Approved Submission [Mechanic] Damage Rating Revision

As this gets refined and approved, I'd like to see the option to still use the existing DR system included though a simple link to the old article. The current system is really good and I wouldn't want to use this new one. Just don't want something shoved down our craw with no way out of using it. It'd be nice to have some mitigating factor for people who like how it's been.

It wouldn't be an exact science, but this goes through 15 steps, kind of like the previous one.

A person reading a class 7 weapon in this system could decide it equals ADR2. Class 10 could be ADR5. Class 11 could be SDR1 (though ADR5 and SDR1 are supposed to be equivalents - I'm just saying this in the interest of speedy translation). So, with some flexibility, this might be backward compatible to anyone wanting to house rule it.

If I felt conservative and in favor of the older DR system, it's likely how I would choose to interpret any weapon included or grandfathered into this.

I don't think we should have to house rule it, tbh, since DR is already a "take it or leave it" mechanic beyond getting stuff approved. We came to a compromise on the calendar, why not on a possible revision to the DR system? I think it's entirely fair to allow people who submit articles to use the old system if they're used to it after years of RPing here. It wouldn't really impact new members, since they'd be indoctrinated into the new system, anyway.

I don't especially mind, either way.

Like, in the opening header, mention "The previous iteration, whom still sees use by some of our members, can be reviewed here." That way there's visibility.

I can't answer for how the tech mods will treat submissions following this and can't force people to keep putting the older DR thing in, but I don't see why you can't have your cake and eat it either. The point is helping out more, not pissing off people.

As long as the old system and new system "talk to each other," i.e. there's a conversion that exists, I can live with people using old or new numbers for submissions.

However, I'd expect to see a sunset on the old rules eventually. Two years, perhaps.

@Doshii Jun
@Wes

May I have a ruling on this?

I still have no problems with the FDR. As long as there is the conversion and the sunset of the DR, I'm good.

I'd still like to see DR grandfathered in. Maybe it can be because the NDI used it, or something.

I don't mind the DR system being grandfathered in, I.e. you don't have to go out and change every article that uses it.

Nor do I expect each article to be updated in two years' time. I would take a "if you see one and it's convenient, add FDR" approach. After two years, adding FDR could become a wikiscaping-style project.

I DO expect that after two years, new submissions cannot use the old DR. The idea of the new system is that it will gradually replace the old, and new submissions eventually won't use it at all. Besides, a wholesale wipeout of DR is impractical and unnecessarily jarring.

That said, keeping the old DR rules on the wiki is important. So while they eventually will not see active use, they'll remain for reference and historical context.

I can't recall if this has been addressed yet since it's been a while, but are there limits to how much damage output can be put on a ship yet?

Not as envisioned by me. Since 'cinematic effect' is really the way to figure out how much damage a weapon should cause, unless a weapon is so powerful it can actually one-hit kill a craft, it's hard to actually tell how many shots it takes to decisively take out a vessel:

Unshielded example case:

Given the above, I kind of wonder if there's really an effective way of policing this beyond common sense. I'll grant that it's vague, but it's hard for me to envision such recommendations as "should not be decisively lethal as this", "should not be able to take out X number of smaller units", "should not be able to cause this to bigger units". This guideline doesn't even cover rate of fire - and there's a drastic difference between a pistol and a submachinegun even if each fire bullets that can kill people. On the bright side, it's perfectly normal for a normal human soldier to be able to take up a rocket launcher and give a tank a very bad time with it.

This strikes me more as a common sense concern for a whole package, such as a ship's entire arsenal. And then, it'd likely be on basis of how it compares with other existing unit. Just like how a GM would rule "No Timmy, you cannot carry six bazookas on you... and even less dual-wield them". So, if building a destroyer, you'd likely compare with other destroyers and try to fit in with the rest of the crowd (which SARP did a lot of earlier on).

I can say that the previous system seemed to cap on weapon DR value equal to... twice the SP of the unit. Which I personnally thought made ships over-armed. But as 'ship hit points' aren't a metric for this here, it's not a baseline that can be used. Of course, if we keep using the DR system before that at the same time, that one does have a limitation already built in it, but it's not an effective answer, only a stopgap - to the grandfathering Doshii expects to see happen.

