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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.
I think this is actually best done separately. The reason for it is that, as we've pointed out, the system seems solid... but it's not tested. Seeing if we'd need said boost is vital first. Personally, I don't think it matters much... but it is science. It's sorta the same on if this completely devalues mecha, fighters, bombers, so on and so forth. It's a pretty large consensus that this makes mecha more viable in terms of their damage and compared to PA (which they are now ACTUALLY stronger than in clear definition of the system, rather than just logic), but as we pointed out this opens up the ideas of "dedicated" roles.

I think adding bonuses for specific craft needs its own look... but as of right now, I don't think the lack of said bonuses tilts the benefits of the new system overall into being a let down. If we find that the whole trading of weaponry isn't enough to make X good, then we can definitely add changes. My only thing is that if we aren't careful, we could do some bad things. Like turn a ground artillery tank into something akin to a planetary defense gun. AKA, fixing it with a Tier 12 weapon, you fire with special atmospheric-to-vacuum ammunition... and you effectively turn that siege gun into an anti-corvette and destroyer tank.
 
To be fair @Syaoran , one advantage that missiles do have is that they can be ripple fired and come in at the enemy in a swarm to overwhelm all at once. In comparison, cannons and such do their damage over time. Even then, the missiles could still be reloaded, making logistics mid-battle pretty important.
 

Understand that Cadetnewb wanted some indication or ballpark to head towards in this regard. I myself kind of think just stuff that makes sense or figure out in visual/cinematic design how it would function. So, I looked at what the Plumeria had and found in it the basis that seemed to apply okay to many other KFY ships... so, I gave that as indication - throwing out numbers because numbers were asked and this seemed like a decent start. I don't swear by it, though. I think it needs to go in use and that we need to see how well it'll work out before making further adjustments. I'm counting on exceptions to kick that in the teeth and further adjustment/considerations will likely home in on something more accurate.

Limited ammo is an headscratcher for me too, especially in light of one-shot weapons like the Plumeria's two one-shot torpedoes. And again I'd point to Cadetnewb with a "work it out with this guy and his NTSE friends".


I think it's just a poor transition issue, and my making mini-missiles the way they are is a compromise between the armors that use it in combat and the fighters that use them in combat expecting somekind of anti-aircraft/mecha performance out of them. If this flies, I'd expect the addition of micro-missiles to fulfill the ADR2 weapon needs (probably light anti-armor?) and actual missiles so fighters have a good anti-fighter weapon without it being an actual torpedo (heavy anti-mecha?).

Stretching armor and mecha separately is bound to require some birthing pains, but I think that was an unavoidable outgrowth of that.

The fighters/bombers versus starships/battleships debate

People have been pointing to a Nodachi's cannons for example, while shooting at a Plumeria - a target it does light damage to. It has four of those. Each fire 2 times per seconds.

So, in one fly-by giving me a 4 seconds window opportunity to fire those guns, I'd fire eight shots per gun, for a total of thirty-two. 7%ish damage per shot to the Plumeria's barrier. So, with just these guns, I've a potential to cause around 225% of barrier damage assuming all hit. I guess those turbo-aether guns are so laughing matter, because the Nodachi can then loose its Z-1 torpedoes on the Plumeria to score compartment-wide damage - if the Plumeria survives that hit at all.

So, it looks to me like the Nodachi is still fairly dangerous to a destroyer-sized starship.

So, what about the bigger ones?

Well, we know the Z-1 torpedoes it packs are heavy anti-starship, so, they should be of some good against the shielding of any of those battleships. But the reason they do less is mostly on account of scale. Those things are huge! The turbo-aether guns hit the shields and it might not even do enough damage to overtake the upkeep of those things. Even if the turbo aether cannons did hit the ship, sure they'd burn the paint, leave holes and such... but the damage would be so small in comparison to the gargantuan sizes of the crafts involved that it would ne negligible to sinking it.

I mean, have any of you played X-Wing/Tie fighter or Descent Freespace? How long have you pummeled on big ships with your small normal guns just to see a 1% difference happen? In real life, do you expect an F-22 machinegun to down an aircraft carrier within a few strafing passes? Your guns are rightly insignificant to downing the protection of such vessels in order to threaten sink them - they're not lethal, but it does mean the GM will consider them insignificant. It's why bombers tend to shine. It's why subsystem targeting also bears some merits: sure your weapons won't breach the hull, but you might be able to cripple thruster assemblies, sensor palettes, and weapon emplacements.

I don't find this to be at all outlandish. It just depends on the GM's scenario and how you plan to deal with your limitations.

