Approved Submission [Mechanic] Damage Rating Revision

@Wes @Doshii Jun
Okay. So, we agreed on the bigger guns, but you had a higher esteem on the turrets than I did. That works.

Lets broaden our test samples.

Maybe the Plumeria's smaller sister class, the Chiaki?
The Chiaki is a lighter hull than the Plumeria. So far, the example lists it as Class 10 defensively.

• Aether Shock Cannon: 1x, SDR 5. This cannon is more compact than the Yui 7's weapon, and has a reduced firing rate of 6 shots per minute.
• Mass Driver Guns: 4x, SDR 1 or 4

• Type 32 Light Anti-Armor Turret: 5x, ADR 4

And while we're at it, something bigger, the Super Eikan:
The Super Eikan is significantly larger than the Plumeria and the example lists defensively puts it as Class 13

• Aether Shock Array
• 2 Super-heavy weapons SDR 5
• 20 Type 31 Secondary Anti-Starship Turret
• 22 Star Army Anti-Fighter Turret, Type 31

Some weapons on it are actually similar to the Plumera's others less so.
So, in war games, how would the Super Eikan deal with a squadron of smaller vessels? How would it deal against other capital vessels?

I have a credible problem: So, I've been making a 10mm and 20mm round for the SAOY, and the problem I've run into is that in trying to keep the 20mm's damage low enough to not be higher than the existing 50mm Shell's damage, it's effectivelygot the same damage as the 10mm round. *whoops*

I'm afraid talking bullets is not my field of expertise; @Doshii Jun would be a better judge of that.

Based on what I read, I'd consider the change too granular to really matter in the eyes of this DR system. Apparently, it still deals the same kind of lethality to the intended target without leaping to the next class. what would convey the effectiveness of the 20mm round would then be the description of the weapon (hopefully being able to evoke that quality to the reader) as well as how much the roleplayer/GM actually cares about the distinction.

As a GM whom doesn't know a whole lot about guns, I expect Yukari pew-pewing at people to make them permanently stop moving unless she misses. In the broader scheme of things, her using a handgun or a large caliber machinegun doesn't make much difference unless I consider bodyarmor. Back with the VYC's Uniques on Fortuna, I decided that the zen arms pistols impacted and degraded the bodyarmor without breaching, that the NSP actually delivered wounds consistently around articulation points, and that an NSP on heavy mode would vaporize the Unique into fine mist, bodyarmor or not.

Based on what I know thus far of your 20mm round (not a whole lot), I'd make the impact of the larger caliber being a more noticable recoil/knockback to a target like an Unique. Ideally, your 20mm's article would have enough information to have me "know better" if there was anything more I needed to know of this weapon's performance either as a player or a GM.

It's been put to me that not enough people have weighed in on this submission.

Ultimately, I'm the reviewer for it. However, because it's a sitewide mechanic we're talking about here, I think it's worth asking our GMs to take one last look before I close the thread for review.

@Wes, is it possible to issue an announcement to those GMs only? Just so we're covering all our bases.

Well alrighty. I imagine I don't have much influence to pull in this thread since I am not a GM and probably never will be, but maybe I can offer my experience as a wargamer on this damage scale system.

First off, lemme get it off my chest - I think any kind of damage rating system or 'crunch' as its called in the biz is... presumptuous of a play by post site. It's a storytelling medium more than it is a game, at least ideally - but this is neither here nor there.

So, the DR system. I get it, it's a integral part of the site and there's no getting around it anymore, so let's look at this one. The old DR system had a lot of criticisms - I'm assuming ambiguity towards ships firing on one another is one of those, due to the layout of this current system.

However. The layout of the damage steps is... well, here's mostly where my big issues are. This scale is biased inherently towards ship to ship combat. Of the fifteen damage steps, there are... 9 dedicated to ground combatants, and 6 dedicated to spaceships. Not a problem when you look at it on the surface, right?

