| From: | Brett Barksdale <brett@***.ORST.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Reply to <Person to Vehicle Combat> (LONG) |
| Date: | Thu, 20 Mar 1997 15:12:09 -0800 |
>
>Joe Cyber decides that he's going to shoot a Mitsubishi Nightsky Limosine
>with an Ares Mp-LMG full auto. 9 shots 16D damage. I can see that the
>Nightsky has a Body of 5 and an Armor value of 3. What do I have to
>roll? Does the car explode in a big ball of flames. Does it go ping? I
>need to know.
There are a lot of issues all rolled into this seemingly innocent
question. In order to get answers that I was satisfied with as a
GM, I had to do a LOT of house rules modifications on the basic SRII
rules.
The first issue is the full autofire. Even in the basic SRII rules, it's
not really 9 shots at 16D damage. The SRII system "blends" all of the
shots together into one big damage burst to be resolved at once. You
can use that system well enough or use any number of the full-auto
variants that have been posted here. If you're curious, I'll re-post
them, but for now, I'm only interested in the vehicle part of my house
rules.
Here's my basic problem with unmodified SRII rules. Vehicles are ULTRA
wimpy. I mean, it's just too easy for even a starting SR character to
hose a vehicle with even non-anti-vehicle weaponry. It makes riggers
somewhat less of value.
So, the first thing I changed was to implement a rule that the TN
of any (non-magical) attack against a vehicle can NOT be lower lower than
4 - period. I understand how things like smartlinks can help immeasurably
against "soft" targets (i.e. people :-), but when you're trying to
punch thru vehicle armor, there's only so much you can do. Adjustments of
a few inches/feet will get critical areas on "soft" targets and account
for the -2 to TN bonus of smartlinks. But a foot to the left and a foot
the the right is all the same when shooting at vehicle armor. Allowing
a street sam to roll with TN's of 2 (as opposed to 4) TRIPLES the number
of successes they get against vehicles. That's why vehicles get wasted
so quickly with the basic SRII rules. Even with great armor, vehicles
just can't roll enough dice to negate all of those successes.
Example: Sammie blasts a Body 4 Armor 8 vehicle with ONE SHOT from his
9M handgun. Firearms of 6 and combat pool of 6 gives 12 dice. With
a TN of 2, he gets 10 successes on average. According to SRII rules,
vehicles get to resist with body + half armor (8 in this case) and
subtract body+armor from the power. So, the vehicle has to roll 8
dice with a TN of 2 (power 9 - 12 = -3 = 2 because it can't be any lower).
So, the vehicle gets (rounded) 7 successes on average and takes an
S (!!!) (base M scaled up w/ 3 successes).
Good lord! This isn't full auto, even! This is a SINGLE SHOT from a
HANDGUN. And, if you look at the spectum of SRII vehicles, a
body 4 armor 8 vehicle is not a pushover! One shot = fu**ed up
vehicle.
Yuk. Bad system = bad game result.
So, I just make sure that all TNs are at least. Calculate them
normally, but if they are lower than 4, they get set to four. Thus,
smartlinks (and the like) are great for bringing the TN down to
4 against fast-moving and/or far-away vehicles. But your shot against
a vehicle can only get SO good...
The second thing I do is disallow combat pool against vehicles. Again,
it's for game balance - plus, I just assume that "bobbing and weaving"
and positioning for shots just can't net you a lot against a vehicle.
People, yes. Vehicles, no. I understand that one can reason a lot
of situations where "combat pool" (or whatever one assumes combat pool
really is) could help, but it's just a matter of good game balance to
ignore those situations. I go with the assumption that engineering
techniques are much better in 2057 - so vehicles are really tough.
The final thing I do is apply the damage shift of non-AV weapons against
vehcles downward AFTER any other modifications are done. So, if someone
blasts at a vehicle with a 8M and scales the damage up to 17D with
auto-fire, it becomes as base of 17S. (Rather than the opposite order
where it would still be a 17D.)
I also ignore APDS as far as vehicle armor goes. I just treat it like
normal ammo.
There are other elements to my vehicle system. For example, I don't
count "peripherals" (turrets, tires, etc.) as part of the body
"proper" of the vehicle. Any vehicle in my game has separate body/
armor stats for "peripherals". Damage against the main body doesn't
count against peripherals and vice versa. So, a valid strategy when
you don't think you can handle the main vehicle is to blast the guns
right off of it.
Armor degradation: I have two types of armor degradations for vehicles
that take damage: anti-vehicle and hand-held. I use "facings" for
armor in SR. Any AV weapon hits degrade the armor from all 4 facings
and handheld just from the side that gets hit. So, if someone is
shooting with a pistol or SMG at the right side of a vehicle, only
THAT side's armor will degrade - not helping anyone shooting at the
left side of the same vehicle. However, if someone hits the vehicle
with a AV missile, all sides will degrade. Calculating degradation
is simple: base damage is used to see if the vehicle takes damage and
the adjusted damage (if higher) is used to check for degradation.
So, if Johnny hoses the side of our example vehicle (armor 8) above,
with a base-7M SMG and scales the damage up to 16S (16D, then shift
down for the target being a vehicle), the vehicle would take no
damage (because base power 7 is less than vehicle armor, 8). But
it would degrade because the adjusted power (16) is greater than or
equal to the armor (8). The amount of damage is equal to the adjusted
power divided by the current armor, rounded DOWN. So, in this case, it
is 2 (= 16/8). If Johnny had only scaled up to 15S, it would only be
1 (= 15/8 --> rounds down to 1). But since Johnny is not using an AV
weapon, only THAT side gets degraded.
GMs would have to make the occasional call as to what is or is not
an AV weapon. C-12? Grenade? Safes falling from the 20th story? Players
can be so imaginative...! :-)
The (nice) result is that, in the beginning, resolving damage against
well-armored vehicles is as easy as saying "well, you degraded its
armor one step". :-) It's almost impossible, without armor-piercing
anti-vehicle weaponry to do appreciable damage against a well-armored
vehicle in my game with hand weapons (at first, anyway). You gotta
wear down the armor for a bit. I like that result because I believe
that armored vehicles SHOULD be really, really tough. Hey! If you
don't like it, get off the street! :-) At any rate, it solves
the one-shot-from-a-pistol problem... It's also not too complicated.
Once you use it a few times, it rolls along very quickly.
Oh, yeah. I forgot. I extended the damage boxes for vehicles a bit. If
a vehicle reaches "D", instead of going boom, it gets a TN modifier of
-4 and, as it takes more damage, chances are its systems will go "boom" or
the entire VEHICLE will go boom. Every time damage accrues past "D",
I make a raw vehicle body test against an unmodified TN equal to
twice the number of boxes past "D" the vehicle is at. So, if a vehicle
is 3 boxes of overflow past "D", the target is 6. If the vehicle gets
a success, it can continue as normal with the -4 TN modifier. If it
gets no successes, the vehicle is out-of-commission. It counts as
armor and cover for it's occupants, but the vehicle itself is scragged.
Finally, if the vehicle ever exceeds its body in overflow boxes, BOOM! No
test - no nothing - just BOOM! Unhappy occupants... :-(
Whew! I feel better. It's been weeks since I tossed out a way-too-
large posting here. :-)
- "youngin"
