Star Hero damage too low! [Archive] - HERO Games Discussion Boards

Monolith

Mar 8th, '03, 08:43 PM

I do not consider the damage to be wimpy. I consider the damage to be inline with the DEF of whatever it is fighting. Also keep in mind that while the Warship might only have a 10d6 RKA, it is an Armor Piercing 10d6 RKA. So while that Warship does have 65 DEF (with force shields), on average it is going to do 2-3 BODY to itself per hit (plus the fact that the ship's shields are Ablative). So it will take only a few hits before those shields fail completely, but even if they do not fail the ship could stop itself in around 15 hits. And that is not including secondary weapons attacks. I think if two major warships are doing battle against each other, 15 hits is not out of line to take the ship to 0 BODY.

Now I do think there are some flaws, but I do not think it is because of damage. I think some of the ships defenses are too high. The Merchant, for example, has a 27 DEF with its Force Shields. With having only a 3d6 AF RKA, few shots are going to penetrate its own shields. So if two Merchant ships are fighting each other the battle would almost never end. Each ship would have to hope for a lucky roll, first to do more than 15 DEF to get an Ablative check, and then to have the ship actually fail the Ablative roll so as to lose shields.

The Fighter is the poorest designed, but once again not because of damage, but only because its damage is NND (defense being Force Shields). 30 Fighters come up on a Merchant ship and none of their weapons can penetrate the Merchants Force Shield. I would think that Merchant ships should be fairly easy prey for a squadron of Fighters. But once again, this is a DEF issue more than an Damage issue, IMO.

Gary

Mar 8th, '03, 09:16 PM

Originally posted by Monolith
I do not consider the damage to be wimpy. I consider the damage to be inline with the DEF of whatever it is fighting. Also keep in mind that while the Warship might only have a 10d6 RKA, it is an Armor Piercing 10d6 RKA. So while that Warship does have 65 DEF (with force shields), on average it is going to do 2-3 BODY to itself per hit (plus the fact that the ship's shields are Ablative). So it will take only a few hits before those shields fail completely, but even if they do not fail the ship could stop itself in around 15 hits. And that is not including secondary weapons attacks. I think if two major warships are doing battle against each other, 15 hits is not out of line to take the ship to 0 BODY.

The warship actually has 75 def. 25 base, 40 force wall, 10 force field. Of course, after the first hit, the force wall will go down and it'll take a minute to erect it again, so a fight between 2 warships would probably take about 1 turn.

However that's not the point. If a Tow missile is 6D6 AP RKA, and a tank shell is 8D6 RKA, a 16" armor piercing shell is probably at least 10D6 AP RKA. That would mean that a 30th century warship and the battleship New Jersey has the same level of attack. Both will destroy a third warship in a equal amount of time! It just doesn't make sense that a 30th century warship has merely the same destructive power as a 20th century warship.

Incidentally, an orbital military base has 10D6 non-AP RKA, and 95 Def including 60 forcewall. It's attack will bounce off the 40 ED forcewall of the warship on average, while the warship's AP attack will knock down the 60 forcewall easily. This means that a single warship is more likely to take out the military base than the base is to take out the warship!

Incidentally, the merchant ship's weapons are just about the same level of power as a .50 cal machine gun. Very wimpy for a space laser.

Monolith

Mar 9th, '03, 06:24 AM

Originally posted by Gary
Incidentally, the merchant ship's weapons are just about the same level of power as a .50 cal machine gun. Very wimpy for a space laser.
Well it is just a Merchant Ship. It is not a fighter, and it is not supposed to be a fighting ship. And the .50 cal does 2d6+1, so the Merchant ship's guns are 2 DC better. :)

I hear what you are saying, but I do not agree with you. I think a 225 Active Point RKA is more than enough power for just about anything. I do not think the game needs 20+d6 RKA attacks to achieve the same purpose. I just think some of the Defenses are listed as being too high.

As far as your Orbital Base example, while it does only have 10d6 AF RKA attacks is its primary weapons (and with all 5 shots hitting in a burst there is a good chance that one will roll higher than 40 to take down the Warship's shields), it also has 8 20d6 RKA MSAE Space Nukes. A couple of shots from that will take out a whole fleet of Warships. So the Orbital Base is not whimpy, IMO.

I do think the damage and defense systems needs to be playtested more though, but I still feel that it is more of a Defense issue than a damage issue. It does not bother me in the slightest that a TOW does 6d6 AP and a Warship's secondary weapons only do 8d6 AP. That 2 extra dice is 7 more BODY on average; and that is quite a bit of extra damage IMO.

Monolith

Mar 9th, '03, 06:31 AM

I should point out that there are many more examples of space vehicles in both TUV and TE. Both of those books give a nice rounding out to the overall attack and defense structure of space ships; and both of which were written after Star Hero, and thus have a slightly more evolved feel to them.

Toadmaster

Mar 9th, '03, 11:02 AM

Originally posted by Gary
However that's not the point. If a Tow missile is 6D6 AP RKA, and a tank shell is 8D6 RKA, a 16" armor piercing shell is probably at least 10D6 AP RKA. That would mean that a 30th century warship and the battleship New Jersey has the same level of attack. Both will destroy a third warship in a equal amount of time! It just doesn't make sense that a 30th century warship has merely the same destructive power as a 20th century warship.

I don't disagree that some work is needed on the upper end weapons which is one of the reasons I've been trying to build piercing among other things, the differance between a 75mm M3 gun as used on a Sherman tank and a 120mm gun as used on the Abrams are so close together that it is hard to make the Abrams immune to the Sherman without also making it immune to itself. However the idea that a 30th Century warship is related to a 20th Century Warship is not really an apples to apples comparison, a 21st century Warship is not equal in firepower to a 20th Century Battleship in reality either. They were built for entirely differant battlefields.

A major problem when dealing with the high end is that HERO is based around +1DC for each 2x in power, so when you are dealing with pistols (generally 100-1000 Joules) you find a range of 1 pip to 2d6+1, but rifles (typically 1000-15,000 Joules) for the most part sit at 2d6+1 with a few exceptions, by the time you reach cannons you see megajoules of energy differance only getting you a +1DC.

Then you also get into the issue of DEF which works in a similar way, so the problem is actually compounded, its not just DC that is tricky to scale, it has to be added to DEF which is also difficult to scale, and then you throw in Superheros who are suposed to be above all this as well (nothing like arguing "real world" physics with comic book and / or magical physics.

Basically I see your point but don't have a solution at this time.

Gary

Mar 9th, '03, 12:04 PM

Originally posted by Monolith
Well it is just a Merchant Ship. It is not a fighter, and it is not supposed to be a fighting ship. And the .50 cal does 2d6+1, so the Merchant ship's guns are 2 DC better. :)

I hear what you are saying, but I do not agree with you. I think a 225 Active Point RKA is more than enough power for just about anything. I do not think the game needs 20+d6 RKA attacks to achieve the same purpose. I just think some of the Defenses are listed as being too high.

As far as your Orbital Base example, while it does only have 10d6 AF RKA attacks is its primary weapons (and with all 5 shots hitting in a burst there is a good chance that one will roll higher than 40 to take down the Warship's shields), it also has 8 20d6 RKA MSAE Space Nukes. A couple of shots from that will take out a whole fleet of Warships. So the Orbital Base is not whimpy, IMO.

I do think the damage and defense systems needs to be playtested more though, but I still feel that it is more of a Defense issue than a damage issue. It does not bother me in the slightest that a TOW does 6d6 AP and a Warship's secondary weapons only do 8d6 AP. That 2 extra dice is 7 more BODY on average; and that is quite a bit of extra damage IMO.

Actually, the .50 cal does 3D6 according to the FAQ, and it's listed as 3D6 under the M-1 Abrams listing.

The warships have missile deflection, so the nuclear warheads probably won't hit. The warship will still win. Besides which, the warships have nukes as well.

OK, I'm being nitpicky. :p However, even the secondary weapons on a WW2 battleship, the 5" guns, are quite a bit more powerful than a TOW missile. So if both a 30th century warship and a 20th century battleship took broadsides at the same target, both will destroy that target in the same amount of time. Actually, the 20th century battleship will destroy the target quicker because it has 9 16" guns, and dozens of 3-5" guns. Just doesn't make sense to me.

I think there has to be some separation between 20th and 30th century technology, otherwise it doesn't feel right.

Monolith

Mar 9th, '03, 12:19 PM

Originally posted by Gary
Actually, the .50 cal does 3D6 according to the FAQ, and it's listed as 3D6 under the M-1 Abrams listing.
Sorry. I was looking on the list on page 332 of FREd. There the .50 cal is listed as 2d6+1.

The warships have missile deflection, so the nuclear warheads probably won't hit. The warship will still win. Besides which, the warships have nukes as well.
The nukes are Mega-Scale Area Effect. They cannot be Missile Deflected. And that was sort of my whole point. The warship can destroy the base, but the base can destroy the warship just as easily. It's a draw.

OK, I'm being nitpicky. :p However, even the secondary weapons on a WW2 battleship, the 5" guns, are quite a bit more powerful than a TOW missile. So if both a 30th century warship and a 20th century battleship took broadsides at the same target, both will destroy that target in the same amount of time.
TUV lists the "Mark 5" guns on a Destroyer as doing 8d6 RKA (and it has 2 of them). The fact that a Warship in SH can do 10d6 AP RKA seems like a considerable amount of increase to me. The Warship has 2 extra dice and the Armor Piercing advantage. All things being equal, the Warship blows the battle ship out of the water in a couple of shots.

I am not an expert on weapons, but I can clearly see that it is not in the advantage of the game system to have Warships shooting 20d5 AP RKA. It's time consuming, and also unbalancing when trying to incorporate superhumans who might want to fight those Warships into the mix. My own feeling is that if a Warship did not have 75 DEF, there would be no need for 20d6 attacks.

Gary

Mar 9th, '03, 01:08 PM

Originally posted by Monolith

The nukes are Mega-Scale Area Effect. They cannot be Missile Deflected. And that was sort of my whole point. The warship can destroy the base, but the base can destroy the warship just as easily. It's a draw.

The nukes have a physical limitation that they can be missile deflected. Still not a draw.

Originally posted by Monolith

TUV lists the "Mark 5" guns on a Destroyer as doing 8d6 RKA (and it has 2 of them). The fact that a Warship in SH can do 10d6 AP RKA seems like a considerable amount of increase to me. The Warship has 2 extra dice and the Armor Piercing advantage. All things being equal, the Warship blows the battle ship out of the water in a couple of shots.

I'm not talking about firing at each other. If a 30th century warship and a WW2 battleship fired at each other, the warship wins because of higher defenses. I was talking about firing at a third target. The WW2 battleship will take out the third target faster than the 30th century warship.

Originally posted by Monolith

I am not an expert on weapons, but I can clearly see that it is not in the advantage of the game system to have Warships shooting 20d5 AP RKA. It's time consuming, and also unbalancing when trying to incorporate superhumans who might want to fight those Warships into the mix. My own feeling is that if a Warship did not have 75 DEF, there would be no need for 20d6 attacks.

Superhumans shouldn't be fighting toe to toe with a battleship. They should infiltrate and destroy the warship from the inside. The ones who can fight toe to toe should be 1500+ point monstrosities like Mon-El or Superboy. If the warship doesn't have high defenses, then they're in the position that a WW2 battleship could take one out.

Monolith

Mar 9th, '03, 01:27 PM

Originally posted by Gary
The nukes have a physical limitation that they can be missile deflected. Still not a draw.
I think that is a design flaw. In the "real world" nuclear missiles do not even hit the ground. They explode before ever touching the surface to get as much area damage as possible. Since the missile which covers such a vast area should explode before contact I would remove that Limitation, and thus we are back to a draw. But even if the Missile is Deflected, the Warship will still be in the Area of Effect.

I'm not talking about firing at each other. If a 30th century warship and a WW2 battleship fired at each other, the warship wins because of higher defenses. I was talking about firing at a third target. The WW2 battleship will take out the third target faster than the 30th century warship.
I fail to see how a Battleship doing 8d6 RKA will destroy a target quicker than a Warship doing 10d6 AP RKA. :)

Superhumans shouldn't be fighting toe to toe with a battleship. They should infiltrate and destroy the warship from the inside. The ones who can fight toe to toe should be 1500+ point monstrosities like Mon-El or Superboy. If the warship doesn't have high defenses, then they're in the position that a WW2 battleship could take one out.
With a starting point total of 350, I no-longer consider 1,500 point characters to be "monstrosities". :)

Game Show Man

Mar 9th, '03, 01:47 PM

It just doesn't make sense that a 30th century warship has merely the same destructive power as a 20th century warship.

A thought: TE takes place in the 25th through the 27th centuries. The 30th century will be the time of Galactic Federation, which after seeing TE, I am absolutely DROOLING for (which should tell our friends at home how utterly BADASS TE is).

I actually thought the same way you did for a while, that the damage rating for the starship weaponry was too low...until I realized that I was thinking in terms of the normal damage ratings...with blaster pistols dealing on the average 8 or 9d6 worth of normal damage. Sounds silly, right? I wouldn't say that. An 8d6 EB is Damage Class 8. An 8d6 RKA is Damage Class 24.

