Plumeria 2E/Chiaki 1B/Azusa Weapon Correction discussion

[Toshiro]

I've just noticed that the Plumeria 2E's Anti-Fighter Turrets and Anti-Starship Turrets are supposed to be Tier 9 and Tier 11 respectively, but are instead are marked Tier 7 and Tier 9 respectively. As such, the Plumeria 2E packs less point defense firepower than the 2D version. This is entirely my error, and correcting this would run normally run afoul of the Weapon Limitations system.

Thankfully, at the time I made the article, I marked the Plumeria 2E as a Tier 11 vessel instead of the Tier 12 vessel it just barely qualifies for (Plumeria is 254 meters, Tier 12 starts at 250 meters). This was because so much of the front of the ship was gun, I felt Tier 11 to be more appropriate for armor computations. What I'm asking for is to have the ship be Tier 11 for armor computations but be allowed to lay in between Tiers 11 and 12 for weapons explicitly to correct the Tiers of the weapons in error and have the vessel avoid downgrading its point defense from its predecessor. If I need to instead re-submit it as Tier 12, I'm willing to do so.

While the Chiaki 1B and the Azusa-class Light Gunship also suffer from this error (Tier 9 weapons mislabeled as Tier 7 and some Tier 7 weapons mislabeled as Tier 5), both have enough spare room in the numbers to correct the problems without any issues or concessions needed. I also ask for permission to correct this. I'm not sure how I could have miscategorized so many weapons at the time, but it happened.

Thoughts?

Edit: The weapon limitations article has the exact same errors for the weapons, which it uses for examples, so I must have gotten the mistakes from there. I checked the histories of the actual weapon articles in question, and there is no sign of them being upranked in firepower.

 

[Andrew]

In full support of these corrections being made. @Wes

 

[Alex Hart]

I believe the pages for these weapons to actually be misconverted, as the actual DRv3 page and Weapon Limitations page lists these weapons as tiers 7 and 9, not 9 and 11. These ratings make sense taking into account the intended purpose and titles of these weapons. (An anti-fighter weapon and an extremely rapid fire secondary anti starship gun)

While I can understand the anti-starship turret wanting to be higher tier (Though I feel that 11 is far too high for something so small) I don't believe the anti-fighter turret has any reason to be higher than tier 7.


This screenshot is from back when the examples list in DRv3 was switched to being primarily SAoY, and was the first time that the two weapons in question here were 'converted' to DRv3. The tiers we see on the pages for the Type 31 Anti-Fighter turret and Type-31 Anti-Starship turret are derived more from batch converstions where only the numbers from DRv2 were taken into account.

 

[Toshiro]

The weapon articles themselves, however, have to be accepted as the most accurate values. Deeper analysis shows that the only weapon of the three that has ever been shown as the lesser value in the wiki page history is the anti-starship one, and it even had Tier 11 and Tier 9 listed in the same article at the same time in the confusion. It seems that there were conflicting ideas of what Tier it should be. As such, I missed the Tier 9 mention because the Tier 11 mention came first on the first readthrough.

Thankfully, the fact the gun is explicitly and consistently called 'anti-starship' is a strong clue as to its intended specification since a Tier 9 weapon is by no means 'anti-starship' under DRv3. Tier 9 would just be 'Heavy Anti-Mecha'.

 

[Andrew]

To my understanding, Anti-Starship Weapons are Tier 10, Tier 11, and Tier 12. I don't see any reason to lower them down below that. Toshiro is correct, a Tier 9 weapon is not Anti-Starship, so therefore it doesn't classify these weapons.

Once again though I'm going to state - The Weapons Limitations Page is not easy to understand and appears to have some errors just like these ships and weapons do.

I also, was in understanding that the "Anti-Mecha" category included fighters and bombers.

 

[Alex Hart]

To my understanding, Anti-Starship Weapons are Tier 10, Tier 11, and Tier 12. I don't see any reason to lower them down below that. Toshiro is correct, a Tier 9 weapon is not Anti-Starship, so therefore it doesn't classify these weapons.

