Navian, what you describe as preferable is exactly the sort of thing this here is supposed to do. Do away with the hitpoints, give the power to the narrative. It's supposed to inform 'each use of this can be that effective'. What actually happens is at the mercy of how the players implement it and how the GM rules on it.
* * *
Back to Cadetnewb's concern:
I know this is a concern
because of a change like this. But this is less a question of the mechanic so much as the need to standardize what each of the classes is capable of. It's management of
poverty, with the idea that ships can only do so much. It's a novelty to see a ship undershoot the capacity of its weight class - usually, everyone wants their baby to compete equaly.
Let's say I try to do this - which I'm not sure I can, because rate-of-fire and other weapon qualities will change things around a lot...
Straight up, our nearest equivalency is that the class below is halved in power, so, it'd take two weapons of one class to equal one of the next class up. But that's not quite true: the next class up has in a single use much more killing power against bigger targets. It's
equivalent, but not just as good. At least, we can see that from the lethality table (the labels
under the class commonly always halve, so I'll use that as the consistent baseline metric).
But just as much as there is a benefit to have these really hard hitting weapons, there's also a benefit in having multiple lesser weapons. If the Plumeria gunship only had its aether shock cannon, it'd be
extremely vulnerable to starfighters.
If we go by fractions, using a Plumeria as our example:
The Plumeria is a Class 11 in term of defense.
It has:
1x Class 13 “Light Anti-Capital” aether shock array
2x Class 11 “Medium Anti-Starship” railguns
4x Class 9 “Heavy Anti-Mecha” turrets
11x Class 7 “Light Anti-Armor” turrets
Class 11 - the native class of the ship, equals 1. Anything a step above or under is divided or multiplied by a factor of 2.
So, the aether shock array, being Class 13, is worth 4.
The railguns are worth 1. There are two of them. So a total of 2.
The Anti-Mecha turrets are Class 9 - two steps under - so they are individually worth 1/4. That makes a total of 1.
The Anti-Armor turrets are Class 7 - again two steps under - so individually worth 1/16. That total would be 11/16
So, based on the above calculations, the Plumeria is carrying nearly the equivalent of
8 weapons that could potentially put it out of a fight in one strike.
Based on that, a precedent which shows me an iconic destroyer category vessel, I could rule that all destroyers can carry this equivalent as well.
For example, I could decide that the SMX Xianthrafruglu gunship - another (Class 11) destroyer - has:
1x Light Anti-Capital main gun (Class 13, worth 4)
2x Heavy Anti-Starship cannons (Class 12, so worth 2 each)
...and I'd come even at a value of 8. And what do you know: that's actually what the Xianthrafruglu has.
* * *
Moving on. Another test of this: warships can carry the equivalent of 8 weapons that can potentially kill it in a single hit.
The Super-Eikan cruiser - a Class 13 Light Anti-Capital Ship - has:
I'm not sure what its Aether Shock Array and Super Heavy Cannons actually represent for it, so, I'll start with the weapons I do know it has in common with the Plumeria.
Wes explained that the Type 31 Secondary Anti-Starship Turrets on the Plumeria are actually “Heavy Anti-Mecha” Class 9 equivalents here for cinematic purposes.
That's 4 steps down, 4 times dividing by 2. They're worth 1/16 each. The Eikan has 20. Pretty trivial to pack 20/16 of its budget to give smaller ships a serious run for their money.
The Anti-Fight turrets are actually Anti-Armor cinematically, like established by Wes; so Class 7. Those are then worth 1/64 each. 22 of those, so, 22/64.
Oookay. I'm having some serious doubts here in the validity of what I'm doing... but let's just keep going. I'll try to get this on a common denominator:
22/64 is worth 11/32.
20/16 is worth 40/32.
Add those two up. All my turrets so far are worth 51/32 of my '8' budget. Therefore, my Class 13 Super Eikan has about '6' left to play with, so...
A Class 15 Heavy Anti-Capital Aether Shock Array would cost two steps higher, so 4.
I have '2' left, so, I guess my two positron cannons have to be Class 13 (worth 1 each)
So, we end up with:
1x Class 15 “Heavy Anti-Capital” aether shock array
2x Class 11 “Light Anti-Capital” railguns
20x Class 9 “Heavy Anti-Mecha” turrets
22x Class 7 “Light Anti-Armor” turrets
I guess it does work out some. In fact, the Eikan's weapon setup feels a lot like the Plumeria's (1 thing to shoot things bigger than it, 2 to fight against things in its weight class, and then a bunch of turrets to discourage attacks from smaller units). I guess it does work with '8' too.
I brainstormed as I typed, so I can't call this solid. I still can't deal with weapon properties such as range/rate-of-fire/ammo-dependence/area-of-effect... but this might be better than nothing.
Mind you, this is an inorganic process that's contrary to what I wanted to recommend - especially for conversions. I wanted people to figure out "this should do this big of a boom on this thing, so this is its class". I feel like hitting the mark with my 3 tests is a happy coincidence more than anything else. I'm concerned this'll result in some sort of point buy system (what about shields? Engines? Armor? etc etc...). This iteration of the DR system was supposed to try
avoiding that.
