Fixing Grandfathered Equipment

[Ethereal]

Hello all!

In the spirit of the new wave of using threads to discuss topics and changes, I thought I'd bring up another one.

Personally, it's always bugged me that there's a good portion of equipment on the wiki that doesn't comply by DRv3 in one sense or another, either by accident or design.

Some offensive DRs that are usually restricted to something like heavy PA or starfighters are usable in some cases by infantry-held weapons, some even one-handed. Occasionally there are notes of this causing some kind of damage to the operator, but this is never codefied into how severe. These notes are often ignored in any case by players, are sometimes non-existent, or simply shrugged off by PCs, and serve more as fluffy justification as to why something should break DR in the form of a mostly empty promise.

To me, this is quite incongruous with the rest of the setting. A random with a pistol shouldn't be able to one-shot a PA, and a PA shouldn't be able to one-shot a medium starship with a wrist rocket, etc. Using a heavy or static weapon is fair enough, but oftentimes these overspec'd weapons are in small form factor, are very portable, or orders of magnitude smaller in size than a weapon usually of that DR.

I feel that having grandfathered items that allow this kind of "DR-spoofing" actually cuts down on variety and RP, as it makes weapons like the SiZi hugely overrepresented due to this "DR-spoofing property", especially when such items are supposedly a rarity (not SAOY standard issue/KFY made). It incentivises people to sniff out "DR-spoofed" weapons for their characters so that they can have the biggest fighting potential, quite understandably, but ultimately this just cuts down on variety and specialisation.

However, I had a spirited conversation on Discord about how some people believe that grandfathered items shouldn't be fixed for a variety of reasons, and thought it best to move the conversation here so that we can get all sides.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Yuuki]

Yeah but the sizi looks f'in rad too tho

 

[Immortal Cyan]

To me, this is quite incongruous with the rest of the setting. A random with a pistol shouldn't be able to one-shot a PA, and a PA shouldn't be able to one-shot a medium starship with a wrist rocket, etc. Using a heavy or static weapon is fair enough, but oftentimes these overspec'd weapons are in small form factor, are very portable, or orders of magnitude smaller in size than a weapon usually of that DR.

I admire the desire to try and balance the setting, but to me, these examples are either deliberately pulled out of context while ignoring other balancing factors with the submissions in question or are invented straw men that don't actually exist as approved submissions. There's no PA-grade wrist rocket that is going to one shot a medium starship like you're claiming and "a random with a pistol" is a gross understatement that ignores necessary context (Is this pistol PA, infantry, or mecha-grade? What is the pistol's rate of fire? Are there any quirks in its usage?). As I understand, you are attempting to propose a new hard-and-fast ruleset that "always" applies, while advertising it as a system that "does not demand" (Screenshots from the DRv4 WIP). I'd encourage you to refrain from misleading readers about what you are actually presenting here in the attempt to get people to agree with you by presenting disingenuous straw men.

What these restrictions will do is effectively put weapons into template boxes that limit creativity, eventually making all weapons clones of each other. PA weapon formulas will never deviate from the "Tier 5 assault rifle" or the "Tier 4 pistol" and infantry weapon formulas will never deviate from the "Tier 2 assault rifle" or the "Tier 1 pistol", since this rule set seems to ignore context and is based on exaggerations or fabricated straw man examples. I'd question whether or not you've read the submissions that you seem to be referring to or just skimmed them, hit Ctrl+F to search for "Tier", then decided that we need a another new ruleset because that number seems too high for some reason.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

DRv3 gives us scale to picture but should not overtly interfere with RP. After all a tank can kill a starship, a man with a rock can kill a god, and if you go off DRv3 the giant 120+ mile long megastructure military station I built years ago can technically be destroyed by a single or two shots from any T-15 weapon or a few extra shots with a T-14 weapon. Now that im no longer FM and not really bound to care i've widely changed my stance on the damage rating rules and see them as pretty redundant.