While it is not within the anti-starship category, it is capable of doing heavy damage to tier tens and moderate damage to tier 11s. This is quite good for something with a firing rate of 1000 rounds per minute especially considering that DRv3 operates on a per-shot basis. Tier 10 may be more accurate, however, I don't think it makes sense for a secondary turret that's small enough to be carried in fair number by medium sized starships such as the Plumeria and Urufu classes to be tier 11.

While re-reading the OP again, I noticed mention of Tier 7 weapons being mislisted as tier 5, but this very surely must be a misconversion on the page. An anti-armor weapon such as the one in question (Listed/titled as light-anti-armor but on the main DRv3 page as tier 5) would certainly not be tier 7.

I believe all three of these weapons, as well as potentially many more pre-DRv3 weapons, were converted hurriedly and without much thought put into what their tier ought to be beyond raw DRv2 to DRv3 numbers rather than the purpose of the weapon and taking factors such as ROF into account, and most ship pages that they appeared on were converted similarly, hence why they appear in the misconverted numbers more often than on the DRv3 pages that actually use them as an example.

I'm personally of the mind to trust the DRv3 page itself, as each conversion on there was done 'by hand' and with consideration put into what tier it should be rather than using the 'rough and dirty' method for DRv2 to DRv3.

The reason for these conversions being askew seemed clear enough to me; but maybe I'm just talking out of my ass or trying to cause grief; when moving from a damage rating predicated upon per-use/turn to one predicated on per-shot, a direct transfer and conversion of the per-turn number would produce higher values than each shot would actually do.)

 

[Andrew]

So this is the article in question -



Reasonably speaking, a Type 32 Light Anti-Armor Turret - should be Tier 4 "Light Anti-Armor"
A Medium Anti-Armor Turret would be Tier 5
A Heavy Anti-Armor Turret would be Tier 6

So in this case the article is wrong, cause if it was Tier 7 it would be a Light Anti-Mecha Turret, or Tier 8 a Medium Anti-Mecha Turret.

Honestly, I think the articles being used for weapons need to be overhauled. These stubs all seem to be in error.

Why can the name of the weapon be the name of the tier and they match?

 

[raz]

Thoughts?

You should just correct the mistake and note the correction in the approval threads for these ships. Wes or another Yamatai FM will either say "okay" or "no."

 

[Alex Hart]

So in this case the article is wrong, cause if it was Tier 7 it would be a Light Anti-Mecha Turret, or Tier 8 a Medium Anti-Mecha Turret.

Honestly, I think the articles being used for weapons need to be overhauled. These stubs all seem to be in error.

Why can the name of the weapon be the name of the tier and they match?

I only just realized that I was editing my last post and not writing a new one, but my explanation for what I believe went wrong with the mass-conversion work that went on a few years back is this;

I believe all three of these weapons, as well as potentially many more pre-DRv3 weapons, were converted hurriedly and without much thought put into what their tier ought to be beyond raw DRv2 to DRv3 numbers rather than the purpose of the weapon and taking factors such as ROF into account, and most ship pages that they appeared on were converted similarly, hence why they appear in the misconverted numbers more often than on the DRv3 pages that actually use them as an example.

I'm personally of the mind to trust the DRv3 page itself, as each conversion on there was done 'by hand' and with consideration put into what tier it should be rather than using the 'rough and dirty' method for DRv2 to DRv3.

The reason for these conversions being askew seemed clear enough to me; but maybe I'm just talking out of my ass or trying to cause grief; when moving from a damage rating predicated upon per-use/turn to one predicated on per-shot, a direct transfer and conversion of the per-turn number would produce higher values than each shot would actually do.)

These all absolutely need a second look with the DRv3 per-shot approach in mind (Would a general purpose AA gun really be doing tier 9 with each bolt? Would a secondary anti-starship gun really have the juice to do tier 11 damage on a good hit with each of the 16 shots it fires every single second?)

I'm personally inclined to trust the conversions that Fred did back in 2016 that are included as examples on the page.

 

[Andrew]

In all honesty, the system, in general, is anti-creativity. The writer should be what matters not a number and I think that's what messes this up so bad. As things currently stand under this system. A Light Anti-Armor Turret is Tier 4. Still not sure why we all just can't go back to being writers and being creative. I will never use this tool, it makes everything so generic, so complicated, so argumentative. Either way...Light Anti-Armor is Light Anti-Armor. So says the DRv3.

