Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

[Fox1]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

Perhaps you missed the part where I said: "or close enough that it's easily modified to an individual's taste"?

 

We used an M1A1 recently in our Champions game, which is why I brought it up in another thread. How did we fix it? We dropped 3d6 from the 120mm killing attack and 10 defenses. As I said, easily modified.

 

Again, by that measure anything in the book would work. The def 2, attack 1 pip K and butterfly wings M1A1 only needs a few increases and a wing removal job.

 

How wrong does something have to be in order to be wrong?

 

As far as I'm concerned we're judging the write-up as is, I too made corrections for the time I used a M1A1- that does not mean the present material is correct. It's sloppy work, and it doesn't deserve to be cut that much slack.

[Fox1]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

Did my post not make it in? I was trying to talk about that very issue of compartmentalization' date=' and thought I came up with a gameable solution.[/quote']

 

I didn't see it...

 

Was it early in the thread?

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

Did my post not make it in? I was trying to talk about that very issue of compartmentalization' date=' and thought I came up with a gameable solution.[/quote']

 

It got swallowed in the rapid fire posts that followed it. But you are on the same line of thinking that I am. With all the huge hero brains we have on the boards, I'm pretty damn sure we could make a system like this work. My old pre 1st edition Star Hero spacegame used a very similar idea to what you were proposing, but the notes are long since lost in moves and as it was a heroic level game, we never worried much about pointing things out. In fact, at the time we simply used a modded form of Traveller vehicle construction rules and then stated them out in HERO according to my system. It worked well for us at the time, but I've always wanted to see something put together that really meshes well with the core system and could be used in any genre.

 

Come on folks...

It seems like the frequent posters on here average around 2 decades of experience with the system. That should imply that we have a couple thousand years of accumulated wisdom. We should be able to do this.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

 

Here, for you:

http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptionsbook/helltanner.html

http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptionsvehicles/damnationalley.html

Thanks! Nice stuff...

I'd probably give Tanner a bit more to work with (the main things being an increase in his Southwestern AK, some dirty infighting moves, and a bit of stun only DR, based on willpower), but otherwise, it looks great.

 

Now if they'd only do a REAL movie of the book,instead of that travesty that starred Jan Michael Vincent.

 

EDIT: Just looked closer at your write up for the Car. Cool stuff too... tho, as another fan of the book, I thought I might point out that the move by limit on the wings probably shouldn't be there. IIRC, he mentions the ability to sweep the sides of the Car to clear away vermin, and also that they could be couched in front to act like lances. That and I'm thinking that the Eyes need to be an OAF... they were the only part of the Car, aside from the wheels, that was vunerable to small arms fire. Speaking of which... Brilliant job on writing up the wheels

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I didn't see it...

 

Was it early in the thread?

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=706548&postcount=59

 

On page 6.

[Warp9]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

In general I build a weapon for use against it's common target. Firearms against people, tank guns against tanks/vehicles, etc.

 

Does that cause a problem if they are used against something else? Sometimes yes. It's an 80% solution. It works against the primary target and I'm willing in a game system to accept some degree of error when they are used against abnormal targets. I consider this better than failing against 80% of its targets.

 

I do of course run sanity checks to make sure I haven't screw up the game system as whole. Thus my house rule firearms that work so well in a gritty normals campaign is verified as working in a superhero setting. I check to see if my M1A1 tank gun works the same range (it does, and better than the official version for that matter).

I can definitely understand the reasons for doing that.

 

My concern there is that would seem like the practice would lead to different scales of damage. I would prefer that all damage was rated on one scale (which was independent as possbile from the vast sea of potential targets).

 

If a simple magnitude does not do enough to describe how damage works against multiple sorts of targets, possibly other factors are needed (not that Hero doesn't have some already). I would be agreeable to adding more damage factors to better describe different attacks (for example, a description of the size of the area the attack is focused over might be nice).

[Fox1]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

Fox1 says bigger bullet better against flesh: I'm thinking a narrower 'bullet' of the same mass would be better against armour though: anyone know if this is right?

 

Assuming all else remains equal (i.e. the narrower bullet doesn't deform and eat up too much energy), yes.

 

 

I'm getting that mass is more important than velocity: again: is this right?

