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Approved Submission [Mechanic] Damage Rating Revision

Eistheid

Inactive Member
Retired Member
Submission Type: Narrative driven damage guidelines.
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=fred_s_damage_rating_revision

Notes: Much of default the form doesn't really apply since this isn't a typical setting submission. I hope you don't mind me removing those components.

This is probably going to take some work to get finalized. I will however be more than happy to fill in blanks and update this as we go along. Additionally post-approval I'll be happy to update old DR values as needed, likely including both systems for a while to smooth over the transition.

A final note, the article will probably need to be moved to a new page location as I believe the current one is just WIP storage.

As has been determined the final call of what is done comes down to GM fiat. As such it is best to view this as intended: A set of guidelines to help players and GMs understand the effects of what they're working with rather than hard rules that must be adhered to.
 
This suggestion has been implemented. Votes are no longer accepted.
This is my own fault, but I've been keeping myself distant due to how heated the topic can get, so do point out if something I bring up was already addressed.

Let me get the little things first. I honestly don't agree on the placement of the Aggressor and Ripper - I feel that the Aggressor should be Tier 7 and the Ripper Tier 6 considering the disparity in size and weight between the two. There's also the Offensive Augmentation Pods too - I don't know why they're way up there, but considering how I've usually seen them in RP, maybe Tier 4 or even 3 alongside the SLAG grenades? They are 'mini-missiles' after all, and I imagine the payload that the two carry would be very similar.

With that out of the way, more important things.

1. Something that I'm scratching my head over is how ships have 6 tiers to differentiate them, while the rest only have 3. That feels like oversimplification when I think there's more in-betweens with some items. This is especially odd since most RP on the site revolves around those three, and PA in particular, yet are the sections with the least depth.

2. The next thing that stands out for me would be how barrier/energy-shield tiers appear to be force matched with armor tiers. Though it's not common, I would like it to be possible to mix things up by having under-armored units with heavy shields or heavy armor units with low shields. That sort of thing. It'd potentially give more flavor to new tech and such this way.

3. It appears that energy shields are more effective than armor? That could discourage the use of armor heavy but low shield units - I'm not sure why the same hit that'd pierce armor would only deplete a shield by 50%.

4. This has been a sometimes frustrating point in the past, but is it possible for something of a lower tier to upgun itself, such as a person grabbing an Anti-Armor Bazooka, or a 25mm Precision Rifle? There's mention regarding ships, but not cross category armament.

Again, I'm quite sorry if these have already been addressed, but it's been a while since this has been discussed.
 
I might interpret it differently than described, for example I'd probably come up with some ways for light and negligible damage to cause more than cosmetic inconveniences, especially if the shots hit the joints of an armour suit.
And I think that's great. If one of my players thought like you do and, when using an NSP on a Mindy, go "I know my weapon's not great against this thing, so I'll try to focus on the softer points of articulation", I know that as a GM I'd want to humor you.

I noticed the LASR is given as an example of a heavy anti-personnel weapon, though it looks like it was ADR 3 in the previous version. I'm a bit confused about that.
The LASR has a weird history of wiki stats not living up to the way it ended up being used in the actual roleplay. It was never considered that effective against power armored targets in contrast to its competitor to go on a Daisy's shoulder-rack: the plasma rifle. Especially considering many opponents had strong exotic armor types like yamataium, nerimium and zesuaium. Faced with a choice between firing ineffectual shots over zesuaium armor, or using the often dependable plasma rifle... the latter was the most popular pick.

The LASR made its identity by having a significantly high rate of fire that let it be useful against softer targets; like a horde of Mishhuvurthyar than the slower firing plasma rifle dealt with less handily than fewer, harder targets. It still does damage on power armor, but like explained in the SADRv2 conversion section, visually the LASR is pictured as a weapon that will tear down another power armor by shredding them with its high rate of fire, rather than the individual punch of any single projectile.

I'd also suggest merging the 'vs. lightly protected personnel' and 'vs. heavily protected personnel' tables into just 'vs. personnel' since their content is mostly redundant.
I don't disagree. This was something that was on my mind too. I was on the edge of folding it in with its sturdier neighbor, but refrained because the majority of our roleplayers spend most of their time in uniforms, and some of those - like the Star Army Type 30 - were said to be protective enough to be treated as light personnel tier.