But then people can just make whatever they-

Good. PvP is non existant and has been since the end of the nep civil war. And all the annoying paperwork aspect of the wiki is what made me learn to hate it when I was constantly browbeaten by redundant rules even when I was underpowering a lot of my submissions to make them interesting.
Let a gun be a gun; We all know what it does. And let a ship be a ship. Because with the slowly stagnating community rules should be lifted more and become slacker on creation as there are fewer and fewer people over the years and not doubled down on to hinder and stifle what few are left trying to contribute to the setting.

We should focus more on the RP and getting people more involved with it and finding ways to make what few new people come here have an easier time than trying to find better ways to streamline a 9-5 office job with ten encyclopedias worth of rules and reference matterials required just to make the same OP revolver everyone makes if a different shade of black ten times over.

 

[Ethereal]

I appreciate the opinions on this. In my view, making things more standardised would actually cut down the barrier for entry for new players trying to find "their kind of weapon" or trying to create a new weapon. Rather than having a drawn out 3+ page debate in NTSE about why something should or shouldn't have a damage rating, it's more upfront. While I appreciate that a 120 mile station shouldn't be 2-shot by a single weapon, people do and will always fall back on whatever DR says when anyone tries to apply their thoughts to a disagreement about that. If two people disagree, the rulings is what wins out in the end, rather than arguing ad infinitum, because that's what they're there for.

I'd also like to pointedly note that the system I'm working on explicitly wasn't mentioned or linked in this thread, because it's clearly WIP and is not ready to be submitted. This is not a submission thread and saying I'm being disingenuous about this thread because of what's in an unlinked WIP page is disingenuous itself. I know that wiki article isn't completed because I haven't submitted it, please take it in that light rather than posing stupid questions like whether I've read the wiki and explicitly accusing me of misleading people.

In terms of the wrist-rocket, that was me eluding to things like Mindy micro-missiles, but I am deliberately not pointing fingers and am obsfucating examples as to not rile anyone up. The same thing applies to my "a random with a pistol" quote. There's at least a handful of over-spec'd pistols, both infantry and PA. I'm not going to list them, I already mentioned the SiZi.

I maintain that things like 'quirks' and 'fire rate' really don't matter and just serve to muddy the water about what a weapon's capabilities actually are. You could make something fire 1,000 times a second or 1 time a second. If it's DR 2 it's still DR 2, not every single bullet counting as its own DR 2 hit surely? Same thing with quirks, as per my original post, these are often superfluous at best and often never observed by their users.

 

[Immortal Cyan]

The tier rating of a given weapon occupies only a single line of space in a most weapon submissions, whereas "inconsequential" things like quirks and rate of fire can be expounded upon in paragraphs. I can personally attest to that through my own submissions, though maybe you don't hold yourself to that same standard. If players are abusing a weapon by ignoring it's specific quirks, a GM can easily step in to intervene. Firing a weapon too fast and too often? The weapon overheats and blows up. Your character now has no hands!

As for your point about Mindy micro-missiles, I...don't know where to begin with that. I did a quick search and the highest Mindy micro-missile on this page I could find is Tier 6, which...isn't even remotely close to "one-shotting a medium starship with a wrist rocket" like you are claiming. It might have been overly-aggressive of me to assert that you were attempting to mislead writers and for that, I apologize. The statement should have been attributed to ignorance instead, as a Tier 6 missile would deal less than negligible damage to a medium starship. I wrote that post under the assumption that you could realize that on your own, but apparently it was incorrect.

Regardless, the wiki would be quite a barren place if weapon quirks didn't matter. They're arguably more important than the damage rating. For most weapons on the wiki, their handling characteristics, capacity, mechanisms, intended purpose, and other qualities occupy far more attention and page space than the damage rating, which by comparison is typically just a single line buried near the bottom of the submission. I would advise against reducing submissions which have so much effort behind them to just a number.