Consider this: the starship lasers (presumably) have a much higher rate of fire than the 18" guns of, say, the Missouri, the U.S. battleship that the treaty that ended WWII was signed aboard. The 18" guns might have equivalent destructive power, but an Empress-class battleship would still likely atomize Missouri in a massive hurry, simply because their weapons would be able to fire more shots, and in all likelihood, place more of those shots on the target.

The damage ratings are more than accurate, IMHO.

Gary

Mar 9th, '03, 03:21 PM

Originally posted by Monolith
I think that is a design flaw. In the "real world" nuclear missiles do not even hit the ground. They explode before ever touching the surface to get as much area damage as possible. Since the missile which covers such a vast area should explode before contact I would remove that Limitation, and thus we are back to a draw. But even if the Missile is Deflected, the Warship will still be in the Area of Effect.

I don't think it'll explode since otherwise the limitation isn't a limitation. I put this question up on the Rules Questions board, so we'll get an official answer soon. :)

Originally posted by Monolith

I fail to see how a Battleship doing 8d6 RKA will destroy a target quicker than a Warship doing 10d6 AP RKA. :)

The battleship merely does 8D6 with its 5" guns. With its 16" guns, it's probably going to do at least 10D6. It also has dozens of 3" or lesser guns that probably do 6D6.

Originally posted by Monolith

With a starting point total of 350, I no-longer consider 1,500 point characters to be "monstrosities". :)

They're still pretty gruesome. :)

Gary

Mar 9th, '03, 03:27 PM

Originally posted by Game Show Man
A thought: TE takes place in the 25th through the 27th centuries. The 30th century will be the time of Galactic Federation, which after seeing TE, I am absolutely DROOLING for (which should tell our friends at home how utterly BADASS TE is).

I actually thought the same way you did for a while, that the damage rating for the starship weaponry was too low...until I realized that I was thinking in terms of the normal damage ratings...with blaster pistols dealing on the average 8 or 9d6 worth of normal damage. Sounds silly, right? I wouldn't say that. An 8d6 EB is Damage Class 8. An 8d6 RKA is Damage Class 24.

Consider this: the starship lasers (presumably) have a much higher rate of fire than the 18" guns of, say, the Missouri, the U.S. battleship that the treaty that ended WWII was signed aboard. The 18" guns might have equivalent destructive power, but an Empress-class battleship would still likely atomize Missouri in a massive hurry, simply because their weapons would be able to fire more shots, and in all likelihood, place more of those shots on the target.

The damage ratings are more than accurate, IMHO.

The Empress wins because it has higher defenses, not because of more damage or better ROF. If both the Empress and Missouri fired upon a third stationary target, the Missouri would probably destroy it quicker because it has 9 16" guns and dozens of 3-5" guns.

I don't think it's too much to expect that the futuristic warship should do more damage as well as better accuracy and rate of fire.

The 20+ D6 values for TE sound better to me.

keithcurtis

Mar 9th, '03, 08:02 PM

Originally posted by Gary
The Empress wins because it has higher defenses, not because of more damage or better ROF. If both the Empress and Missouri fired upon a third stationary target, the Missouri would probably destroy it quicker because it has 9 16" guns and dozens of 3-5" guns.

Unless the third target is in orbit, in which case the Missouri is no more effective than a mall cop in a rowboat.

Also, should the Missouri be somehow lifted into orbit, it would do a fairly good job of destroying itself.

I see the problem as apples and oranges. We haven't seen a Star Hero land or water based flagship. Perhaps they're tougher? Perhaps space based weaponry is more difficult to design, operate and maintain, necessitating a different design emphasis: i.e. efficiency over raw damage.

Keith "Give me the Argo's (Yamato's) Wave Motion Gun, anyday" Curtis

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 06:52 AM

Originally posted by keithcurtis
Unless the third target is in orbit, in which case the Missouri is no more effective than a mall cop in a rowboat.

Also, should the Missouri be somehow lifted into orbit, it would do a fairly good job of destroying itself.

I see the problem as apples and oranges. We haven't seen a Star Hero land or water based flagship. Perhaps they're tougher? Perhaps space based weaponry is more difficult to design, operate and maintain, necessitating a different design emphasis: i.e. efficiency over raw damage.

Keith "Give me the Argo's (Yamato's) Wave Motion Gun, anyday" Curtis

Their ground based weapons don't seem to do a lot more damage. The sample mech in Star Hero does 4D6 AP, which is much less damage than a Tow missile or a 120 mm tank shell.

Monolith

Mar 10th, '03, 07:06 AM

Just as a point of reference, the Spruance-Class Destroyer in TUV has an 8d6 RKA as its largest attack, on its largest gun. It also carries missiles, and the largest attack on those missiles is 8d6 EXP RKA. So just using what we currently have for military reference, a Warship does 10d6 AP RKA; a Destroyer does 8d6 RKA. The extra 2d6 and the Armor Piercing make all the difference in the world.

KA.

Mar 10th, '03, 10:36 AM

Okay, first let me say that I am out of my depth here, because I am more of a Champions and Justice Inc. player than a Star Hero player, so maybe I am missing something basic.

However, it seems to me that, in space, every weapon is the equivalent of a torpedo in the water. In other words, you don't have to vaporize your enemy, you just have to put a hole or two in him, and let the environment do the rest.

A spaceship with a few holes in it is in a completely different set of circumstances from a building with a few holes. On land you have to knock something to rubble if you want to destroy it, in space, or deep water, you don't.

Now I have not read enough of the Star Hero rules to know if the spaceships are built with an eye toward things like explosive decompression, but if they are, or the rules for space combat include such things, it could be that even in the future considerations like weight and cargo space make weapons that punch small holes more efficient overall.

Okay, feel free to rip this apart now. :D

KA

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 10:38 AM

Originally posted by Monolith
Just as a point of reference, the Spruance-Class Destroyer in TUV has an 8d6 RKA as its largest attack, on its largest gun. It also carries missiles, and the largest attack on those missiles is 8d6 EXP RKA. So just using what we currently have for military reference, a Warship does 10d6 AP RKA; a Destroyer does 8d6 RKA. The extra 2d6 and the Armor Piercing make all the difference in the world.

A Spruce class destroyer is a far cry from an Iowa class battleship. The Spruce has 5" guns which are a lot less destructive than the 16" guns of a battleship. The 5" gun has roughly the destructive power of a tank cannon which is 120 mm.

Considering that the Iowa class battleship has 9 of these puppies and lots of lesser guns, I think it's safe to say that it has far more raw destructive power than the Star Hero warship. That would be as silly as a Napoleonic era Ship of the Line vs the Iowa class battleship.

Grymlynn

Mar 10th, '03, 10:46 AM

Hold on a sec, folx. All these ships (water & space) are mearly the author's opinions built using Hero rules. Now, I am enjoying the conversation, but I think a coupla things have been lost... eg. the fact that if you think the guns are too weak and/or the defenses are too high, it IS your game... please feel free to create your own, either whole cloth, or as I will, loosely based on the examples. TE is a GENRE book, and so contains stats concurrent with the genre it is modelling. They didn't plan to have Star Cruisers interacting with WWII era battleships. So, that comparison really doesn't apply. Also, I personally don't feel the need to roll 20+ dice to ensure a Star cruiser can destroy a third target quicker than a battleship. I don't want to have to carry that many dice around. I also don't intend to let any character have enough power to take a star cruiser alone and without even a spacesuit, either. That's not in the genre in question. You have to decide this stuff based on what genre you're trying to accomodate, and build from that. The TE book doesn't include either SuperHeroes or time travel (to my knowledge, I've only read it once...), so those things are not delt with in the decisions made about weapons and defenses. So far, the stats given seem reasonable to me, given the fact that I don't want to carry two fifth Royal crown bags full of d6s, and I don't plan to move outside genre. When I DO decide to play Interstellar Hero, I imagine that the ships will be different, as will the characters, to stay within that genre.

I just wanted to interject a little reminder that TE is a specific genre, and if you're wanting to introduce something not accounted for, it's going to require modification. This leads back to all those "tech level" questions, and how to model star cruisers vs. water born cruisers. Wasn't there something about making the higher tech stuff AP vs. the lower? Once again, I think to save gamers' backs from dice fatigue...

Monolith

Mar 10th, '03, 10:48 AM

Originally posted by Gary
Considering that the Iowa class battleship has 9 of these puppies and lots of lesser guns, I think it's safe to say that it has far more raw destructive power than the Star Hero warship. That would be as silly as a Napoleonic era Ship of the Line vs the Iowa class battleship.
You could be right about the battleship's guns. Without a published point of reference I cannot dispute anything you have said. But even saying that, the difference between 10d6 RKA and 10d6 AP RKA is still substantial. I would also like to point out that the Warship has 32 Main Beamguns. That is a far cry from the 9 of the Battleship.

Monolith

Mar 10th, '03, 10:54 AM

Originally posted by Grymlynn
I just wanted to interject a little reminder that TE is a specific genre, and if you're wanting to introduce something not accounted for, it's going to require modification. This leads back to all those "tech level" questions, and how to model star cruisers vs. water born cruisers. Wasn't there something about making the higher tech stuff AP vs. the lower? Once again, I think to save gamers' backs from dice fatigue...
You are quite right, but we are not actually discussing TE. We are discussing the genre book itself, which allows us to make our own versions of TE. As far as TE itself, most of the ships in that book are actually tougher than the versions given in SH, IIRC.

I would also disagree about cross-genre ability. The new HERO Universe is designed to be a concentric whole. I would imagine the warship the Hzeel might show up in to conquer the earth will be fairly close to the design they will be using in a TE game. The point would still be, how would your JLA clones pound their way into the side of a battleship which has 65-75 DEF. :)

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 10:56 AM

Originally posted by Grymlynn
Hold on a sec, folx. All these ships (water & space) are mearly the author's opinions built using Hero rules. Now, I am enjoying the conversation, but I think a coupla things have been lost... eg. the fact that if you think the guns are too weak and/or the defenses are too high, it IS your game... please feel free to create your own, either whole cloth, or as I will, loosely based on the examples. TE is a GENRE book, and so contains stats concurrent with the genre it is modelling. They didn't plan to have Star Cruisers interacting with WWII era battleships. So, that comparison really doesn't apply. Also, I personally don't feel the need to roll 20+ dice to ensure a Star cruiser can destroy a third target quicker than a battleship. I don't want to have to carry that many dice around. I also don't intend to let any character have enough power to take a star cruiser alone and without even a spacesuit, either. That's not in the genre in question. You have to decide this stuff based on what genre you're trying to accomodate, and build from that. The TE book doesn't include either SuperHeroes or time travel (to my knowledge, I've only read it once...), so those things are not delt with in the decisions made about weapons and defenses. So far, the stats given seem reasonable to me, given the fact that I don't want to carry two fifth Royal crown bags full of d6s, and I don't plan to move outside genre. When I DO decide to play Interstellar Hero, I imagine that the ships will be different, as will the characters, to stay within that genre.

I just wanted to interject a little reminder that TE is a specific genre, and if you're wanting to introduce something not accounted for, it's going to require modification. This leads back to all those "tech level" questions, and how to model star cruisers vs. water born cruisers. Wasn't there something about making the higher tech stuff AP vs. the lower? Once again, I think to save gamers' backs from dice fatigue...

Actually, Star Hero does have a chapter on time travel, so it is possible for WW2 era weapons to fight futuristic weapons. Based on the writeups for Star Hero, the WW2 and modern era weapons will do quite well. :)

Hero is supposed to be a universal system, so having separate damage ranges per genre isn't right. You should be able to take characters and weapons from any setting, and drop them anywhere else.

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 11:02 AM

Originally posted by Monolith
You could be right about the battleship's guns. Without a published point of reference I cannot dispute anything you have said. But even saying that, the difference between 10d6 RKA and 10d6 AP RKA is still substantial. I would also like to point out that the Warship has 32 Main Beamguns. That is a far cry from the 9 of the Battleship.

The point is that the damage shouldn't even be this close. A cannon from 1700 could fire all day at a target that a WW2 battleship could destroy in one shot with a tertiary weapon, let alone a primary or secondary weapon. A futuristic warship should be able to do the same thing.

The warship isn't the only example. The 4D6 RKA of a mecha is significantly weaker than a tank gun or even a Tow missile.

Monolith

Mar 10th, '03, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by Gary
The point is that the damage shouldn't even be this close. A cannon from 1700 could fire all day at a target that a WW2 battleship could destroy in one shot with a tertiary weapon, let alone a primary or secondary weapon. A futuristic warship should be able to do the same thing.
I look at it this way. The Battleship and the Warship are both shooting at a 20 DEF target. The battleship (with 10d6) does 15 BODY and the Warship does 25 BODY. That extra 10 BODY per hit seems like a lot to me. :)

The warship isn't the only example. The 4D6 RKA of a mecha is significantly weaker than a tank gun or even a Tow missile.
I am not familiar enough with Mecha to make any good comments here. In general I do not know if they are designed to withstand or hit as hard as a TOW does. You could be right that the Mecha is underpowered, but that is a quite different than saying all the vehicle's weapons are underpowered. I would need to have a Mecha fight a Tank, and then I would need to have someone tell me whether a Mecha could beat a tank, becore I could make a good rebuff. :)

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 11:20 AM

Originally posted by Monolith
I look at it this way. The Battleship and the Warship are both shooting at a 20 DEF target. The battleship (with 10d6) does 15 BODY and the Warship does 25 BODY. That extra 10 BODY per hit seems like a lot to me. :)

I am not familiar enough with Mecha to make any good comments here. In general I do not know if they are designed to withstand or hit as hard as a TOW does. You could be right that the Mecha is underpowered, but that is a quite different than saying all the vehicle's weapons are underpowered. I would need to have a Mecha fight a Tank, and then I would need to have someone tell me whether a Mecha could beat a tank, becore I could make a good rebuff. :)

And against a hardened target like a tank, they'll both do 15 body. That's even assuming that an AP shell from a battleship doesn't have AP in game terms, which might be questionable. They're still in the same ballpark, unlike a 1700 warship vs a 1945 warship.