 

In living critters, the answer seems to be a yes. Velocity bleeds fast moving through such things and the heavier the projectile the better it retains it.

 

Against armor? Not so clear at all. The interaction is very complex. Here we're talking about a rather thin layer instead of a body.

 

The best idea is to consider both important.

 

 

Hmm this leads to some dark but interesting places: if a CHARACTER were made of plastic, or of metal, ammunition would react very differently.

 

Indeed. In HERO I tend to give out resistant defenses and DR to taste to represent this, but I understand I've gone outside the model that produced my weapon damage charts.

 

However to do more would change the character of HERO too much IMO. So I accept gross simplification at this point.

 

 

 

From here you enter some interesting ideas mechanically. As you say, likely too complex for any game. But interesting none the less. If you hack them out further I'd be interesting in seeing the final result.

[proditor]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

And the funny part about this was that my real question was along the lines of "Should we just write up something this big as a moving base with sectional armor?" That'll learn me to be oblique....

 

[Fox1]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I can definitely understand the reasons for doing that.

My concern there is that would seem like the practice would lead to different scales of damage.

 

That it does to some degree.

 

In my system the break over occurs at the point where damage is done more as a side-effect of penetration than it does as a result of the actual hole poked in something. In pratical terms that means anti-tank weapons+.

 

This isn't ideal, but given the requirement of only altering the build and not altering core HERO itself (a requirement I put on myself), there isn't much in the way of other practical options.

 

Although I'm open to suggestions.

 

 

 

 

If a simple magnitude does not do enough to describe how damage works against multiple sorts of targets, possibly other factors are needed (not that Hero doesn't have some already). I would be agreeable to adding more damage factors to better describe different attacks (for example, a description of the size of the area the attack is focused over might be nice).

 

We have some of that already in AP, piercing and various other limits.

 

For mine, I used base damage, Stun Modifier, Piercing, and a custom armor effect limit on the weapon side.

 

On the target side there is resistant defenses, Body, Stun, DR, etc.

 

Hero has a lot of elements to take into account.

 

If one centers on a degree of baseline realism (human targets, etc), it becomes more acceptable to play games with the rest. After all, you can't pick up a newspaper and find out how Mr. Uber reacted to being hit with 120mm last week. Almost whatever you do there is as good as your data.

[Fox1]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=706548&postcount=59

 

On page 6.

 

I like the basic idea.

 

I've often thought that vehicles should turn into bases after reaching a certain size- basically above a single hex.

 

This conflicts with characters who have growth. Logic says they should be treated in at least a similar way. How do we deal with this?

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I like the basic idea.

 

I've often thought that vehicles should turn into bases after reaching a certain size- basically above a single hex.

 

This conflicts with characters who have growth. Logic says they should be treated in at least a similar way. How do we deal with this?

its a problem, I agree

For biological targets, I don't see a problem with the system, as there are few things as interdependent as a body ("What do you mean a hole the size of a pinhead in a little artery just killed me?") I usually solve the damage issue with big critters and giant types with DR.

For non biological ones... its more complicated.

Back in aforementioned olden days, I used the Justice Inc gadget rules to write up cyborgs and robots with almost every system and location as a seperate "focus". Worked well for Mecha, Terminators, Jump Armor, and Genocide Minuteman Robots (I ported the idea over to our Champs game when we decided to do a Mutant campaign). I even had one Cyborg character who used the system and it worked out great. But it was a bit of a headache on construction.

[MitchellS]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

Again, by that measure anything in the book would work. The def 2, attack 1 pip K and butterfly wings M1A1 only needs a few increases and a wing removal job.

 

How wrong does something have to be in order to be wrong?

 

As far as I'm concerned we're judging the write-up as is, I too made corrections for the time I used a M1A1- that does not mean the present material is correct. It's sloppy work, and it doesn't deserve to be cut that much slack.

Wrong based on whose opinion? Yours? The point you're overlooking is that everyone is playing their Hybrid Hero game at different standards. The standard which works for you [or for me] doesn't necessarily work for everyone else.

