 May 3, 2012 - 9:04am | Much like physicist have had little success with developing an unified field theory I 'm not holding my breathe on this one. At any rate three are effectively three or more systems of armor in game. First there is essentially ablative armor as hit points: defense suits and screens that simply function as added hit points. SECONDLY there is the target penetration number of the AD vehicle combat rules where the amount of dice of damage done to a vehicle is added to 2d10 and if the number is high enough then damage penetrates or hurts the vehicle. THIRDLY there is the system for space suit armor which is non ablative and simply has percentages of damage stopped upto and including 100% for some weapons. On top of that there is a few odd items in the SFman like flak vests and power armor all doing their own thing. So ... in the interest of the KISS rule what might we do for a unified armor rule? My gut feeling is the rules for personal defenses are the most commonly used and most familiar to the widest audience in our fan society so they could be a good place to start. However thinking about how real world armored vehicles function where the armor may deflect 10 hits completely or one shot could penetrate and slag the whole vehicle and crew, there may be a value to keeping the target penetration number of the vehicle combat system. I definitely think that space suit armor should be brought into line with either ablative or target penetration number systems. To me is seems the least like the rest of the AD rules. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 3, 2012 - 9:15am | A side note: I don't like the vehicle damage system as written since many weapons have little chance of damaging a vehicle at all. It could use a tweaking. For example if you kept the target penetration number system but lowered the number for damage to affect civilian vehicles, and had a corporate grade as well as a military grade of armor with higher penetration numbers that might be workable. In order to prevent vehicle combat from becoming an endless round of dice rolling; damage dice that fail to penetrate reduce the penetration number thus making succeeding shots more likely to penetrate and do damage. Just kicking around ideas here. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 3, 2012 - 6:18pm | I think your mentioning optional rules found in early Sfman and in the AD Remastered book; they are different on purpose depending on which you'd like to use in your games. For vehicles check out two different damage methods in this article; Non-Civilian Duty Vehicles, #15-p26
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 May 3, 2012 - 9:34pm | I Don't think that there should be a separate grade for corporate and military armor. Usually Corporate either creates the products used by the military therefore its the same grade or has the connections and resources to purchase mil-spec equipment. There might be a light armor plating that is available for civilian vehicles for like bank courier type armored cars / transports and body guard type details. However I was a corporate body guard I wouldn't settle for anything less than mil-spec equipment (after all your life often depends on your skills and equipment) |
May 4, 2012 - 4:47am | Civilian and military grades are obvious and recognizable but I felt that there should be a middle ground that was readily accessible for civilians (& PC's). Casting around for what that grade should be called the only thing that presented was corporate or mercenary grade. You argument bears even more weight when it comes to mercenaries and mil-spec. So merchanary grade makes no sense. As to corporate grade, I agree with you about RW corporate security but in setting corporations are different and I think people will get the use of corporate grade (equating it with medium in the light, medium and heavy spectrum). However we could use unarmored, armored and military grades with the caveat that the first two are considered civilian grades but for some reason I just like civilian, corporate, and military. Perhaps in the frontier the evolution of the "corporate" grade came from the vrusk- it is nothing more than the same grade of armored vehicle that humans were building and calling armored but because of vrusk business culture and an early vrusk trade house pushing the use of corporate grade in their show room the designation stuck. Most world outlaw the owner ship of military grade weapons and armor (though that statement has implications for space ships). I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 5, 2012 - 2:56am | From my experience, mil-spec does not always mean quality in anything. But I agree with AZ_Gamer, that corporate and mercenary would want mil-spec armor and equipment. What about a designation that goes, light civilian, heavy civilian, and military? That would let you know that the first 2 are available to most everyone and the top is military only. It really is semantics though, whatever you want to call it, it is 3 levels of armor. |
May 5, 2012 - 5:26pm | In the real world the grade pretty much goes like this 1. Civillian (Both High & Low Quality As Karxan pointed out so well that there are some civillian products that are superior to their military counterparts). 2. Law Enforcement Grade: Its a little harder to come by than civillian grade because you often have to know where to look and sometimes need to have credentials to purchase some items that could pose a public safety issue. This grade usually has both civillian quality and millitary specification quality but may not include the really powerful items carried by the millitary. For example in the law enforcement quality you may be able to find a high quality full auto rifle but you may not be able to get a sub machine gun. And Finally 3. Military Grade, not necessarily better than civi grade but definitely designed specifically for warfare. No need to buy the upgrade kit this baby already comes full auto. |
