Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

[ghost-angel]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

At least I'm not the guy who basically said "Size doesn't matter as far as killing something. Elephants are big and people kill elephants with *elephant guns*".

 

 

The point was:

Compared to the Elephant the bullet is relatively small - yet still manages to kill the elephant. So obviously the size of the projectile has little to do with killing big things.

 

Is there a reason you are incapable of having a conversation without insulting someone?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

I feel bad for having started this now:hush:

 

Let's all take a deep breath and keep it light and conversational. I am interested in everyone's opinions as to how I might address my problems, and also in opinions that they are not problems, but this is not helping.

[Fox1]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Is there a reason you are incapable of having a conversation without insulting someone?

 

I'm sorry, but you're... funny. And so classic in today's world. You're like the Sicilian in the Princess Bride, the word you using mean doesn't mean what you think it means- and it funny watching you say it besides.

 

 

Really ghost-angel, this isn't rocket science.

 

 

People are a given size, what sort of guns are used to kill people?

 

Elephants are much larger, what sort of guns are used to kill elephants?

 

A look over a few weapon stats will show you the following truism: Guns used to kill elephants are much bigger than the guns used to kill people. That's why they are called *elephant guns*.

[ajackson]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

The point was:

Compared to the Elephant the bullet is relatively small - yet still manages to kill the elephant. So obviously the size of the projectile has little to do with killing big things.

 

Huh? No, it just indicates that the hole required to kill something is much smaller than the thing itself. You still need a bigger hole to kill an elephant than to kill a human. The typical threshold for a lethal projectile injury on a human is in the 30-40J range (about 0.5 J/kg), and a .22 short has an energy in the 120J range. That implies that the threshold for lethal force on a 4,000 kg elephant would be in the 2,000J range, and that a comfortable value would be in the 6,000J range.

 

Typical elephant guns fire projectiles with kinetic energy in the 5-10,000J range, so you would expect them to be lethal with a well placed shot, much like a .22 is lethal with a well placed shot on a human. That's actually surprisingly close to the computed value.

[Agent X]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Oh I know elephant guns exist.

 

I'm just laughing at someone who has no clue whatever about the actual reality of them and how they relate to whole family of weapons. It's like a blind man having been told of color attempting to tell Leonardo that the Last Supper would look better with more reds.

 

You're are just funny. Clueless and funny.

 

I think you need to move on or I'm going to report this post and two or three more from you. You are definitely violating the rules concerning conduct.

[Fox1]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

I think you need to move on or I'm going to report this post and two or three more from you. You are definitely violating the rules concerning conduct.

 

And here I thought we had moved on, ghost-angel even went back and edited out the line that caused me to make the post you object to.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

OK guys: take a big breath.

 

Now: let it go.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

People are a given size, what sort of guns are used to kill people?

 

Elephants are much larger, what sort of guns are used to kill elephants?

 

A look over a few weapon stats will show you the following truism: Guns used to kill elephants are much bigger than the guns used to kill people. That's why they are called *elephant guns*.

Ghost-Angel's point, while not expressed in Gunspeak for those purists among us, is essentially correct. Neither the bullet nor the rifle used to deliver it against an elephant are as much bigger comparatively to an "anti-human" weapon than an elephant is compared to a human. Indeed, the diameter of the typical elephant round such as the 375 H&H Magnum or 458 Winchester Magnum is about twice that of a common military round such as the M16A2's .223 caliber projectile. So it's not just about bullet diameter.

 

Elephant rounds are heavy and pack a lot more energy for only one reason: So they can penetrate the dense flesh and bone of an elephant to deliver a killing blow to a vital organ. In Hero terms they use that extra energy primarily to penetrate the defenses of an elephant; and it's generally not possible to pack enough energy into a small caliber bullet to guarantee a quick kill. But it's still just a relatively tiny hole in the brain or heart that actually kills the beast nearly instantly. We don't engage elephants with rocket launchers.

 

Why you couldn't have simply and courteously explained that to Ghost-Angel instead of acting like an @$$ escapes me. But I'm pretty sure we all know the answer to that question. If you ever attain the apex of the bell curve, perhaps you'll figure it out.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Dude! Everyone is gettin' crass!

[Fox1]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Elephant rounds are heavy and pack a lot more energy for only one reason: So they can penetrate the dense flesh and bone of an elephant to deliver a killing blow to a vital organ.

 

For the common head shots, the total density of the bone is actually less than that of a human given the honeycomb like construction of the elephant skull. The concept of dense flesh having a signficant impact is also false. It's pure depth all the way requiring you to reach thru 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 FEET of muscle and bone compared to a human where 12" of penetration allows you to blow thru limbs on the way to a vital organ.