But, this is where I think most people's concerns with the system are being raised. Fred, you say that the small-scale stuff, infantry combat, differences between caliber of weapons, etc, that this is all too 'granular' and too small scale, and this is I think the big issue. And while you say that, there are six steps dedicated solely to space combatants, three of 'regular' classes, and three dedicated to... super heavy spaceships. Large, expensive, strategically value ships only capable of being built and fielded by large, coordinated powers.

How many players on this site engage regularly in capital ship on capital ship engagements? Or even spaceship on spaceship engagements? I understand that it does happen, and that rules are needed for it, but the biggest issue with this system is the proposed audience - this system is inherently biased towards space combat.

Why is this a problem? Consider the average character - they make a neko, or a nepleslian, typically a jotou hei or a P3C (or whatever the new E1 rank is) in their faction's military, usually infantry, and join a plot. I can't prove it readily with a bar chart or graph, but the vast majority of force-on-force engagements in SARP are done with either non-PA infantry, or power armored infantry.

In fact, the logo of the site has a Mindy on it, not a spaceship. Power Armor combat is one of the main draws of the site. Claiming that rules that concern type of combat that the majority of the site will engage in are too 'granular' or too 'small scale' is... very, very misguided. Three damage steps for Non-PA and PA each is simply not enough to replace the DR scale on the whole site, considering the significant differences between something like pistol rounds are, in many cases, a question of mere millimeters.

Designing a system that needlessly dumbs down the method of combat used in the vast majority of the plots on the site just isn't the answer. I understand that this is a system in review right now, and if this is the case, I don't think it deserves to see even a test period right now - the rules just aren't complex enough if we want to try to use them with the site in its current state.

If SARP was a tabletop wargame, and actually had to rely on crunch, this damage system would simply not be complex enough to be engaging. And although it isn't a wargame, SARP is very much a roleplay site with no real 'crunch' to speak of, no skill checks or dice rolls. You could argue that this system doesn't matter that much, since we are a roleplay site, but then why implement a system in the first place that doesn't fulfill our needs, or doesn't do anything better as far as most of the playerbase is concerned that the old system did? It's clear the playerbase wants more detailed infantry combat, or else this topic wouldn't have reached two pages.

Folks don't want much - the changes they want to this system are, for the most part, covered by the vagaries of the current system, which does give more complexity to infantry and power armor, rather than ship to ship fighting. They're not asking for something on, say, a 28mm skirmish wargame level -

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-aMNzi-WTn5Q1MzUTZIX25naVE/view?usp=sharing

- like that. I would consider this to be 'far too granular'. Most people just want a little more thought dedicated to the kind of fighting they actually have a chance of seeing in a typical SARP roleplay, is all.

In short, my proposed solutions are thus: either this damage scale is made completely voluntarily, at the GM's discretion only, or it is sent back to the revision board for much needed changes. The simple truth of the matter is that there is just too much of this chart that is dedicated to things most players will never see.

This entire Damage Rating system seems to be in the business of allowing GMs the ability to gain a clearer understanding of the effects of what certain weapon systems have on intended targets, but attempts to become so specific that it detracts from one of the main values of the current DR system:

That the current system is less specific with regards to cause-effect actions to the degree that it places the effects of weapon systems and the mitigating effects of defensive systems solely up to the GM in their plot. This represents a further tightening of the DR rules that completely takes away from the freedom that the current system provides.

As it currently stands this proposed damage rating system is incredibly unwieldy and will only represent a sense of discouragement for many current GMs or upcoming GMs.

Great if you are a faction like Yamatai that is privileged with so many plots, and not so great when you are a faction like the DIoN or other minor factions; now the workload for those other factions' GMs is increased exponentially, and so are attrition rates for GMs in those factions.

In that manner, the lack of any sort of foresight as to this proposed system representing such a discouraging force in its restrictive nature and its increased complexity seems to suggest that it was designed as a universal rating system to be applied across the site, regardless of whether or not it actually can be applicable equally to all the factions.

