 October 26, 2016 - 10:07am | I've tried to search for this topic, but only found one vague reference in the Forums. Zebulon’s Guide to the Frontier added information about weapons that inflict damage over a wide area. Larger explosives have an immediate and a secondary blast area. I want to convert this idea of a secondary blast radius over to the Alpha Dawn combat system, but I was wondering if anyone has already done this. Area effect weapons would include:
Immediate and Secondary Blast Areas
When high explosives detonate, the blast radius listed on the Weapons Table is the immediate blast area. Every character, robot, vehicle, structure or other item within that area will take damage. Roll individually and then determine what effect armor, defensive shields and other cover may alter the result.
If the blast occurs in the open – and it is the result of TD-19 packs, type I through III missiles or artillery rounds – there is a secondary blast area which is equal to 1.5 times the radius of the immediate blast area.
For example, if the immediate blast area has a radius of 15 meters, the secondary blast radius extends out another 7.5 meters. Anyone (including robots) from 15 to 22.5 meters from the detonation site must pass a Reaction Speed check. Characters who fail the check must roll on the resolution table below.
___. No Effect
___. Stunned for 1 turn
___. Stunned for 1d10 turns
___. Roll for damage, but divide the result by 10. Also, the character is stunned for 1d10 turns.
___. Roll for damage,
but divide the result by 4. The character is stunned for 1d10 turns. Now, my resolution table is incomplete so far because I'm not sure if I should base it on a 1d10 roll or a percentage roll. Then, what should the percentages be for "no effect," "stunned for 1 turn," etc.
Joe Cabadas |
 October 26, 2016 - 6:28pm | Something you learn as a first responder electricity is an area of effect weapon. Depending on voltage/amperage and either water content or humidity electricty can electrocute you from quite a distance. This can mean stun energy weapons can be area affect. Now lets use not forget sonic weapons. Noise is not a pinpoint weapon and since the sonic stunner is discribed as a shotgun/blunderbus weapon. Sonic bombs known in our world as stun grenades are fun fun fun. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
October 26, 2016 - 7:20pm | Something you learn as a first responder electricity is an area of effect weapon. Depending on voltage/amperage and either water content or humidity electricty can electrocute you from quite a distance. This can mean stun energy weapons can be area affect. Now lets use not forget sonic weapons. Noise is not a pinpoint weapon and since the sonic stunner is discribed as a shotgun/blunderbus weapon. Sonic bombs known in our world as stun grenades are fun fun fun. Oooo! Sonic bombs! Why not? There are sonic grenades in the game. Joe Cabadas |
October 31, 2016 - 2:02pm | Well, I came up with a chart:
What do you think? Joe Cabadas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
November 2, 2016 - 4:54pm | I've added a download document -- new weapons charts -- here -- under my project "Joe's Half-Baked Ideas." http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/9562 Joe Cabadas |
November 4, 2016 - 6:16pm | As noted under "Recent site issues" I haven't been able to successfully upload a revised chart. And the one that was there became corrupted during the process. But, when I can, I will post an updated version. But, while I was searching online for copy of the original "Tanks a lot!" story, I found a website with downloadable copies of not only Dragon magazine but other gaming magazines. http://annarchive.com/dragon.html So, I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out before, but enjoy. Joe Cabadas |
November 6, 2016 - 11:14am | I have a gaming question! I've been looking at the weights of various weapons and ammo, such as the Type I-III missiles from Zebs versus the vehicle weapons weights and ammo from Dragon magazine articles such as "Tanks a lot!", "Tanks again," and "Here Comes the Cavalry" plus those from the vehicle articles in Star Frontiersman magazine, September 2010. To me, the missile and warhead weights from Zebs seem way too light for the amount of damage they do versus the small and medium bombs from "Tanks a lot!" For instance, Zeb stats for the Missile I: Cost 30 Credits, Weight: 2 kg, 1 warhead, max range: 5 km. If armed with a High Explosive warhead, it's cost is 50 Credits, Weight 1 kg, damage: 7d10+5 (based on converting Zeb to Alpha Dawn rules), blast radius: 7 meters. But let me compare it to the small cannon from "Tanks a lot!" Cost: 4,000 Credits, Weight: 40 kg, Damage: 12d10, Ammo: 20 shells, ROF: 1/2, Max range: 3 km, Ammo Cost: 50 Credits per shell, Ammo weight: 5 kg. And then the small bomb: Cost: 150 Credits, Weight: 15 kg, Damage: 12d10. It seems that the Zeb missiles pack an awful lot of punch for a lot lower cost and weight. I'm thinking of increasing the cost and weight of said missiles for my charts. Does anyone else want to weigh in on that idea? Joe Cabadas |