The mecha is severely underpowered. An army of them would get annihilated by a squadron of modern day tanks. :)

Victim

Mar 10th, '03, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by Gary
And against a hardened target like a tank, they'll both do 15 body. That's even assuming that an AP shell from a battleship doesn't have AP in game terms, which might be questionable. They're still in the same ballpark, unlike a 1700 warship vs a 1945 warship.

The mecha is severely underpowered. An army of them would get annihilated by a squadron of modern day tanks. :)

At least it's not as bad as battletech. The longest ranged Mech weapons around shoot about 1000m, while most modern anti-tank weapons have much longer ranges. They probably wouldn't even get a shot off.

Despite the fact that Iowa class battleships were originally built for WWII, most of our modern ships don't have the same raw destructive power either, barring nukes on Tomahawks. In fact, we reactivated our old battleships for a while to counter one type of Russian ship. Instead of getting bigger guns, our newer ships have fancy toys like the Aegis system. I can easily see the same thing applying for space ships, especially since they'd presumably have to spend lots of resources just to travel around in space and keep the crew alive.

tiger

Mar 10th, '03, 12:30 PM

Just sounds to me like you found one of the problems that can arise from a universal system. Unless you sit down a lay out all the damage acroos the board for every genre this can happen.

Look at like this. The gun off of a WW2 battle ship has the same chance to damage another battlehip as the laser of one warship has to hurt another. So the dam/def ratio is the same in the SH as the dam/def ration is is WW2.

I personal don't want to keep increase the damage of weapons as the "time" of a genre increases. This would mean that if you have a camapign set 3000 years in the future the damage of a weapon would be sick.

Also if you base it totally off the damage, do you also realize how many Villains have attacks stronger than any weapon we have now?

Toadmaster

Mar 10th, '03, 12:40 PM

Originally posted by Gary
The point is that the damage shouldn't even be this close. A cannon from 1700 could fire all day at a target that a WW2 battleship could destroy in one shot with a tertiary weapon, let alone a primary or secondary weapon. A futuristic warship should be able to do the same thing.

Consider range too, a 16" gun on the Iowa has a range of approximately 30 miles, that won't get you very far in space.
Also WW2 Battleships represent the high point in big gun heavy armor warships, modern ships can't even compare for blasting ground targets in support of infantry. In a similar concept the USSR has a much higher capability in transistor technology than the US because they did not begin to use micro chips until a much later date, so while in the US transistor technology is considered totally obsolete (really hasn't advanced since the 1960's) the Soviets were doing stuff with transistors we were thought you could only do with micro chips. Its all a matter of how the tech is used. You can not just assume that tech will advance endlessly, you have to consider the use.

tiger

Mar 10th, '03, 12:49 PM

With few exception the weapons we use now would be used on a targets PD and not ED

So A GM could consider the ED DEF of a battleship much lower the PD DEF. I realize the rules don't seperate the two. However, one culd do this if one wanted.

One could also increase the damage o the weapons for that matter.

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 12:57 PM

First of all, I dispute that today's conventional missiles don't do as much damage as a 16" shell. They're a lot more expensive, but the warheads are gigantic on some of them. The advantage that the battleship has is that shells are cheap compared to missiles, and thousands of them can be carried by one ship.

Second, the reason we don't have weapons that are far more destructive today is because there aren't any targets with that much armor. The Iowa class battleships were designed to take on Bismarck and Yamato class battleships. You can bet that if Russia had ships with armor that heavy, that the weapons today would be a lot more destructive. However, uparmoring ships is a losing proposition. For the price of 1 battleship, you can have a fleet of destroyers and frigates.

Third, assuming weapon technology stays static, defies belief in a universe where FTL travel is possible, and weapons have tens of thousands of km range. This technological leap is at least as great as a 1700 warship to a 1945 battleship.

Last of all, even if damages were consistent within era, the possibility of time travel as raised by the book would quickly make hash of things. You'd find that at close range, the WW2 and modern weapons are as good as or better than the 'futuristic' ones.

MarkusDark

Mar 10th, '03, 01:41 PM

My only question would be - are the offensive and defensive capabilities in Star Hero proportionate? If the main gun of a space destroyer only did 2d6 RKA, I wouldn't mind as long as the def was appropriate and that personal weapons only did one pip.

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 02:41 PM

Originally posted by MarkusDark
My only question would be - are the offensive and defensive capabilities in Star Hero proportionate? If the main gun of a space destroyer only did 2d6 RKA, I wouldn't mind as long as the def was appropriate and that personal weapons only did one pip.

A problem arises if advanced cultures meet more primitive cultures like with Star Trek or Hammer's Slammers which is very common in science fiction. If the futuristic pc's go to a planet with 20th century tech, it would be nice to not have to lower all the 20th century damage ratings across the board. The system has to be consistent as a whole, not just within its genre.

MarkusDark

Mar 10th, '03, 02:44 PM

Originally posted by Gary
A problem arises if advanced cultures meet more primitive cultures like with Star Trek or Hammer's Slammers which is very common in science fiction. If the futuristic pc's go to a planet with 20th century tech, it would be nice to not have to lower all the 20th century damage ratings across the board. The system has to be consistent as a whole, not just within its genre.

Then ya answered me question. ;)

sbarron

Mar 10th, '03, 04:33 PM

Originally posted by Gary
Second, the reason we don't have weapons that are far more destructive today is because there aren't any targets with that much armor. The Iowa class battleships were designed to take on Bismarck and Yamato class battleships. You can bet that if Russia had ships with armor that heavy, that the weapons today would be a lot more destructive. However, uparmoring ships is a losing proposition. For the price of 1 battleship, you can have a fleet of destroyers and frigates.

To me, you've anwered your own question. TE spaceships were designed to fight other spaceships in space, not WWII battleships. There is no reason that they need to have more powerful weapons than said battleships. They would have weapons that were powerful enough to do the job they were designed to do, and not waste any more space, weight or resources than they had to.

Originally posted by Gary
Last of all, even if damages were consistent within era, the possibility of time travel as raised by the book would quickly make hash of things. You'd find that at close range, the WW2 and modern weapons are as good as or better than the 'futuristic' ones.

I don't know that we can improve sword technology much. We probably can't improve big gun tech much either. We have taken these techs to their upper limits of potential. Could we design a more accurate gun? Sure, but it won't necessarily do more damage than a 16" gun. WWII 16" guns could destroy anything on a modern battlefield. Here we are 60 years into the future and they still could destoy anything that we'd have to through at them. That's pretty good.

We are doing a lot with missles now, because they are more accurate and have better ranges than big guns, not because they do more damage. Heck, we've designed missles that even do less damage, because we are trying to acheive things other than maximum detructive power (limit civilian casualties, surgical strikes, etc.).

We may see lasers in the future, but I'm not so sure. It will be hard to make a laser gun that is much more effective than a modern rifle. Maybe lighter, with less needed ammo to carry (recharable battery packs?), but not neccesarily more destructive. What if we can design small missle like projectiles that can turn corners and seek out moving targets? That would beat a laser hands down on almost every battlefield. And even if we do design powerful laser guns, they will have drawbacks to match any advantages they might provide.

I think it's entirely possible that 16" guns and future weapons may do similar damage. The future weapons will have other advantages that make them desirable over the lower tech ones, but I'm not sure that "damage levels" will neccesarily be much higher. And until we design some more effective defenses, they won't need to be.

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 04:46 PM

Originally posted by sbarron
To me, you've anwered your own question. TE spaceships were designed to fight other spaceships in space, not WWII battleships. There is no reason that they need to have more powerful weapons than said battleships. They would have weapons that were powerful enough to do the job they were designed to do, and not waste any more space, weight or resources than they had to.

Star Hero warships have 75 total defense. I'd say that this would require higher damage. The orbital military installation has 95 total defense.

Originally posted by sbarron

I don't know that we can improve sword technology much. We probably can't improve big gun tech much either. We have taken these techs to their upper limits of potential. Could we design a more accurate gun? Sure, but it won't necessarily do more damage than a 16" gun. WWII 16" guns could destroy anything on a modern battlefield. Here we are 60 years into the future and they still could destoy anything that we'd have to through at them. That's pretty good.

Of course we can do more damage with big guns! We simply choose not to. A 16" shell is basically a big hunk of high explosive. There are so many futuristic possibilities to deliver large chunks of explosives on target, that it's not even funny. For example, a fuel air bomb is far more powerful than a 16" shell and that's today's technology. If you add possibilities like rail guns or gauss guns, I think it's safe to say that we haven't scratched the surface of big gun technology.

Originally posted by sbarron

We are doing a lot with missles now, because they are more accurate and have better ranges than big guns, not because they do more damage. Heck, we've designed missles that even do less damage, because we are trying to acheive things other than maximum detructive power (limit civilian casualties, surgical strikes, etc.).

And the missiles that we use against hardened targets like bunkers are far more powerful than a 16" gun. We can and do easily scale up the damage of a missile to adjust for tough targets.

Originally posted by sbarron

We may see lasers in the future, but I'm not so sure. It will be hard to make a laser gun that is much more effective than a modern rifle. Maybe lighter, with less needed ammo to carry (recharable battery packs?), but not neccesarily more destructive. What if we can design small missle like projectiles that can turn corners and seek out moving targets? That would beat a laser hands down on almost every battlefield. And even if we do design powerful laser guns, they will have drawbacks to match any advantages they might provide.

I think it's entirely possible that 16" guns and future weapons may do similar damage. The future weapons will have other advantages that make them desirable over the lower tech ones, but I'm not sure that "damage levels" will neccesarily be much higher. And until we design some more effective defenses, they won't need to be.

I don't think that futuristic weapons will do merely the same damage as a 16" gun. We're already doing more damage today, and it'll be trivial for a futuristic warship to do lots more.

keithcurtis

Mar 10th, '03, 07:42 PM

This is entirely a house rule, but it could solve the problem of those wanting to mix and match. I have always run weapons technology being used against earlier tech levels as being automatically armor piercing. Thus a future gun is armor piercing against modern armor. If the gun is already armor piercing, then it has two levels and can negate a level of hardened on any modern target.

Thus your future guns are far more devastating against modern targets, and you don't have to do a ton of re-writing, or a ton of dice rolling.

Keith "Cutting the Gordian Knot" Curtis

Gary

Mar 10th, '03, 08:31 PM

Originally posted by keithcurtis
This is entirely a house rule, but it could solve the problem of those wanting to mix and match. I have always run weapons technology being used against earlier tech levels as being automatically armor piercing. Thus a future gun is armor piercing against modern armor. If the gun is already armor piercing, then it has two levels and can negate a level of hardened on any modern target.

Thus your future guns are far more devastating against modern targets, and you don't have to do a ton of re-writing, or a ton of dice rolling.

Keith "Cutting the Gordian Knot" Curtis

Darn it! How dare you be so reasonable! I was having fun being opinionated. :D

Seriously this is a great idea, but there may be problems when dealing with non-armored items like walls and rocks. At what tech level do natural objects have half defenses?

Herolover

Mar 10th, '03, 09:18 PM

Okay. I finally got a chance to read this thread.

1) I have always had a problem with how HERO scales up. However, my main problem is with BODY not with DEF or damage.

2) In any weapon there is a point at which the amount of damage the weapon does is not going to go up with any amount of significant. As an example of this take a look at the sword of 1700 and the sword of today. They both do the nearly the same amount of damage. Look at the gun. The M-16 of today doesn't really do significantly more damage than the M-1 Garand of WWII and I am sure the next gun in the world’s arsenal will not due significantly more damage than the M-16. There comes a point in any technology where the damage done by the weapon is maxed out and the only thing left is increasing ammo, lowering weight, and dealing with other factors.

3) Now, I know someone is going to say oh, but what about rail guns or gauss weapon. What will kill a person more an M-16 bullet or a rail gun bullet? Both are going to be dead. Yes, the rail gun may do a little more damage up to say an extra d6. However, the real ability of the rail gun is the lower weight due to smaller ammo, etc.

4) One thing I noticed that people did not mention on this list is the secondary effects of damage. I haven’t had a chance to read TUV yet, I do have it, but a very accurate way to do damage is to have a number of secondary effect rolls based upon the amount of damage done. You could do a secondary roll for every 5 BODY done. That means a 25 Hit will do 5 secondary rolls where as a 10 hit will only get two.