 May 6, 2012 - 8:54pm | One other grade is a gray area and very limited. This is items which were produced but not accepted into service and which are available. Whenever a contract for a new item comes up there are always more than one company trying to win it. The losers will often try to market their products anyway. The reasons they lost the contract does not always have to do with the product being inferior. It could be for any of many reasons even that it was superior but not cost effective to mass produce. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
May 8, 2012 - 3:49am | OK so we have a lot of examples from the real world and it would seem some consensus on there being a rough gradation of civilian unarmored and armored vehicles and then military armored. Militaries don't buy every vehicle at the top armor quality and sometimes only purchase light armor so that a general's car might simply be the standard available hovercar. Bringing things back to the start of the thread it would seem that we there is a general acceptance of three grades of armor with difference of opinion on semantics for what they should be be called. For game purposes we need a designation for then as each will have stats or game mechanics attached to them and the designation simply facilitates communication. The simple designations would be unarmored or civilian for work-a-day Joe blow takes the kids to soccer practice in it, common to rental agencies, and even common to law enforcement. Next is civilian armored for vehicles that the military would call lightly armored, they may lack features the military considers a must like sloped armor but they are available to the public though not usually to private individuals I.e. companies and corporations. Then military grade armor and vehicles are your main battle tanks and other heavily armored vehicles expected to enter battle which are not generally available to the public. So that was civilian unarmored, civilian armored, and military; which follows real world realities for the most part. Would it not be simpler to call them civilian, corporate, and military? In a setting with the sorts of corporations Star Frontiers has the corporate designation makes sense from a number of perspectives yet it doesn't really suggest that every corporation vehicle is armored. Likely that 95% of all corporate vehicles are civilian unarmored for company cars and delivery vehicles, and such. Unless someone has another name or the majority think using the corporate designation is a bad idea? In game fluff could be that its simply the name that stuck even though when Streel buys a tank it buys military grade, baby. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 8, 2012 - 5:05pm | A side note: I don't like the vehicle damage system as written since many weapons have little chance of damaging a vehicle at all.
Well, consider that
many of the weapons also have little chance of damaging people too. The fact that an unarmored character with average STA can survive a point blank machine gun burst (10d10 average of 50 points) speaks volumes to this. It's not the vehicle rules that need the tweaking  |
 May 22, 2012 - 3:35am | yes... I concur there is a RW aproximation of; I. Civil II. Security III. Mili-Spec High Grade Civil is equal to Mid-range Mili-spec, and Low Grade Mili-Spec is roughly equal to High-Civil/Mid-Range Sec... the whole concept is largely abstract and subjective, and means nothing outside of actual products... any concept of a "capability limitation" on a category of "legal civilian usable equipment" is largely a "cosmetic illusion" in every country... most cases in the RW, any work-a-day Joe Blow just doesn't bother to own anything he could legally own... and the statement "they are available to the public though not usually to private individuals I.e. [only avaliable to] companies and corporations." assumes that "non-natural persons" (non-living corporations and organizations made of work-a-day Joe Blows) are attributed with more; inherent rights, discretionary ethics, and judicial morals, than any average "natural person" (an actual living being with a self-aware brain) this is backward thinking... and nothing like any RW example of legislation on; public safety, ownership regulation, and justified due-force. just my toss in the ring... mind you, I do like my Cyberpunk 2020... I just don't consider many of the presumptions made of a "corporate ruled society & impotent government body" very realistic... but I still enjoy the genre. http://www.podiobooks.com/title/beautiful-red it is really more a matter of; I. what most comfortably secure civilized people own... II. what people can own if they have a need to own it... III. what could be found or made if you are lucky or very skilled, but most people will hardly ever see... (and in the case of The Frontier IV. what can be dug out of a dead xeno's clutches but isn't even reproducible at current tech levels...) and The Frontier is a very... very, very... immensely large, wilderness... and it is kinda difficult to go around policing ownership of equipment that isn't being misused, when just tagging known miscreants and suspected nut-jobs that pass through the security bottle-neck points, is so much less of a logistics hassle to the already over-extended and over-worked policing agencies. that is a general view of legitimacy & availability as an over-all approach... obviously most people just can't even