I honestly don't agree on the placement of the Aggressor and Ripper - I feel that the Aggressor should be Tier 7 and the Ripper Tier 6 considering the disparity in size and weight between the two.
Hey! o/

I thought the Aggressor was a power armor, not a larger mecha. Rereading its "entry & interior" info, I have to admit you're correct: it's clearly bigger than the Hostile.
I was convinced the Ripper was bigger than an ED-209 when I used it in the Miharu plot... and I just found out it was only 7.5'. Wow. Yeah, it's an Heavy Armor. Boo. I always imagined those from the art as huge monsters for boss encounters.

There was a post I made a little bit back that had me explained how I rated weapons and why. I basically said:
"Offensive Mini-missiles - Heavy Anti-Armor: Probably our Power Armors' closest way of emulating the Macross Missile Massacre, we have less missiles, but they are decidedly quite deadly to power armor and a threat even to larger units."
Reflecting from experience coming from Wes' plot that I followed up in my own, the mini-missiles by themselves were at least as potent as the main handheld weapons. That was an instance of "the weapon lives up to more than just its wiki stats". Not to mention that since power armors have easy access to drones that can shoot the mini-missiles down, it seems like there had to be some payoff for the mini-missile that did connect to a target (or a compelling reason why you'd want to shoot them down ASAP).
There's also that the same mini-missiles seem to be the only kind of non-torpedo guided warhead around, which means fightercraft use them and expect them to be of some good in dogfights against other fightercraft. That's a holdover of back when fighters were forced to be in the same Armor Grade as power armors. So, they kind of have to toe the line between the two... and heavy anti-armor does seem to make a decent compromise.

IMO, I don't think you're wrong, but it's been a bit all over the place. I feel like there's should actually be micro-missiles which do exactly what you say and would be more wiki-accurate, and mini-missiles that do about what I say which would be more accurate to the roleplayed intents I've seen. Along with actual missiles for fightercraft to down other fightercraft with.

Well, previously, we had 5 ships categories. I always kind of felt like we were reaching a ceiling too early for things like SDR5. So many stuff ending up SDR5 when some of them still felt more potent than others. Now we have stretched that out by one and it seems more comfortable to me. I could have made a more clear line between starships and capital vessels like I did the rest, but I chose not to do so and visually made two separate categories look like they were a bigger one - mostly for smoother transition from the previous system to this one.

As for the others, SADRv2 essentially had SP5/10/15 for power armor and that never seemed like it was a problem, so a sample size of 3 seemed adequate. Mecha were previously squeezed into two spots, SP20/25, and worse, they were stuck in the armor grade. Now, they have their own category, one more spot to actually show that they can be of bigger size (up to half a tennis court; then a full tennis court; or about the size of an Orbiter Shuttle seems pretty adequate to me and a clear improvement of what there was before).

Earlier in this thread, there was pressure to increase the sample size to 5 items per category. I tried to work with Eistheid and humor that, but it never worked right in my eyes. Later on after I had put this on ice, Wes expressed that he had been fond of my original 3 'sample size per category' version, so, this is what I've returned to.

At any rate, I do consider that it successfully fulfills one of the main objectives for bringing this forward, which is giving better representation and scale to mecha and more strongly distinguish them from power armor. Though it sounds like you'd wish a bigger sample size, it doesn't sound like you disagree.

Do you really want to open that can of worms? SADRv2 did about the same thing with little variation; "SP 10, Shield 10/1", "SP 20, Shield 20/2", etc. Like I mentioned in the cliffnotes, it's to avoid arms races. People trying to have their thing be the special snowflake, and one-up the things other people have made.
I see no problem with willfully aiming lower. You can certainly tweak the material, or choose to have a ship actually not be armored ("We're a science vessel, we come in peace!" *boom* -U.S.S. Grissom, ST3). You can pick the kind of barrier layout you want; some are clearly more advanced than others. Nothing stops you from deciding your ship is rated to a weaker barrier either - I just don't expect it'll happen often.