 

In my opinion damages are too high and because of this defenses are too high. My answer is to simply lower damages and defenses but that doesn't make the current write ups invalid. What the write ups do is tell me things I didn't know [like the fact that the Abrams has that many weapons] about the vehicles in question. I think that is all which is really important to most Hero players. Absolute accuracy is not something you can get in any game.

 

Is it possible the Iowa's defense are just wrong? It's not like typos have never happened before. Either way I don't need a vehicle sheet to be one page longer just so every possible connotation can be accounted for.

[Silbeg]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I like the basic idea.

 

I've often thought that vehicles should turn into bases after reaching a certain size- basically above a single hex.

 

This conflicts with characters who have growth. Logic says they should be treated in at least a similar way. How do we deal with this?

 

Not sure that logic DOES dictate that. Do we deal with buildings in the same way? In any case, with very large vehicles, I would probably deal with them more like buildings than vehicles (10X BODY to destroy, and then not immediate)

[MitchellS]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I admit this... I don't have a copy of UV yet...

I perused it at my FLGS and didn't see enough actual system additions to make it worth my limited fundage. I am looking for a way to deal with comparmentalization, hit locations, and hopefully a good way to sidestep the whole "vehicles have a set Body And Def value that is used in all combat" issue. This thread could, quite easily, devolve into the same kind of discussion we've had time and agin on similar threads, in reference to the whole Exponential Damage discussion. There is almost NO way to write up a large complex vechile that can take the kind of punishment that a battleship, or star destroyer, or The Enterprise, to name a few examples, that doesn't break under the +1 body = x2 mass system.

A tank gun is NOT going to kill the Iowa in a couple of shots.

Its the same issue that comes up in the "How do you destroy a planet" discussions.

I'm not saying we need a ruleset like Star Fleet Battles.

But there needs to be a paradigm shift if we want to involve the vehicles in the game plot in a more complex manner.

I still think that it can be done, and I'm willing to bet that the base rules are a good starting point.

The Base rules are written with the expectation that they will be too large for any single attack to detroy (barring large AoE attacks or megascale)

Essentially... wouldn't you agree that for functional play purposes, something like a Starship or a pirates Merchantman fuill essentially the same plot role as a base, rather than the role of, say, a starfighter. And even in the Starfighter... If its your character piloting it, wouldn't you like a better system than " Well...your fighter took 15 body. it explodes. you die. Sorry"

TUV has optional hit location charts which can deal with a great many of your vehicle issues. As far as the body issue, there's a reason you're allowed to buy additional body. And yes, the Abrams and Iowa shouldn't be able to take out each other with 2 hits each, but it's possible the Iowa sheet is in error. Mistakes do happen.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

And as a quick side note....

In my games, I tend to build heavy weapons like Tank Guns as Multipowers, to better simulate the various munition options. And even if I don't, explosive heavy weapons tend to get built with Penetrating. If they are shaped charge weapons, then they get AP too. Why Penetrating first? Its the best fit we have in the system to represent spalling (The inside layer of armor blowing off and spraying the interior of a vehicle) Most modern MBT's have a spallguard on the inside to prevent just such an occurance (An extra level of Hardened, Only vs Penetrating)

 

Edit: Not to mention additional DCV levels (or possibly missile deflection, tho the CV vs CV roll doesn't really sim it right), triggered, with charges for reactive armor

[Sean Waters]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I was thinking of Damage reduction too but all it really is is an increase in the (for vehicles and bases) BODY of the thing: 3/4 damage reduction is like buying 4 times as much BODY against that type of attack. That's good enough in a pinch, but buying 3/4 DR (resistant) for physical and energy attacks, you might as well just spend 120 points on +60 BODY and have done with it: obviously the more BODY you start with the more of a bargain it is.

 

Perhaps the solution for vehicles and bases is to allow the BODY to be bought with an advantage: compartmentalised. This allows you to break the total size up into 8 hex units each of which have to be completely destroyed in order to completely destroy the base/vehicle. However each compartment can contain stuff like engines, guns, crew; which can be effectively be targetted by targetting that compartment.

 

You could have a bigger advantage to make the compartments 4 hexes or a smaller one for each doubling of the compartment size. If you hit the thing with an area effect attach big enough to touch more than one compartment then it damages all of the ones it touches.

