Fred's musing on Damage Ratings

Re-doing the DR system would require a massive overhaul of every wiki using the current DR system. Not to mention I have seen wikis that are not yet updated to the current one.

I respect fred's idea, I am just saying it is too much complication.

Well I think it would not be that hard. All you would need to do is stating weapons damage class. Yeah sure it would take some times but I think there would volunteers myself included that could work on it.

Also you need to work on stuff to make it better. To say "let's not do it because that would actually required effort" won't help a thing.

Guys, for now, we're exploring ideas. The one I posted at the very beginning is the foundations of my own brainstorming on the matter, but it might not be the end result - it sure didn't please Nashoba and Wes is too happy with what he has now to find it appealing.

Sorry, Ira, but you don't get to say what I want to work on or my priorities. =P There are compelling reasons why I'm attending this, and I believe that once it's going to be out of the way it might last for a good while and hopefully fare better than what we have presently.

I've been thinking on what Doshii told me, and the reservations Nashoba has. I kind of want to stick to roles more than number crunching, but maybe some branching out would help satisfy the degree of detail Nashoba wants.

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.

...

You know, just off the top of my head, I seem to have held to the pattern of 3 items per role - maybe in response to Nashoba wanting light, medium and heavy. In that light, qualifying an LASR under the Medium Anti-Armor role could work. This might retain the idea of evocative role names, sort of stick to the current range of weapon lethality more or less established in SARP presently, and provide the differential variety Nashoba seemed to wish for.

I'm not discussing the actual numbers here. I still want to avoid it if possible. If we can keep the inlying reasoning to "You're a lightly armored Mindy and I'm firing at you with a medium anti-armor rifle made to get through a Daisy's tougher armor and hurt it, so I have even better chances of killing you with it" rather than "I hit your tier 4 armor with my damage 5 weapon, so I'll kill you if I hit you", I think it'd be preferable. hit points just don't work well when the possibly lethal weapon strikes the arm, or the shoulder, or deals a serious but not-immediately fatal belly wound. Numbers of SPs don't cover that all that adequately.

You could add 3 more ranks, for a total of 15, and have the current DR system.

Uso, Fred DID list 15...more or less five sets of three rather than three sets of five. It pretty much broken into "Light, Medium, Heavy" of "Personnel, Armor, Mecha, Starship, Capital Ship/Anti-Planet", with some overlap where the best of the previous class of weapons overlap with the lowest of the next class.

Personaly I liked basic idea more. It was more simple and less tying. true is that it hanged heavily on GMs common-sense and some tech-smarts and knowledge.

Basicaly what you just did is put there discussed light/med/heavy for every tier. Si insted of saying that Lasr is tier 5 gun, let's go back and sey it is anti-armour medium. I see it more simple then numbers, altough it is pretty much the same thing.

But with this I would like to ask one thing? What about armours? Should we do the same with armours? Saying Styrling Everyday, would personal-light armour and Muur would be medium? And that Mindy is Anti-armour light, Daisy medium and Hostile heavy? It would probably work, but it won'T be decided what fits where. Since Mindy is lightweight, and Daisy is slightly more armoured. But Hostile is much mroe tougher and I am not even speaking about Ripper or Aggresor. And don't get me even started about shields.

Personaly I like how simple this was at start, but if this is going to get more sofisticated let's put all things into it. We can't just start tlaking about how much damage what gun deals without talking about armors and defense at the same time. Ligth/Medium/Heavy is a thing that will work though. I think so, and it let's you put in much wanted mecha-scale which I and other players and even GM will apreciete heavily.

I'm taking a babystep approach here, Shotjon.

It's not that I disagree with you, but presently compromise is what I'm trying to reach. I'm just waiting on Nashoba to chime in about it now. Let's face it: as long as an admin holds major issues with it, this is never getting off the ground so for the moment I'm just trying to resolve all my fundamental goals for it.

I'd like to simplify and hold the DR ratings back to a comparative scale rather than a number crunching one. Streamlining it would also be ideal in order to make it more elegant and allow it to appeal to the people whom thought ill of it in the past, while mostly contenting those whom liked what they had presently. I also need to have it include mecha units better.

Roger that and I agree with you Fred.

Fred,
While I personally have no real angst with the current DR system.

