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The Limits of Techology

Drew : You could actually look at that two ways. Definitely, taking hits and damage on your own without some sort of stat system is more fun, at least from my time in Ayenee. But there were also a lot of people who were complete asses about it and never took hits at all. Of course, it might be different when you're talking about starship combat instead of ground-based fights.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of some sort of system like Kotori suggested, but since the little RP I do is usually on planets, I'm not really in a position to say anything about ship battles.
 
I think that it is a good idea, however not everyone would agree with it so you would have to talk it over with them.
 
I wouldn't mind seeing a beta of a stat system (I've been using something like that as a slim template for ship design elsewhere) as long as it dosen't get in the way of the freeformness of the role play. This is a freeform RP and as such we aren't supposed to be checking distance, charting movement angles, and roleing dice to determine critical damages al la battlefleet gothic but using a ship stat template to get an overview of the ships wouldn't be bad.
 
They don't need to be. Personally, I'm just interested in knowing just how much a weapon could hurt another ship by knowing it's relative hitting power. Knowing how effective shields and the ship's hull as well.

The structural point thingie I mentioned earlier doesn't really work because ship's could very well be destroyed in various ways, depending on where they are actually hit. I think that to go better in hand with the preference 'freeform roleplayers' have, it should be ratings based on thresholds - you know, a guide, not a straightjacket.
 
Check out anything by dream pod 9 (heavy gear, jovian chronicals, mecha D20 ect.) or battlefleet gothic/man of war from citidel. If you are going to think up a numbers system for ships that is where you should start.
 
I like it but it would take a long time to get it approved and there could be a few people who disagree, wanting to kep it the same.
 
It's hard to come up with any values when the actual specifics of the weapons aren't known though. Probably not a job for me XD
 
With the amount of ships and weapons we have it would take a very long time to make up the values for them, I am not sure that this would happen.
 
Ship protection is mostly based on shields, CDD/CFS and armor while weapons do either light, moderate, heavy, very heavy or 'total annihiliation' type damage.

As long as you know what is what, it shouldn't be TOO difficult. Thing is, the best person to know how strong 'stuff' is would be Wes... so, I could try pulling out numbers out of my butt all day, it still doesn't mean I'd get the real values right since I don't REALLY understand the scope of the weapons' effects and the protections ships have.

Which is the point of the whole exercise. Understanding.
 
I'd be willing to chart it all out.
 
Could it be more of an indication? Meaning they fit roughly into these boundries, but you have to consult the greater detail of the weapons for the actuall play itself. This would mean the players would have a rough idea what was going on, and even some battles could be done using the template system, but at its basic it's still using figures?
 
You know, now that I'm thinking of something on a comparative scale... this could turn up to be not so complicated and remain pretty much the guideline it was before, except there would be a clearer understanding of just what sort of damage 'heavy' damage would stand for here.

Right now, I can think of 2 things to pay attention to for the ships, and that's :
  • A Hull value to signify how generally tough and armored the vehicle is. Should work for power armor up to big capital ships...
  • A Shield value that would act as a buffer for damage. Damage recieved would be reduced by the shield rating (assuming the ship's shields are in good condition - shield can weaken and should still go down after it's ship takes a significant amount of punishment).
And then, there would be weapons. For the sake of the content of this post, I won't bother with their special abilities (if any) and scale their damage ratings so :

  • Very Light (1)
    Light (2-3)
    Moderate (4-6)
    Heavy (7-8)
    Very Heavy (9)
    Massive (10+)
Now, when an actual strike would be made on a vessel with a said weapon, the shield would first come into play, then, the remaining damage would be applied against the hull and we could take that result to judge the probable outcome of an attack based on the difference between the two values. Like so :

  • Damage caused is...

    Negligible if the damage is 4 less than the hull value
    Minor if the damage is 2 or 3 less than the hull value
    Average if the damage is less than 1 to more than 1 of the hull value
    Severe if the damage exceed the hull value by 2 to 3
    Crippling if the damage exceeds the hull value by more than 3

So, um, how about I make an example with that?

Attacking ship's weaponry :
- Big Cannon : Heavy Damage (7)
- Not-So-Big Lasers : Moderate Damage (5)

Defending ship's resistances :
- Hull rating : 5
- Shield rating : -2

The attacking ship closes in, opening the battle with a shot of it's Big Cannon. The Big Cannon's shot strikes the defending ship, whamming it hard with a 7 damage value, but the defending ship has shields which reduce that by 2, making the end result a 5... so, the defending ship's shields blunted an attack which could have dealt it grave damage and ends up having the struck part of its hull smoldering and twisted from the hit... but that's better than a hull breach.

The attacking ship turns and makes a broadside attack, firing it's Not-So-Big Lasers at its hated nemesis and scores a few hits. Of course, the defending ship still has its shields up and strong, each hit sees its potential weakened and only minor damage is scored, leaving tracks of superheated scorchmarks on the ship's hull.
Click to expand...

I hope this was a good enough example to illustrate what I mean. ^_^ Things is that there'd be a more clearly drawn line inbetween say power armor (hull 1, no shields), scoutships (Hull 3, shield -1), gunships (Hull 5, shield -2) and battleships (Hull 8, shield -4). It takes really beefy weapons to score significant hits on a Chiharu-class flagship, but there'd be no way a Yui-class scoutship would stand up to the same kind of abuse!

I'm just mentioning the basics though. I make no mention of how shields would weaken, of how anti-shield missiles and aether beams would affect them. A very damaged ship's hull rating could even disminished from extended battle (recieving many times moderate or light damage does take it's toll)... but that sort of stuff could very well be left to the GM's interpretation too.

This is meant as a guideline after all XD
 
The GMs should be able to ascertain technological differences without needing a scale. This includes comparative system damages. Regardless, I doubt most of us need to be held to it either way.

I'm not really seeing the need for it, all it serves is making a convuluted process that is already ineffective being made more complicated.
 
Rei said:
The GMs should be able to ascertain technological differences without needing a scale. This includes comparative system damages. Regardless, I doubt most of us need to be held to it either way.

I'm not really seeing the need for it, all it serves is making a convuluted process that is already ineffective being made more complicated.
Click to expand...
Convuluted process?! There is no process right now! It's just reckoning by the GM, and not all GMs think alike.

It's a very easy stat system, and only for starship battles. I don't see any problems but I do see great benefits.
 
I've not encoutered the same problems. It's fine without it already, it comes down to GMs being able to pull their weight in terms of things happening in their own plots. It's not broken, it doesn't need fixing.

I'm only seeing pedantic arguements between other members out of this, frankly.
 
In therory it sounds like a good idea but I agree with Uso on this one, it would change the stucture of starship battles, and we do not really need to.
 
No stat system. The point was that you weren't sure about what was going on in space battles, right? The exact details? But would your character know anyway? If the character wouldn't know, you having the knowledge will likely only lead you to metagame and only be slightly beneficial if at all. Even if it's not that complicated, if it's not exactly needed, there's not a lot of reason to implement it.
 
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