 

Now there is a significant bone layer in the elephant skull that needs to be dealt with. But that also exists in humans for weapons of the same relative effectiveness. Just like a hit by a .22 short on the human skull can be deflected, an off angle hit on the elephant can have the same result.

 

Now if you want to represent mass in the game as DEF, you can do that. In fact using DEF to represent a large creature's resistance to minor wounds is likely a good idea.

 

But to claim that the size of the target doesn't matter in *reality* is a mark of self-created justification producing ignorance and wrong headed conflicts.

 

And calling an *elephant* a small weapon who's size doesn't matter is just simply laughable.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Dude! Everyone is gettin' crass!

So Fox1 was making a cr@$$ out of himself?

 

crass

· adj. showing a grossly insensitive lack of intelligence.

– DERIVATIVES crassitude n. crassly adv. crassness n.

– ORIGIN C15 (in the sense ‘dense or coarse’): from L. crassus ‘solid, thick’.

 

Yep. It fits.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

For the common head shots, the total density of the bone is actually less than that of a human given the honeycomb like construction of the elephant skull. The concept of dense flesh having a signficant impact is also false. It's pure depth all the way requiring you to reach thru 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 FEET of muscle and bone compared to a human where 12" of penetration allows you to blow thru limbs on the way to a vital organ.

 

Now there is a significant bone layer in the elephant skull that needs to be dealt with. But that also exists in humans for weapons of the same relative effectiveness. Just like a hit by a .22 short on the human skull can be deflected, an off angle hit on the elephant can have the same result.

 

Now if you want to represent mass in the game as DEF, you can do that. In fact using DEF to represent a large creature's resistance to minor wounds is likely a good idea.

 

But to claim that the size of the target doesn't matter in *reality* is a mark of self-created justification producing ignorance and wrong headed conflicts.

 

And calling an *elephant* a small weapon who's size doesn't matter is just simply laughable.

 

 

You mean size really does matter?

 

Damn....

[ghost-angel]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Ghost-Angel's point' date=' while not expressed in [i']Gunspeak[/i] for those purists among us, is essentially correct. Neither the bullet nor the rifle used to deliver it against an elephant are as much bigger comparatively to an "anti-human" weapon than an elephant is compared to a human. Indeed, the diameter of the typical elephant round such as the 375 H&H Magnum or 458 Winchester Magnum is about twice that of a common military round such as the M16A2's .223 caliber projectile. So it's not just about bullet diameter.

 

Elephant rounds are heavy and pack a lot more energy for only one reason: So they can penetrate the dense flesh and bone of an elephant to deliver a killing blow to a vital organ. In Hero terms they use that extra energy primarily to penetrate the defenses of an elephant; and it's generally not possible to pack enough energy into a small caliber bullet to guarantee a quick kill. But it's still just a relatively tiny hole in the brain or heart that actually kills the beast nearly instantly. We don't engage elephants with rocket launchers.

 

Why you couldn't have simply and courteously explained that to Ghost-Angel instead of acting like an @$$ escapes me. But I'm pretty sure we all know the answer to that question. If you ever attain the apex of the bell curve, perhaps you'll figure it out.

 

thank you.

 

I'll admit - I don't know guns. I don't even like guns. I'm not in my element with discussions using guns.

 

However .. the very second we start using Telephone Systems to hunt and kill elephants I'm ALL over it.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

But to claim that the size of the target doesn't matter in *reality* is a mark of self-created justification producing ignorance and wrong headed conflicts.

 

And calling an *elephant* a small weapon who's size doesn't matter is just simply laughable.

For the record, Ghost-Angel said:

 

Compared to the Elephant the bullet is relatively small - yet still manages to kill the elephant. So obviously the size of the projectile has little to do with killing big things.

What exactly is incorrect with that statement?

 

An elephant gun certainly is a small arm; firing a projectile that is miniscule compared to an elephant. The actual bullet diameter isn't nearly as important as having enough energy remaining once it penetrates the bone and muscle to destroy a vital organ (If it were, elephant hunters would use hollowpoints instead of solids). A larger projectile at the same velocity as a smaller one delivers more energy downrange. It's not the size that counts; it's the kinetic energy on impact. You should know this.

 

Your statements on this matter are actually no more accurate than his; and you have far less excuse to be wrong because he's not claiming to be some kind of firearms expert; you are. And that's something I find laughable.

[Fox1]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

What exactly is incorrect with that statement?

 

I'd answer you, but I realize that you haven't really asked the question. All you're doing is venting.

 

If you really want the answer to that, give it a couple days and ask again. I'm done wasting my time on people who a) don't know what they are talking about but still insist on talking and who are looking for nothing more than a fight.

 

Edit: What the hell. I go ahead, there may be some here that actually want to know.