 

That should make the old Iowa a bit harder for the T80s to take down...

 

It's more bookkeeping but any system to increase realism generally has that effect...

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

TUV has optional hit location charts which can deal with a great many of your vehicle issues. As far as the body issue' date=' there's a reason you're allowed to buy additional body. And yes, the Abrams and Iowa shouldn't be able to take out each other with 2 hits each, but it's possible the Iowa sheet is in error. Mistakes do happen. [/quote']

 

There have been past examples before too, but even in published variants (like the ship rules from 4th edition FH) there has been a lot of handwaving (Just treat any attack from small weapons as ineffective or with 75% DR, or the like)

And mistakes do happen, but this is a bit deeper than that.

In my mind, it comes down to the role of vechiles in the campaign.

The rules as they stand are good for a game that occasionally has vechiles show up, but not for one where they are an integral part of the story.

Just my .02

[Andrew Cermak]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

In my mind, it comes down to the role of vechiles in the campaign.

The rules as they stand are good for a game that occasionally has vechiles show up, but not for one where they are an integral part of the story.

Just my .02

 

I feel the exact opposite to be true.

 

With the exception of the DEF of the warships (which I feel is likely the result of an error), I think the vehicles work perfectly fine in relation to each other. It's against other published characters that they make less sense, so the more the campaign focuses on vehicle vs. vehicle, the better off the vehicles come out.

[Beastial]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

So a quick-hack fix for the Iowa might go something like this:

 

 

Base DEF: 10 (superstructure)

 

+10 DEF: 14- Activation (hull)

+10 DEF: 11- Activation (armor skirt)

 

 

Maybe throw in a x2 vulnerability to attacks that penetrate the skirt (it's covering Important Stuff). With 30 DEF, I'd probably rate that at "Uncommon".

 

If you happen to hit the control tower, you'd find something significantly squishier than the afore-mentioned tank... Hitting the skirt on the other hand (both activation rolls, And I'd rule they'd share a single roll) would run you smack into a 30 DEF that the 8d6RKA would have a hard time scratching.

 

Now combine that with the per-hex rules for damaging buildings, and you're good to go.

 

 

--------------------------

 

As an alternate solution, I propose we pour some gas on this complexity fire:

 

A "Scale" system, across all of Hero, based on size. You'd pay some ammount for a BB to be 4 or 5 steps up this scale system (heck, tanks would probably be at least one step up themselves).

 

Any attacks against things of a smaller scale would take a CV penalty and a damage bonus... visa versa going the other way. Keep growth/shrinking modifications for PER, reach etc. DEX (rather than CV) and SPD penalties might be appropriate instead appropriate (hordes of fighters swarming around a Ponderous capital ship and all that).

 

Properly designed, this sort of thing would allow for stuff like insects, capital ships, and planets.

 

Things at the same scale would interact normally (Capital ship, Cosmic Gods, rodents, bacteria, whatever), but when you started crossing scale boundaries, the smaller stuff starts to have trouble inflicting damage, while the ponderous, large stuff has trouble hitting.

 

With this sytem, you could define your tanks as having some reasonable level of power in comparison to one another, and their interaction with people, vermin, and capital ships would Just Work.

 

Weapons designed to work on other scales could take an advantage or limitation based on which way they were going (anti-cap ship missiles, AA weapons on a ship, anti-personnel on a tank, the Death Star's planet-destroyer, etc). Insecticide gets a big price break.

 

I propose that this would cost about as much (perhaps a bit more) than 3 levels of intrinsic growth per level (30 per level?)... just because you're getting not just STR, but damage across the board (but loosing SPD).

 

Lessee here... growth x 3: 15. +1/2 0 END, +1/2 Persistent, +1/4 intrinsic, -1/2 always on: 33.75(34) active, 22.5(22) real. That seems pretty cheap all things considered. Maybe 30-40 points per level? Without firm decisions on how effective various aspects of the proposed system are, it's pointless (pun intended) to come up with a fixed value.

 

And rather than a flat SPD bonus/penalty, I'd rather see something along the lines of different turn lengths (though this could get needlessly complex). Each 2 (3?) steps of Scale would change your turn length by a step up/down the time chart... That raises some potentially unpleasantly effects for Really Small things, but then there's really not much they can do at that point.