afford to own a military tank... operational costs alone would break Joe Blows credit, never mind finding a cheap used and striped down surplus store and then having the sales-sathar hypnotizing him into buying it... but any weekend-warrior type with a skilled wrench-hand and a full automotive garage, has the potential of turning a civilian soccer-mom's mini-van into an extended-duration-mission off-road-capable small-rocket-stopper with a full tactical-comp&nav-display, and without even worrying about making it "look" like a military vehicle... it can easily still "look" civilian. what you seem to be calling "military grade vehicle armor" is (cough cough) largely aesthetics (I exaggerate a little, but please, hear out my point), slopes and heavy-box reactive panels are not making as much of the carry over into RW designs of next-gen military models for any other reason than it "looks" military and they "believe" they need it, the rules of the battlefield have been changing while the aesthetics of some RW militaries have been stuck in the "Great Wars" (I know few organizations capable of showing such sentimental emotions as deeply as the military), meanwhile the materials and engineering designs that modern high-grade high-tech armors are capable of being made from are available cheaply on the open market... I personally see The Frontier being in a situation that exaggerates these RW tendencies of available material and a technical knowledge-base being openly available to the common Joe, and the streamlining of "military grade" equipment into lighter, faster, maneuverable, designs that can be ported in small-space sensitive lifters and planet-hoppers... or focused on immobile deep crust battle bunker fortresses capable of holding off orbital assaults for many months... years... generations! and... there is often more than one way to "Skin" a C.A.T. (Civilian Armored Tank)... Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 22, 2012 - 4:44am | As usual Spiritcoyote has put a lot of thought into his post. I would however dispute one small point concerning corporations not being able to buy stuff that regular citizens cannot buy. While i would be very surprised to discover that the Microsoft, Pepsi or Duncan Donuts corporation own any military grade hardware like armored vehicles or weapons that would trigger a visit from the ATF if it was Joe Blow citizen who owned it; however i'm quite sure that a corporation like Black Water owns quite a bit of stuff that would trigger a party with more than a frew alphabet soup federal agencies if it was you and me in possession of it. So while it probably doesnt happen much there is certainly enough RW examples of corporations buy owning equipment that is not considered civilian legal that i feel we can included that idea in the game. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 22, 2012 - 5:02am | Alright, we side track a little here, let me bring the discussion back around, imagine we're the game designers tasked with the long over due revision of SF. First addition had extra "hit points" in the form of defense suits and screen and had space suit armor that came with a list of percentages of damage it would stop and the there were vehicles that had an effective penetration number system though the first edition rules did not call it such. We're mindful of the enduring popularity of the game and figure that radical change to the defense suit and screen systems might turn off some of the fan base so while we may tweek that we dont want to toss it out. On the table at this design meeting is the question what would be the best way to unify the system of armor and defenses. Meeting has been openned for brainstorming- fire away. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 22, 2012 - 12:47pm | surprised? Would you be surprised that Disney Corporation owns; Small Assault Tanks, APCs, a couple-few Armed and Armored Helicopters, and a few Brigades worth of personnel authorized and trained in the use of heavy weapons such as man-portable SAMs... all in a Security Division that by head-count, gear, and training, can compare with at least a small country? And realizing this an Entertainment Company... what would be surprising of any other? or that there are some eccentrics in every country (including America) that do own operational military vehicles, a few keep them on their large estates, others just for sport and conversational topic? My statement was not to say that corporations can't or don't... but that the way the law works (at least in theory and in front of an honest judge in most countries...) is that corporations and organizations are not "natural persons" and therefore do not have more rights than the individual "natural persons" that make up the Joe Public and Working Citizens that those corporations are chartered to serve. yes... technically anything a corporation is allowed to do, an individual person is most likely going to be allowed to do, as no incorportated organization gets "extra" favors, but in some cases may get exemptions based on a concept of some "irrelevant civil responsibility" or an "inability for the incorporated entity to comply with an equivalence of the expected behavior of a natural person"... however... not all sovereign given rights extended to a natural person are automatically extended to just any "organization of persons" that constitute a "non-natural person"... organizations in any governmental system are almost invariably considered "lesser entities", neither equal to nor equivalent with any of natural people recognized by the state, but subservient to the state and often by extension, if not in some direct democratic effect, to the legitimately recognized