Star Hero damage too low!

[Monolith]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Unless you plan on mixing present and future vehicular weapons together in one game

 

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]

Re: Unless you plan on mixing present and future vehicular weapons together in one game

 

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]

Re: Re: Unless you plan on mixing present and future vehicular weapons together in one game

 

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

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]

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]

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]

Re: Re: Apples and oranges, I think...

 

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]

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]

Re: Re: Re: Apples and oranges, I think...

 

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]

This bomb is a lot larger than 10D6.

 

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

[Alibear]

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]

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]

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.

[Guest Champsguy]

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]

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'?