About Tanks

I personally see 'perceiving tanks as tougher' to be something that's more in relation to how tech mods judge a submission, and how a GM will interpret the ruggedness and sturdiness of said vehicles.

Right now, they're considered to be a vehicle made to be armored sitting in the mecha scale. It doesn't have as many moveable parts as a mecha or the intentionally lighterframe of fightercraft (since aerodyne works better with being light if you want to be airborne over a planet, if not in space), so I myself would likely think of tank as "more crunchable" as a GM (I think they're vulnerable to track hits, but hey, so are mecha legs or fighter wings *shrug* ). Does that require special dispensation?

I don't know. Seeing this tries to set down 'setting default' stuff, I'd leave that ultimately up to Wes/or prolongued observation of tendencies. I think Legix is right when he's saying this, though:
 

Agreed, but I think the opposite problem of passenger ships being basically undergunned battleships is what we are left with considering how things are left at the minute. Surely there must be some sort of middle ground.

Also, for the record, tanks being weaker defensively but stronger offensively is fine by me. I mean, my entire argument is based on the fact that the gun is bigger and more of the hull is physically taken up by it, in comparison to a fighter. The disparity of high-power weapons vs the decreasing usefulness of heavy armor is basically what is making them go out of fashion now.

Both of these things could be solved with a discrepancy between penetrating and explosive weapons, but that's a whole different can of worms.
 

I believe they'd be under-armored as well. Not only would a passenger ship's hull be thinner, but the structures itself may not be rated to weather the stress of multiple nuclear warheads. In other words, they are likely the size of a military vessel, but with the toughness of something much smaller. High explosive and its extra effects on targets such as these would ultimately be up to GMs I think. It sorts reminds me of War Thunder and using High-Ex on light vehicles. to be honest.

The idea of making a new class of mini-missiles entirely for the new system isn't a bad one @Fred and would likely help a lot. The divide between PA and Fighter borne ones should be distinct however.

Oh, and @Syaoran - regarding the modular weapons? I think we'd likely go over the modules and configurations themselves, if that helps.
 
Hey @Doshii Jun !

Like discussed previously, do you think you'd be able to give the article an editing pass? I reminded Wes of the post mentioning it was feature complete and he started a pool, so, I guess it's greenlit.
(I hoped we'd cover this point before the actual vote, but it's out of my hands now)
 
I should have time this weekend to give it a good scrub.

For transparency's sake: I'm editing for style, grammar and spelling, not content. The goal of my editing is not to rewrite or reconstruct entire paragraphs, or to change the spirit of the submission. Rather, it's to line edit phrasing or grammar that is awkward for readers. My ethos is to use a light touch.

If I come across anything that requires me to make an edit that could be perceived as changing the content of the submission, I will raise the question with Fred to sort out what word or phrase is best used to convey his original meaning.
 
Reactions: Tom
I'm still familiarizing myself with SADR v3 but I noticed that now shields take all damage rather than just blunting the blows. I'm not so sure how I feel about that, I felt that the threshold was more realistic. Say your shield is on 'hot-standby' and BANG! A guy launches a 12 gauge slug into the face of your Mindy 4 helmet at point-blank range.

Are we saying that the wearer wouldn't feel that?
 
@Rizzo - Even with the current system, you wouldn't have felt that shotgun. What you're looking for is a 50mm aimed at the chest perhaps. Under the current system, a Threshold 3 shield would soak up 3 points of damage, with the fourth being taken up by the armor.
 
About threshold: that was an extra layer of calculating that I didn't really want to get into, considering many people I've asked before told me they didn't bother with it anyways. I was not too sorry to get rid of it myself. However, notions regarding excess damage were inspired from how threshold was handled previously.

As for the shotgun, how point-blank is point-blank? If you tell me "a couple of centimeters off", my answer is "yes, the AIES quantum computer will have noticed it and the rest goes at the speed of electricity... which is typically faster than your bullet". If the shotgun is pressing directly on the helmet's surface, then I'd be less sure: no room in which to have an active barrier between gun and bullet.

Though I hear putting a shotgun's muzzle into the ground is unhealthy for the gun if its fired which obstruction in the way. Dunno.
 
I wasn't running numbers, I'm just saying that if absolutely nothing gets through the shield we are assigning the shield infinite resistance to a miniscule degree, and I have had bad experiences on other sites with RP groups exploiting any nod at infinity. I think some incorporation of the threshold system would be nice to have, if for nothing else just to ensure that there is no potential for abuse.
 
I'm picturing this in my head a lot like how it might run in Mass Effect. I know Cadet is concerned that barriers can soak too much damage, but with some of the high RoF weapons out there, I'm more concerned that they're not potent enough, so the significance of bleedthrough seems minimal at best.