I would charge that this DR system is clearly biased towards larger factions such as Yamatai who have the largest pool of experienced GMs, and who have the most "pull" to bring in new GMs.

Whether this is intended or not (and if it is unintended it reflects a severe lack of foresight by its creators), it represents a DR system that is extremely bloated and overly complicated, that it provides a long list of rules for GMs to follow.

That does not foster creative growth at all - it teaches potential GMs to work within a very narrow system, instead of our current system allowing the GMs a degree of creative leeway in running their plots how they wish.

Fred said:

Based on what I read, I'd consider the change too granular to really matter in the eyes of this DR system. Apparently, it still deals the same kind of lethality to the intended target without leaping to the next class. what would convey the effectiveness of the 20mm round would then be the description of the weapon (hopefully being able to evoke that quality to the reader) as well as how much the roleplayer/GM actually cares about the distinction.

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Why is it that in terms of the different weapon classes that Starship Weapons are afforded six major subcategories while the rest are only afforded three each? Just as there are specific differences in levels of starship weaponry are there differences in levels of PA, vehicular and firearm weaponry.

There is nothing "Granular" about either of those categories, and the fact that starship weaponry are afforded six different levels of lethality demonstrate an inherent attempt to glorify starship combat, something that only a minor amount of factions engage in on a plot level. In fact, the only faction that does engage in this is Yamatai.

As it stands I support this becoming just an optional system that can be adopted at the discretion of FMs/GMs, but I would like to declare that:

In the event of an approval, I as the Faction Manager of the Democratic Imperium of Nepleslia will not enforce this DR system on my GMs or within my faction unless specifically authorized to do so by a GM of my plot, with the ability to reverse this decision back to the old DR system should the GM find it to be unwieldy.

I won't sit by and let this bloated, overly-complex system undo all the work that I and a lot of other folks have put into bringing our faction back from having just one plot.

For the record -- and to keep it from being a distraction -- GMs and FMs always have been allowed the discretion to not adhere to the DR system when it comes to plots.

That was not in question before, and it is not in question here. It is, in fact, not germane to this discussion.

With that said, carry on.

Now that all my co-villains have spoken, I'll just come in and say my complaint as simply as I can. I don't really like the way this system treats unarmored people on the ground-- that's kind of where I think individual characters can truly shine and that's also where more traditional RPGs really take place. Now, since GMs can just ignore it, I'm going to do that just like I pretty much do with the current damage system. So, that just puts this, in my case, as a net loss of time for the people who made it.

Furthermore, I really don't like making the DR system more complicated if I'm not entirely satisfied because people making new tech will have to adhere to it when they work. I don't like that. I already don't make very much tech, and it's hard enough for me to advise people when they come to me as an FM and ask for help making stuff. With this system in place, I'm basically going to tell them to roll a die and ignore anything I say. Because I really don't feel the breakdown into numbers used, you see?

My arguments regarding this DR system representing a discouraging, overly bloated mess of rules also extends to the tech and setting submission side. Do we really want to add a larger difficulty curve to possible new submissions and as a consequence deter people from contributing to the site?

Lamb said:

I really don't like making the DR system more complicated

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This has been said, and I would like to ask how this system is more complicated.

With the old DR system tech authors had to navigate the arcane nature of SP, thresholds, etc. which no one (to my knowledge) has any clear idea on what determines SP or how it works. Additionally the old system required a weapon to pick its way through SP to manage to get a kill according to the rules as they were presented. Which implies sort of grindy RPG esque combat which doesn't really fit with RP.

With this system if you use a weapon of the same class as the target, and aim for a vital area, it will die assuming the GM okays the hit. You no longer need to wonder if a weapon in a class will kill its target. If you can tell me how this is more complicated than wondering whether or not an ADR 5 weapon will scratch/harm/kill a target. I would be happy to read.

Koenig808 said:

My arguments regarding this DR system representing a discouraging, overly bloated mess of rules also extends to the tech and setting submission side. Do we really want to add a larger difficulty curve to possible new submissions and as a consequence deter people from contributing to the site?