 

I'd want weapons at a given scale to act at that rate... unmodified DEX/SPD/etc... providing whatever is controlling the power/weapon/whatever could physically act on that scale (or why would they buy the reduced-scale power in the first place?). Titanic-Planet-Eater-Guy might not be capable of acting on human-scale speed, but the Death Star's crew is quite capable of crewing human-scale equipment.

 

Having set a base scale (the PC's I'd imagine), you've determined the actual

size of a 'hex'... everything not at that base scale is affected one way or the other.

 

 

I'd actually considered something like this in the past... degree's of 'heroicness' or 'divinity'... only without the size/SPD thing. I wouldn't really want that sort of thing to be purchasable with points though. You'd just say "Superheroic campaign: all characters have 2 levels of Heroism". You could even have 'subhuman' levels, though I really hadn't thought about it previously. Low-end undead hordes perhaps?

 

 

So I've stated that crossing Scales changes your damage, but not how. I'd guess a flat DC bonus wouldn't scale well (pun intended again). Doubling damage every level seems way too extreme, but I don't want people to have to memorize 1.5^X tables either. x1.5, x2, x2.5 sounds better... I'd think that should be used as a multipier to whatever was rolled rather than increasing the number of dice involved:

 

GM: "The Death Star fires, you're hit with a 60d6 RKA! What's your rED?"

Player: "Dude.... we don't HAVE 60d6".

 

To bring this back to the original subject:

Assuming a system like this could be balanced, some BB with a 10 def sounds about right... though it still might be a touch low.

 

 

The first proposal sounds much easier on everyone's lives (fix the individual write-up), while the latter one could be Very Cool if you could get it to work. With this, you'd have to rewrite just about every non-human-scale object in the game. Ho hum.

 

Dream big, eh?

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I was thinking of Damage reduction too but all it really is is an increase in the (for vehicles and bases) BODY of the thing: 3/4 damage reduction is like buying 4 times as much BODY against that type of attack. That's good enough in a pinch, but buying 3/4 DR (resistant) for physical and energy attacks, you might as well just spend 120 points on +60 BODY and have done with it: obviously the more BODY you start with the more of a bargain it is.

 

Perhaps the solution for vehicles and bases is to allow the BODY to be bought with an advantage: compartmentalised. This allows you to break the total size up into 8 hex units each of which have to be completely destroyed in order to completely destroy the base/vehicle. However each compartment can contain stuff like engines, guns, crew; which can be effectively be targetted by targetting that compartment.

 

You could have a bigger advantage to make the compartments 4 hexes or a smaller one for each doubling of the compartment size. If you hit the thing with an area effect attach big enough to touch more than one compartment then it damages all of the ones it touches.

 

That should make the old Iowa a bit harder for the T80s to take down...

 

It's more bookkeeping but any system to increase realism generally has that effect...

 

This is the kind of thinking that will get us somewhere. Bravo. and in defence of DR in these builds...it works better than extra Body because it can be limited to create vunerabilities to particular attacks. ( like a sailing ship with DR, doesn't work vs AoE or explosions)

Repped

[Blue]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

You could, I suppose, rule that bases and vehicles apply thier Damage Reduction BEFORE defenses rather than after.

 

I wouldn't. But you could!

[Warp9]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

We have some of that already in AP, piercing and various other limits.

 

For mine, I used base damage, Stun Modifier, Piercing, and a custom armor effect limit on the weapon side.

 

On the target side there is resistant defenses, Body, Stun, DR, etc.

 

Hero has a lot of elements to take into account.

 

If one centers on a degree of baseline realism (human targets, etc), it becomes more acceptable to play games with the rest. After all, you can't pick up a newspaper and find out how Mr. Uber reacted to being hit with 120mm last week. Almost whatever you do there is as good as your data.

I agree that the method which you describe will produce realistic results which are excellent for many types of games.

 

Still, I find your mention of "weapon side" and "target side" to be interesting. It relates a bit to something I wanted to get at. . . .

 

To me one of the important issues here is that I believe that it is possible to talk about the qualities of an attack (the weapon side) in an abstract manner without worrying about the particular target involved.