You'd have to run that through @Wes and figure out how he wants it. The notion of threshold could be a measure of how good the barrier tech is, but I don't know how I'd devise it. This isn't pen & paper or something automatically calculated, so I'm leery of weighting it down past stuff that's easy to pick up.
 
It seems there's an inherent 'threshold', since an attack that's more than one tier above a given defense with barrier does immediately do damage to whatever is inside the barrier. It could be made clear that if an attack is more than four tiers above a defense, the barrier might not even slow it down, though maybe that could go in a 'special cases' section since it's not something that would come up very often. I don't see anything that looks like 'infinite resistance', it's just that the barrier provides a layer of regenerating ablative protection, rather than working as an additional layer of armour.
 
In general there is a lot of OP tech in this setting. I can see how having a threshold could also be abused with low powered high RoF weapons. I'm sure amendments can be made later if a problem were to occur. I think I like this new SADR.
 
Changelog:
- tried to clarify damage on a shield (the physical kind). It seems like people were confusing a physical shield as upgrading the tier defense-wise of a targeted unit (a medium power armor would upgrade to heavy?). That's not the case. Shield is treated as a separate location of the unit which is often a degree tougher and will be used to cover and intercept incoming attacks in the stead of the rest of the unit.
- I moved 'supplemental armor' higher in the Armor section. Seems a more significant subheading than materials and being unarmored.
- I moved the Barrier section to be above the Armor section. As damage usually goes to barrier first, adn armor/hull second, this seemed more intuitive.
- Moved the "vs." examples to the end of the article. There a handy link at the end of the damage section to quickly hop to it, but as I explained several posts ago, I too was unsatisfied by how the examples went on-and-on before getting to armor/barrier.

- A link was created at the end of the article's introduction leading to what I said I wanted to create: the SADRv3 Quick Reference. I think, to someone already in the know, that it reads much better. It should also be the wiki article most other articles point to for details on the SADRv3 - if they want to learn more, they just have to click the link to the full version.

Bear in mind, I wanted Wes to greenlight the content before doing the quick reference article or asking Doshii Jun to do editing on it. Wes moved forward to a poll somewhat earlier than I expected.
 
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Reactions: Wes
I'd like some feedback in regard to the quick reference article:
https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=sadrv3_quick_reference

I mean, people have criticized the 'full instruction manual' because of the heavy reading involved. But the Quick Reference article seems much more sparser like the DRv2 article was.
I don't feel it gives enough handholding for someone wholly new to it... but besides that, does it feel better?
 
The only direct interaction between the armour materials list and the DR guide seems to be that transparent armour doesn't count against beams, and stealth suits don't count as armour unless they contain armour material. That much information doesn't need a table, and most of the rest doesn't really go anywhere (what does it mean if a material resists electricity?)

I still think general examples of what each damage category means would be helpful, adding an extra column to the table doesn't clutter the page, and in most cases referencing the specific target type shouldn't be necessary. 'Superficial damage, localized armour buckling, trivial injury' might be something I'd put to describe the first category, up to 'extreme dismemberment/partial vaporization' for the last category.

Mind you, this doesn't quite match the descriptions at the end of the article, where the first three categories of starship damage are all described as cosmetic harm. I don't think we need entries for cosmetic damage on the table, the examples should describe more meaningful examples of potential damage, so that it doesn't seem that underpowered weapons 'can't do anything' to ships.
 
I'm afraid I don't get what you mean. I thought that was already in. Can you elaborate?


You mean this, right?

Negligible: scratches, ruined paintjob
Light Damage: Nicks and scrapes over the hull's surface
Moderate Damage: Pockmarks and gouges over the hull's surface​

I believe moderate damage is accurate. It looks like a decent step down from what heavy damage represents.
The rest I relied heavily on synonyms and previous suggestions to carry it through. As it suited other people that wanted that kind of detail, but doesn't meet your approval, I'm not sure how to improve that.

Do you have better vocabulary in mind to express lighter forms of damage?
 
I think Moderate Damage, actually could be better represented. A pockmark or gouge can be of differing severity, so it's not terribly helpful beyond realizing you might put big dents or small dents in something.

The Light Damage also seems to describe Negligible. I don't know about most people, but a scrape or nick is something I could have on an entire limb and (while it'd sting) wouldn't really hinder me. It doesn't really ring as light, but rather more in line with Negligible. In fact, scrapes and scratches tend to be the same thing/synonyms... so changing that or making an actual gap there would be nice.
 
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