5) I base the above idea on that fact that in ALL combat it is not really the amount of damage done, but what is damaged. Take WWII naval combat as an example. 90% of all shells fired from guns at other ships missed. 10% of all the shells fired sunk all the ships. A single 5” shell could be far more deadly than a broadside of 16” guns, obviously not because the 5” shell does more damage, but because it hits something more vital.

The weapons of the future are going to be more powerful than the weapons of today. That goes without saying. However, the damage the weapons of tomorrow do are not going to be extremely greater than the weapons of today. The difference is going to be in range, accuracy, weight, rate of fire, ease of use, etcs.

tiger

Mar 11th, '03, 07:57 AM

Originally posted by keithcurtis
This is entirely a house rule, but it could solve the problem of those wanting to mix and match. I have always run weapons technology being used against earlier tech levels as being automatically armor piercing.

As I mentioned before you could also consider the DEF listed as PD. Have the ED much less. Shells, torpedos and the like are PD attacks where lazers/blaster are ED attacks.

Grymlynn

Mar 11th, '03, 09:23 AM

Originally posted by Gary
Actually, Star Hero does have a chapter on time travel, so it is possible for WW2 era weapons to fight futuristic weapons. Based on the writeups for Star Hero, the WW2 and modern era weapons will do quite well. :)
Okay, now this is different. If you're doing a time travel game, this becomes germaine...

Hero is supposed to be a universal system, so having separate damage ranges per genre isn't right. You should be able to take characters and weapons from any setting, and drop them anywhere else.
I will agree with this on principle, but I don't think I will put it into practice by increasing damdge levels. I think I will put a K. Curtis, and give higher tech weapons better range, AP or Penetrating effects, and maybe slightly better damage, maybe 1 or 2 DCs. You can also consider range in the current question: If the star cruiser can hit the battleship from orbit, then the relative damage kinda becomes moot...

Gary

Mar 11th, '03, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by tiger
As I mentioned before you could also consider the DEF listed as PD. Have the ED much less. Shells, torpedos and the like are PD attacks where lazers/blaster are ED attacks.

This has an unintended side effect that energy attacks should then cost more than physical attacks. Otherwise, you're getting more bang for your buck when a PC purchases a laser instead of a gun using character points. Besides, it doesn't make sense in many cases. A metal door should probably be more resistant to a torch than a gun.

Gary

Mar 11th, '03, 11:11 AM

Originally posted by Grymlynn
Okay, now this is different. If you're doing a time travel game, this becomes germaine...

Not just time travel, but campaigns where there are different tech levels on different worlds.

Originally posted by Grymlynn

I will agree with this on principle, but I don't think I will put it into practice by increasing damdge levels. I think I will put a K. Curtis, and give higher tech weapons better range, AP or Penetrating effects, and maybe slightly better damage, maybe 1 or 2 DCs. You can also consider range in the current question: If the star cruiser can hit the battleship from orbit, then the relative damage kinda becomes moot...

That's a reasonable idea, but some kinks need to be worked out.

Gary

Mar 11th, '03, 12:58 PM

This bomb is a lot larger than 10D6. ;)

http://msnbc.com/news/883752.asp

Alibear

Mar 12th, '03, 05:13 AM

Originally posted by Monolith
Sorry. I was looking on the list on page 332 of FREd. There the .50 cal is listed as 2d6+1.

I'm guessing that is for a .50cal hangun? The kind peeps on this board explaind the difference to me a while ago. Something about smaller casings have less gunpowder have less velocity have less damage or something?

Alistair "misses his pal wee Alan, the gun nut, who lives in Japan and knows this sh1t" Currie

AnotherSkip

Mar 12th, '03, 06:22 AM

perhaps the differences between modern and Sci Fi is in part temporal scaling, there were some complaints on the first board about making armor useless against arquebuses and such and how to handle properly the scaling of gunpowder weapons and such without dramtically inccreasing the damage dice. perhaps a similar effect is happening here?

besides is there not a theoretical wall we hit up against in offensive weaponry which will eventually allow defenses to catch up?

just a few meanderings.

Tom Carman

Mar 12th, '03, 10:08 AM

Originally posted by Alibear
I'm guessing that is for a .50cal hangun? The kind peeps on this board explaind the difference to me a while ago. Something about smaller casings have less gunpowder have less velocity have less damage or something?

Alistair "misses his pal wee Alan, the gun nut, who lives in Japan and knows this sh1t" Currie

I think the .50cal Gatling gun in Western Hero was 2d6+1K. Of course, that was black powder and not a modern gun propellant.

Champsguy

Mar 17th, '03, 10:39 AM

Originally posted by Gary
Of course we can do more damage with big guns! We simply choose not to. A 16" shell is basically a big hunk of high explosive. There are so many futuristic possibilities to deliver large chunks of explosives on target, that it's not even funny. For example, a fuel air bomb is far more powerful than a 16" shell and that's today's technology. If you add possibilities like rail guns or gauss guns, I think it's safe to say that we haven't scratched the surface of big gun technology.

I'm not so sure about the fuel air bomb being more powerful. I know that it's more destructive, but "powerful" is an interesting term. It could be that the fuel air bomb just has a larger Area Effect. I wouldn't trust it to penetrate a bunker, anyway. It'd fry everything outside said bunker, but from what I understand of it, good old Saddam bin Laden would still be comfy sitting inside his bunker.

Regardless, why don't we choose to make the 16" guns more powerful? Don't need to. We've advanced to the point where those things aren't that useful for us.

Let's put it this way. The US has a new piece of artillery, the Crusader. Now, as I understand it, this is the pinnacle of artillery tech at the moment. It fires multiple shells, one after the other, at varying arcs, so that all the shells land at the exact same time. This dramatically increases the "kill" ratio against enemies (see, cause once the first shell hits, everybody ducks). But the US isn't even going to buy this newfangled piece of wonder. Why not? Don't need it. There aren't a whole lot of big, regiment-style armies that the US will engage in the future of warfare. We don't need to have a kick-ass artillery piece. Money can be spent on more useful things.

And the missiles that we use against hardened targets like bunkers are far more powerful than a 16" gun. We can and do easily scale up the damage of a missile to adjust for tough targets.

Again, far more powerful based on what? I'm sure they penetrate bunkers better, but they don't clear out swathes of jungles better. Just as the fuel air bomb has a bigger Area Effect than a 16" gun, the 16" gun has a bigger Area Effect than a missile.

I don't think that futuristic weapons will do merely the same damage as a 16" gun. We're already doing more damage today, and it'll be trivial for a futuristic warship to do lots more.

"Damage" doesn't always mean more dice. We do more damage today because we hit much more often. We also hit vital areas. I know that we've got bombs with more explosive force than 16" guns, but those are special-use things. The truth is, we don't have anything (non-nuclear) today that's better suited to blow up large chunks of ground cheaply and efficiently than a WWII battleship.

On a different note, we've used a house rule for supers vs starships. Starships halve their defense against supers, since they aren't really built to stand up to a guy who can fly up and punch through the transparent aluminum window. Starship cannons are big. Supers are small by comparison.

Gary

Mar 17th, '03, 11:16 AM

Originally posted by Champsguy
I'm not so sure about the fuel air bomb being more powerful. I know that it's more destructive, but "powerful" is an interesting term. It could be that the fuel air bomb just has a larger Area Effect. I wouldn't trust it to penetrate a bunker, anyway. It'd fry everything outside said bunker, but from what I understand of it, good old Saddam bin Laden would still be comfy sitting inside his bunker.

I think a fuel air bomb has between 20 and 30 tons of tnt equivalent vs about 1 ton for a 16" shell. Possibly more than that for the latest one that they tested. It'll take out a bunker if it wasn't completely sealed.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Regardless, why don't we choose to make the 16" guns more powerful? Don't need to. We've advanced to the point where those things aren't that useful for us.

Let's put it this way. The US has a new piece of artillery, the Crusader. Now, as I understand it, this is the pinnacle of artillery tech at the moment. It fires multiple shells, one after the other, at varying arcs, so that all the shells land at the exact same time. This dramatically increases the "kill" ratio against enemies (see, cause once the first shell hits, everybody ducks). But the US isn't even going to buy this newfangled piece of wonder. Why not? Don't need it. There aren't a whole lot of big, regiment-style armies that the US will engage in the future of warfare. We don't need to have a kick-ass artillery piece. Money can be spent on more useful things.

But we have this technology in place. If we ever run into an enemy that requires this sort of weapon, we can recreate it relatively quickly.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Again, far more powerful based on what? I'm sure they penetrate bunkers better, but they don't clear out swathes of jungles better. Just as the fuel air bomb has a bigger Area Effect than a 16" gun, the 16" gun has a bigger Area Effect than a missile.

A fuel air bomb does more damage than a 16" high explosive shell. A bunker busting missile does more damage than a 16" armor piercing shell. Regardless of the type of damage you want, we have weapons that are better for it than a 16" shell.

Originally posted by Champsguy

"Damage" doesn't always mean more dice. We do more damage today because we hit much more often. We also hit vital areas. I know that we've got bombs with more explosive force than 16" guns, but those are special-use things. The truth is, we don't have anything (non-nuclear) today that's better suited to blow up large chunks of ground cheaply and efficiently than a WWII battleship.

Damage does mean more dice. A fuel air bomb will do more body to a building than a 16" high explosive shell. A bunker busting missile will do more body to a bunker than a 16" direct hit with an armor piercing shell. More body = more dice.

Actually, if you want to blow up ground cheaply, a few batteries of 155 mm guns will cover more area than a battleship without having to have a crew of 2000+.

Originally posted by Champsguy

On a different note, we've used a house rule for supers vs starships. Starships halve their defense against supers, since they aren't really built to stand up to a guy who can fly up and punch through the transparent aluminum window. Starship cannons are big. Supers are small by comparison.

Does this house rule apply only to starships, or vs all inanimate objects? Would you halve the def of boulders and vault doors as well? Would this rule apply to martial artists and other 'non-super types'?

Toadmaster

Mar 17th, '03, 11:32 AM

Originally posted by Champsguy
On a different note, we've used a house rule for supers vs starships. Starships halve their defense against supers, since they aren't really built to stand up to a guy who can fly up and punch through the transparent aluminum window. Starship cannons are big. Supers are small by comparison.

This brings up something I've seen mentioned before that I think is improtant to the whole idea of HERO being universal.
While the whole HERO universe thing is an interesting idea, the all stats are the same in all genres is exactly the kind of thing that I think makes it fall apart. In a supers campaign it makes sense to reduce the damage of tanks, battleships and other impliments of destruction and to reduce their armor because with Supers its all about the heros and villians. In StarHERO or ModernActionAdventureEspionageWarHERO or even some low powered supers its more about the technology, sure the characters are important but how they interact with the available tech is more important than in a classic supers game, compare Batman to Superman, Batman is exceptional for his mind and resources, sure he has some good physical attributes but those are secondary to his gadgets and his brain, Superman is also very smart but his thing is his inherant powers, even if he were a little dense he would still be Superman the "Man of Steel", a dumb Batman would be Mongo, large thug #17943 or possibly Button pusher #7.

I think a house rule like you mention is really the only way to work Supers and non Supers stuff, and to a lessor extent certain other genres, I mean if Gamma radiation can create the Hulk and Radioactive spiders make Spidermen why wouldn't tanks and guns and such be weaker, in our world Gamma radiation would kill me not turn me green and grant super strength, so guns that take 5 or 6 shots to stop me make just as much sense.

Toadmaster

Mar 17th, '03, 12:10 PM

Originally posted by Gary
I think a fuel air bomb has between 20 and 30 tons of tnt equivalent vs about 1 ton for a 16" shell. Possibly more than that for the latest one that they tested. It'll take out a bunker if it wasn't completely sealed.

You are completely mixing peaches and watermelons, a 16" shell is fired from a gun, a 15,000lb "daisy cutter" FAE bomb is pushed out the loading ramp of a cargo plane, a 16" gun has a range of about 30 miles, a bomb has a range of 0 feet without something to drop it. Using this logic you could argue that a scifi ray gun doesn't do enough damage because getting hit by a semi would do more. BTW FAE is rated at about 5x the force of TNT, so that 15,000 lb FAE is actually about equal to a 75,000 lb bomb.

Originally posted by Gary
A fuel air bomb does more damage than a 16" high explosive shell. A bunker busting missile does more damage than a 16" armor piercing shell. Regardless of the type of damage you want, we have weapons that are better for it than a 16" shell.[/B]

I've dealt with the FAE bomb, as for the missile they do not do more than a 16" gun, a Tomahawk carries a 1000 lb warhead, a 16" shell weighs 2700 lbs, at least 1/2 of this is explosive in an HE round, (or it would be semi AP) an AP round carries less than 1/2 but I'd guess its still close to 1000 lbs. Of course the Tomahawk can be nuke armed but then we are back to the FAE question above.