 

IMO it is the qualities of the attack, interacting with the qualities of the target (the target side) that produce the end effect (which is damage).

 

It bothers me when stuff from the "target side" start messing with things that belong to the "weapon side" of the equation. I'm not questioning the validity of your technique within a limited setting (a realistic war genre), but I do have some reservations about how well the system projects out to other situations which might be common is some settings.

 

I would like to have one system that puts things on one scale which moves seamlessly from pistols and people, all the way to bazookas and tanks. With such a system I have more confidence in its ability to project out to handle other hypothetical situations (like Mr. Uber and the 120mm gun).

 

Finally I would argue that it is still possible to make educated guesses even about things that do not exist in real life. We can find the principals behind the things that we do have experience with, and extend along those lines to guess about the things that we do not know about. In some ways, that is what Physics is all about, and to me a game system is a very simple form of "game world physics."

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I definately agree with building slugthrower type weapons as multipowers, to cover the wide range of available ammo types etc

 

I tend to use HE and HEAP rounds mostly for direct fire, for Indirect you can add such wonderful toys as submunition rounds, scatterable mines, homing AT rounds, advanced smoke and chaff rounds

 

I put together a design for the Imperial "Sunburst" Missile Sled, its not quite obscene, but invoked devastation comes to mind

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

I don't see this as a niche client issue, however. I see expanded vehicile rules as quite important to every genre EXCEPT Supers. In the superheroic genre, Vehicles are basically props. A tank lets a solider threaten Grond. A tank is a conveinent projectile for Grond to throw at someone. The Batmobile is a plot device that lets Batman get places quickly and access better lab gear than he can reasonably fit in his belt of holding. A Battle ship is a setting for a fight, or something for Superman to airlift to saftey to show just how freaking strong he is. The current vehicile rules are fine for Champions.

Its ALL the other Genres that suffer.

Any subgenre that treats vechiles as, in a way, complex characters.

What I'm trying to dream up is a Simulationist ruleset that allows for increased dramatic potential from a Narationist perspective, with the right balance of ease of play and accuracy to keep the Gamists happy.

HERO is almost unique as a system in that it allows the flexibility to do this, usually.

I don't see this as a "too complex so not needed" thing.

I see this as vital to a true "universal system"

I want to be able to call engineering on the com for a damage report after a Klingon suprise attack.

I want to try and cripple the Archeron with a clever tactic that takes advantge of its only weak point.

I want to be able to disable the Star Destroyers hyperdrive so they can't follow me back to the Rebel base.

I want to keep fighting in my delta while systems redline and burn out and redundant systems come online to keep me from buying a farm.

I want to run a shipment of Haffakkine antiserum across the Alley to keep the Nation of New England from dying of the Plauge.

I want to feel the rumble of my scythed chariot wheels as I charge the front ranks of the Formorian army.

I want to drive a tanker truck out of the badlands, and try an keep the mutants from stopping me.

I want to command a ship in Heliums navy, turing my radium cannons on the endless horde of Tharks who are marching to besiege the city.

 

Basically

I want advanced vehicle rules.

Obviously.

 

The rules in The Ultimate Vehicle and even in The Hero System Rulesbook itself is sufficient to simulate everything you want. The problem is the published designs, not the rules themselves. One can use the current vehicles rules to design relatively accurate and playable vehicles, even in a vehicles-heavy campaign such as military or Sci-fi, but one must do it themselves as things stand now. Most of DoJ's published writeups are insufficient, or unbalanced. Though, I haven't seen the Vehicles Sourcebook, so I don't know how things look on that end. (some of the writeups in TUV are good...some are unbalanced. The starships in Terran Empire are horrid)

 

Write up your own vehicles and I bet they'll turn out to be pretty good...(I write up mecha all the time)

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?

 

Its not so much that the designs in TE are horrid, as there arent enough ships for PC's, and the ones there are are just plain boring

 

has anybody played out a battle with ships from TNE, especially the really big ones? I havent tried yet.... maybe its time to at least do a re-write of the starship damage rules for my own campaign, I already did one for Gurps Space/Gurps Traveller, but since it was published in Pyramid, I shouldnt use it here too, I could write up something closer to High Guard though

 

ideas?