3. It appears that energy shields are more effective than armor? That could discourage the use of armor heavy but low shield units - I'm not sure why the same hit that'd pierce armor would only deplete a shield by 50%.
That's based on an earlier recommendation on my part that barriers be worth roughly 2 'potentially lethal' attacks.
I kind of get the feeling you're overrating barriers. Don't forget that the lethality is per shot, and that not every hit landed on, say, a power armor will strike a fatal spot or ablate at the same spot.
Say a Daisy power armor is shot at by an LASR: it's hit six times on the chest, each shot spaced out to make a dotted line across the chestplate. So, the Daisy has six pockmarks spread out across its chestplate... big deal? Maybe the wearer will need to catch his breath, but after that he'll ride out that kind of damage just fine.
But if the barrier had been active, all six shots would have had reduced it by 72%

Attacks can be spread across the body of the entire power armor. A lot of the areas struck may not be that significant or pivotal to a fight, but everywhere the Daisy would take damage, the barrier would deplete equally. That's why I made it the way it is.

Yes, it's true that the barrier itself can soak up more damage than the strongest point on a Daisy could. But barriers previously saved Daisy armors from being cut in half by an aether sword at the cost of being entirely drained before, so, this seems consistent to me. I once had 'potentially lethal' do 100% instead of 50%, but that really didn't seem like enough, especially considering the high rate-of-fire weapons out there that are still going to tear through that like wet tissue paper, especially in climatic encounters against larger opponents.

Yup, I covered that in the wiki article. It's right above the Tier table:

"You will also notice that there are divisions by categories: Personnel, Power Armor, Mecha, and Starships. These are for ease of reference and scale, but are not exclusive. For example: an infantryman can carry an Anti-Mecha bazooka to take down tanks, and fightercrafts can load up anti-starship torpedoes in the hopes of taking down bigger prey. It's also fairly common for larger starships to carry a complement of weapons to deal with smaller targets such as fightercraft."

* * *

Changelog:
On Cadetnewb's suggestion I switched places between the Ripper and the Aggressor.

- I'm annoyed that the shield and armor information is so far away from the Tier table. I think things are in the right order for explaining the concept, but it's not an optimal order to quickly reference it. So, I'm thinking I could have a miniature 'quick reference' version of the article for the benefit of people that do grasp it but want to quickly check something on it.

Navigation flow could be like:
Main SADRv3 article > SADRv3 quick ref
Wiki article (unit, weapon) > SADRv3 quick ref >Main SADRv3 article
 
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Merry Christmas!

That aside, I'm glad for the armor changes. They really made me raise an eyebrow when I first saw them. When it comes to this stuff though, I always ask myself if it can fit in the hallway or room my players are fighting in, since it's pretty often that sci-fi writers have no sense of scale.

1. Since I had taken a break from this thread for a while, on and off depending on how heated things would get, how did those experiments regarding the expanded tiers turn out? I'm sure just having three tiers simplifies things, but as a tech mod and content maker, I'm very wary of that watering things down. I'd crack up if we adopted the system as it is right now, only to end up with power armors that were Tier 5.5 or something like that.

2. Well, it's best opened here rather than post-approval. I'm particularly curious since being able to have stronger shields in exchange for less armor, or more armor for less shields is an interesting trade-off that could potentially act as some very nice flavor on the site. It could result in metagaming, you're correct, but after this is approved, I'm sure someone out there will do so anyways. And as a result, the tech mod may have to make an on the spot call, which may be better or worse than hoped for.

3. You are correct that the barriers will take the full brunt of any attack regardless of the location hit, but I believe that a barrier's biggest edge is that they regenerate while armor does not. Armor may have locational based damage going for it, but it stays damaged until repaired. I would think that this dynamic between the two alone would balance them out, and no extra help for shields is needed. I don't know if anyone else agrees, but I think it's something to consider. Regarding the specific example of the Daisy surviving the aether attack though, I suspect that's more to do with the current DR system's limitations and a GM following it than anything else; the aether saber is limited to ADR 5 after all, and that's well within the Daisy's limits.

RP wise however, I'm under the impression that the armor should have been damaged as well at least. Again, this is just my opinion.