This last suggestion for the classification of the damage into Light/Medium/Heavy does address my concern with your original concept of all weapons in a class being the same.

I wait to see how the other aspects of this proposal work.

Before I make my own opinions known, I need to say two things as a disclaimer. (1) I did not read everything between here and Page 1. (2) I'm really new to all of SARP so my conceptual and design understandings are far more limited than most others in regards to SARP-verse

Well, here goes. From what I understand, this is a tiered approach to how damage is applied based upon the weapon. E.g. a tier 2-type weapon (anti-armour weapons) vs tier 3-type shielding (mecha), tier 2 weapon vs. tier 2 armour, etc. Simplistically put, that's my understanding of the conceptual thinking behind Fred's proposition. The examples probably aren't perfect since I'm still trying to understand the varying distinctions. If my understanding of Fred's proposal way off, please let me know so I re-think what it means.

Nonetheless, I want to say that quantifying damage given/taken is a dicey thing since realistically, there is no damage counter. Heck, even trying to say "Weapon X should bring down Object Z" does not always work out in war.

Examine : http://www.daveswarbirds.com/b-17/fuselag2.htm

How did some of these warbirds make it home? By all rights, the German weaponry should have brought them down but through some kind of luck or brilliant engineering or whatever you want to call it, these machines brought their crews home. While this is not the norm of combat, the sheer randomness involved in any sort of armed conflict and the damage dealt leads me to say that making anything should be set in stone.

This is where I see the point of narration and GM discretion rather than trusting to a system. Maybe my armor just got hit by a large amount of shrapnel, which in normal circumstances would have killed me, but has in fact, only severely damaged my weapons, sensors, as well as suit and armour integrity. Possibly I have internal injuries from the physical impacts but that should be a GM decision, not an automatic ruling dictated by a system.

Emphasis on the DR system makes little sense when such a system does not exist in real life. Using it as a base line to understand relative strengths makes more sense. In that regard, the DR system does need some work for simplification and clarification. Fred has made a good stab at the issue, but in the wrong direction, I think.

But what I see (and think I understand) from Fred does not seem to resolve that issue. Again, I am willing to acknowledge I could be entirely wrong in my analysis due to the above stated reasons. So, please let me know. Politely, without the defensive/antagonistic stuff I saw on the IRC earlier today.

Update: I'm still idly thinking on defense values. I plan to post about that more around the weekend when I'll be able to sit down and really think about it.

@Sigma: I appreciate the analysis, but I don't find it wholly helpful since it has nothing constructive to it. So, I ask: if I'm taking this from the wrong direction... what would be the right direction in your opinion?

Pretty much Fred, Sigma's little rant stated that this new DR system you are thinking up would box us in.

The statement about "the wrong direction" is pretty clear cut. This is a writing forum, and your new DR system would take away from the creativity by making an absolute.

This will be just another way for some people to beat you over the head by thumping a rule book at you, and further stifling creativity. The current DR system is flawed, but the truth is it leaves enough room for people to have fun.

this new DR system is simply too much.

Didn't mean it to come off as a rant. Oops

I chose not to add any suggestions since I'm too new to say what in the system works and what doesn't. That should be for more experienced hands to comment on.

Ira succintly got to the underlying analysis of my long post.

I don't see how you both can jump to that conclusion. The way you are talking, it appears you are discussing the flaws of the present DR system rather than the cause I've been championing.

Basically, we're grabbing a weapon's role, giving an explanation about what it should achieve as well as setting expectations as to how they would usually fare against what's typically inferior and superior.

Rather than use hard damage point values versus hard hit point values to signify a targets toughness and how it would suffer from a weapon's attack, this turns this into an exercise of "an anti-armor rifle is made to take down a power armor" instead of "The LASR does ADR2".

Because every circumstances of firing a weapon will usually be unique, the result will always vary. One anti-armor rifle shot might squarely hit the left shoulder, another the more-rounded and better-armored plated chest, and one strike the helmeted head. Each of those have differing degree of lethality that a number value won't accurately represent, so it feels much more consistent to just set expectation and then leave the player (informed about his tool's effectiveness) to use the weapon and the GM of a plot to arbitrate the result of any attack.

