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DRv4

@Charmaylarg Dufrain Check out Children of a Dead Earth or 'Everything you wanted to know about space combat but were afraid to ask'.

Everything is accurate down to the Physics, materials science, and the Voltage going to your coilguns (or rail guns, you can custom-design your weapon down to the material in the barrel, the number of coils in the gun, the capacitors attached, what cooling pump you use, etc.)

The game starts out as an easy Kerbal Space Program and ends up as a very hard Kerbal Space Program.

If you want even more specifics check out Atomic Rockets and Rocketpunk Manifesto. Atomic Rockets hurts the eyes to look at but it is overflowing with useful information. Rocketpunk is more aimed at people like you who want to try and apply some logic to their RP setting.

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Distilling all of this down is hard. Yes things in space would be made very lightweight but at the same time we have powerful engines and can make 'lightweight' things very strong. We also have the DRv3 problem where larger objects are inherently stronger and better armored. For example a large transport plane would be better armored than a tank.


But yes: 'Things are super-deadly in space'

But also: 'There are a lot of qualifications and specifics to that which can make killing something very difficult'
 
In my opinion, it's up to the GM whether or not something is one shot. If you have a problem with stuff getting one shot, don't describe it as getting one shot unless it's reasonable to assume that something would. That's what's great about DRv3, it allows GMs to describe things the way they want to do so.
 
Additionally, games like Children of a Dead Earth (a game I have wanted to look at for a very long time) are unfortunately too complex for the average SARPgoer. We don't come here to calculate massive amounts of physics (exception: @HarperMadi) we come here to roleplay. If you really wanted to, in games like D&D you could rule called shots and body part damage but that's really complicated and annoying to do.

Roleplay damage systems should never be about realism. They should be about surrealism, simplification, and streamlining to a general reference. I've ballparked multiple systems in private chats; each one has been shot down before it could see the light of day because they were simply too complicated.

If I had my way I'd make an incredibly complex and vast system with tons of mechanics and data to input and multiple in-depth outputs and statistics. But no one would play it. (Except maybe Madi. Because she's a nut.)
 
The only real roblem I had with DRv3 was the lack of minor damages, such as using a sandblaster to strip paint.

Depending on the GM, a sandblaster is a mere T2 damage, which wouldn't even scratch most starship armors, which makes repainting your ship a pain because I am that petty.

It also takes away from effects such as reentry or solar wind ablation, which would make it very difficult for a science ship such as my ISS Oracle to scan close to a solar mass due to the plasma sloughing off the surface, and would add a sense of risk to scientific ventures. It would also make a nice economic problem of having to replace my heatshield every once in a while because reentry has this nice habit of burning it right the Hell off.

While SARP is soft scifi, I do like to add a sense of realism and danger even in a noncombatant's story, for the story. I find suspension of disbelief difficult when the physics just aren't there.

Also, I'd get enormous humor from watching a Yamatai ship captain explaining to her superiors just why she went after something in a dense debris field and her hull's chewed up and half the paint's missing.
 
I mean, that's up to a GM though. If they want a sandblaster to strip paint, they can say it does. At the end of the day, that's a GM's prerogative, to GM.
 
Also, that doesn’t require an update. All it need is a reference list of environmental hazards and whatnot.

(Can’t wait for Tier 13 solar flares.)
 
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