 

[Ethereal]

Personally, I made the IRIS/MAW (with the help of Madi) which is a infantry-usable rifle which can fire Tier 5 ammo without repercussion. It fires a Tier 5 round every second with no noise, recoil or flash. Max range 2 kilometers. It's powered by a robust air compressor rather than anything fancy. It's probably 2 or 3 Tiers above what it should be.

I got it through NTSE by equating it to a SLAM rocket, a infantry shouldered weapon, which can hit Tier 7 easily and was already in setting. That's just one example of how this kind of creep can happen. It's an issue, because something like a SLAM can have a Tier 0 person jump 7 Tiers without repercussion. There are examples out there of this kind of thing happening. It's not beyond the pale to have a Tier 4 weapon jump up 7 to a Tier 11 weapon that could wreck a medium starship with a wrist rocket, because we already have the precedent that you can jump 7+. Hence, currently DRv3 is kind of all over the place, with weapons varying up to half the Tier scale without any meaningful change in repercussion, size, weight, or other disadvantages.

I think we need to agree to disagree on this one between you and me, Cy, if you think that kind of thing is a-ok.

Also, I really resent how you worded the above post.

maybe you don't hold yourself to that same standard

I don't appreciate these kinds of comments. I've made entire new corps of the SAOY, I have no idea why you think my standards are so crap?

The statement should have been attributed to ignorance instead

This is not an apology. This is just calling me stupid and I resent it.

under the assumption that you could realize that on your own, but apparently it was incorrect

Alright, now I really don't know where this venom is coming from. Again, calling me stupid.

I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of this discussion, you've made your stance clear and I'm going on record saying that I'm not appreciating the condescention in your wording. It's genuinely nice to see you on the site again but if you can't keep the insults out of a discussion thread I don't know what to tell you. I haven't made any such comments directed at you and this feels unwarranted.

 

[Soban]

Something I'll note is that in terms of "Punching up", (above tier + 3) is mostly limited to personal scale (0-3) and powered armor scale (4-6). With the vast majority of it being personal scale. The actual size of the weapons rule of thumb is tier-2 or so IIRC (again, more variability in personal and powered armor scale)

The reason for this is in real life, unarmored people are capable of firing weapons that can hit much tougher stuff. It also helps to encourage personal level fights and gives individual characters ( vs crews) more freedom.

Personally, I haven't ever ran into a problem in RP here where I feel like the DRv3 was abused. So it feels like much to do about nothing, but YMMV. As long as we remember what for, (A very rough guide which IS a useful thing) I don't think there is really a problem. If you want crunchy rules, make them up and apply them to your RP, but let's not make super crunchy rules prescriptive.

 

[Deleted member 6093]

I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of this discussion, you've made your stance clear and I'm going on record saying that I'm not appreciating the condescention in your wording. It's genuinely nice to see you on the site again but if you can't keep the insults out of a discussion thread I don't know what to tell you. I haven't made any such comments directed at you and this feels unwarranted.

@Immortal Cyan @Ethereal,
I am going to kindly step in here and say that while you both have valid points, keep the bickering out of this.

As someone who's caused their fair share of arguments, and as someone who actually thinks that most grandfathered tech should be completely redone to match the setting, I agree that ultimately DRv3 should come down to GM discretion and that broken tech should be fixed. Please try to be civil.

There is also merit in saying that the DRv3 system provides structure. I think we should strike a middle ground between the two points.

 

[Locked_0ut]

about the over speced pistols: The Heavy Aether Pistol. Sure it's a power armor weapon but it's a Tier 6 with range basically to the horizon when the standard issue PA rifle is a Tier 3 with long but not insane range. Ignoring things like suppressing fire or just aesthetics, it feels like you'd want to opt for the pistol over the rifle for most engagements. That doesn't sit right with me

 

[Immortal Cyan]

The NTSE isn't a court of law and reviewers aren't obligated to follow precedent. That said, if you think there's something wrong with the IRIS-MAW, you can just...fix it? It's your submission and no one is gonna stop you from nerfing your own content if you feel like it needs it. Maybe you should think of doing that instead of trying to create more rules bloat.