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The rules are hardly bloated... A weapon of the same Class as a target kills it on a hit to a vital area. That doesn't seem a hard concept.

If the target has shields, it has on average 2 chances to survive a shot before the shields drop, with weaker weapons taking more shots as one would expect. Again not complicated.

With this system you either assign a Class and number of shield charges to an object, or you give it a Class for a weapon. So only one or two stats at most with the rest relying on the fluff that the author writes.

No longer do you have to fuss with Thresholds, and SP on top of choosing the DR and classification. So depending on how you look at it there are half as many "hard number" rules that the author has to fuss over, and the writers who replied in the thread admitted to just bullshitting the old system anyway because no one knew how it worked.

-----

The complaint about there being more starship Classes than any other category isn't really something I can address since I personally think it would be simple enough to adapt thing to larger sections, but no one has really presented a solid argument besides, "I don't like it" either way. So uh, unless a firm argument is made I'm going to refrain from chipping in on that subject.

I'm going to keep this thread open a day more, as I want some other G/FMs to comment who are not from Yamatai or Nepleslia.

@DocTomoe, for instance. @Nashoba too, and @Sham, @Jimmy, @Yoshi, @Gunsight1 and @Arieg.

This is a lot of polarizing, even hyperbolic, feedback. I've spent easily more than a year asking people from many venues for their opinions of ho to clarify said article and make it more reader-friendly, and for a very long time people couldn't be bothered to contribute until my latest attempt (which honestly wouldn't have had any traction if Eisthied hadn't invested so much time in it either). Some of the feedback given by the most recent detractors even happen to be self-contradictory within the same post. It's hard to take constructively when it amounts to "I don't like it and won't use it" and "bring it back to the drawing board, because".

This DR system had a few goals, but mechanically, it does 3 things which are different than the previous one:
1. It does away with hit points and instead give you a guideline to expect how good a weapon performs. Which in effect seems much more in line with our roleplay by post format.
2. It expands the former 3 categories of Personnel/Armor/Starship to five; Personnel/Armor/Vehicle/Starship/Capital, and this was a request that came around over and over for the previous one. In effect, it is more accurate than the previous one.
3. Categories are more blurred than before. An infantryman can use an anti-personnel handgun, use an anti-armor sniper rifle, and use an anti-vehicle rocket launcher. In effect, this thing about infantry being more limited isn't true - they're actually much less fettered with this than the previous 'game' rules you've been stuck with until now and actually far more representative of the things you're saying right now that you want.

Do I have a bias toward Yamataian things? Yes. That's why I made sure the two main categories Yamataian plots use, Power Armor and non-capital vessels, have categories above and below them, sinc eI wanted to avoid extreme cases. Capital structures are like the biggest structures around, and I see it as a valid concern that Nyton, my tactical officer, would like an idea of how well the weapons he handles are probably going to do against that big NMX carrier.

The notion that a lot is going on at the Personnel scale doesn't go unnoticed, or fails to resonate with me. But I kind of feel that you don't realize how good things are becoming in comparison to what you had.

What you had: The PDR scale (Personnel Damage Rating)
PDR 1
PDR 2
PDR 3
PDR 4
...and PDR 5, which is actually ADR1.

So, the personnel scale really had four distinctions with a fifth 'edge case' that said "with PDR5, you may slightly hurt power armors". And that was your bazookas, your grenades, etcetera.
and now, I'm saying, it's like you have PDR1~3, and on top of that, your infantry weapons can do something credible to power armors and even tanks. Well, actually, you probably were already doing that anyways, but this DR system at least doesn't get in your way, and even tries to cooperate with you.

I don't think subdivising more will actually give you want you want, because you pretty much already have in there what you are already asking, and I don't want to devalue the written description of an article, which is supposed to breathe life into a submission beyond just a numerical value (I want to promote good writing, and well designed submissions too!). You've all made it clear that you don't want something "gamey" and this is far less gamey than what came before. What's there, is there to help a roleplayer or help a GM make a judgment call. I could go on, but Eisthied was already eloquent over the other points.