citizenry. HOWEVER... this only really holds true in a Human mentality, Vrusk are obviously less concerned with concepts of individual rights over the rights of the "incorporated entities" that employ social groups who identify it as a social hive of mutual resource management and protection... and Yazirians, Ifshnit, and Osakar don't have normal corporations (by Human standards of "normal") anyway, rather something a bit more like Clan Cartels, Multi-Guilds, and [Untranslatable Text Omitted] are the natural organization environments. the major prohibitive factor of owning a tank is cost not legality, initial and maintenance costs are large, and open market supply is much lower than demand... and the cost-to-benefit ratio is just not very good for Dunkin Donuts to make the investment. Microsoft and Paris Hilton otoh, can fudge the books and afford it without batting an eye. But even the (frequently over-estimated) Pirates of Black Water do not own any Air Superiority Fighters and need to rely on special favors, time-sharing, and rent-a-jet opportunities. the ATF does not exist to take your toys away, just to make sure you are not using them to scare the neighborhood kids... or run over granny at the road crossing... if you hit someone with your baseball bat, they will be just as quick to remove it from your dangerous hands... Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 22, 2012 - 12:47pm | ...side-track disengaged... my preference can be summed up as; I hate HP... but as an active defensive energy screen the bubble-pop effect of HP at least makes the best sense. cloth suits, hard armor, and physical cover, is best as a damage reduction system with an ablative coefficient rating. I would treat vehicles the same, but with higher reduction and depletion coefficients, making small arms fire "ping-off" more often than "punch through"... and weapons gain multipliers to damage done to targets below their scale level... and I would incorporate a damage scaling system as seen in Mekton or Starwars D6: Character Scale (People and Robots) Light Vehicle Scale (Motorbikes, Power Armors, and Minivans) Heavy Vehicle Scale (Hummers, Big-Rigs, and Tanks) Ship and Building Scale (can even use the Hull Class as scale tiers from here up) oh... and I would just make everything based on a percentage damage capacity. 100% Functional - 0% Functional and thus have a quick way to apply the death spiral to characters and equipment. all functionality (stats) reduce by the equivalent percentage of base normal maximums as damage is accrued. Everything from a character's scores, to a battery's SEU capacity, to a vehicle's top speed... that's my quick set of considerations for a (re)-design philosophy... trying to keep a tie into the percentage-based asthetics already in place, and not change the basic structure of the different systems too much is a high-goal for me too... yep, blast away, I am sure there were some controversial ideas there...  Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 23, 2012 - 12:35am | and I would incorporate a damage scaling system as seen in Mekton or Starwars D6: Character Scale (People and Robots) Light Vehicle Scale (Motorbikes, Power Armors, and Minivans) Heavy Vehicle Scale (HumVees, Big-Rigs, and Tanks) Ship and Building Scale (can even use the Hull Class as scale tiers from here up) Fixed that for ya. I've seen numerous civilian Hummers wreck and they get mangled just as efficiently as Civics do. ;) |
May 23, 2012 - 4:33am | So as I read Spirit's post the essence of it is: 1. all protective devices have a chance to deflect damage 2. the more it deflects damage the less functional it becomes. (ablative) 3. In the case of a character being hit by the main gun from a tank the weapon would have a damage modifier making the effect more horrific (no saving throws on the D20, [cough]) My first thoughts is that the original screen tech in AD works this way- stoping 50% to 100% of damage in exchange for power which by default is actually ammo too. This would call for a change in the mechanics of how suit technology would work. In keeping with the idea to not make too many changes that would call for something similar to the rules for space suit armor or to vehicle damage system. My gut feeling is that I dont like the space suit armor in that its is actually too powerful and too much to keep track of. Suppose body armor functioned like vehicle armor- character gets shot with a weapon and the suit is of a type that could interdict the damage so the attacker rolls the number of dice of damage his weapon does and if the total is 15 or greater then the damage penetrates and goes against the targets END. If the suit deflects the damage then the target number (20) is reduced by the number of dice it deflects. So that if the weapon did 3 dice of damage and the armor deflected it then the new target number would be 17 thus making it more likely that successive shots penetrate. However a character could take 3,4 or even 5 shots from small arms and suffer no damage other then his body armor looks marked up and is in sore need of replacement before the next fire fight. So there would be a roll to hit, a roll to penetrate and a roll for damage (or the dice rolled for penetration would be With the above suit/body armor mechanic screen technology would need to be handled differently too so that every thing is streamlined and that you dont have two systems for handling damage. The way a ballistic screen could work is that it reduces the number of dice of damage for a power expenditure. it the dice of damage would have been 3 the screen reduces it to 2 for so many SEU. With scalling of weapons if the weapon was of a higher scale then it gets extra dice against the defenses of the target or if it was hand weapons against light armor then the hand weapon loses one dice of damage since its going agianst the higher scale of protection. Thus a semi automatic pistol firing one shot will just ping off but a autorifle on burst will do something just not the same that it would do against a man. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 23, 2012 - 5:44am | Oooops just realized that i forgot to address % of functionality from Spirit's post. Not sure what to do with that as we dont really track % of functionality in a charactrr and where we would would be on his endurance which is in and of itself a % of 100. The idea has some appeal and with a tool kit having a specified ammount of resources instead of the list of stuff the AD rule book specified you could tell a player that he just doesnt have enough resources on hand to fix something damaged to 30% functionality. Still im unsure about integrating this into the above ideas seemlessly and whether i want yet one more thing to track, especially for a SEU clip though it makes more snse for a vehicle which is likely to have its own character sheet. Having an ablative target number certainly simulates the % of functionalit and damage that penetrates a vehicle could get applied to internal components in much the same way as it was in car wars. Percentage of functionality could be handled much like the check off boxes of a Car Wars vehicle sheet. Each box is simple a d10 of damage. If the parabattery take a dice of damage you check off one box and the vehicle loses 10 kph from its top speed. After 3-4 hits its totally destoyed. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 23, 2012 - 6:48pm | touché ShadowShack! Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 23, 2012 - 7:04pm | Still, nothing will fly if you had to be a math major to play the game, unless of course you are a math major. Thought you confused yourself? Part of you explanation sounded like an explantion of the column shift table from Zebs and thats when I checked out. I was suddenly struck by the fact that most players only want math on the level of -15 STA or +10 STA. Not even sure if the target penetration number mechanic is fast play enough to win anyone over. Might need a rethink. I'm going to go read something else for awhile to let the brain relax and see what sudden connection pops up. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 23, 2012 - 7:15pm | really?!?? !!! ?!?? I thought you would have gotten where I was going when you mentioned the Car Wars connection!  I was showing-my-work so as to be understood...  since being abstract had previously left blank expressions...  The check boxes in Car Wars, Cyberpunk, even Battletech and Starfleet Battles... it is just the math with an OS-wrapper. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 23, 2012 - 7:58pm | really?!?? !!! ?!?? I thought you would have gotten where I was going when you mentioned the Car Wars connection! I was showing-my-work so as to be understood... since being abstract had previously left blank expressions... The check boxes in Car Wars, Cyberpunk, even Battletech and Starfleet Battles... it is just the math with an OS-wrapper. I love check boxes, slide rules scare me. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 27, 2012 - 8:11pm | I don't own a slide rule... I do have an abacus... but, I am no math-wiz... fortunately calculators don't scare me... I prefer to stick with the first basic seven of the first seven grades, (Subtraction, Addition, Multiplication, Division, Fractions, Decimals, and Percentages) and I love check boxes also... My own complaint with the Damage and Defence System given in the rules is not the variant types of Defensive Methods... The idea that there are a variety of defensive systems is realistic enough, even if the implementation isn't simple... The largest fault I find is how the math is scrambled and not unified into a streamlined method, as the same damage resolution could require the initial damage to be passed through a fraction reduction, a percentage reduction, and a decimal multiplication... I would prefer to simplify this to one method for all occasions, and my choice is to stick with additive percentages or decimal multiplications -; to be in-line with the expected mathematics in the rest of the Star Frontiers System -; and reinterpret the other methods into that Unified Method System. I spent a couple days looking harder at the damage rules between pg18 and 25... and the column shift table, as was suggested... there is no comparison to the later. My suggestion streamlines the Defensive Systems into a single unified system, uses whats already written as the basis, does not heavily alter anything, and makes the math far more comprehensible and consistent... but it is only a first thought, and sits unrefined. My only suggested addition to the R.A.W. is the %Damage System, and is an optional add-on that works, but is not required. Scaling, which is already partially covered in Structural Damage Capacity on pg15, just requires some expanding... as written an average character's stamina gives an Effective Structural Damage Potential that can be found as equivalent to a Fortified Door or Light Vehicle... legit or not? I would say not... and feel this needs to be looked at a little closer if any rule adjustments are being made... Other than that; my previous examples gave melee damages that are about twice the potential damage of such attacks given in the rules... oops... Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 July 14, 2012 - 11:11pm | Food for thought: I don't know what you guys know about the MRAP (Mine resistant ambush protected) family of vehicles, but the Taliban don't seem to have very much stuff to penatrate the Armor on them. The RPG can sometimes penatrate the thinner places like the battery box or the engine compartment, But not the crew compartment. Most of thier Homemade bombs IEDs (improvised explosive devises) do little more than take an axle off.... if that, or maybe Blow the engine off the front end. ( those were the bigger ones) Thier answer is this: Build bigger IEDs. The biggest one we encountered was 250 pounds of Homemade explosives. (fertilzer and fuel oil) It blew one of our MRAPs apart. It did not "penatrate" the armor with projectiles. It cracked the crew compartment into 3 pieces and blew both axles and the engine off. The 2 Guys in the front seats were killed and the guys in the back (gunner and dismounts) all had broken arms or legs of one type or another. It was ugly. This is a truck built with crew survivability in mind.It is about 38000 pounds and most of it armor. Most of the armor is protecting the crew. Figure out how that would work out in game terms. Penatration is a factor, but so is the size of the bombs. While most SF Characters are using firearms or lasers or Gyrojets, what about that guy who lays 100 kilos of TD-19 in hole in the road. And keep in mind that TD-19 is a High explosive not a homemade explosive. Hit something hard enough and it will break. In an RPG it is not likely I admit.... unless your PC's get involved in something like Laco's war. But there is always that chance. What do you think? The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 15, 2012 - 5:53am | I think we need a system that is playable, feels half assed realistic, is unified in that there is one type of armor for space suits, one for vehicle and one for personel each with their own game mechanic and some of them wonky. I suppose I would be ok with a retune of the existing systems, and even a merging of space suit armor with the defense suits. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 15, 2012 - 10:02am | something simple would be best. proposal. Penatration (P) subtracted from Armor value (AV). if the integer is zero or less, STA damage is taken. If the integer is 1 or greater no damage occurs. A larger caliber or higher velocity weapon would of course have a higher penatration value. Different munitions may have different values as well. A civilian skeinsuit would have an armor value and the military one could have more or less depending on the manufacturer. Laser rifles and pistols would of course ignore the skiensuit but would have to penatrate an albedo suit or screen. Keep in mind that most non-player non adventuring characters are not walking around in armor all the time. That would be paranoia. I keep thinking of more stuff as I write this, so I may have to get back to you. As for vehicles... sheet metal does not stop bullets but armor plate does. As to the idea that you take damage away from armor until you do penatrate.... this was good when I was a kid. Now that I am older and wiser it seens silly to me. Example: I could shoot at a tank all day with with a shotgun or rifle and never never penatrate the armor. Under some systems the tank would have a stamina rating of some sort call it struture or whatever. Do enough damage even with a rifle and you will eventually penatrate. Reality:That stuff don't happen; you could shoot at 1/2 inch steel armor plate all day with a 7.62mm machinegun and never penatrate it. However a .50 cal/12.7mm will go right through that same armor plate. I am going to do some research and try to come up with something realistic that is still simple and playable. I hope this makes sense to you all. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 15, 2012 - 11:46am | Side Note: Mil-Spec With the advent of the ISO certifications I have found that most civilian Equipment is actually tougher than the supposedly really tough milspec crap they have been foisting off on us to use in combat. Why? Lowest bidder is why. Crappy quality control standards that go into milspec. Milspec is not really better anymore. They are a set of standards that worked 20 years ago when nobody else (with a few exceptions like NASA) had any standards at all. Milspec has become a joke in the military. "oh it's military spec... better be careful or it will break" All it accomplishes these days is make everything more expensive. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 15, 2012 - 12:48pm | I'm thinking that the best and simplest way to go is grades of weapons and grades of protection. Within this there will be a lot of simplification for easy of play. For example kinetic handheld weapons and pistols would be grades A, rifles would be grade B, and heavy weapons (hvy machine gun or recoiless rifle) would be grade C (the system can continue to scale up at need). Then a defense is graded for optimal defense agaisnt at type of weapon. For example a skien suit is probably optimal against hand held melee and pistols, less then optimal against rifles and pretty much you gonna kiss your but goodby against hvy weapons. We codify what optimal defense is in game terms is as well as sub- optimal and super optimal and then each new piece of equipment is graded A,B,C and the game mechanics take over. