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Damage Rating System Patch

CadetNewb

CadetNewb

Well-Known Member
Currently, it's come to @Doshii Jun and my own attention that there are certain rules that are lacking on the Damage Rating page which have been 'soft rules' for a long time. However, these have not been codified despite their enforcement by Tech Mods like ourselves at staff's insistence. This is proving problematic as new submissions come in which go against this rule knowingly or unknowingly, which results in a fair amount of drama in the forums. That's something we can do without.

@Wes - can we get the green light to codify the Offensive DR limit as being 2x the ship class's damage rating?
 
The 'rule of thumb' I've been using is that the maximum damage you can do to any single target per turn is twice your ship's SP. It has never prevented maximum damage output in general or the amount of weapons a craft can have.
 
That rule was the one cited earlier for the C5 in regards to having too many weapons / too much damage output.

Originally the rule was said to reference maximum damage output.

We then clarified it to be maximum damage output per target.

It also doesn't seem to apply to missile weapons attached to a ship but I think missiles are out of scope here since there is a lot to talk about in that regard.
 
To clarify, a ship may have a total damage output of, say, 200 SDR but because its hull rating is 50 SDR, it can only have an output of 100 SDR at any one time? If this is the case, I would like to codify that to prevent future misunderstandings and trouble in general.

EDIT: I got ninja'd. So is it per-target, or output overall?
 
Per target. It started as a rule to make battles more easy to calculate but it's also been kind of a way to discourage overdoing ship designs with excess weapons by making them mostly equals in 1v1 battles.
 
If that's the case, can I go ahead and codify this into the DR page? It's been giving us trouble because it's not explicitly written down.
 
Why would this need an article for a guideline that is only 1-2 sentences?
 
Well, I want to make sure you're ok with the wording before it's approved, and also make sure that the proper procedure and documentation is followed too. That way, we can keep track of things more easily as time goes on.
 
@Wes @Doshii Jun @Nashoba

This is what I currently have on the table, but I have been thinking of another problem. Since the rule has not been written down, I believe it has been misinterpreted over the years; my own understanding of it was that a ship may only have a total damage output of 2x their class's SP. For an example, and according to my own misinterpretation, a Battleship may only have 100 SDR total since its class had a 50 SP rating standard. I don't think I'm the only tech mod who has made this mistake either, as many ships in the setting, including Yamatai's, seem to abide by this misinterpreted version of the unwritten rule.

At this point, we can either go with the original version of the rule and potentially render a lot of ships in need of fixing up to fit with the meta (people always do this sort of thing no matter what) , or instead go with the misinterpreted version of the rule and avoid any OOC arms race popping up.
 
I don't see anything wrong with this.

I'd raise the personnal opinion that 2x SP is pretty damn high; I find SARP ships in general to be overarmed and the emphasis on quantity always seemed to detract on the narrative identity of a weapon.

Even 1x would be too much based on the roleplay I see; very few ships are narrated as having this favorable a 'time-to-kill' on targets all in one go. But, that's just me. I'll address that differently once I return to that DR system that's still cooking. (I'm in no hurry to complete it, as I've other priorities that need be taken care of first)
 
To be fair, it's only the total damage output that's limited, and that's against one target. Considering this though, the ships are most likely to dodge or evade the shots, with even battleships doing quick firing runs or passes against each other to minimize damage while maximizing output with fire control for the fleet or flight as a whole. However, if we want ships to take more hits, I would advise we lower the limit, assuming we stick with Wes' original version of the rule. Alternatively, we could go with the misinterpretation of the rule to similar effect since most ships aren't always able to bring all their weapons to bear.
 
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