Originally posted by Gary
Damage does mean more dice. A fuel air bomb will do more body to a building than a 16" high explosive shell. A bunker busting missile will do more body to a bunker than a 16" direct hit with an armor piercing shell. More body = more dice.[/B]

Not necessarily, there are many ways to represent damage, AP, + Stun X, normal vs killing, NND etc, a HEAT round would most likely do an AP killing attack vs he target, an FAE is more likely a really big normal attack, the AP round is better for cutting through hard targets, the FAE for obliterating non armored targets. Explosives are also rated for their "shattering power", I read an article on the Oklahoma Federal building bombing and it claimed the ANFO used was actually one of the most effective explosives for that purpose although only about 1/2 the power of an equivelant amount of TNT it provided more of a push causing more structural damage than TNT which would have had more of a shock but less actual ability to knock the building down due to the distance, an explosion is not just an explosion, you can also compare this to a stick of dynamite and a frag grenade, if you drill a hole in a rock the dynamite will do more "damage" because the grenade has less explosive filler, but if you toss both out in a field the grenade is more likely to kill you because its fragments carry farther (more damage at range).

Originally posted by Gary
Actually, if you want to blow up ground cheaply, a few batteries of 155 mm guns will cover more area than a battleship without having to have a crew of 2000+.
[/B]

Not really, the Iowa class carries 9x 16" (406mm) guns, 20x 5" (127mm) guns and some Tomahawk missile launchers, in WW2 it carried a crew of 2700, I believe that was reduced considerably when updated in the 1980's. To get 20+ 155mm guns you are talking about several batteries of guns so you're probably looking at 1500 soldiers to match the 5" guns, I'm guessing probably another batterey or 2 for each of the 16" guns. Of course a handfun of C-130s pushng BLU-82 "Daisy cutters" out the back could do it with less than 100 men and 2 B-52's with about 10 but now were back at the Apples and Bannanas discussion.

I think were you are having problems is application not absolute technlogy, sure in a couple of centuries we will probably have the ability to demolish entire planets with hand held weapons, it is unlikely however that they will be issued a standard equipment, since the 1950's the technology has existed for nuclear bazookas, they were even issued for a time fired from a tripod or jeep, never used though (Hmmm, I wonder why?) so there you go a Jeep was better armed than a WW2 Battleship and now Cruisers are not as well armed as Coldwar Jeeps. Something must be wrong.

I don't disagree in whole with you, as I mentioned sometime back, the upper end of HERO damage is a bit screwy, but don't agree with the conclussions of your technology arguments.

Champsguy

Mar 17th, '03, 12:36 PM

Originally posted by Gary
I think a fuel air bomb has between 20 and 30 tons of tnt equivalent vs about 1 ton for a 16" shell. Possibly more than that for the latest one that they tested. It'll take out a bunker if it wasn't completely sealed.

But it's spread out over a big area, right? The 16" gun puts a lot of force on a smaller area. The force, while less in explosive value, is more concentrated.

(Of course, I'm just guesstimating here. I could be wrong. Most of my knowledge of fuel air bombs comes from watching the first 15 minutes of Outbreak :) )

Maybe I should reword what I'm trying to say. In caveman-speak (the only language I'm truly fluent in):

16" gun: Big kaboom, pretty big spot
Fuel air bomb: Really big kaboom, really big spot
Bunker-buster missile: Big kaboom, small spot

In this case, the fuel air bomb is definitely the "most powerful", in that it has the most explosive force. However, the bomb is built to affect a really big area. As a result, the force exerted on any one specific spot in that area would be less that that inflicted by a 16" gun.

Make sense?

But we have this technology in place. If we ever run into an enemy that requires this sort of weapon, we can recreate it relatively quickly.

Yep. So when the Bugs attack, we can blow em up good. But my point isn't that, in the future, those societies couldn't build ultra mega-cannons. It's that they might not be cost-effective. In the future, warship vs warship fights might never come about. They might be too rare, and too valuable to waste blowing each other up. As I understand it, battleships after WWII didn't engage each other as much as everyone expected. They were far too useful in other purposes to risk in open combat with another battleship. Why, it might even get sunk! ;)

A fuel air bomb does more damage than a 16" high explosive shell. A bunker busting missile does more damage than a 16" armor piercing shell. Regardless of the type of damage you want, we have weapons that are better for it than a 16" shell.

Again, without regard to price. $$$ are an important factor in any military. Fuel air bombs also have to be dropped from big, slow planes. 16" guns are thus more useful in most situations.

Damage does mean more dice. A fuel air bomb will do more body to a building than a 16" high explosive shell. A bunker busting missile will do more body to a bunker than a 16" direct hit with an armor piercing shell. More body = more dice.

Not necessarily. More damage could mean Armor Piercing, or Find Weakness (which is probably what a lot of our modern guidance systems could be defined as). A 10D6 Energy Blast, with Megascale Explosion is more "damaging" than an 18D6 Energy Blast, if you're talking about harming mass quantities of troops. I'd treat it as affecting every hex of a building, too, so it would still do more Body to most buildings.

Actually, if you want to blow up ground cheaply, a few batteries of 155 mm guns will cover more area than a battleship without having to have a crew of 2000+.

But you still understand my point.

Does this house rule apply only to starships, or vs all inanimate objects? Would you halve the def of boulders and vault doors as well? Would this rule apply to martial artists and other 'non-super types'?

On the first question: Nope. Vault doors are built to stand up to human-scale attacks. Starships (the way I envision them, anyway) aren't. Think of it this way:

Your Galacticon-class battlecruiser (4 miles long) fires beams of energy 50 feet wide from it's powerful guns. Your enemy has a similar ship. Both of your defenses are built to stop what you think your enemy will throw at it. Thus, the defenses are built around stopping those 50' wide columns of energy. They aren't designed to stop a guy with a 125 Str who can fly up and rip the escape pods out of their docking holes (you see, the escape pods are positioned so that they're unlikely to be hit by the Mega-Cannon).

Modern day tanks are heavily armored on the front, less so on the sides and rear. Their armor is sloped and angled so that high-velocity projectiles will bounce off if fired from an anticipated angle of attack. Nobody really expects an Iraqi tank to shoot your tank from underneath the sand, or from a spot hovering in the air, so not only are the top and bottoms of the tank more poorly armored, but an attack on the front of the tank from above also has to get through less armor. Likewise, nobody expects anybody to fly into the Death Star through the exhaust ducts and tear it up from the inside (nothing could survive the exhaust, except Superman).

As far as your second question (non-supers, conventional weapons, etc): It doesn't matter. The defense is high enough so that any "non-super" personal-level attack won't have enough damage classes to get through even half the defense.

MilkmanDan

Mar 17th, '03, 01:27 PM

Gary

Mar 17th, '03, 05:07 PM

Originally posted by Toadmaster
You are completely mixing peaches and watermelons, a 16" shell is fired from a gun, a 15,000lb "daisy cutter" FAE bomb is pushed out the loading ramp of a cargo plane, a 16" gun has a range of about 30 miles, a bomb has a range of 0 feet without something to drop it. Using this logic you could argue that a scifi ray gun doesn't do enough damage because getting hit by a semi would do more. BTW FAE is rated at about 5x the force of TNT, so that 15,000 lb FAE is actually about equal to a 75,000 lb bomb.

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't realize the FAE was quite that powerful.

Originally posted by Toadmaster
I've dealt with the FAE bomb, as for the missile they do not do more than a 16" gun, a Tomahawk carries a 1000 lb warhead, a 16" shell weighs 2700 lbs, at least 1/2 of this is explosive in an HE round, (or it would be semi AP) an AP round carries less than 1/2 but I'd guess its still close to 1000 lbs. Of course the Tomahawk can be nuke armed but then we are back to the FAE question above.

I think you're right. I was thinking of the bunker buster bomb, which weighs 5000+ pounds and is rocket propelled. I should have said bomb not missile.

Originally posted by Toadmaster

Not necessarily, there are many ways to represent damage, AP, + Stun X, normal vs killing, NND etc, a HEAT round would most likely do an AP killing attack vs he target, an FAE is more likely a really big normal attack, the AP round is better for cutting through hard targets, the FAE for obliterating non armored targets. Explosives are also rated for their "shattering power", I read an article on the Oklahoma Federal building bombing and it claimed the ANFO used was actually one of the most effective explosives for that purpose although only about 1/2 the power of an equivelant amount of TNT it provided more of a push causing more structural damage than TNT which would have had more of a shock but less actual ability to knock the building down due to the distance, an explosion is not just an explosion, you can also compare this to a stick of dynamite and a frag grenade, if you drill a hole in a rock the dynamite will do more "damage" because the grenade has less explosive filler, but if you toss both out in a field the grenade is more likely to kill you because its fragments carry farther (more damage at range).

This is true.

Originally posted by Toadmaster

Not really, the Iowa class carries 9x 16" (406mm) guns, 20x 5" (127mm) guns and some Tomahawk missile launchers, in WW2 it carried a crew of 2700, I believe that was reduced considerably when updated in the 1980's. To get 20+ 155mm guns you are talking about several batteries of guns so you're probably looking at 1500 soldiers to match the 5" guns, I'm guessing probably another batterey or 2 for each of the 16" guns. Of course a handfun of C-130s pushng BLU-82 "Daisy cutters" out the back could do it with less than 100 men and 2 B-52's with about 10 but now were back at the Apples and Bannanas discussion.

Actually to be nitpicky, probably only about half the 5" guns could fire at a target, because the ship itself is in the way of the other half. I don't quite how you get 1500 men to equal 20 guns. I thought it required a crew of 5 per gun. Even if you allow a reasonable amount for support units, it still wouldn't come close to 1500 men.

Originally posted by Toadmaster

I think were you are having problems is application not absolute technlogy, sure in a couple of centuries we will probably have the ability to demolish entire planets with hand held weapons, it is unlikely however that they will be issued a standard equipment, since the 1950's the technology has existed for nuclear bazookas, they were even issued for a time fired from a tripod or jeep, never used though (Hmmm, I wonder why?) so there you go a Jeep was better armed than a WW2 Battleship and now Cruisers are not as well armed as Coldwar Jeeps. Something must be wrong.

I don't disagree in whole with you, as I mentioned sometime back, the upper end of HERO damage is a bit screwy, but don't agree with the conclussions of your technology arguments.

Yeah, I still feel that 30th century tech compared to 20th century tech should be like 20th century tech vs 17th century tech.

Gary

Mar 17th, '03, 05:25 PM

Originally posted by Champsguy
But it's spread out over a big area, right? The 16" gun puts a lot of force on a smaller area. The force, while less in explosive value, is more concentrated.

(Of course, I'm just guesstimating here. I could be wrong. Most of my knowledge of fuel air bombs comes from watching the first 15 minutes of Outbreak :) )

Maybe I should reword what I'm trying to say. In caveman-speak (the only language I'm truly fluent in):

16" gun: Big kaboom, pretty big spot
Fuel air bomb: Really big kaboom, really big spot
Bunker-buster missile: Big kaboom, small spot

In this case, the fuel air bomb is definitely the "most powerful", in that it has the most explosive force. However, the bomb is built to affect a really big area. As a result, the force exerted on any one specific spot in that area would be less that that inflicted by a 16" gun.

Make sense?

To a certain extent this is true, but not completely. For instance, a 155 mm gun will do more damage and cover a greater area than a grenade. The FAE is of a much higher magnitude than the 16" shell.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Yep. So when the Bugs attack, we can blow em up good. But my point isn't that, in the future, those societies couldn't build ultra mega-cannons. It's that they might not be cost-effective. In the future, warship vs warship fights might never come about. They might be too rare, and too valuable to waste blowing each other up. As I understand it, battleships after WWII didn't engage each other as much as everyone expected. They were far too useful in other purposes to risk in open combat with another battleship. Why, it might even get sunk! ;)

Warships being too rare to fight is very uncommon in science fiction. Most science fiction is like Star Wars or Star Trek with lots of space combat. :) There were no battleship engagements after WW2 because there was only 1 country with battleships. During WW2, there were lots of battleship combats.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Again, without regard to price. $$$ are an important factor in any military. Fuel air bombs also have to be dropped from big, slow planes. 16" guns are thus more useful in most situations.

The 16" gun requires a 60000 ton battleship to deliver. A big slow plane is cheaper.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Not necessarily. More damage could mean Armor Piercing, or Find Weakness (which is probably what a lot of our modern guidance systems could be defined as). A 10D6 Energy Blast, with Megascale Explosion is more "damaging" than an 18D6 Energy Blast, if you're talking about harming mass quantities of troops. I'd treat it as affecting every hex of a building, too, so it would still do more Body to most buildings.

But you still understand my point.

The 10D6 with megascale would do far less vs tough targets than the 18D6. Whereas a bunker buster bomb would do far more damage (more body) vs tough targets than the 16" shell.

Both a FAE and a 16" shell would affect every hex of a building. However, the FAE would do a lot more net body. Since nobody is claiming that a FAE is AP, more body translates into more dice.

Originally posted by Champsguy
On the first question: Nope. Vault doors are built to stand up to human-scale attacks. Starships (the way I envision them, anyway) aren't. Think of it this way:

Your Galacticon-class battlecruiser (4 miles long) fires beams of energy 50 feet wide from it's powerful guns. Your enemy has a similar ship. Both of your defenses are built to stop what you think your enemy will throw at it. Thus, the defenses are built around stopping those 50' wide columns of energy. They aren't designed to stop a guy with a 125 Str who can fly up and rip the escape pods out of their docking holes (you see, the escape pods are positioned so that they're unlikely to be hit by the Mega-Cannon).