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 17, 2012 - 10:11pm | I have Been doing some real world research and have found several different types of armor for various applications. To put this simply, I can not find a unified game mechanic that will work with every type of armor out there. The characteristics of the different methods of protection make that almost impossible if you want to keep the game as realistic as possible. However if you want to dumb it down for the sake of quick easy play a GM should feel free to do so. Types of Protection: Ablative armor/ shields or screens. Examples in game: Albedo screens and skien suits. Real world: the heat shields NASA used for reentry. Ceramic trauma plates used in modern body armor (good for 1 to 3 bullets Such as the IBA (interceptor Body Armor) or IOTV (improved Outer Body Armor) with ESAPI (Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert) plates) Deflective armors. through strength deflects incomming projectiles or beams. Armor plates used typicaly on armored vehicles like Tanks, APCs or old battleships. Also the Metal Trauma plate used on Police style bullet proof vests. In game example: Reflective Hull Reactive armors. typicaly good for 1 use. it stops incomming projectiles by reacting against it(exploding outward) to block incomming weaponry. Electronic defenses. Try to keep guided missiles from striking targets at all. Try to blind a shooter with dazzling lights or loud noises to painful to hear, so that he will fail to fire or miss. Thats just the basics. Dragon skin is the most advanced body armor available in the US inventory. It is not even close to the SF skien suit wich is ablative in nature. The dragon skin is deflecive; It stops bullets from penetrating the body. However the bullets still cause blunt force trauma. While it is good that they don't penatrate the body a person can still be killed by a bullet that bludgeons him to death by caving in his chest. Witch is why we still use the IBA and IOTV. Short answer: Too many kinds of Armor with differing characteristics for one unified theory. This is just my Humble opinion. Take the description of what the armor is or does and use it in role play. It will keep the players guessing and add variety to the game. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 18, 2012 - 7:35am | @ dmoffet- while you were researching the real world I've been musing over the mechanics we have and thinking some things over and musing about what might work Grades of armor and grades of weapons Weapons would be graded like this Grade A is usually pistols, grade B is rifles, grade C is heavy weapons Grades of vehcile armor would be Unarmored- typically commercial sold mass produced vehciles for the civilian market. their skin doesnt stop projectiles but is good against sonic beam weapons Grade A, Sonics grade B will bust a window (aiming at a window will effectively be the same as aiming at a character riding in a vehcile-see combat modifier table) Grade C sonic weapons will damage the vehicle. there has been a lot of debate concerning grades of armor and not much concensus from a game point of view I think 3 grades works best- call it unarmored, light armor, hvy armor OR civilian, corporate, military the basic idea is we need three names; personally I like civ/corp/mil naming convention simply because SF is a game with lots of mega corps I know mil spec doesn't mean better but within the society of the Frontier with four races the idea is that one name came to denote a whole class or grade of armor- kind of like the word Xerox & Xeroxing came to refer to photocopying no mater who the manufacturer of the photocopier is. With a view that militaries that developed armored vehicles during the industrial age sought heavier and heavier armor the grade known as military has come to denote the heaviest armor available reguardless of who's vehicles its on- PGC almost certainly fielded corporate owned vehicles for Laco's War with military grade armor. Corporate grade could have evolved as a name from say vrusk companies having a penchant for security vehicles that were not as costly as military vehciles but better then civilian vehicles. For gaming purposes i think we need to codify these three grades for three different levels of action in an AD game. 1) PCs grab a rental car in Port Loren and have a chase where weapons are used- that vehicle is a civilian/unarmored vehicle and the results of combat should reflect that 2) characters are on an expedition to Voltunrus or Alcazzar and have an explorer to run around in- no way that vehicle would be heavy/military grade armor but its concievable that it would have some light/corporate grade armor or be a civilian/unarmor grade but with the reinforcing dicussed latter. 3) characters are Port Loren Police responding to a riot in the slum known as Rook Hill or they are responding to an emergency like a space shuttle crashed into the PGC tower- they take out the departments lightly armored explorer that was purchased for just this sort of event. its more or less the same as the explorer in number 2 but painted black and optimized for police operations 4) characters are Royal Guard or Land Fleet sent against the sathar or corporate mercenaries in a corporate war - they have vehicles with light to heavy armore- the commander's hover jeep has light armor or reinforced civilian/unarmored grade while the maint battle tank has heavy. as options that tweek individual armors you can: 1) reinforce a grade of armor that gives it s slight edge over the rest of its class 2) add reactive armor which is usually a one use anyway so it feels like an add on or at least should be treated in game as an add on system. Star ships have reflective hulls for lasers and I dont see most militaries painting their vehicles bright shiny reflective colors like a starship so on reactive armor would be a network that absorbs laser power and channels it safely but burns out after so many dice of damage. the real world reactive systems can be stated out too. Each grade of armor specifies what grades of weapons can effect it. for the heavy/military grade of armor we need to codify grades of weapons in the D and E categories - light vehicle weapons and heavy vehicle weapons, you can even scale up to Grade F which would be star ship mounted weapons and grade F is a good name because if you riding in a ground vehicle that gets hit by a grade F weapon the F stands for something that you now are . civilian/unarmored grade of armor has these armor saves Grade A=25% everything else that hits damages it. sonic weapons are special cases the only can damage this grade of armor but only sonic rifles and hvy sonic weapons and rifles must target the windows to be effective. So light/corporate armor would be good against Grade A weapons (pistols) it has an effective armor save of 100% but we could allow for a lucky shot of a natural 01-03% doing something (or not), Possibly would allow for Grade B (rifles) to damage it but would have an armor save of 75%, for Grade C (heavy man portable weapons) it has an armor save of 50% Hvy/military grade has an armor save for these grades of weapons Grade A= 125%, Grade B= 100%, Grade C= 75%, Grade D (light vehicle mounts)=50%, Grade E (heavy vehicle mounts)= 25% Now if you noticed Hvy armor has an armor save of 125% for pistols and that is because I was thinking of a system where you defects damage (the armor save) but if it takes a pounding over time meaning it deflects a ton of shots that would have damaged it then the armor becomes degraded at a certain point. when an armor grade becomes degraded its armor saves drop by 25% in each category- that effectively means that pistols will never damage a tank. So how do we know when a vehicle armor degrades? if think the simplist is to check off the number of dice of damage that it deflected. I figure that we wont count the dice of damage that penetrates, though we could, as that will add insult to injury and I figure we should give PCs a chance to survive. powered body armor can be treated in the same way. though I'd make it the same as light/corp grade for civilian/unarmored the degrade point will be low 10 dice defected and all its armor saves drop by 25% meaning it no longer has any armor save. For light/corporate grade armor- it would be much better than the previous grade probably in the 20-30 dice of damage range as we are talking about it facing heavier weapons so maybe split the difference and call it 15 dice of damage deflected. For hvy/military grade it would be fairly high 30-50 dice adding the reinforced option makes the vehcile heavier and adds 5 dice to the degrade total Adding a reactive layer intercepts the first shot that would do damage of the type the reactive would stop. or on the first such hit it add 20% to the armor save and the dice of damage deflected dont count toward the degrade score. or something along those lines I think the basic system outlined would be workable though numbers could be tweeked like for example light/corporate armor that had degraded drops it armor save for pistols from 100% to 75% making it possible for a pistol shot to damage it. this might be unreasonable and the values could be changed to 125% to start for the light/corporate grade so that pistols will never damage it and the save for rifles could be 100% to start and 75% after the armor is degraded. in practice if people know they are taking on this class of vehicle they're going to stock up on rockets and such and not bother with pistols IMO. We'll also need to factor in grenades thrown or grenade rifle shot, I'd expect a grenade bounces off most military vehicles for little effect I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 18, 2012 - 8:17am | Shields I think the shield rules work fairly well and probably dont need too much of an overhaul. Most screens work as written in the AD rules but inertia will need a rethink on how it interacts with the new armor mechanic. to be certian a main battle tank with a albedo field is not going to power it on power backpack- likely it has a dedicated parabattery and or a series of parabatteries. for the laser shield. Personal Body armor I think the basic system outlined for vehicles will work for characters too. 1) the body armor deflects damage via armor saves 2) at some point the armor degrades and the amor saves drop by 25% across the board 3) personal armor is good for only Grades A (pistols), Grade B (rifles), possibly Grade C but only if brand new in effect a hero on a massive dungeon crawl could defect damage all day without being wounded by getting lucky with the rolls naturaly this will lead to legendary bar stories "about the time we took down the Merco mercenaries and Jones charged right at them and never got wounded" now we dont stop there for applying the vehicle armor mechanic because even if a charcter's body armor deflects damage he still took a hit and must make an ability check to resist being stunned or knocked prone or both. If the deflected weapon was a pistol its simply stunned, if in the rifle grade its stunned and knocke prone, if heavier stun and knocked prone are automatic. The ability check here is modified by the dice of damage deflected -10/dice of damage deflected. People will want to spend money to service their body armor after firefights or replace altoghter. as to the degrade point for the new body armors- the AD skeind suite soaked up 50 points of damage which is on average 10d10 dice of damage so give the new skien suit a deflection degrade score of 10 dice. (this also means going back and uping the numbers for vehicle armor which started out too low in relation to this). I would delete space suit armor altogether and simply have the regular space suit, and an armored space suit- you have one or the other. some power armor is designed for vacuum as well. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
good call