 

The statement is stupid when viewed in context. It's a give that a small projectile can kill a human, so it should be a given that a small projectile can kill elephants. The implied reason for making the statement is that an elephant gun does not fire a significantly larger projectile than a weapon used to kill a human would, i.e. size does not matter.

 

This implied meaning given the context is absurd in the extreme.

 

Comparing weapons of comparable effectiveness (say 22 Short vs. human and .458 win mag vs. elephant) we find that elephant gun has a impact area (directly related to the wound channel) 450% that of the human level weapon. The mass advantage is even more significant coming at at 1700%.

 

The energy difference has already been well pointed out, energy used in penetrating that huge amount of muscle and bone already noted.

 

In short, he referenced a huge freakn' weapon in a statement saying that size doesn't matter.

 

Size matters.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

The original point I was talking against basically said that a small bullet should not kill a large creature - to whit I pointed out an instance in real life where a small bullet did in fact kill a large creature.

 

That's it.

 

Obviously how you deliver that small object (bullet) matters. Throwing a .458 thingamabob a the elephant side-arm pitching style won't be nearly as effective as firing it from an Elephant Gun. Which is what, I think, you were implying with Impact Area and Wound Channels in your .22 hoozamawhatsit vs the .458 thingamabob - it's a bigger bullet shot at a higher velocity. I could be wrong. Like I said, I'm not a gun person. I can identify a bullet wound and I can identify small arms fire in relation to my current position (resulting in my either ignorign it or ducking). Beyond that I wouldn't know a Glockenspiel eleventeen mm from a whateveryouwannacalit 10mm pistol grip pump.

 

(oh and part of the original discussion involved Body Damage and Body Stats of large cretures and one of my other points being that if you want your really large creatures to ignore small, medium and x-large-fries arms fire add more Def, not more Body. but that's neither here nor there.)

[Hierax]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

If the poorly applied Exponential builds are a problem then go Linear, the HERO System mechanics are already set up for it, you just have to change the specific builds. Make bigger weapons to proportionally more damage, make heavier defences provide proportionally more defence. What's the big deal? If you don't like it change it.

[Fox1]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

The original point I was talking against basically said that a small bullet should not kill a large creature - to whit I pointed out an instance in real life where a small bullet did in fact kill a large creature.

 

But it's not a small bullet, it's a huge bullet in the world of bullets. Not at all the kind that your post indicated you thought on par with those used to kill people. Basically you were giving an example of just the concept you were trying to counter. That's what stuck me as so funny.

 

I think at this post we've breaten the dead elephant enough. Let's call it quits, I'm sorry for laughing at your post.

 

 

(oh and part of the original discussion involved Body Damage and Body Stats of large cretures and one of my other points being that if you want your really large creatures to ignore small, medium and x-large-fries arms fire add more Def, not more Body. but that's neither here nor there.)

 

Sadly, that wouldn't work. Or rather, wouldn't work if you wanted to represent something like killing elephants.

 

There are basically two ways of killing a living creature through the application of kinetic energy.

 

One is by a vital location hit (brain/spine is best although heart/lungs are good too) and that on a elephant requires an elephant level weapon if you want any degree of safety. Basically, to quickly kill big you need big.

 

The other is just by bleeding it to death. Much slower, but it works. To this end even low-damage low-penetration weapons like thrown spears work just fine although they have to be used in numbers if you want to kill it in a reasonable amount of time. There are reports of hunters even jumping on the critters and taking a light axe to them, it was said to be an effective if highly dangerous method.

 

Just upping DEF removes the second option from play.

 

Basically BODY functions fine for both conditions IF you don’t' treat direct BODY damage as cumulative (i.e. only use it for determining impair/disable and for bleeding totals) and IF you apply good bleeding rules and IF you don't overdue it (which HERO has a habit of doing with its BODY values).

[Warp9]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

You misunderstood me. I suggested no type of progression for determining BODY by mass, linear or otherwise. I was merely observing that 2X Mass = +1 BODY clearly does not automatically equate to being twice as hard to kill. Mass at best equates only to a starting point for calculating BODY. The GM can adjust that number upwards or downwards as he sees fit. Clearly your theoretical Mile High Monster could have an enormous amount of BODY, or he might have only 40. It's up to the GM to decide how tough he wants said MHM to be to kill.

What if it is a PC who wants to build a Mile High Person? How much BODY should the character have if he is basically a normal person with 150 points of growth?

 

What should the character's BODY attribute be?

 

If mass were the sole determinant of how much BODY something should have, then 99% of all supers and heroes should have only 10 BODY because they are normal human size. Clearly this is not the case.

No where in the progression of "+1 BODY per X2 Mass" does it say that a 100KG character must have 10 BODY.

 

All the "+1 BODY per X2 mass" requires is that if a 100KG character has 50 BODY, then if he was increased in size and mass by a factor of 1000 then he'd have a 60 BODY.