Modern day tanks are heavily armored on the front, less so on the sides and rear. Their armor is sloped and angled so that high-velocity projectiles will bounce off if fired from an anticipated angle of attack. Nobody really expects an Iraqi tank to shoot your tank from underneath the sand, or from a spot hovering in the air, so not only are the top and bottoms of the tank more poorly armored, but an attack on the front of the tank from above also has to get through less armor. Likewise, nobody expects anybody to fly into the Death Star through the exhaust ducts and tear it up from the inside (nothing could survive the exhaust, except Superman).

As far as your second question (non-supers, conventional weapons, etc): It doesn't matter. The defense is high enough so that any "non-super" personal-level attack won't have enough damage classes to get through even half the defense.

I'm still not quite sure why tank armor which is deliberately designed for protection, would be halved while vault doors and boulders which aren't wouldn't be halved. The fact that the sides, rear, top, and bottom of a tank is already reflected in lower Def for those facings.

The halving for ships could matter for non-supers. It makes a huge difference whether that first 'free halving' occurs for a martial artist or gunner with find weakness. Would that first find weakness roll drop that 40 def ship to 10 def or 20 def?

Champsguy

Mar 17th, '03, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by Gary
Warships being too rare to fight is very uncommon in science fiction. Most science fiction is like Star Wars or Star Trek with lots of space combat. :) There were no battleship engagements after WW2 because there was only 1 country with battleships. During WW2, there were lots of battleship combats.

My memory is foggy on the specifics. But I did read somewheres about how battleships had become too valuable to engage other battleships.

The 16" gun requires a 60000 ton battleship to deliver. A big slow plane is cheaper.

Two points:

First, ships require high costs to construct, true, but once you've got them, it's cheaper to bombard a coastline with them than with bombs from planes.

Second, this analogy only stretches so far. At this point, it's not relevant any longer as to whether Star Hero stats are too low. :)

The 10D6 with megascale would do far less vs tough targets than the 18D6. Whereas a bunker buster bomb would do far more damage (more body) vs tough targets than the 16" shell.

Yes, but you've just proved my point. Damage is going to vary depending on your target.

I'm still not quite sure why tank armor which is deliberately designed for protection, would be halved while vault doors and boulders which aren't wouldn't be halved. The fact that the sides, rear, top, and bottom of a tank is already reflected in lower Def for those facings.

Because vault doors are built to stop personnal-level attacks. That, after all, is what is supposed to be used against them. They're designed to stop explosives, etc. Boulders get their defense because it's material strength. Boulders aren't designed to resist attacks. Boulders have that much defense out of sheer toughness.

Tanks, on the other hand, wouldn't have defenses that high just from the materials they're made of. The M1-A1 Abrams has Chobham armor that stops most weapons cold. Part of the reason it does so is the way it's layered and angled. The material itself isn't Def 20. What makes it Def 20 is the way it's assembled.

Tank armor is designed for protection... from other tanks. Vault doors are designed for protection from personal-level attacks. It's also high defense because it's just a big, old lump of metal. Tanks don't have nearly as much metal to protect them. Much of their protection comes from sloping, composites designed to resist specific weapons, and other technological "cheats". It doesn't apply nearly as well against a big old fist coming at it from a funky angle.

The halving for ships could matter for non-supers. It makes a huge difference whether that first 'free halving' occurs for a martial artist or gunner with find weakness. Would that first find weakness roll drop that 40 def ship to 10 def or 20 def? [/B]

Well, any non-powered martial artist is going to have a hell of a time floating through space and trying to kick open a hole in the ship, when he has no powers. But anybody with enough DCs and a good enough Find Weakness to kick a hole in it is close enough to superpowered for me.

As for gunners? What do you mean, on fighters? The halving wouldn't apply. The big ships are designed to resist that.

Gary

Mar 17th, '03, 06:18 PM

Originally posted by Champsguy
My memory is foggy on the specifics. But I did read somewheres about how battleships had become too valuable to engage other battleships.

There were still plenty of BB vs BB fights. Some include the Bismarck vs the Hood and Prince of Wales, the Scharnhorst vs the Duke of York, and the Washington vs the Kongo. The Battle of Leyte Gulf had a huge BB vs BB engagement. There were a number of British vs Italian BB engagements as well.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Two points:

First, ships require high costs to construct, true, but once you've got them, it's cheaper to bombard a coastline with them than with bombs from planes.

Second, this analogy only stretches so far. At this point, it's not relevant any longer as to whether Star Hero stats are too low. :)

It's also more dangerous bombing with the BB. Anti-ship missiles are a real threat, and if you lose a plane, it's cheaper than if you lose a ship. Also, the ship can't go too close to the coastline, and thus it's range is severely limited. A plane can bomb anywhere.

Since when is it a crime to wander from the subject? Especially if I'm having fun. :)

Originally posted by Champsguy
Yes, but you've just proved my point. Damage is going to vary depending on your target.

However, Champions treats all targets, barring hardened, and all damage, barring AP or other advantages, the same. Since we don't roll different amounts of dice based on the target, we have to make sure that the attack that does more aggregate damage (the FAE) does more damage (more dice) than the attack that does less aggregate damage (the 16" shell).

Originally posted by Champsguy

Because vault doors are built to stop personnal-level attacks. That, after all, is what is supposed to be used against them. They're designed to stop explosives, etc. Boulders get their defense because it's material strength. Boulders aren't designed to resist attacks. Boulders have that much defense out of sheer toughness.

Tanks, on the other hand, wouldn't have defenses that high just from the materials they're made of. The M1-A1 Abrams has Chobham armor that stops most weapons cold. Part of the reason it does so is the way it's layered and angled. The material itself isn't Def 20. What makes it Def 20 is the way it's assembled.

Tank armor is designed for protection... from other tanks. Vault doors are designed for protection from personal-level attacks. It's also high defense because it's just a big, old lump of metal. Tanks don't have nearly as much metal to protect them. Much of their protection comes from sloping, composites designed to resist specific weapons, and other technological "cheats". It doesn't apply nearly as well against a big old fist coming at it from a funky angle.

How about WW2 era tanks which essentially were big hunks of steel like vault doors? By your logic, a King Tiger tank would have more protection vs a super than a M-1 Abrams since it doesn't have all the sloping, composite materials, and special construction to be bypassed by an attack.

Originally posted by Champsguy

Well, any non-powered martial artist is going to have a hell of a time floating through space and trying to kick open a hole in the ship, when he has no powers. But anybody with enough DCs and a good enough Find Weakness to kick a hole in it is close enough to superpowered for me.

As for gunners? What do you mean, on fighters? The halving wouldn't apply. The big ships are designed to resist that.

Give the martial artist in a space suit a 2D6 HKA sword, 3D6 with str and MA. You'll allow the first find weakness to drop the ship's defenses from 40 to 10?

For gunner, I meant someone with a pistol or other small arms with some find weakness.

Edsel

Mar 17th, '03, 06:41 PM

a 16" shell weighs 2700 lbs, at least 1/2 of this is explosive. . . I hate to be a stickler for detail but the Mark 8 APC shell for the 16"/50 Mk. 7 guns, fired by the Iowa-class battleships, contain a "bursting charge" of only 40.5 lbs. of high explosives. The main damaging force of these projectiles is the tremendous kinetic energy delivered by a 2700 lb. shell traveling at an average of 2000 feet per second (1300 MPH+).

I love big guns.:)

Toadmaster

Mar 17th, '03, 07:09 PM

Originally posted by Edsel
I hate to be a stickler for detail but the Mark 8 APC shell for the 16"/50 Mk. 7 guns, fired by the Iowa-class battleships, contain a "bursting charge" of only 40.5 lbs. of high explosives. The main damaging force of these projectiles is the tremendous kinetic energy delivered by a 2700 lb. shell traveling at an average of 2000 feet per second (1300 MPH+).

I love big guns.:)

I wasn't sure about the AP but for explosive shells if the weight of explosive is less than 1/2 the weight of the shell, then they are considered semi AP, not HE so a 2700lb HE shell has at least 1350lbs of explosive and they don't pound a beach with AP shells for the most part, they didn't even use AP shells against many ships as they would tear right through the lighter ships without exploding.

Toadmaster

Mar 17th, '03, 07:26 PM

Originally posted by Gary
Actually to be nitpicky, probably only about half the 5" guns could fire at a target, because the ship itself is in the way of the other half. I don't quite how you get 1500 men to equal 20 guns. I thought it required a crew of 5 per gun. Even if you allow a reasonable amount for support units, it still wouldn't come close to 1500 men.

I thought about that after the fact, I was just looking at the listing of weapons carried and didn't think about the fact that 1/2 are on the other side of the ship. As for the number of people required to crew the 155's? A Battery of guns is roughly a company, a company is about 200-250 people, a battery of guns includes 3-5 guns, so to get 20 guns you need 4 to 6 batteries 800-1500 people. You need more than just the SP gun and the 6 crew members to operate properly, just as the BB needs more than just the gun crews. Plus the BB is far more mobile and has a longer range between the 16" guns and Tomahawks. The BB doesn't do cross country well but the SP's don't swim so good either.

Also if it makes you feel better the 16" gun with an AP shell would only do 8d6, the 120mm gun given in Fred is far too powerful going on previous versions of HERO, it caused quite a stir when 5th came out, it should only do 6d6, not 8d6 AP. HERO has always based damage doing +1DC for each doubling of energy, the 120mm gun which has 11-12 megajoules at the muzzle is not even in the same class as the 16' gun with its 350+ Mj but due to the doubling they are only 6DC apart. This is what I was refering to earlier about scaling at the high end, Steve Long (presumably, since he was the author) "boosted" the damage of a few items (.45ACP being another one, it should only do 1d6+1 not 1 1/2d6) which completely throws the rest off kilter, I don't mind the changes if a new way is produced but it screws everything up to only change a few things and leave the rest as they were. I've seen a write up for a nuke someplace and I think it did 20d6 and that caused a ruckus all on its own. Probably would have helped to bring this up earlier but I only just found my notes on the really big guns.

Gary

Mar 17th, '03, 10:08 PM

Originally posted by Toadmaster
I thought about that after the fact, I was just looking at the listing of weapons carried and didn't think about the fact that 1/2 are on the other side of the ship. As for the number of people required to crew the 155's? A Battery of guns is roughly a company, a company is about 200-250 people, a battery of guns includes 3-5 guns, so to get 20 guns you need 4 to 6 batteries 800-1500 people. You need more than just the SP gun and the 6 crew members to operate properly, just as the BB needs more than just the gun crews. Plus the BB is far more mobile and has a longer range between the 16" guns and Tomahawks. The BB doesn't do cross country well but the SP's don't swim so good either.

I just checked. The TO&E for an artillery battery of 6 guns is 144 officers and men. So we're talking about 500 or so men for 20 guns. Just being anal. :p

Originally posted by Toadmaster

Also if it makes you feel better the 16" gun with an AP shell would only do 8d6, the 120mm gun given in Fred is far too powerful going on previous versions of HERO, it caused quite a stir when 5th came out, it should only do 6d6, not 8d6 AP. HERO has always based damage doing +1DC for each doubling of energy, the 120mm gun which has 11-12 megajoules at the muzzle is not even in the same class as the 16' gun with its 350+ Mj but due to the doubling they are only 6DC apart. This is what I was refering to earlier about scaling at the high end, Steve Long (presumably, since he was the author) "boosted" the damage of a few items (.45ACP being another one, it should only do 1d6+1 not 1 1/2d6) which completely throws the rest off kilter, I don't mind the changes if a new way is produced but it screws everything up to only change a few things and leave the rest as they were. I've seen a write up for a nuke someplace and I think it did 20d6 and that caused a ruckus all on its own. Probably would have helped to bring this up earlier but I only just found my notes on the really big guns.

It doesn't make me feel better. If a 120 mm gun only did 6d6, then it would take 10 or so hits to take out an opposing tank. If 16" guns did only 8d6 damage, it would take 2-3 hits to take out a tank. 2X damage = 1 DC doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

Besides, velocity damage has absolutely no relationship with other damage. A terminal velocity fall does more damage than a 120mm tank shell? :rolleyes:

dbsousa

Mar 18th, '03, 07:38 AM

Originally posted by keithcurtis
. I have always run weapons technology being used against earlier tech levels as being automatically armor piercing. Thus a future gun is armor piercing against modern armor. If the gun is already armor piercing, then it has two levels and can negate a level of hardened on any modern target.

I would be willing to take this a step further, and say that Tech Level X weapons have Reduced Penetration against Tech Level X+1 Armor. And that none of the rules above apply to Superheroes.

That way, if you are playing in a game with the Iowa, the Enterprise, and the Silver Surfer, The Iowa and the Enterprise are severely mismatched, but the Silver Surfer stacks up against either at the same level.