November 6, 2016 - 12:38pm | Doing a wiki search (if it can be trusted), I looked up the stats for a current day stinger missile: A helicopter launched version exists called Air-to-Air Stinger (ATAS). The missile is 5.0 ft (1.52 m) long and 2.8 in (70 mm) in diameter with 10 cm fins. The missile itself weighs 22 lb (10.1 kg), while the missile with launcher weighs approximately 34 lb (15.2 kg)... So, I'm definitely increasing the weight of the Type I-III missiles, especially seeing that the type II can carry two warheads and the type III can carry three warheads. But, I would welcome other opinions! Joe Cabadas |
November 6, 2016 - 12:40pm | Oh yeah, and the warheads on the type II and type III missiles are supposed to be bigger than the type Is... they increase in power and weight with the size. Joe Cabadas |
November 6, 2016 - 1:03pm | I'm thinking of changing the missile stats to these:
Feedback please! Joe Cabadas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
November 6, 2016 - 1:11pm | I think I also need to tacke the cost and weight of the multi-launch tube clusters (MLTC). A 2 kg. weight seems pretty low. Joe Cabadas |
 November 12, 2016 - 11:51am | Look up the FLASH 202, it was rocket launcher last used in the 80's. It was 4 missiles, He, AT, and Incendary. Also if you can find, Paldin Press RoboTech RPG, they have wonderful mutliple missile launch tables. Player rolls a hit with his missiles Gm can tell him with a roll of the dice how many actually hit the target. On your chart above. Real world grenades weigh about 1 kgs, translate that into gameplay is 2d10 but since it a missile and it guides to target a larger amount of the damage is transfered to the character, I get that. So if you use the forumula 3d10+5 for every Kilogram, it makes more sense, in my book. There are really only 6 types of missiles, mircomissiles (iron man), shoulder fired, ground mounted/vehicle, aircraft, artillery and ICBM/ship mounted, Class missiles in the real world and most RPGs. For game play, use the types of grenades in SF. Mutliple warhead are just damage upgrades.
Splash damage from the larger missiles should be half of the damage per every square away from point impact. example: Target Car: player dodges and starts running away. role damaged at 20, 1sq away from vehicle is 10, 2 squares 5, 3 squares away 3, 4 squares 0. Of course, there is no outrunning a nuke. and nukes should have a 1d1000 damage point on targets anyway. Those are my thoughts...
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November 12, 2016 - 12:32pm | Look up the FLASH 202, it was rocket launcher last used in the 80's. It was 4 missiles, He, AT, and Incendary. Also if you can find, Paldin Press RoboTech RPG, they have wonderful mutliple missile launch tables. Player rolls a hit with his missiles Gm can tell him with a roll of the dice how many actually hit the target. On your chart above. Real world grenades weigh about 1 kgs, translate that into gameplay is 2d10 but since it a missile and it guides to target a larger amount of the damage is transfered to the character, I get that. So if you use the forumula 3d10+5 for every Kilogram, it makes more sense, in my book. There are really only 6 types of missiles, mircomissiles (iron man), shoulder fired, ground mounted/vehicle, aircraft, artillery and ICBM/ship mounted, Class missiles in the real world and most RPGs. For game play, use the types of grenades in SF. Mutliple warhead are just damage upgrades.
Splash damage from the larger missiles should be half of the damage per every square away from point impact. example: Target Car: player dodges and starts running away. role damaged at 20, 1sq away from vehicle is 10, 2 squares 5, 3 squares away 3, 4 squares 0. Of course, there is no outrunning a nuke. and nukes should have a 1d1000 damage point on targets anyway. Those are my thoughts... Thanks Tollon. I'll look into that. So, real world grenates are 1 kg? Hmm. I'll up that weight on my weapon's charts too. Joe Cabadas |
November 12, 2016 - 1:31pm | One other thing: There has been development of a small rocket or line of sight (LOS) that can be mounted on M-16, just like the M203. Single shot. They are for bunker and tank busting. Missile get Compicated, no matter how you work them because, there are unguided (LOS) and Guided missiles. LOS Rockets are straight forward. Point and shoot. Guided however, can be a nightmare, since their are so many. The best way to handle them I have found are narrowing them down to two classes Guided and Seekers. Guided simply put, is a bonus added to a character skill, whereas Seekers actually track the target and give a massive negative to the player's ablitily to dodge the in coming missile. This carried over into vehicle combat as well. Played a game once where a Tank was trying to hit a man in a high tech Powered Battle Suit (AKA Iron Man style suit) Rolled 01 and nailed the player, took half his armor off. He failed his dex check and tumbled about hundred yards. I bring this up because, missiles are going to do that sort of thing to a player. Getting hit with a missile or large round gun has to have a physical effect on the player.