Too soon man. Too soon.

That deep pain aside, this is honestly a concern for me, since we have had problems with people trying to game systems and gain an unfair advantage in the past. Recently even. I am very hesitant with the idea of not figuring out something a bit more concrete and reliable than simply comparing to predecessors. Unlike a person toting six bazookas, the firepower on a ship is less intuitive and more difficult to grasp in some cases since it's more abstract in some ways.

I'm not too keen on a damage guideline system that uses just fixed damage ratings versus hit points. It's nice having a general idea of how beefy/destructive things are, but it's not realistic or interesting to expect things to take a fixed number of shots before failing. Energy shields aside (I have no idea how they work), it's both more likely and more cinematic for a shot to either fail to do appreciable damage, or to cause (at least minor) crippling damage immediately, rather than accumulate in a linear fashion.

It wouldn't be too hard to have a system for determining what systems on a ship get disabled by damaging hits--that's really just a table of random results to give GMs suggestions--but determining whether something can penetrate a vessel and hit something vital in the first place is more complicated. My favourite way of doing it is by giving ships an armour rating that negates damage on a 1:1 basis, and making it so the first few cumulative hits (assuming the weapons are enough to challenge, but not deadly threaten the vessel) are only likely damage or destroy vulnerable external systems, or the armour itself.

That way, once the ship is full of holes (or when the weapons are so overpowering that they can punch right through the armour to begin with) the shots can start hitting critical systems, or destroying the ship, but won't automatically do both at once... the scenario Fred expressed would be quite possible, if the ship kept getting hit in different places, so it never got a 'destroyed' result despite technically taking 'enough damage' to destroy multiple ships, if the attacks had been better placed, and more effective.

This seems like a touchy subject. I'm not sure if anyone would like me to work on tables like this? I could keep it simple and use the current DR numbers, it'd mostly just change what DR means by replacing flat SP with armour points, structure points, and vulnerable/critical systems (which, if hit, would stop working but not reduce AP or SP directly, unless the damage was enough to overflow.) It would still depend on GMs to decide how to interpret the results, especially since they probably wouldn't be rolling dice. The tables would also need to be vague enough to cover anything within the right scale category.

I would prefer to not add complication to this, @Navian. I much appreciate your willingness to do the work; it's noticed. However, I have no problem with a "just be sensible and go with your GM" approach on max damage output.

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:

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

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.

The fact that this new thing takes massive posts to explain makes me wary about its approval. What we have nice nice, effective, and simple. If it's not broken, or even bad, why fix it?

The current system is extremely frustrating to deal with tbh. It's very limited in scope and was made to cater more to PA than anything else. I honestly feel that if a GM wants to focus on other things outside of that, they're better off simply ignoring it. That strikes me as broken.

Apples and Oranges, Raz.

What I set out to do was a "here's how this kind of armanent can amount to this kind of result depending on its target".

Cadetnewb comes in with "as a Tech mod, how do I police what kind of loadout a warship?". I answer "I'm not sure it can be done, that kind of wasn't the point". Cadetnewb went "but I keenly feel something in this regard is needed, can't something be worked out?"

So, Cadetnewb being a swell guy, I want to at least attempt to work out something. And in one post - the post you answered to - I pulled stuff out of my litteral butt to see if it works. It... kinda does, but I still have misgivings.

So, with this out of the way... @CadetNewb what did you think of what I tried to do?

Just doesn't seem like much of an improvement, at the end of the day. That's all. A lot more effort yielding few returns for the end user.

Well, no... not exactly, Fred. What I was suggesting gives armour a bigger role, which tangibly increases the importance of using the right tool for the job, whether the goal is to disable, disarm, or destroy a ship, or to just force a surrender. (There's no rules for any of that, currently.) The place where it gives power to the narrative is in defining what systems hits mean. The system linked to at the start of this thread seems less orderly and more subjective than what I'd prefer.

I meant to suggest something a little more detailed and flexible than the current system, but that is still very straightforward to use. This system is similar and it's certainly flexible, but it's not detailed or straightforward... Mostly, it just doesn't provide much guidance toward results, which is why I'd prefer to add more details. It could do with less fiddly bits, too... Does anyone know what '12.5% of expected damage' means? I can only guess.