when I get started on the second draft.
I also want to note that I didn't touch too much on the Plumeria example at the bottom aside from trying to help it read a little more clearly since it is a more candid section that expresses Fred's vision rather than anything that I feel I could improve...

I would also like to agree that there is no issue with lighter weapons becoming a threat to PA now. If a PA pilot is foolish enough to stand around and soak up SMG fire or whatever someone is trying to kill them with I think they deserve their punishment. Additionally this creates a niche perhaps for lightly armed, but heavily armored PAs (or variants) for riot control that are designed to soak up a large amount of punishment from smaller weapons. It gives our setting depth allowing for systems to be written more for their roles rather than being invincible because they happen to be in one category rather than another.

Hopefully the coming iterations will be more timely.

 

[Fred]

Thank you for your contributions, @Eistheid. You put a lot of good work into this.

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=fred_s_damage_rating_revision

I addressed the page again. Most of what I did was elminate the former text to replace it with Eistheid's. Some of the bits were shuffled around to areas I felt were more appropriate. I puttered around the table, trying to remove some of the examples to improve how presentable it looked. The bulk of my attention were given to the Plumeria brainstorm, where I removed the hesitancy and informality from the writing.

The Shield section concerns me; it's the most "gamey" section where I recommend shielding to be like a number of extra lives (2 being the default) and then go in further exposition. Even after the Eistheid rewrite, I worry that it might feel convoluted. I'd like some new eyes on it to play editor - maybe @Doshii Jun - and let us know how well the text is understood and what might be done to clarify it.

Can't have the Priss scale be too prissy.

 

[Eistheid]

I gave it a quick read over and didn't see anything that stood out to me so I'll wait on Doshii's opinion before considering proceeding.

I did however notice and fix a few spelling and minor grammatical errors that I seemed to have missed during my writing... The most amusing that I found was that I had used "maid" instead of "made" in a section...

 

[Firebrand]

As a new player who is still familiarizing himself with this site, I like Fred's Damage Rating idea. I feel like it gives more room to things that aren't PA to be useful here- like Tanks and other vehicles.

Admittedly, the shield idea in it does seem a bit confusing.

 

[Eistheid]

The shield system is simple though. If you have a Class 5 shield with endurance 2 it can get hit by Class 5 weapons twice before collapsing. Being a guideline, how exactly this plays out is up to the GM though, because they might want to extend or deplete the shield more rapidly, depending on narrative.

 

[Firebrand]

Then that works. I say we implement this immediately.

 

[Fred]

Thanks, but no. Not yet. There's quality control yet to do.
@Doshii Jun @OsakanOne I'd like you in here.
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=fred_s_damage_rating_revision

Doshii I want to harness your editor skills, in particular with the explanation about the shielding. I know you were fond of the Priss scale and this is close to completion - but I want your impression on how applicable to our setting this is.
OsakanOne, you had issues with the previous iteration. I want you to read over the above link and let me know if you actually understand it/get why it works the way it does.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Yessir! I have the tab open; I should get to it tonight or tomorrow.

 

[OsakanOne]

This does make a lot more sense but now there's going to be huge conversions to do all over the SARP.

 

[Fred]

@OsakanOne I'm of mind that once this is implemented, anything newly submitted should adhere to it. Whereas older stuff ought to be grandfathered in as it gets employed in our setting. If we grandfather on a need-to-use basis - it's not that much of a monumental task as it would come in bite-sized format for everyone. After all, it's not like the previous DR system suddenly stopped working and people interpret it their way all the time anyhow.

@Doshii Jun Still waiting on your input.

 

[OsakanOne]

@OsakanOne I'm of mind that once this is implemented, anything newly submitted should adhere to it. Whereas older stuff ought to be grandfathered in as it gets employed in our setting. If we grandfather on a need-to-use basis - it's not that much of a monumental task as it would come in bite-sized format for everyone. After all, it's not like the previous DR system suddenly stopped working and people interpret it their way all the time anyhow.

@Doshii Jun Still waiting on your input.

In which case, there needs to be a conversion chart. I'm actually waiting on a few submissions that I'd like to submit using this damage system. Its so much easier to work with.

 

[Fred]

It's not really a chart. Not sure it can really work that way. It's too different to be a straight-up conversion since the lines between grades have been very blurred. Small arms weapons can hurt power armor now up to a certain degree, and some power armor weapons can actually be considered anti-personnel now under this umbrela (see LASR below). There's a whole new category to bridge between power armors and ships now : vehicles. Some anti-ships weapons that were expected to damage ships but not destroy them wholly might have some of those sit in the vehicle category (see the wiki page's Plumeria example at the very end). SDR 5 is likely being stretched out over all the Anti-Capital category.