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November 15, 2016 - 10:55pm | One other thing: There has been development of a small rocket or line of sight (LOS) that can be mounted on M-16, just like the M203. Single shot. They are for bunker and tank busting. Missile get Compicated, no matter how you work them because, there are unguided (LOS) and Guided missiles. LOS Rockets are straight forward. Point and shoot. Guided however, can be a nightmare, since their are so many. The best way to handle them I have found are narrowing them down to two classes Guided and Seekers. Guided simply put, is a bonus added to a character skill, whereas Seekers actually track the target and give a massive negative to the player's ablitily to dodge the in coming missile. This carried over into vehicle combat as well. Played a game once where a Tank was trying to hit a man in a high tech Powered Battle Suit (AKA Iron Man style suit) Rolled 01 and nailed the player, took half his armor off. He failed his dex check and tumbled about hundred yards. I bring this up because, missiles are going to do that sort of thing to a player. Getting hit with a missile or large round gun has to have a physical effect on the player. Yes, I haven't incorporated your ideas above yet, but I've posted the lastest version of my weapons charts over under Joe's Half-Baked Ideas. Joe Cabadas |
 November 19, 2016 - 7:55am | there is no outrunning a nuke. and nukes should have a 1d1000 damage point on targets anyway. Those are my thoughts...
A lot depends on strength. is the nuke in the megaton range or kiloton range. It would be possible for a character to be relatively close to a nuclear detonation if we are talking 1-5 kiloton which is what I would judge the self destruct device of the Predator to be since its so small (1 kiloton). Distance is important and cover from buildings, hills or vehicles will vastly increase just how close a character can survive a nuclear detonation and how well they will survive it. Throw in the neutrad drug from the game and absolutely PCs could have a "near miss" with a nuke. And a game with a near miss from a nuke would be something different. EDIT: Sfman 17 has the article i did on Radiation sickness done in a AD game mechanic. Just reread it as i could have sworn I wrote something on PCs and NPCs surviving a nuclear detonation discussing effects of blasts from 1 kiloton up but I cant locate it. even scanned my list of 130 published articles spread over 3 magazines and still cant locate it. Have to check my files maybe its half written and forgotten in a file somewhere. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 19, 2016 - 8:35am | there is no outrunning a nuke. and nukes should have a 1d1000 damage point on targets anyway. Those are my thoughts...
A lot depends on strength. is the nuke in the megaton range or kiloton range. It would be possible for a character to be relatively close to a nuclear detonation if we are talking 1-5 kiloton which is what I would judge the self destruct device of the Predator to be since its so small (1 kiloton). Distance is important and cover from buildings, hills or vehicles will vastly increase just how close a character can survive a nuclear detonation and how well they will survive it. Throw in the neutrad drug from the game and absolutely PCs could have a "near miss" with a nuke. And a game with a near miss from a nuke would be something different. EDIT: Sfman 17 has the article i did on Radiation sickness done in a AD game mechanic. Just reread it as i could have sworn I wrote something on PCs and NPCs surviving a nuclear detonation discussing effects of blasts from 1 kiloton up but I cant locate it. even scanned my list of 130 published articles spread over 3 magazines and still cant locate it. Have to check my files maybe its half written and forgotten in a file somewhere. Yeah, I'm not providing nuke rules at the moment. I'm just trying to do a better conversion of the Zebs missiles -- which seem awfully cheap and powerful -- to an Alpha Dawn system and balance them out. Now, there is a question of artillery and bomb rules... not that I want to make things too complicated. In the real world, artillery and bombs can have proximity fuses. A high explosive shell might be set to go off several meters above the surface of the ground to spread shrapnel about to wound and kill unprotected soldiers, though this would probably reduce damage to vehicles. Anyone have any suggestions on that idea? Also, I was going to try to modify BattleTech's artillery rules which had the shells in air 1 turn for each map the cannons were from the battle field. But, that's a long time for the rounds to be in the air... Then you could argue that bombs take a while to fall, with the planet's gravity impacting the speed.... Oooh, my brain starts hurting when I think of the math... Maybe we don't need it that complicated. After all, SF isn't BattleTech... Joe Cabadas |
November 19, 2016 - 12:33pm | Star Grunt from Ground Zero Games which was a company level skirmish wargame had rules for the calling in of artillery. Beit traditional artillery, cruiser in orbit fired fire support or air assets etc. there was a inbound track on the trun chart and the fire mission was put on the inbound turn track and three tokens were put on on wargaming table (one was the target). traditionaly artillery from the same service ie the company is Clarion Royal Guard calling for artillery fire from another Clarion Royal Guard unit would have a faster response time and would enter the inbound track at a low number while if it was say Clarion Royal Marines calling for orbital fire support from a Space Fleet cruiser then the response time was bound to be longer. not only is Space Fleet not the same service as the Royal Marines but its completely different organization under a different government. thus the request for fire support would have to travel up the chain of command to the appropriate laison who would need to request it from his Space Fleet counterpart who