Fred said:

Some of the feedback given by the most recent detractor even happen to be self-contradictory within the same post. It's hard to take constructively when it amounts to "I don't like it and won't use it" and "bring it back to the drawing board, because".

Click to expand...

Ok. I'm going to dissect your post now so you can say my feedback is "I don't like it and I won't use it." K?

Fred said:

1. It does away with hit points and instead give you a guideline to expect how good a weapon performs. Which in effect seems much more in line with our roleplay by post format.

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People already had to write how a weapon performed in the article.

Fred said:

2. It expands the former 3 categories of Personnel/Armor/Starship to five; Personnel/Armor/Vehicle/Starship/Capital, and this was a request that came around over and over for the previous one. In effect, it is more accurate than the previous one.

Click to expand...

It isn't, you still have 9 (Nine) levels spread on 3 (Three) categories as opposed to 10 (Ten) spread over 2 (Two). Can't be more accurate when you have less levels per category.

Fred said:

Categories are more blurred than before.

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Now you're just contradicting yourself, didn't you just say above it made it more accurate? And on that note:

Fred said:

An infantryman can use an anti-personnel handgun, use an anti-armor sniper rifle, and use an anti-vehicle rocket launcher.

Click to expand...

Already existed and was already possible under the old DR rating.

Fred said:

What you had: The PDR scale (Personnel Damage Rating)
PDR 1
PDR 2
PDR 3
PDR 4
...and PDR 5, which is actually ADR1.

So, the personnel scale really had four distinctions with a fifth 'edge case' that said "with PDR5, you may slightly hurt power armors". And that was your bazookas, your grenades, etcetera.
and now, I'm saying, it's like you have PDR1~3, and on top of that, your infantry weapons can do something credible to power armors and even tanks. Well, actually, you probably were already doing that anyways, but this DR system at least doesn't get in your way, and even tries to cooperate with you.

I don't think subdivising more will actually give you want you want, because you pretty much already have in there what you are already asking, and I don't want to devalue the written description of an article, which is supposed to breathe life into a submission beyond just a numerical value (I want to promote good writing, and well designed submissions too!). You've all made it clear that you don't want something "gamey" and this is far less gamey than what came before. What's there, is there to help a roleplayer or help a GM make a judgment call. I could go on, but Eisthied was already eloquent over the other points.

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It does get in the way and doesn't cooperate with what already exists at all. It's convenient how you just forgot the PDR4 there in your example, sure it might be just one level within a category but it's still very important in preventing cases like, for example:

The HPAR. Originally, the stable Nepleslian power armor rifle is on ADR 4, while the AoP is sitting at ADR5 and the LCA sits on ADR3. With this new system of yours one of these guns will have to be moved, which means one will have to be portrayed as weaker or stronger than another, depending on how you look at it. To reiterate, say that the HPAR gets grouped down to the LCA level with this new damage rating, that will essentially make one of them obsolete because there's still numbers in the system. You can't claim "This isn't a game it's about narrative" and then backpedal on that when people argue that there's not enough categories on your damage rating.

As it is, this still doesn't cover categories where other people roleplay as broadly as it cover starships, and I can tell you there's quite a few plots that cover more the infantry and vehicle part of combat than it does for the latter, so why is it fine for Starships to have six levels but suddenly it's a huge hassle to have six for infantry, armor and vehicles? Sure you might argue that capital ships are in a different scale than starships, like you did, but I'd point out how this DR doesn't cover mecha, which scale towards vehicles just how capitals scale towards starships.

SO! As what would be entirely expected of me, I decided to ignore everything that was said here, and simply evaluate the article on its own merit. It is a lovely piece of work, and has much promise for how to comprehend where things fit on our pecking order. Though, what I also did, was continue to flagrantly ignore everyone else, and with permission of Eistheid, I added a little bit of meat to the chart.