It's mostly... cinematic. You consider what you want your weapon to do and how it's supposed to do so. For example, the LASR is pretty much thought of as a armor-killing weapon but making it class 4 made people uneasy since they considered that the weapon was supposed to kill something like a Daisy (Class 5) in a multiple hit burstfire rather than just one or two well-placed shots while it'd be shieldless.

That was explained on the wiki under the Conversion\Rate of Fire heading:

For the purpose of this damage system lethality is being considered on a per-shot basis. The damage potential for weaponry that has a very high rate of fire is something unique to the weapon and should be detailed and elaborated upon during the submission process.

With this said, if a weapon was made to cause damage to a 'light armor' (Class 4) on multiple hits, it should not be considered a “Light Anti-Armor Weapon”. While the weapon can be described as being used to assault such targets, when it comes to the Class the author should, depending on the intended effectiveness of the weapon, consider whether the weapon will prove lethal on a single hit for a Class 3 or Class 2 target and label it as such.

To give an example, the LASR was designed for use near friendly assets where the potential collateral damage of more powerful weapons was not desired. As such, while it has frequently been employed in an anti-armor role the weapon can be better thought of as an “Anti-Heavy Personnel Weapon” (Class 3) as a single shot to a vital area (head, torso) is likely to incapacitate such a target.

That's why it's mostly about the visuals of how you want the weapon to perform.

@Aendri @Eistheid you guys have been explaining this for others before. OsakanOne asks for a conversion tool and examples don't quite seem to be enough. Is this something we ought to handle? Would there be an easier way of explaining this? I was wondering, the convern for conversion can largely be diffused over just making a good explaination of how something's class would be set in relation to which factors. That way, we'd deal with the conversion consideration and help people figure out the right values for setting elements in the first place.

@Doshii Jun rawr

 

[Doshii Jun]

It'll be today then.

 

[Eistheid]

Honestly... I think my response would be to ignore the old DR system all together when thinking in respect to the new guidelines. Instead the question should be, "What do you want your weapon to do?"

My reasoning for this is thus:

The old system was closer to game mechanics in structure. X weapon deals Y damage to this tier of vehicle. Add in some dice rolls with the SP already in place for Hit Points and you could argue it is a table top system. This lead to a lot of submissions being worked to fit the DR rather than the DR being used to give players and GMs an idea of what the weapon did. For example if you wanted a powerful personnel weapon, your only option was generally to make it PDR5 and hope for the best when someone wrote it IC.

With the new set of guidelines, instead we're asking, "If you shot something with this, what would be the biggest thing that it could theoretically kill in a single shot?" Instead of asking the question, "Where would an SDR2 weapon fit on this scale?" We should instead be looking at the fluff and asking ourselves, "How was this weapon intended to preform in roleplay? Is it supposed to destroy its intended target? Or merely damage it?"

I personally feel that a lot of the DR values were chosen to evoke a certain feeling rather than placed with the effect of the weapon in mind. For example often people considered SDR1 and SDR2 weapons largely useless in starship combat and would opt for the high end of the scale at SDR5, and would only grudgingly use SDR 4 or SDR 3. It gave the impression that unless you were hitting in the top end of each category the weapon wasn't worthwhile. An example of this is the low number of PDR1 weapons that exist to my knowledge. I remember on more than one occasion people commenting that they wouldn't be caught dead with something small like the Little Killer, this gives the impression that the way the current system is structured lends to players and possibly even GMs disregarding the lower end of the scale as ineffective.

I would instead propose that we look hard at a sample of weapons and units to truly fill out the examples listed to give a better idea of how they should function in character, rather than from the lens of a numerical value. I don't think I personally have enough experience with how the weapons and armors have played out in combat to populate the list myself or I'd get started on that. As such I'd appreciate it if the veterans among us could chip in and start discussing what fits where. The more examples of experiences with the equipment the better we'll be able to place it, which will in turn provide a more accurate example of what to expect.

---

A final note, is that I think one of the most important things to emphasize is that an equal tier weapon is supposed to -kill- the target. Rather than thinking that the armor will defend capably against a same tier weapon. I think that learning that a Class 5 weapon will kill a Class 5 target with skilled use is going to be one of the things that people will have a bit of trouble learning. After all the present DR system has it so that an ADR unit can tank an ADR weapon. That is the way the system frames it. So the more clear it is that a same Class weapon will kill a same Class target the better.

Edited to add a bit at the top.