I wanted to keep it simpler with limited values and Nashoba wanted to expand on it. My benchmark ranks is a rough representation of that and while there are more values... the evocative imagery is still there. A medium anti-armor rifle well suited for piercing the defenses of a medium-armored power armor like the M6 Daisy power armor will be very effective at shearing through the protective cover of a lightweight power armor like the M2 Mindy. But, because it can doesn't mean it will - that's up to factors base on character action and a GM's rulings.

Basically, Sigma, this should be exactly what you want.

Well I am not going to doom this completely. But from the standpoint of somebody who is not biased, I am saying what is written so far(Which is assume is preliminary) is too much.

Simplicity is what is needed. Simplicity to understand it, as well as use it.

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!

* * *

How is that not simple? I see narratives, actions, offense and defense held in comparison, and from there a GM can determine outcomes.

So how does the weapon hurt heavy armor?

Well, in here, we'd imply that the Medium Anti-Armor weapon is ideal for causing possibly-fatal damage against Medium Power Armor-grade protection.

Heavy Armor protection is better prepared to handle that kind of punishment, so, instead of being compromised, it's merely damaged around the struck location (armor ablate, shots gouge in but don't fully penetrate, etc... the armor is made to cope with this kind of damage, but it's still enough damage not to take it with grace). Subsequent attacks around the damaged armor will eventually/probably get through.

So, the weapon against the thing its intended to kill will typically cause severe to lethal damage to it most of the time. Use the same tool to strike a softer target, and your lethality increases. On a tougher target, the lethality decreases.

I was thinking, in homage to the very first 1 to 10 DR system (which defined that if a weapon was 4 points below an armor defense value that it wouldn't be effective) that this would be a 3-steps thing.

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)

Click to expand...

Essentially, the more steps the target is below the intended target role of the weapon, the more effective the weapon will be. The reverse, with a target more resistant than the intended target role, will in turn suffer less. This is mostly comparative, so an expectation is set and then the GM adjudicate the result, and math is kept at a bare minimum in favor of dramatic imagery.

It's a whole lot better than what we presently have, which had weapons cause specific damage values which will then reduce an arbitrary pool of hit points and then encourage GM and player alike to divine something from that ("I shot you with an ADR3 weapon, your Mindy is half-dead!").

Right now, many GMs whom voiced their support thus far pretty much don't stick to the above and improvise something. It seems natural then to adapt the Damage system to support that trend better while still doing it's job: giving a good idea of how effective your weapon can be.

Okay, I see how it works, somewhat.

But basically with me being uninitiated, every time I fire a gun, I would have to consult with the proposed page you are constructing?

I mean I can tell you are putting thought and work into this which is good. The point I am making is that is a lot of work for me, and the GMs to put out with posting.

In defense of it, I will say maybe having this system as an alternative option to the standing DR system could be a good idea.

Honestly I think this would take us one step closer to being a DnD style game.

When you grab a new weapon, you usually take a look in the wiki to see its specs, right?

So, you eye it and see that its role is a "Medium Anti-Armor weapon". That means it's designed to kill mid-weight power armors.

It would seem a foregone conclusion for me to assume that it's going to be much better when attacking lightweight power armors, and even more devastating on people even if they wear body armor. On the other hand, it's going to be harder to leave a dent in more heavily armored power armors and larger mecha.

I personally rate taking a gun that should kill people covered in lightweight powered armor, aiming it at a towering Mishhu Ripper mecha and figure out that the weapon will probably not hurt it as much as it would hurt people in power armor as 'stupid simple'.

Perhaps the wiki entry for the 'Medium Anti-Armor role' itself will say something around the line of "Well suited for taking down mid-weight power armor, devastating against personnel and of limited use against mecha".

Whereas a 'Heavy Anti-Armor role' might read as "Excellent against all power armors, devastating against personnel and somewhat effective against mecha".

Anyhow, I'm glossing over it from the top of my head - there's probably a better way to word that. Heck, it wouldn't be too hard to make a graph for it, even.

The more important part here is that this should be intuitive. You read the weapon entry and you end up being able to picture in your head what the weapon is capable of doing. With words that set your expectation. As far as I'm concerned with common sense alone you shouldn't even have to look at some table or graph (or at least minimaly so if you want to understand how shields, barriers and such work along with that).

It's really not a difficult concept to grasp and that's part of the point, to make it more user friendly and easy to understand for newcomers. When I first came to SARP, that's the kind of thing I wanted to know.