Re: Fred's revision on the DR system
Well, if you take into account that a Plumeria gunship could have this:
Plumeria-class Light Gunship
Starship-grade Yamataium armor, 20 structural points
CFS Shielding - Absorbtion: 20, Threshold: 2
Armament: Aether Shock Cannon (ASR 5), 6x Positron Cannons (ASR 2 each), Swarm of Aether weapon pods (ASR 2 total)
Yes, Wes. I still insist on the Plumeria's positron cannons being Rating 2, because there are non-main gun weapons out there on larger ships like the Chiharu flagship that are larger, ought to do more damage and yet shouldn't be main guns.
With that weapon volley, the Plumeria in ideal circumstances would cause 19 points of Anti-Starship damage. The combined structural points above would make it so that in two successful volleys, the Plumeria would have had nearly defeated a counterpart vessel of the same class.
Shields, if fighting an opponent of similar ship size or less, should make it possible to effectively last twice as long as an unshielded ship. However, if you end up facing larger ships, they likely hold larger and arguably better weapons on board, allowing them to knife through the defenses of smaller vessels much more easily.
So, if you have seven Plumerias firing on a single Plumeria, 3 ASR will blast through the shield on every Aether Shock Cannon discharge. Since the Plumeria's hull armor value decreases faster than its absorbtion value, you end up destroying it before its shields actually fail (though they might still from internal damage, depending on the roleplay scenario).
Anyhow, point was, even shielded the Plumeria can only two two full salvos of its own arsenal before being nearly destroyed.
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Exhack, Wes... I'll admit I'm a little uncomfortable with making armor materials translate into just numbers. I think that might be telling GMs a little bit too much how to handle damage suffered by a ship.
The goal of the initial idea was to make it so that someone could look at a weapon and easily comprehend the level of harm it could deliver. The DR 1-10 system failed to do that, only giving out how capable they were of penetrating defenses.
The DR system was made because there was confusion on what weapon was powerful and what weapon was not, because a power armor rifle would have 'Very Heavy' and the same would go for a ship's turreted cannons. Unfortunately, that ended up resulting in the same lack of clarity regarding just how damaging a weapon was, because a lot of things, big and small, ended up with the same values still.
My goal with the ratings was to convey how much a weapon could bring harm to something, while using the grades to help with penetration values. The three larger distinctions seemed to be on the personnel, mecha and ship levels - which is why I took that approach. After all, most ship weapons were DR 6+ and a DR 6 weapon
could harm a DR 10 armor-type, so, I figured making them all ship-grade did that cleanly.
If a weapon was made to be effective against ship armor, then it was a simple assumption to have it function so, regardless of the weapon type used. For a GM wishing to get more out of his weapons and make it less generic, there was the encouragement to look up the weapon and armor qualities and then make them apply in the roleplay, deciding the effectiveness of the attacks delivered on the fly as most GMs do anyhow.
I believe this is wrong.
However... Wes has already gone beyond how I devised this scaling/rating system with putting 'total annihilation' weapon at the top - regardless of how I was trying to make it so that smaller ships would likely be better off having smaller weapons which would not cause as much damage as larger hulls could manage.
I don't like how armor qualities get translated into numbers, but I suppose (reluctantly) that armor density and weight could use some representation too.
If speeds need to be altered, though, I think we should give our speed standards table another look. Several categories on it are underused because everyone scrambles to get the top values. Instead of giving a bonus over the maximum, why not make adjustments so that a ship with lighter armor would hit that maximum and other vessels with heavier armor would not? The aspect of poorer engine technology - something nearly totally overlooked - could very well sit with some adjustments as the relationship between engine power and armor weight.
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A thought also comes to me, looking at the Plumeria. Just how many weapons can you fit on a hull? It is acceptable for a light ship to be able to nearly destroy itself in two weapon volleys? What about ships whom can't? Do they get out some advantage out of it?
Armor density and speed seem to be interrelated now. How does weapon arsenal figure in that? Perhaps there could be a few balancing relationships put into effect while were at this, though this goes far more into the ship designing realm than the guideline making:
Armor <--> Speed
Weapon <--> Shields
A light ship with most of its assets devoted to weapons could end up with less powerful defensive systems as a result. That's purely hypothetical... but that thought struck me.
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Wes, the qualificative 'Total Annihilation' is getting old. Could we change it to something else? I dunno... 'disintegration' maybe? They don't exactly annihilate totally. >_>