Toadmaster

Mar 18th, '03, 05:10 PM

Originally posted by Gary
I just checked. The TO&E for an artillery battery of 6 guns is 144 officers and men. So we're talking about 500 or so men for 20 guns. Just being anal. :p

I was going off of definitions of military units, under battery it said it was an artillery unit equivelent to a company, company said 4-5 platoons, platoons said 40-50 men. 500 does sound more reasonable, I just thought perhaps artillery crew eat good and have secretaries to write their letters home. :)

Originally posted by Gary
It doesn't make me feel better. If a 120 mm gun only did 6d6, then it would take 10 or so hits to take out an opposing tank. If 16" guns did only 8d6 damage, it would take 2-3 hits to take out a tank. 2X damage = 1 DC doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

Besides, velocity damage has absolutely no relationship with other damage. A terminal velocity fall does more damage than a 120mm tank shell? :rolleyes: [/B]

And that is where I agree with you, damage is weird when you get this high, the +1DC per 2x works fine for small arms until you start getting into the .50 Browning range, as you go higher it gets weirder. Explosives don't seem to follow this pattern either.

pawsplay

Mar 19th, '03, 10:09 PM

I think it's been pretty well demonstrated that increasing tech results in some greater hitting power, but primarily results in greater range and accuracy.

Case in point, the M-16 doesn't hit that much harder than a musket.

The advantage Star Hero vehicles would have over anything we could field today is their mobility combined with extremely long ranges. Chances are, one of our tanks or helicopters would be toast about the time a Star Hero vehicle came onto its radar.

It's probably worth mentioning, also, that Terran Empire is a space opera game, so modern weapons would likely not have startling stats, either.

Gary

Mar 20th, '03, 06:52 AM

Originally posted by pawsplay
I think it's been pretty well demonstrated that increasing tech results in some greater hitting power, but primarily results in greater range and accuracy.

Case in point, the M-16 doesn't hit that much harder than a musket.

The advantage Star Hero vehicles would have over anything we could field today is their mobility combined with extremely long ranges. Chances are, one of our tanks or helicopters would be toast about the time a Star Hero vehicle came onto its radar.

It's probably worth mentioning, also, that Terran Empire is a space opera game, so modern weapons would likely not have startling stats, either.

Yeah, but then you start comparing battleships and 18th century ship of the lines. Which of them does far more damage? :)

misterdeath

Mar 20th, '03, 07:25 AM

I've been thinking about this, and really, it depends on your sci-fi universe.

In Bab-5, the Nuke seems to be a huge weapon, massively powerful. So, the beam weapons and pulse cannons, are all less powerful (even the Minbari seem to have less powerful weapons than the nuke)

In Star Trek, the Photon Torpedo has a much greater destructive power than a nuke, and in most of the game systems, the Phaser is approximately equivalent (probably to mimic the shows, where Phasers are the primary weapon. Gamers use the best weapon, if that's torpedoes, then rock and roll baby!).

So, in Star Trek, you have to have much more powerful weapons.

I'm not sure how the Star Wars universe goes, since we don't have much info on planetary bombardment, or really, anything scientific at all.

So, in Star Hero, which has examples which covers a bunch of different Genre's, has a widely divergent power level of the ships.

Some of the ships probably aren't more powerful than old earth battleships, because that's what their universe is made like.

Some should be much more powerful, and I think that's what's lacking.

D

tiger

Mar 20th, '03, 07:35 AM

Originally posted by Gary
Yeah, but then you start comparing battleships and 18th century ship of the lines. Which of them does far more damage? :)

Hard to say. What is the force of a cannon ball at optimum range and the force(not explosin) of a 16" gun at optimum range.

As I've pointed out before a 16" gun is PD and Phaser/laser/balster/ion cannon would be ED.

Weapons we use now are ALMOST all PD based. SO The ED of a battleship could be much less. While vehcile rules give a set DEF. House rules could easily adapt them to less vs energy. Another answer that has been pointed out is having sci-fi weapons be considered AP vs Old tech.

There is only way to have a continuing rise in damage per time/genre. That would be to sit down before any genre books are done and ge X amount of damage to X weapon.
This would be a long process for sure.

Gary

Mar 20th, '03, 08:39 AM

Originally posted by tiger
Hard to say. What is the force of a cannon ball at optimum range and the force(not explosin) of a 16" gun at optimum range.

Trust me, a 16" gun is far more powerful than a 18th century cannonball. :)

Originally posted by tiger

As I've pointed out before a 16" gun is PD and Phaser/laser/balster/ion cannon would be ED.

Weapons we use now are ALMOST all PD based. SO The ED of a battleship could be much less. While vehcile rules give a set DEF. House rules could easily adapt them to less vs energy. Another answer that has been pointed out is having sci-fi weapons be considered AP vs Old tech.

The ED solution isn't very appealing. A big hunk of steel would probably resist fire or lasers easily as well as cannon shells. Some materials such as wood probably should have less ED, but not battleship armor. The AP part vs old tech might work, but then you'd get the silly situation where 20th century armor specifically designed for protection would have less def than non-manmade objects not designed for protection.

Originally posted by tiger

There is only way to have a continuing rise in damage per time/genre. That would be to sit down before any genre books are done and ge X amount of damage to X weapon.
This would be a long process for sure.

Yeah, but Hero claims to be an Universal System where a character or equipment in one setting dropped on another could function with no adjustment. You should be able to drop on a planet with 20th century tech and use published sources for 20th century damages without any alteration. It's better to do the work up front and be consistent, rather than having to make ad-hoc adjustments on the fly.

tiger

Mar 20th, '03, 11:37 AM

Originally posted by Gary
Trust me, a 16" gun is far more powerful than a 18th century cannonball. :)[/i]

Why? The force, while I'm sure it is different, may not be that much different when you look at the optimum range of each weapon & then look at the DC of the Hero system and the effect that each step up has.

Some materials such as wood probably should have less ED, but not battleship armor.

Why were they made to stand up to lasers? The toughness of material now compared to the past is based on what we have had to combat. Don't remember ever fighting anyone with a laser. So you can't just dismiss the difference.

Yeah, but Hero claims to be an Universal System where a character or equipment in one setting dropped on another could function with no adjustment.

It is a universial system, I can use these rules to play any genre I want. This doesn't mean that I have to keep stepping up the damage everytime I move forward in time.

The damage of a musket is about the same as some weapons now. it's just ours are a whole lot easier to hit with.

Also where do you stop at. I mean saw FH is DC 3-4, Then by your theroy vicotrian age would be 5-6, pulp would have to be 7-8, modern would be 9-10, Cyber 11-12 and so on and so on and so on. Never mind Champions

Sooner or later it why bother. I mean the armor of the time can usually hold up to the weapons of the time. So why keep grossing up the damage?

Our armor isn't designed to defend against energy weapons. Kind of hard to design against something you have know idea about. So it would logical to make them ED or AP. Easy solution without starting constant build up of damage.

Gary

Mar 20th, '03, 11:57 AM

Originally posted by tiger
Why? The force, while I'm sure it is different, may not be that much different when you look at the optimum range of each weapon & then look at the DC of the Hero system and the effect that each step up has.

If a battleship fired at a tank at optimum range, it'll nuke it in one shot. If a 18th century cannonball hit a tank at its optimum range, the tank wouldn't even notice. The 16" shell does a lot more raw dice than the cannonball.

Originally posted by tiger

Why were they made to stand up to lasers? The toughness of material now compared to the past is based on what we have had to combat. Don't remember ever fighting anyone with a laser. So you can't just dismiss the difference.

Let's take a modern day weapon that does do ED damage. A flamethrower would not be twice as effective vs battleship armor than a cannon. This should be obvious.

Originally posted by tiger

It is a universial system, I can use these rules to play any genre I want. This doesn't mean that I have to keep stepping up the damage everytime I move forward in time.

The damage of a musket is about the same as some weapons now. it's just ours are a whole lot easier to hit with.

Also where do you stop at. I mean saw FH is DC 3-4, Then by your theroy vicotrian age would be 5-6, pulp would have to be 7-8, modern would be 9-10, Cyber 11-12 and so on and so on and so on. Never mind Champions

Sooner or later it why bother. I mean the armor of the time can usually hold up to the weapons of the time. So why keep grossing up the damage?

What happens when your Star Hero dudes go to a more primitive planet, a common motif, and the natives do the same amount of damage as you?

Originally posted by tiger

Our armor isn't designed to defend against energy weapons. Kind of hard to design against something you have know idea about. So it would logical to make them ED or AP. Easy solution without starting constant build up of damage.

Flamethrowers. ED damage that is easily resisted by battleships.

Plus you would have balance issues as most people would start purchasing ED type attacks for their characters if it's the same points and they're more effective.

tiger

Mar 20th, '03, 01:06 PM

Originally posted by Gary
If a battleship fired at a tank at optimum range, it'll nuke it in one shot. If a 18th century cannonball hit a tank at its optimum range, the tank wouldn't even notice. The 16" shell does a lot more raw dice than the cannonball.
Now is this because of the raw dice or because armor is better now?

Let's take a modern day weapon that does do ED damage. A flamethrower would not be twice as effective vs battleship armor than a cannon. This should be obvious.

True. But, i know GMs that consider them PD not ED and a flamethrower isn't a lazer or ion cannon now is it.

Flamethrowers. ED damage that is easily resisted by battleships./
True but simple considering weapons AP vs lower tech would solve the problem

Plus you would have balance issues as most people would start purchasing ED type attacks for their characters if it's the same points and they're more effective.
True, but I think requiring damage to be increased everytime a new genre comes out will have the same effect on balance

Gary

Mar 20th, '03, 03:12 PM

Originally posted by tiger
Now is this because of the raw dice or because armor is better now?

It's because of raw dice. A 16" shell vs a 18th century cannon would sorta be like a bazooka vs a flintlock pistol. If they both fire at exactly the same target, the 16" shell will do scads more damage than the cannonball.

Originally posted by tiger

True. But, i know GMs that consider them PD not ED and a flamethrower isn't a lazer or ion cannon now is it.

What GM would consider a flamethrower a PD attack?

Originally posted by tiger
True but simple considering weapons AP vs lower tech would solve the problem

Wouldn't that cause a problem that a hunk of raw iron would have more def vs high tech weaponry than the same mass of steel in a tank?

Originally posted by tiger
True, but I think requiring damage to be increased everytime a new genre comes out will have the same effect on balance

At least the system as a whole would be consistent, without having to make up rules on a fly.

tiger

Mar 21st, '03, 07:54 AM

Well I think the system in consistant. If you look at the damage vs the armor your see that. I think Hero has simply decide against a constant build up of damage, something I like.

If you wish to do that in you campaigns, cool and have fun. Me I'll take the damage they give and if I hit a primitive planet I'll simple consider higher tech AP or the like and not worry about.

That's the great think about this system over others. It's not a ridged structure of this is the way it is deal with it. You use or adjust as you wish, totally upto you.

Toadmaster

Mar 21st, '03, 12:43 PM

Gary, I think we are of a like mind on damage, except that I finally accepted or had beat into me that in HERO the 2x energy = +1 DC is how it works. About 3 years ago on the old hero boards I had come up with a method of determining weapon damage that the square root of damage instead than the exponential method. It worked well keeping the damage at the low end around the same as current damage (.50 cal did 3d6+1 instead of 3d6) but as the energy increased so did the damage. The 120mm tank gun did 12d6 and a 16" gun did something like 100d6, judging from your response here I think you can imagine what the response I got was. I am still looking at ways of representing these large weapon attacks with other means than just more d6. It is surprising what a little work with the lims and advantages can do, for example you might rate an 17th century 12 pounder naval gun as 4d6 RKA, with a big stun X mod and a lim 1/2 damage against metal armor, while a modern 20mm cannon might also have a 4d6 RKA and the beam lim, so while both look similar a 12 pounder cannon ball will knock large holes in stone walls, wooden hulls etc, and the 20mm will penetrate armor better but only leave a small hole behind.

I am assuming that you are like me and would like to see more variety in modern weapons instead of the small gun, medium gun, big guns HERO can sometimes feel like.

Aroooo

Mar 21st, '03, 01:29 PM

Originally posted by Toadmaster
...for example you might rate an 17th century 12 pounder naval gun as 4d6 RKA, with a big stun X mod and a lim 1/2 damage against metal armor, while a modern 20mm cannon might also have a 4d6 RKA and the beam lim, so while both look similar a 12 pounder cannon ball will knock large holes in stone walls, wooden hulls etc, and the 20mm will penetrate armor better but only leave a small hole behind...

I have to ask this, partially because you reminded me of something I read in TUV last night. Why put a STUN X mod on a weapon designed to attack a vehicle? I understand that cannons and other vehicle weapons can attack people, but why use the advantage on a weapon designed to attack other vehilces? (Its been a long week - I hope that made sense.)

Aroooo

Gary

Mar 21st, '03, 04:09 PM

Originally posted by Toadmaster
Gary, I think we are of a like mind on damage, except that I finally accepted or had beat into me that in HERO the 2x energy = +1 DC is how it works. About 3 years ago on the old hero boards I had come up with a method of determining weapon damage that the square root of damage instead than the exponential method. It worked well keeping the damage at the low end around the same as current damage (.50 cal did 3d6+1 instead of 3d6) but as the energy increased so did the damage. The 120mm tank gun did 12d6 and a 16" gun did something like 100d6, judging from your response here I think you can imagine what the response I got was. I am still looking at ways of representing these large weapon attacks with other means than just more d6. It is surprising what a little work with the lims and advantages can do, for example you might rate an 17th century 12 pounder naval gun as 4d6 RKA, with a big stun X mod and a lim 1/2 damage against metal armor, while a modern 20mm cannon might also have a 4d6 RKA and the beam lim, so while both look similar a 12 pounder cannon ball will knock large holes in stone walls, wooden hulls etc, and the 20mm will penetrate armor better but only leave a small hole behind.