Also, we already jump tiers IRL. They're called...RPGs and MANPATs, lmao. It's not inconceivable. That said, Soban is correct in saying that tier jumps tend not to happen as much after mecha levels, mainly because there's a bigger difference between a medium starship (Tier 11) and a heavy starship (Tier 12) than there is between a light power armor (Tier 4) and a medium power armor (Tier 5). Square-cubed law and all that.

Finally, no one here is calling you stupid. Not sure how you're reading that. Just maybe study up on the DR system a bit more before claiming that Mindy armors can OHK starships, lol. I'm not sure if a productive conversation is possible when our understandings of the DR system are so radically different.

 

[Alex Hart]

The standard issue isn’t *really* the PAAR-40, most people opt for the Aether-Saber/beam rifle, or the Aether/Scalar SMG (both tier 4) The PAAR-40 replaced the LASR, which was similarly not used that often by players. It’s a specialist weapon.

While this might seem like pointless specificity, I think having our facts straight in a discussion like this is important. The HAP fires only once every 3 seconds (and the normal aether rifles have features that make them attractive), and has a similar range to other aether weapons. It’s hardly the worst example of OP weapons, and doesn’t cross any DR groups.

 

[Locked_0ut]

The standard issue isn’t *really* the PAAR-40, most people opt for the Aether-Saber/beam rifle, or the Aether/Scalar SMG (both tier 4) The PAAR-40 replaced the LASR, which was similarly not used that often by players. It’s a specialist weapon.

While this might seem like pointless specificity, I think having our facts straight in a discussion like this is important. The HAP fires only once every 3 seconds (and the normal aether rifles have features that make them attractive), and has a similar range to other aether weapons. It’s hardly the worst example of OP weapons, and doesn’t cross any DR groups.

Fair enough, it just feels off as a new player going through inventory. Especially because I was trying to avoid too much specialist gear because it also feels weird to just have a piece of more specialist gear. And the PAAR-40's page still indicates that it's only in limited use

 

[Wes]

I'm going to add a max DR field to the product schema that's going allow us to make an automated chart of weapons by DR. This should help make sure things are in the right spot on the list.

 

[Wes]

The DR field is live (product_drv3_max) but we'll need to populate the field on all product pages before it's useful. We're having a wiki party on Monday where we could do this.

 

[Soresu]

At present, and in the past (as a former GM) I have used the Damage Rating system sparingly focusing more on the roleplay aspect over the more pen-and-paper part of a damage-based rating system. While I understand some of its necessity for avoiding the waving of certain bodily appendages between contributors, I am thus far unaware of its use in roleplay proper beyond player, versus player combat which seems to be a fairly foreign thing these days. And I am more interested in seeing articles with descriptions of how weapons, armor, and other devices are produced and function because I love fluff. As a pen and paper guy, I see some of this as bullet points when picking equipment for characters a lot and wish I knew more about this Hellgun, or that Bolter, or how well my Adamantine Sword will hold up or what its material looks like as it carves into Tana'ri because I'm suicidal like that and rolled a nat 20.

Cyan does make a point in saying we do jump Tiers in real life with their example in rocket-propelled grenades and man-portable launchers such as the Javelin. One is unguided with its range and accuracy decreasing the further out it goes nearing its maximum effective range's accuracy being about 22%, the other guide with a smaller margin of error due to being autonomously guided with a vastly longer range with a larger warhead about twice that of an RPG-7 as far as I am aware. This does increase the cost of the weapon that is meant to do the same job as the RPG-7, but that cost is offset by its increased effectiveness and less likelihood of a user being harmed by return fire.