would send it to the officer that could authorize it and the cruiser might just be on the other side of the planet so it has to orbit around till it has line of sight unless its something with a guidence system. thus the space fleet strike would enter the inbound track at a hire number. The inbound track was also used to track a medivac or reinforcements air mission. or something like a jet making a high speed ground support pass. Star Grunt incidently had a rules innovation i liked that was a Remember the Alamo or Remember Tallos IV where a squad or unit that was about to be over run or wiped out could, at the decision of the controlling player have the officer or NCO in charge make a stiring speach and roll a morale check, if successful this squad made no further morale checks, ignored certain effects and all subsequent combat rolls were at +1 IIRC till end of engagement. it was like a 1 in 6 chance of this happening 2-6 the unit was just removed from the table. It was a desparate messure only to be used at dire need but if successful it would certainly make for a cinematic and fun ending to a game by a losing player who might not lose if this squad suddenly began triggering morale problems for the enemy. Edit: More than likely Dirt Side, which was the mass battle variant from GZG also had that inbound feature on its turn track. Edit 2: you could use an inbound turn track for something like a terrorist bomb set to go off at a certain time as well. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 19, 2016 - 6:03pm | Star Grunt from Ground Zero Games which was a company level skirmish wargame had rules for the calling in of artillery. Beit traditional artillery, cruiser in orbit fired fire support or air assets etc. there was a inbound track on the trun chart and the fire mission was put on the inbound turn track and three tokens were put on on wargaming table (one was the target)... Interesting. I noticed you had mentioned Star Grunt before in ... is it the Battle Hawks discussion or Delta Dawn? ... I don't have that as reference material. The weapons charts I'm working on are more for the small scale, standard Star Frontiers conflicts with the stuff from Tanks a lot!, etc. But, do you have any better way of converting this "inbound track" stuff into Alpha Dawn rules? Joe Cabadas |
November 20, 2016 - 6:52am | I presume we're talking AD combat rounds If an Alpha Dawn character called for a evac by another PC in the team's explorer and we're using the port loren map then it would stand to reason that explorer is represented with a counter on the map and the inbound explorer would simply be handled via normal game rules of the PC opperating it driving the vehicle to pick up the PC in trouble. If the situation was on the back side of the port loren map where you have small terrain areas and a PC was calling for the evac by the teams explorer this would be a situation where the explorer for whatever reason was off map. It may or may not be logical for it to show up the turn its called for so we can presume that it will show up in a few turns. I would in this case put a dice with the explorer counter and turn the dice every turn until 1 reached and the next turn the explorer is on the edge of the map from whatever direction it was coming. In a situation where a PC is calling for something a little less intangible than a vehicle, like say an artillery strike which will not logically show up in the next combat round I'd just put a counter and a die and do the count down. You can make it random to as any number of things can slow up an "in bound". Example: A Star Law officer has found a spawning nest of sathar and their monsters deep in the outback and is calling for a strike by a Space Fleet frigate in orbit. It does just happen that you can call up a frigate and order a fire mission.They will need to authenticate that the Marshal is who he says he is and even then the captain of the frigate will ponder the decision for at least a few seconds [I seem to remember something in the rules about severe consequences for anyone bombing a planet from orbit]. This star ship captain will not make this decision lightly. If there is a Star Law laison on his bridge that could speed the decision. so making it random I would use d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and the dice rolled would be decided on whether response was judged to be slow or fast. you could of course roll a 4 with the d4 and have to wait 4 turns and roll a 2 with a d6 and only wait 2 turns. this gives you some randomness with luck still being present to aid the PCs I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 20, 2016 - 8:31am | Yes. The Alpha Dawn rules. Ah, your idea should work. Joe Cabadas |
November 26, 2016 - 8:00am | Yes. The Alpha Dawn rules. Ah, your idea should work. just spit balling, I am open to ideas in case i over thought it. but this idea was adapted from Star Grunt which is a rather ellegant set of rules IMHO. In Star Grunt quality of unit determines dice used and favorable or non favorable conditions cause the dice to shift up or down do lets say a unit normally uses a d6 but are suffering an unfavorable condition the dice shifts to d4 before rolling. Combat rolls are usually opposed and highest number wins. the unit rolling a d4 is not likely to be effective but it could still win a combat roll if the opposed dice roll lower and it rolls a 4. Back to hour discussion- I would allow the PC to make a LDR ability check and on a successful roll they can shift the dice in there favor. So if I have determined that the likelihood or an orbital artillery strike was a d8 it could be shifted to a d6 to determine inbound timing. If an medivac air car was pre determined that it could show up on a d6 that could be shifted to d4. Consequently a critical failure with the LDR roll would cause the dice to shift up instead. And possibly with a critical success of the LDR roll the inbound "thing" could show up in one turn. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