I can see why things just started being named "Anti-Starship Turret" etc, cause it really doesn't matter what it's made of anymore, or what the ammunition is. It's all just generic..

 

[Alex Hart]

I don't agree that the system is anti-creativity, there's plenty of room to be creative and play with how the damage is done, what constitutes 'possibly lethal' (Did the baddie knock out that PC's life support or his power generation, etc.), but I think that this is just a case of mistakes being made across a lot of articles because there was a time crunch and a lot of conversions were being done very fast.

I think that Fred put the Light anti-armor turret at tier 5 in the examples list because it wasn't just used to shoot down PA but also some fighters. I can possibly see that being done with a tier 5 weapon (maybe?) depending on firing rate.

 

[Andrew]

And we wonder why this system is so hard for players joining the site to understand. We name something "Light Anti-Armor Turret" and we turn around and give it a Tier rating that is not "Light Anti-Armor."

The creativity you speak of, from what I can see is the result of bickering and arguing. Statisticians trying to force creatives into a game of numbers. Again it kills the fun.

In all honesty, we've cried ourselves into a boring game of numbers and generics, where arguments put numbers that leave people questioning. And yet, again, save for a single instance - I've never seen a decent GM play with a calculator. Now I hear people arguing over DR numbers and building excel sheets, they could be roleplaying...writing stories, which is what we're supposed to be doing.

Anyway, I enforce DVR3 because it's mandatory. I will enforce it how its pages are written. Until something changes...

 

[Toshiro]

Perhaps the name 'Light Anti-Armor' used in the actual weapon name was from a time before the various heavier armors existed and predated DRv3's definition of the term? Though the same argument could be made about the 'Anti-Starship' one.

I need clarification on the specifics here so I can correct the ships and perhaps the weapon articles themselves. I am also not a fan of the DR system and strongly agree with Andrew, but I worry that having that overall argument in this thread won't accomplish anything but to derail it.

 

[Alex Hart]

It is pre-DRv3 and was converted after the fact. In terms of how GMs handle the DRv3 system and to what extend they use it, that's up to them. It's a useful tool in the toolbox to approximate roughly how much a gun will do to something, and perhaps it's become bloated over time, but I believe the basic purpose underlying it is good and useful, and in the case we're seeing here, I don't believe what's happened is an inherent flaw of the DRv3 system (Especially considering that things in DRv2 contained a lot of the same rules, but even more game-ified with SP essentially working like HP)

I think that with or without DR systems, people will still argue about "well my thing can kill your thing" or "Well a railgun shot from that mech's rifle ought to be blowing up cities with every shot because of relativity" but those won't have any answers other than "maybe" or "I guess it might". At least with DRv3 (and the other DR systems) we have a guideline for how to handle damage narratively.

 

[Andrew]

Star Army should make sense to its players and be easy and fun to use. Sorry, nothing fun in anything that's been written in this thread.

Read everything above from the perspective of a new player who wants to make a ship or a weapon and RP it. Tell me where anything above would make them want to achieve that goal?

If we are going to use this system, the answer to "What DR is this?" should be apparent to everyone and easy to come to a conclusion on. It should be something that old players and new players should be able to look at and the vast majority of them give the same answer quickly. Not well maybe if you were to argue it the DR number would be better.

We want new people to be able to design ships, design weapons, and places... to be able to have an adventure. The system can't be obscure or hard to understand or subject to vast differences in opinion.

 

[Andrew]

I spent some time thinking about this last night, and I will put here what I put in the staff channel this morning --

I think that we should sit down and find an easy to understand and consistent solution that all players can understand at a glance. I think that stands in general for all of SARP. I spent my real-life career designing flow systems for the company I worked for. Each system had to be tested, meaning the classification (in my case car rental process) had to be replicable, meaning myself, my boss, and our QA rep had to be able to come up with the code that was the same every single time. Meaning the system was proofed. If we as staff, our mods, and our players can't look at a system on SARP and get the same answer, then the system is flawed, and a flawed system....is in danger of turning off future players.

 

[Wes]

I approve of the updates as Toshiro suggested. The confusion comes because DRv3 essentially has more tiers than DRv2 did. Feel free to rename the turrets if necessary to prevent confusion.