We can also simply make amendments to any said articles as needed without any major changes to the current ruleset quite easily. But, as I said in my opener. I use the rating system sparingly. And only really see it used for NTSE purposes as I have a fairly good idea of what can do what for the purposes of a given narrative and suspense building plus being a sci-fi nerd. That is just me. And I have been around long enough to know these things. Even before joining in 2006, I spent some time reading through what I could on the various systems in use before deciding on my trial by fire at the Battle of Taiie. And guessed their functions and destructive potentials easily enough. And did not hesitate to ask. I still ask, and get asked by some people in that regard due to my being old as dirt on here. It isn't that confusing if one takes the time to read an article, but it might be worthwhile to link say, this weapon uses Aether (link to aether), or this weapon uses lasers (this is where wikipedia comes in for things like a laser or plasma. Or a more succinct blurb on those things in a SA wiki article).

An easy example is thus: Zen Armaments makes a Plasma Pistol. It is their first try. Does it measure up in its punch, range, power, and fuel consumption compared to its competitors? Let us use the SiZi Model 38 as well. The Zen version likely would not. This is because the weapon design is fairly new to them. We know they both use superheated gas. But do they use the same fuel? Containment refinements and projection systems? Is that fuel less effective? Cheaper? One design is much more refined than the other. And thereby more effective. Adding a disclaimer that utilizing the weapon at its maximum setting without protection, say, without armor would give you a bad time or other warning labels would help with this. Simply from the discharge, heat, etc. Zen's offering would be of lower quality because it is newer and not as well developed/refined in comparison to the latter offering which has undergone a second revision and jump of several years of further development. You might make it cheaper in comparison to its SiZi counterpart as a result to boost sales. The SiZi would win out in the end due to its effectiveness and reliability. That offers the viability of lower damage ratings, or higher, varied ranges, recoils, shapes, sizes, weights, materials, sights used, RPM, and magazine/clip sizes, with the addition to flavor text (which I personally love the best) but would still say I would use that over the DR system which to me is strictly for mostly NTSE purposes.

 

[FrostJaeger]

Alrighty, this is going to be very brief because I only have about an hour or so before I have to get ready for class.

Eth, I get where you’re coming from, I truly do, as I tried to do something similar back in the day and, during my time away from the site, thought of something very, very similar (while swimming laps in a pool, but I digress). The problem with your solution, as elegant and well-intentioned as it may be - that’s genuine, by the way, and not me being passive-aggressive; like I said, I though of something very similar - is that in my opinion it:

• Doesn’t take into account outliers such as the Mindy’s mini-missiles.
• Would have to be very, very intricate to account for every possible type of weapon, particularly in the case of melee weapons.
• Attempts to balance for something (player versus player combat) that doesn’t really happen anymore.
• Stifles creativity via minimizing the potential for weapons of the same type to have different tiers.
• Adds additional granularity to something that in my opinion already has too much of it.

That last point in particular is what led me down the path of ultimately ditching the plethora of proposed changes that I’d spent a fair amount of hours at the pool brainstorming - armor type affecting tier and speed, a way of counting missiles, a way of categorizing all weapons into types and assigning each type a tier, maneuverability categories, and one or two other thing I don’t remember - because while driving home from the pool one summer day I realized something:

It isn’t necessary, because Star Army’s roleplay is based much more on narration then it is on stats.

That isn’t, of course, a call to abolish those stats entirely - things such as the Military Buildup Limitations, the Weapon Limitations, and even the Damage Rating system should be kept, in my opinion - but at the same time they shouldn’t be expanded too much, either. This, however, presents a thorny problem: what is to be done about the Damage Rating system?

(If you want me to split the below section - or the above one, for that matter - into its own post, please let me know, Wes, and I’ll do so once I’m back at my computer.)