What I've done is add brief snippets of descriptive damage which could be associated with the given class of weapon, and also a rough estimate of armor penetration against commonly encountered hull/armor materials; e.g: durandium, nerimium, zesuaium, at varying thicknesses. This addition has been made for the purpose of helping people get an idea of just what it means to get hit by a 'Class 6' weapon, in comparative terms that can be readily digested.

This being said, I like it.

At this point I'll just ask a simple question:

How would you improve this? What categories would you add?

Honestly I can rework the increasing diminishing table easily, and shuffle around the examples with minimal effort. If it is an issue of not having enough slots, show me a better set up.

This is an opportunity to fix things and I'm not going to cling to a particular set up because of elegance or whatever, because if we really wanted that we'd still only have personnel and armor scale, before starships.

So again, show me an example that would work better.

Eistheid said:

With this system if you use a weapon of the same class as the target, and aim for a vital area, it will die assuming the GM okays the hit. You no longer need to wonder if a weapon in a class will kill its target. If you can tell me how this is more complicated than wondering whether or not an ADR 5 weapon will scratch/harm/kill a target. I would be happy to read.

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I guess it's probably just the devil I know. To me, it's always been a ballpark thing. I see "ADR x" and immediately I'm thinking this is a weapon for vehicles and power armor, but that's not all it works on. That's just what it's for. That's what it wants to kill. And how good it does that is based on the thing itself-- like a little civilian hovercar has less structure points in its class than an APC. You can obliterate an unarmored organic with the thing, sure, and I think a reasonable GM can imagine how that would work. I don't really feel like it's a complicated process. It's very target-focused.

On the other hand, the new system seems more defense focused. It's more about what the target puts up to resist the individual round. (I won't mention the glaring firearm issues because so many others except here where I will say that I won't mention it except to mention it here. Or whatever. Damnit, it's in parenthesis, don't read it!) I get that different things can have different means of defending themselves and maybe we want to look at that, but what I felt was simple about the other DR scale-- which I admit I really didn't use extensively except as a means to critique tech-- was that it was very general. There were three basic kinds of targets, three basic kinds of damage, and the numbers were a big straight line. I guess they still are in some ways, but the new system to me seems like its trying to pair off suitable weapons with the defense they're trying to defeat. And I imagine something from a couple of months ago where Archander came to me asking about the DR for a piece of tech he was making. I took a few minutes to think about it and popped out a suggestion immediately. With this system, if he came to me I'd be looking for the space on the thing where he intended target was? And then I have to decide if we'd field a weapon built specifically to take on that one job? What if we want it to do more, be more versatile, or be a multi-stage weapon? I mean, to me-- just to me-- the existing DR scale says "it does this much damage to suff" and that works fine, while the new system says "it defeats this kind of defense, but not some others that it might technically be able to defeat if it actually existed, or whatever you know just find shields on the thing and..."

Eistheid said:

Additionally the old system required a weapon to pick its way through SP to manage to get a kill according to the rules as they were presented. Which implies sort of grindy RPG esque combat which doesn't really fit with RP.

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I think, if you used it as a hard rule then that is true. However; I also think as a guideline if you go into a battle saying "okay it takes five shots of this to kill one of these usually" then you know as a player that just getting a single shot center mass isn't going to cut it. Your character will have to figure out something better. And that kind of problem solving is really good for RP to me. In real combat, people don't take turns. I kind of hope my players are making their characters behave as though they're in a situation where they aren't taking turns, and try to get them to write with that mindset despite the fact that we do have turns to take.





EDIT: The two posts above this were invisible to me while I was writing this, please forgive me.

EDIT EDIT: OH MY GOD EVEN MORE POSTS WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM

People seem to forget that I'm the person whom designed the previous DR system too. x_x
Anyhow.

