I'm in a Daisy power armor. I have street thugs coming at me with puny pistols (light anti-personnel). Those things mist off on my armor leaving only a mess of bright shallow gouges on my Daisy's paintjob (medium armor-grade).
I grab my Light Armor Service Rifle (the LASR is a Medium Anti-Armor weapon) and start spraying at the thugs. Metal hail conjured by my trigger finger is more than sufficient to turn these guys to hole-riddled ruins.
Their Hostile-wearing buddy shows up to the scene. I take the initiative and fire first, but all I achieve in my first spray is a series of chewed out holes across its chest and left shoulder - I damaged it, but the damned thing's tough! (heavy armor-grade protection)
It unstraps its assault rifle (also a Medium armor-grade weapon) and starts shooting at me. I try to dodge aside, but it still tags me on my flank. Good thing those were only glancing hits! - as is, they penetrated right through the flexible armor of my lower torso and bloodied my hemosynthetic insert; a more direct hit and I'd have taken bullets in my guts!
In example:
The same Medium Anti-Armor Rifle (I ranked it 5) would...
- Do minimal damage against medium mecha targets (8, like a Ripper)
- Do mitigated damage on light mecha targets (7, like a Tasha)
- Do decent damage on heavy armor targets (6, like an Hostile)
- Do severe damage on medium armor targets (5, like a Daisy power armor)
- Be devastating on light armor targets (4, like a Mindy II)
- Be quite bad on heavy personnel targets (3, neko in full body armor)
- Guarantee an awful day on medium personnel targets (2, police guy with a bulletproof vest)
Deployed energy shielding shouldn't 'lose' hit points to attacks - it either is active or not. Keeping this on trigger and making each span of activation something that's costly however fulfills the need of making them go down via attrition.
As for the actual endurance of those protections, I'd typically scale them by unit type by default to keep things simple (at least for the moment). So...
The above would make shields kind of more like they were in the first DR system, though they'd be much easier to bring down while still allowing the larger units the greater endurance they are entitled to. The vulnerability is there to provide much more interactivity with engineering crews trying to manage/shore up ship protections in mid-combat - something that they can do in the middle of a fight (since actually fixing real ship damage in a fight takes too long to be appreciably done beyond quick juryrigging).
- Significantly lower rank attack will see the protection hold indefinitely barring certain circumstances
- Lower rank attack will have the protection hold 'for the moment' without appreciable reduction unless such damage is sustained (that's mostly GM's whim/common sense dictated).
- Same rank attack (medium starship target hit by a medium anti-starship weapon) would see the according protection drained.
- Same rank attack on drained protection would deplete it.
- Higher rank attack would deplete the protection type on the first hit.
- Higher rank attack on drained protection would deplete it and damage the unit or drain the other layer of protection also in the way.
This said, maybe we can start with certain benchmarks. I'll be ranking for clarity, not to assign damage values. Defensive values will be dwelled on later - for now I'm just assuming the target would have standard protection for the 'class' it represents.
- Anti-Personnel:
1- Pistols
2- Rifles (Pistols /w Armor-Piercing Rounds)
3- Rifles with Armor-Piercing Rounds
Around this point, we're getting pretty close to what can dent a power armor. Grenades on average probably fall within the same degree of lethality as rifles, but with wider areas of effect. Same for the Star Army NSP (heavy mode?) and the Daisy forearm cannon. So...
- 3- Rifles with AP rounds, Anti-Personnel grenades, Daisy pulse cannons.
Now, we're headed more toward the stuff power armors wield...
- Anti-Armor:
4. Compact handcannons (like the Armor Service Pistol)
5. Rifle-sized weapons like the LASR and the Accelerated Plasma Rifle.
6. Some nastier weapons like anti-armor grenades, and most mini-missiles. Maybe specialized applications of rank 5-like weapons, like the LASR sniper version.
Around 4~5, I kind of start thinking that these kinds of weapons probably would start dealing some degree of hurt to larger vehicles like tanks and larger mecha in the same way I expect people with guns would be able to chip at a power armor. But not all anti-armor weapons are actually wielded by power armor.
A soldier-dude can go and carry around a bazooka. The bazooka/rocket launcher is probably better meant to strike at a lumbering tank and deal damage to it (tanks being 'mecha' vehicles). An unarmored soldier could probably use the same bazooka and deal tons of hurt to a power armor too. Power armors, on the other hand, readily have better access to weapons that would deal around the same kind of harm without it it being as unyieldy, cumbersome to use, or limited of use (I think bazookas are singleshot, and you can't lug much ammo on your person for those).
- Anti-Mecha:
7. Heavier weaponry that usually are fixed emplacements. Like, a machinegun turret atop a tank, or mounted on the side of an attack gunship, or some secondary weapon mounted on a mecha's arm.
8. Actual rifle-sized weaponry for mecha. Something that's handheld, requires both hands, or has central position on the unit such as the main cannon of a tank.
Large bazooka-styled weapons such as the Gauss Bazooka used by Daisy power armors might be equivalents to rank 8 as well. Of course, the gauss bazooka is not as convenient as a heavy weapon as the mecha's beam rifle is for it to readily wield.
- 9. Here, we talk about stuff with real oomph in the mecha scale, like actual rockets and missiles, rather than mini-missiles. The kind of thing you'll probably see mounted on fightercraft. If a mecha takes a hit from that, it'll going to smart - greatly - assuming it survives.
Anti-Mecha weapons are the sort of thing that a starship couldn't just shrug off, though it's about the same balance as most anti-personnel weapons against power armor. I'd expect a naval vessels cannon turrets, or a mecha's beam rifle. Used at tender spots, a fightercraft's missile volley could strike at a ship's weapon turret, sensor dish, and other location and while the oomph to destroy the starship entirely will be lacking, it'll still be dangerous.
Then, from there, it's starship weapons. Rank 9 missiles might probably send buildings crumpling down at choice spots, but anti-starship weapons sort of up the bar to wiping out city-blocks; with it getting much worse as the ranks keep creeping up.
10, 11 and 12 would likely follow that, with some uber-huge mecha weapon or bomber torpedo being able to creep up there. It'd probably be normal for starships to routinely pack mecha weapons, so, starship weapons would generally qualify for compromising the potent defense and gutting open the shields, barriers and hull armor of other vessels.
Positron cannons, beam arrays, nuclear torpedo warheads could probably all fit in here. If it can threaten the existence of a city, it's probably anti-starship too, I'd guess.
The planet destroying stuff (13, 14, 15) - and this doesn't need to apply to just blowing them up; focused attacks from rank 13 could be threatening to something as large as north america/australia size - would go with the weapons of capital vessels, where anti-starship weaponry would be the usual for many turrets on battleships. The most powerful torpedoes (anti-matter?) would probably fit in there. The fancier sci-fi weapons like the aetheric shock arrays would probably find a good fit here, probably being integrated in spinal mounts few ships could afford to have.
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