After considering several proposals I’ve read here on the forums and elsewhere, I believe the best method of tackling the issue would be to:

• Condense the system from three tiers to five: Personnel, (Power) Armor, Mecha, Starship, and Capital Ship.
• Convert Light, Medium, and Heavy to Many, Few, and Single; this represents how many hits on the target the weapon needs to achieve its intended purpose. By default, lower-power weapons such as submachine guns would need many rounds, weapons shooting heavier-caliber rounds (such as rifles) would need a few rounds, and high-power weapons such as sniper rifles and RPGs would of course only need a single round - and more powerful weapons (such as a heavy machine gun) would need only a few rounds to kill their intended target despite having a very high rate of fire.
• Remove the numbers from the tiers; in my opinion, they cause more drama then they’re worth due to us humans being hardwired to go “big number better.”

This way (credit for the original idea goes to Arbitrated, based on what she posted here) “narrators” (players, GMs, and FMs) have a quick reference for determining what a weapon’s purpose is - but also get to determine what the most effective weapon for a situation is based on factors such as fire rate, range, ammo, et cetera.

This would also allow for the MBL to… essentially be preserved; although the size categories of starships would have to be moved to the Weapon Limitations article to preserve the distinction between, say, a Sharie and a Super Eikan, I don’t think it would be too difficult to adapt - especially when weapons with a high rate-of-fire and a “Single” designation can be made to cost more then slower-firing ones. Yes, I know, that adds more granularity - but only to those writing up articles for starships and vehicles, and said granularity can be easily addressed with an update to the Weapon Limitations calculator I made a while back.

And that’s basically it; apologies for the abrupt ending, but I have to go grab lunch and run to class. >_<

 

[Alex Hart]

Alrighty, this is going to be very brief because I only have about an hour or so before I have to get ready for class.

If that's brief, never let me get you going at length. This post is very impressively thought out, and I agree with the bulk of the top portion of it. Where I start to disagree is the sort of "DRv4" type system, and I think that updating again to a new system even when we've yet to finish updating DRv2 things to DRv3 might be jumping the gun. Of the ideas presented in the bottom portion of the post, there is one I'm particularly fond of, even if I don't know whether it's wise to try and implement it.

The idea of "Many/few/single" designations for the effectiveness of a weapon feels like very nice information to have and I do often prefer the aesthetics, if you will, of things taking many hits to kill a target. If there were a way to implement this without eliminating the defensive distinctiveness of vehicles and armors and starships (For example, how much tougher is a big old tank vs a jeep) it might be pretty cool.

 

[Ethereal]

I think Frost's solution is actually a really good one that solves a lot of issues. It has my support. In terms of things that are still DRv2, I don't think they'll ever see DRv3 given how long DRv3 has been out. One of the main issues that's come up is the idea that the current Tier system is based off one bullet or round hitting the target to do that damage. But then it's the case that many weapons fire hundreds of rounds a minute. Even a weapon far below the target's Tier could kill them in a few seconds via a thousand papercuts then, surely? Frost's proposed solution goes far to fixing these kinds of systematic issues. However, I'm not sure it covers the current issue with over-spec'd weapons and how that would fit into Frost's vision.

 

[Locked_0ut]

I do like Frosts solution. I don't know if we need to deeply retool it as much as just explain that it's more of a narrative thing. Because reading numbers makes my gamer brain say "Get big numbers" That said, as somebody who actually shoots and stuff I realize that a .50BMG isn't a substitute for a 5.56 just because it's bigger. In the end the question should be "Does this weapon do what it's intended to do" An Air to Ground missile that takes out armored vehicles, a Rifle that takes out moderately armored soldiers. For me personally, I think "what feels right matters." I've played in forums that didn't get that granular but I can also understand why you'd want to when there isn't a clear external source material.
I was a bit rambly: but just specifying that it's a narrative guide more than like 3d6 worth of damage.
Edit 2:
Even in the 3d6 situations, i've always found that hard to approximate to IRL stuff. Is that 3d6 a single bullet? A burst? If the weapon is intended to be fired in bursts normally I'd just assume that the DR is based around that as opposed to a single shot. Trying to get too granular does seem to lead to this spiral.