@Foxtrot
The Vehicle scale was originally called Mecha. The brainstorm thread that came before made the argument that refering to the mecha instead as 'vehicles' would be better.
Also, when I say vehicle, I mean tank. As in, heavier than power armor. Your previous ADR4 bazookas had no chance in hell under the previous system to kill a power armor in one hit, but now, if they're classified even as Light Anti-vehicle, they have a hell of a good chance of being credibly able to turn a Mindy into a bunch of flying limbs. BOOM.

What I meant by categories is that it's this system's expectation that the lethality of infantry weaponry will not be confined to only infantry. Under that notion, I expect a significant portion of the higher-powered tools available to an infantryman to actually amount to some good outside the anti-personnel range. This doesn't apply only to infantry; the argument was raised that the LASR (Light Armor Service Rifle) was probably an heavy anti-infantry weapon rather than a genuine armor-tier weapon because the narrative and cinematic desires behind the weapon lied in that due to its high rate of fire, each individual shots would only chew/crater at the target power armors. You can use it against a power armor, it can kill it, but it's not going to be able to do it in a single hit.

Essentially, I expect some degree of overlap. Which is why I don't feel you've lost as much as you've been assuming.

Another distinction this new DR system has is that it's meant to be 'per-use' rather than 'DPS per 10 seconds' (which is what the current one is). It only deals with the lethality - the article of the submission itself is meant to convey a bevy of other qualities for the weapon, from rate of fire, to ammo capacity, to how well it can be serviced/assembled/disassembled, how it handles heat, how its powered, range, etc etc...
You have have two weapons end up in the same categories, but still end up being distinct. There's plenty of weapons around in real life that can deal the same kind of damage, but have thier own quirks. Unless you get really hung up on the numbers, but then, wasn't the accusation that is was 'bloated'. Come again?

Besides.
Let's say there were four - no, five! like you're touting is superior - classes for the personnel scale in there in the list. How many instances of "this weapons can kill" do you actually need. Do you need me to tell you how lethal a knife is? Do you really need a table to consider the precise damage of a bullet if it hits you in the fleshy part of your arm, or the bony part of your arm, the gut, or the ribcage, or in the noggin'? either it will hurt you, either it will wound you, or it will kill you. Either you're wearing somekind of flak vest, or somekind of bodyarmor, or some more elaborate bombsuit/powersuit or something around that.

@DocTomoe
I noticed the changes you made. At first glance, I like most of them.

There was one change I wanted to try doing along with this, though, that we covered in the brainstorming thread. I figure it's normal that you wouldn't know about it yet, so, I'll just run it past you here.

We wanted to normalize the value of armor materials.
As in, as long as it is armor, the protective value is considered equal across units.

Meaning, there's no actual difference in protective value between durandium and the Yama-dura alloy. Instead, what changes is the qualities of said items:
Durandium is lighter. That's its quality.
Yama-dura is less heavy than Yamataium. It regenerates slightly like yamataium and can be made into fine components. (extra weight may also mean more recoil-resistance)
Yamataium has out-of-combat regenerative properties. It has the flaw of not being able to be easily manufactured for fine components, which makes it better used for bigger units (vehicles/ships).
Zesuaium has a base defensive property that's just as good as durandium. But it comes with a cornupia of qualities like radiation immunity, inflexibility, not being electrically conductive, etc.

I liked that idea, because I felt it was more evocative to focus on the qualities a material offered. I also figured that if a durandium armored unit needed more protection, it'd just need to put more durandium. Also, the DR system I was making didn't have any use for the light/medium/heavy armor modifier (that x0.6 to 1.0 thing) so it seemed a good idea to just focus on the exotic qualities of a material rather than its hardness. The assumption is that whichever material is used, unless the submission says otherwise, the designers of a medium power armor will find of way to protect it adequately for its unit type.

I am only done with the first page of this thread, may I ask you keep this open just a little longer, I am trying to get a good understanding what is going on here, and what it all means.

I am trying to read as quickly as I can.

Ditto. I need a couple days to read over the article to put my 2 cents in (busy packing to move and still working full shifts here!)