4. Sweet. So this means really determined people in flak vests can actually make PA worry a bit now.
 
@CadetNewb
Regarding not enough samples per category, I already answered you regarding this in my previous post. I consider the 5-sample-size thing a dead horse that's beaten beyond recognition and I don't really want to rediscuss it anymore (it's tied to a lot of drama I just don't care to even poke at with a long pole anymore - I feel I've given it the benefit of the doubt and more). I'm much happier with the setup as currently represented, and as I'll repeat, it's what Wes previously said he'd wanted to approve.

As for barrier shielding, I've already explained myself and don't think I can answer you again in ways other than repeating stuff I've already said in my previous post, so I won't. What I will say is that I kind of get the feeling that you can't be sure I'm wrong, and I can't be sure you're wrong. It kind of sounds to me like an impasse where some choice has to be taken, and I made one. What I chose is mostly drawn from a mix of gut-feelings, personnal GMing experience and inspiration (mostly from Mass Effect combat), but until the die has been cast and that this is run through its paces in multiple 'real' situations either in the NTSE or in plots, I can't know for sure how that will pan out.

That's neither wrong, nor do I feel it can be pointed out as a flaw. It happened to SADRv2 as well: a lot of shipbuilding rules were tacked onto it (material modifiers to SP/speeds) and shields were standardized to SP rather than left more flexible. Zack even tried to instate a point-buy ship building system that was tried but feel into disuse.

Considering that, I feel SADRv3 is in 'good enough' submission shape. Those are the default values I propose. Barring Wes saying "no, I want a different standard for that", I don't feel I can do much better.
 
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I agree it's ready. I've created a poll for DR v3 and will approve it immediately if the poll supports using it.
 
I was told I had to post here, but can we just get a small addendum to have the mecha tree include tanks and ground vehicles?
 
I was told I had to post here, but can we just get a small addendum to have the mecha tree include tanks and ground vehicles?
I think it does include them, cause fighter craft and small shuttles are listed, just none were listed as examples(cause ground vehicles aren't too popular unfortunately)
 
I mean... all of the large nations have tons of armored elements. Yamatai and Nepleslia have them in spades. As for them being listed... they... aren't really? We have the shuttlecraft listed in the mecha scale and then it jumps to larger stuff on the starships. It has no mention of ground craft in any manner.
 
The nodachi is listed jsut above shuttles, that's a fighter ship. But what I meant was, ground vehicles aren't popular in play, not that no nation has them.
 
It's as Syaoran said. I included commonly seen examples from mostly Yamatai, along with a bit of Nepleslia and Mishhu. I also tried to keep my example list to a maximum of 3, which does actually happen. If entering the tank in the examples is important, then I'd need to know which unit it would be replacing.

If you look down at the unit size table, you'll likely see APCs fit inside half a tennis court, so they're solidly light mecha, whereas a battletank would be larger than that, but likely still squeeze in an entire tennis court, so, medium mecha.
 
I mean, it wouldn't hurt to just link them and make it more reinforced. We have examples for most of the stuff. It's just like a few words @_@
 
Like I told you, to not break the format and make the Light Mecha and Heavy Mecha sections go on two lines, I had to respect a format of 3 examples in a column maximum. I can include tanks, I just need to know what to replace.

In Light Mecha, we have the Tasha, the Aggressor and a mention that it applies to most shuttlepods (the KFY Kuma would be one of those). The Tasha is kind of a legged tank/mecha, the Aggressor is a power armor/mecha and shuttlepods are airborne vehicles; one of the former two could go.

Rivals for one of the 3 light mecha spot could include the Troll Tank.

In heavy mecha, we have the Nodachi (fightercraft), the Ravager (mecha) and Shuttlecraft (the KFY Raccoon is too large to be a shuttlepod, so it's a shuttlecraft). The Nodachi counts as a fighter and the Ravager as a mecha. It feels important to retain the Nodachi, since I'm using its weaponry for example too. I'm not sure we can afford not mentioning the shuttlecraft, so, it looks like the Ravager would be the mecha on the cutting block to see if a tank should be replacing it.