I am assuming that you are like me and would like to see more variety in modern weapons instead of the small gun, medium gun, big guns HERO can sometimes feel like.

Yeah, I agree that we mostly see alike, although I don't think 2X damage = 1DC makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. You really get silly results at the high end of damage.

I would love it if there were more variety in modern weapons. :)

Toadmaster

Mar 21st, '03, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by Aroooo
I have to ask this, partially because you reminded me of something I read in TUV last night. Why put a STUN X mod on a weapon designed to attack a vehicle? I understand that cannons and other vehicle weapons can attack people, but why use the advantage on a weapon designed to attack other vehilces? (Its been a long week - I hope that made sense.)

Aroooo

I just see it as an intrinsic value of the weapon, the bigger the bullet the more likely its going to knock you into next week. If you are building a weapon for efficiency it does not make sense, it does if you are trying to allow really big weapons to have an effect the narrow damage scale won't allow, stunX is a decent way to do that. An unconscious opponent is just as good as a dead one and it helps prevent silly things like 75 point heros taking a tank round in the chest and brushing it off, they are at least unconscious until the next millinium even on a bad roll. The stunX has no effect on a vehicle.

Hope that answered your question.

Toadmaster

Mar 21st, '03, 07:02 PM

Originally posted by Gary
Yeah, I agree that we mostly see alike, although I don't think 2X damage = 1DC makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. You really get silly results at the high end of damage.

I would love it if there were more variety in modern weapons. :)

I agree, but it is just one of those things I have come to accept with HERO, since most games involve the lower end of the damage scale it doesn't come up much. Even when it does it rarely involves multiple vehicles so again it doesn't stand out, a tank will clean heroic characters as it is and against supers tanks are not supposed to be that tough so it seems to work out. On those occasions I want to play something with tank vs tank or star ship vs star ship I typically use another game (blasphemy!!!!! :) )

I hesitate to suggest HERO can not do EVERYTHING but naval combat on the high seas between WW2 battleships is not one of HEROs strong points.

Aroooo

Mar 21st, '03, 07:13 PM

Originally posted by Toadmaster
I agree, but it is just one of those things I have come to accept with HERO, since most games involve the lower end of the damage scale it doesn't come up much. Even when it does it rarely involves multiple vehicles so again it doesn't stand out, a tank will clean heroic characters as it is and against supers tanks are not supposed to be that tough so it seems to work out. On those occasions I want to play something with tank vs tank or star ship vs star ship I typically use another game (blasphemy!!!!! :) )

I hesitate to suggest HERO can not do EVERYTHING but naval combat on the high seas between WW2 battleships is not one of HEROs strong points.

I think this needs clarification. Its not WW2 battleship vs. WW2 battleship that is the problem. Its WW2 vs. WW4 battleships. Its high tech vs. low tech. Supers vs. Normals. Large scale vs. small scale.

Aroooo

Toadmaster

Mar 21st, '03, 08:57 PM

Originally posted by Aroooo
I think this needs clarification. Its not WW2 battleship vs. WW2 battleship that is the problem. Its WW2 vs. WW4 battleships. Its high tech vs. low tech. Supers vs. Normals. Large scale vs. small scale.

Aroooo

Not really, its anything larger than a 20mm cannon, by the time you reach a 75mm gun multiple megajoules of energy are only adding 1 point of damage. In real life a modern destroyer stands no chance against a Battleship but in HERO you would be looking at something like 8d6RKA (16" guns), 6d6RKA (5" guns) DEF 20, vs 6d6 (5" gun), 7d6RKA (missiles) DEF 15 so the DD can get lucky and take out the BB. Same goes for tanks a Sherman is something like 5d6 RKA (76mm gun) DEF 10 (2.5" armor) vs an Abrams 6d6RKA, DEF 20 (12" armor), in reality the Sherman couldn't hope for more than a blown track but in HERO terms they are fairly equally matched, and that is with equipment built in the same century.

Whiplash

Apr 6th, '03, 11:07 AM

My problem with TUV is stuff like the following:

the 1000 lb bomb does 4d6 RKA, 14 BODY average

a 4-door sedan has 3 DEF and 14 BODY.

Generally, your Chevy is going to survive a 1000 lb bomb blast.

The M1 tank will survive it easily, which it should not.

W.

Champsguy

Apr 7th, '03, 11:09 AM

Originally posted by Whiplash
My problem with TUV is stuff like the following:

the 1000 lb bomb does 4d6 RKA, 14 BODY average

a 4-door sedan has 3 DEF and 14 BODY.

Generally, your Chevy is going to survive a 1000 lb bomb blast.

The M1 tank will survive it easily, which it should not.

W.

Obviously, there are problems.

I'd actually reduce the Body in a lot of vehicles. Or give Disadvantages to represent them falling apart faster (a Chevy might have 14 Body to represent how difficult it is to destroy with a 44 magnum, chipping away Body point-by-point, but big 10 to 15 Body impacts should do more). Example: Phys Lim, Chevy: Destroyed if takes 8+ Body in one shot (gas tank explodes, etc)

I've been toying around with posting a "Tank Hero" thread, in which I'd detail how I'd fix some of the vehicle problems, but I just don't have time right now (finals are coming up). Maybe next month.

Gary

Apr 7th, '03, 05:19 PM

TravellerHero

Apr 8th, '03, 12:19 PM

As far as the individual scaling for technological advances, I do think there is room for some optional rules regarding scaling different methods of destruction from point to point on the tech curve.

However, as far as massive capital vessels go, I think the light offense (per tube) and high defense actually makes sense.

You should not judge the damage a ship can do on a per tube basis, but combined. Modern warships and some ideas about how capital starship fight, do not devote individual tubes/barrels to an enemy. They devote a battery. The battleship you mention will not hurl a 16" shell at a destroyer, it will at minimum hurl THREE 16" shells. It could if it wished combine it's turrets into a nine shot barrage of 16" shells.

Suddenly DEF enough to fend off a single 16" shell becomes woefully inadequate.

Now in Star Wars, capital ships engaged with what seemed like a complete lack of fire control. beams of light zipped away from them in all directions. Admittedly they were engaging fighters, but even in the scene were two capital ships got close enough to exchange fire with turbolasers, it was just a bunch of individuals shooting where ever they felt.
Star Trek on the other hand seems to combine attacks on capital ships. this could easily add excitement to a game. (just because the players are in a lightly armed freighter, if they have the teamwork skill and make their rolls, the two gunners can swing their turrets around to hit the armed corsair in the same genral spot at the same general time, and actually have a chance of not just puncturing the armor/shields, but to get in behind them and really do some body.)

Now to get the weapon to weapon comparisons to scale a bit more...

Champsguy

Apr 8th, '03, 02:30 PM

My current (very early) work on a sort of "Tank Hero" is coming along nicely. Again, I don't have the time (or the resources--no Hero 5th Edition, or even 4th Edition, here with me at school) to do a really good job, but I've been throwing some things together and have come up with a few rules I like.

1st, military weapons are mostly killing attacks, and so have too wide a range of possible damage values to accurately represent what they do in the real world. A 50 cal machine gun doing 3D6 killing can roll anywhere from 3 Body to 18 Body. This is all well and good for firing at people (I always figured a high damage roll meant you shot them in the face, or some other sensitive part, while a low damage roll meant you just shot them in the pinky, or grazed their hair), but against vehicles and other objects, it can get ridiculous. One bullet from a 50 cal can fail to penetrate a brick wall, while the other blows a huge hole in it.

Solution: Some damage from a normal, military weapon (not something that anyone paid points for, so Captain Marine can still roll 18 Body with his sniper rifle) should be figured according to the Standard Effect Rule. I decided that half the dice (round up) of a weapon should follow Standard Effect when shooting at vehicles/buildings/etc. This makes the damage ranges far easier to account for, and prevents... strange things from occuring.

Ex: Bob's M16 rifle does 2D6 killing damage. He shoots at an Iraqi APC, which has 10 Defense. Ordinarily, he'd be able to hurt it if he rolled really well, but applying Standard Effect takes care of that (an M16 shouldn't hurt an APC, even if the Iraqis have crappy tech). Thus, 1D6 will be rolled normally, and 1D6 will take Standard Effect (half the dice, round up). Final result, 1D6+3.

Ex 2: Fred shoots his 50 cal machine gun (3D6 killing) at the APC. Half of 3 is 1.5, rounded up to 2. 2D6 will be figured according to Standard Effect. So he really does 1D6+7.* This will allow the gun to penetrate the APC (which, from what I understand of Iraqi tech and our various engagements with them, is pretty close to the truth).

* Note: I don't like the "Standard Effect means you always roll a 3" rule. I prefer "Standard Effect means you always roll average", meaning 2D6 equals 7, not 6. Feel free to do it by-the-book, but my numbers listed here will conform to the way I wanna do it. :)

2nd, I disagree with a LOT of the military writeups that I've seen in Hero 5th. I don't think a tank gun does 8D6 killing explosion. We just saw that today when a tank shot a hotel in Baghdad and didn't level it. I don't tack on extra damage because I feel "this should blow up more good". If I think an attack is 5D6 killing, I'll write it as 5D6 killing, regardless of 5th Edition writeups to the contrary.

3rd, I don't take into consideration effects on humans. Many people want to increase damage done from certain weapons because they'd be instant death to people in real life. I understand this desire, but Hero doesn't do instant death well. The system is almost designed against that concept. Instead of fighting it by increasing damage, I'm going to go with it, and ignore the fact that a guy with straight 10s can take a 50 cal sniper round in the chest and have about a 50% chance of being positive Body. You're free to disagree with this take on the game if you want, but at least you know where I'm coming from. (Besides, when I want to incorporate Instant Death, I'll use a few optional rules to make catastrophic Body loss much more dangerous.)

Finally, I also think that the basic concepts of our vehicle writeups has to change. Too often, we want to do everything we see with Powers. I'm going to focus quite a bit on Disadvantages instead. Just the other day, Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed Iraqi T-72s in Baghdad. From the news reports, the 25mm DU shell from the Bradleys penetrated the Iraqi turrets and killed the crew. The tanks themselves, however, were apparently still whole. The Bradley guns didn't penetrate deeply enough to actually cause an ammunition explosion (which happens when an M1-A1 shoots a T-72). My interpretation? The tanks were still at positive Body, the crew was just dead. Thus, T-72s would get the Physical Limitation: Deathtrap. Once a certain amount of Body got through, you'd roll on a chart to see the effects (similar to Warhammer 40K). This shows that you don't actually have to destroy the tank utterly to knock the darn thing out of action.

Ex: (very rough, will change in the future)
If 8+ Body taken through defenses (1D6, +1 for every additional 2 Body done to tank):
1: Got lucky! No further effect. Smoke a cigarette and count your blessings.
2,3: Cutting it close. Add +1 to next D6 roll.
4,5: Poor Bob. One random crew member gets hit by the attack as it penetrates the vehicle's armor. Roll the attack against him, apply only half the vehicle's Defense (Def 10 would add 5/5 Armor to poor Bob). Add +1 to next D6 roll.
6: I didn't like those guys anyway. Two vehicle crewmen hit by the blast. Apply half Defense. +1 to next D6 roll.
7: Find a new crew. All vehicle crewmen hit by blast. Apply half defense. +1 to next D6 roll.
8+: Kaboom! Ammo cooks off. Roll damage from one round from vehicle's main gun, apply half defense to tank itself, no defense to crew.

Of course, this chart would change depending on the tank. The Israeli Markova tank is supposed to designate something like 75% of it's weight to protecting the crew. Thus, it's chart would be far more forgiving than the T-72's chart. Likewise, the M1-A1 is specially built so that the ammo explodes away from the crew, so in the even of an ammo explosion, you'd get "Roll damage from one round of vehicles main gun, apply half defense to tank. Crew must spend next phase changing underwear."

Likewise, Physical Lims would dictate things like how much fuel the thing has, where the access points are (the guys in the M1-A1 have to get out of a hatch on top, but the Merkova lets you crawl out a hatch to the rear, where nobody can shoot at you), if your tank has an auto-loader, the number of crew required, how well you can see things on the outside, and whether or not you have to expose yourself to enemy fire to shoot the machine guns on top. Some tanks will get far more points in Phys Lims than other tanks do.

What does this all have to do with Star Hero, you ask? Precious little, say I. I'm talking about tanks. Actually, it does have something to do with it. Futuristic vehicles would have far fewer (and far safer) Physical Lims than current ones do. The tank of the future has a Fusion Engine, a high-end computer system to assist the crew, automated weapons slaved to one console, fires energy weapons instead of tank shells, and has Transparent Aluminum viewports all over. What's the different in Hero terms? Well, it doesn't have Phys Lim: Gashog (must fuel up every 300 miles), Phys Lim: Requires 4 man crew, Phys Lim: Can't see squat, or Phys Lim: Got to stick your fool head out of the top to use the machine gun. These are all major advances, but they don't necessarily result in more dice.