Rivals for one of the 3 mecha spot could include the Maximus battletank.
 
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I do have one question considering the system. How do we work modular weapon craft? Like fighter jets that can swap out their missiles. Do we as the people making a submission make it impossible for the craft to have a load out above the limit, or do we leave it to the GM to limit which modular weapons the craft can equip?
 
I do think the Maximus is worth adding to the heavy Mecha Listing. I think the light mecha is, actually, fine. As I said in chat, I hadn't realized the TASHA was there (good job brain), and does accomplish the role of ground craft besides for mecha. But with the final stage, I think the Maximus is the epiphany of heavy tanks. It makes sense to include it, since Shuttlecraft really WOULD be a fairly small category (there's far less small shuttles and such in comparison to heavy tanks/ground craft). It also seems very niche for the size of the Raccoon to differentiate it that much. I mean, we know the size is there... but just how many of these Shuttlecraft (on the same scale) do we have to justify it being separate versus clearly representing out aircraft, mecha, and then ground forces?

As for the modular things, I'm a bit not sure on that element. I mean, it makes sense that the GM or even submission boards could rationalize that you could fix unique ammunition for story elements (such as the crew only having a small supply of plasma charges or something, so they pull them out and do something dangerous). By this, I guess it's sorta like... I feel like the GM having the power on what people equip makes sense. There's tons of ammunition and types of weapons that might not conform as easily (such as missiles) but I mean... some shouldn't. It's the same reason we have bazookas that might support different types of charges (HE and AP). The type of damage some weapons has will always spike out in certain situations... so keeping an eye on it and maybe adding something as simple as "to be fitted on X, it must be specified/requested of a GM" onto submissions.

TLDR: It seems fine to make craft overloading and so forth be up to the GM. In real life, people overburden or over-equip if necessary, but they tend to make trade offs (less fuel in modern examples for ships that want to carry more, often shortening the range for more power. Another example is that if we need to carry more crap, we put on a backpack... so it puts the weight elsewhere and makes us a bit more unwieldy to carry max loads).
 
At Wes's prompting, here is why this sucks for Fighter and Mecha plots:

With the faction build up guidelines, you're encouraged to make SP 20 and SP50 ships (11 and 14 on the new scale).

A fighter can take 8 same tier weapons, now mecha and fighters can't hurt battleships.

A fighter can do minor damage to the Tier 11 ship but not a whole lot.

At best my fighter/mecha team can take the heaviest possible mecha, and trade all of its weapons for one tier 12 weapon.

This weapon does minor damage to shields, and doesn't really penetrate the armor of battleships. Ontop of that if you've got a smaller fighter or mecha you've got no options for damaging larger ships at all.

The result is that under the new system, a swarm of fighters is not a threat to a larger ship. Under the old system a swarm of fighters (even small ones or power armors) could equip ADR 5/SDR1 weapons which would allow them to be a threat to any ship assuming you have enough of them without having to have a dedicated anti-starship design.
 

A mecha or fighter trades their weapon for a tier 12. The biggest ship is tier 15. That gun deals light damage to that ship.

A fly compared to a dreadnought, the largest ships in the setting, can inflict light damage. From fighters fixed with the biggest weapons possible. A swarm of them could ruin that ship.
 
Zack I'm going to tell you something that throws this all out the window. Shield thresholds. For instance, the Sharie that was listed as an example in the new system has a shield threshold of 5. That means according to the old system, nothing a mecha could possibly do would hurt it, cause that's an SRD 5 shield threshold. Mecha can't generate that.
 
A swarm of dedicated anti-starship heavy fighters/mecha could deal minor damage to a ship's armor but have no chance of penetrating it.

This would not only require a specialized anti-starship design, but it would also require the players give up all of their weapons except the single anti-ship cannon.

@Syaoran That isn't how shield thresholds work. A shield threshold of 3 means that the first 3 points of damage from a shot are applied to the shield's HP value, and the rest overflow to the ship's HP.

As an example: an SDR 5 shot against a ship with 30 Shields, Threshold 3 and 30 HP would result in the ship taking 3 shield damage and 2 hull damage to end with 27 Shield HP and 28 Hull HP.
 
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