 

Or, if you know that an object of a given type has 5 BODY, then you know that a similar object which is X 1000 Mass will have 15 BODY.

[Marco]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Clearly one of the issues with killing something by a small, deep wound (as with a bullet or maybe an arrow) is a matter of *where* you hit it. I've never hunted elephants but I think even with the elephant gun you need a headshot to take it down and preferably right in the face.

 

I have read (in The Armory, IIRC, an old Hero weapons compendium) that a powerful elephant gun would deliver a knockout blow through up to a foot of skull material). That's a hell of a lot of bone and even with the super-powerful bullet, it doesn't, apparently, blow the thing's head open like a watermellon.

 

So clearly there are going to be some issues with modeling damage with a single body stat and a simple bell-curve dice-roll (the bell-curve, depending on how you asess it, probably doesn't simulate a head-shot: I think it simulates shooting the thing in the body).

 

Hit locations are a clear and obvious solution to this.

 

There are others--but just comparing damage done by the weapon vs. total damage necessary to destroy the creature isn't going to work real well (even a shoulder fired rocket wouldn't come anywhere near vaporizing an elephant).

 

-Marco

[ JAGS addresses this by taking what you hit by and adding it to a damage roll so a really good shot with an elephant gun is assumed to be targeted at something vital and does a lot more damage than an average hit. ]

[Fox1]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Clearly one of the issues with killing something by a small' date=' deep wound (as with a bullet or maybe an arrow) is a matter of *where* you hit it. I've never hunted elephants but I think even with the elephant gun you need a headshot to take it down and preferably right in the face.[/quote']

 

Not completely true actually.

 

Brain shots are favored because they can be taken from front on and thus are nearly your only choice if facing a potentially hostile encounter. It also has the advantage of quick and 'kind' kill.

 

However if you're facing the elephant's flank, a shot to the heart/lung area is quite acceptable and in fact a better roll of the dice as it presents a larger effective target area. Before the arrival of smokeless powder this was in the fact the only practical shot due to low penetration of the older weapons.

 

 

I have read (in The Armory, IIRC, an old Hero weapons compendium) that a powerful elephant gun would deliver a knockout blow through up to a foot of skull material). That's a hell of a lot of bone and even with the super-powerful bullet, it doesn't, apparently, blow the thing's head open like a watermellon.

 

As I've noted before, an Elephant's skull is a very thick honeycomb, filled with fluid. The modern elephant gun takes advantage of this as it allows a nice shock wave to transmit to the brain even if your aim is a little off- effectively stunning the creature.

 

However a elephant's head is huge, and the brain not as huge (double the size of ours I think...). So it's still very easy to not get close enough. I've read accounts of a elephant being head shot 5 times before it finally went down. And other accounts of one getting back up after it was assumed dead, something could provide a less than pleasant result for the over confident hunter. Thus the safe action after a head shot is a follow up heart/lung shot, or two or three.

 

 

There are others--but just comparing damage done by the weapon vs. total damage necessary to destroy the creature isn't going to work real well (even a shoulder fired rocket wouldn't come anywhere near vaporizing an elephant).

 

Actually I know a guy who did fire a LAW into a elephant, one of asia ones I'd admit. Vaporize? No. But it was raining elephant chunks a huge distance away. Course that may have been in large part due to the ammo supplies it was hauling...

 

However I take exception to the your statement about the game mechanics. I use a weapon vs. total damage necessary to *kill* (not destroy, that means too many different things to different people) method in HERO, and I can effectively duplicate a elephant hunt with either spears or elephant guns or LAWs for that matter without issue.

[Marco]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

However I take exception to the your statement about the game mechanics. I use a weapon vs. total damage necessary to *kill* (not destroy, that means too many different things to different people) method in HERO, and I can effectively duplicate a elephant hunt with either spears or elephant guns or LAWs for that matter without issue.

 

Oh, I completely agree: the damage *is* what's necessary to kill the thing--if it's an animal. If it's an elephant shaped statue then you have to define what the objective of damage is (it could be the statue, even if of a fairly weak material has a lot more BOD--if you are rating what is necessary to destroy it--or you could rate it differently if you will just declare it *broken* at some point).

 

-Marco

[Fox1]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Oh, I completely agree: the damage *is* what's necessary to kill the thing--if it's an animal. If it's an elephant shaped statue then you have to define what the objective of damage is (it could be the statue, even if of a fairly weak material has a lot more BOD--if you are rating what is necessary to destroy it--or you could rate it differently if you will just declare it *broken* at some point).

 

-Marco

 

Certainly.

 

HERO's BODY stat is basically a 'broken' point. The 2x BODY = Destroyed is just a simple rule for those who need a number for some reason.

[Warp9]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

The point was:

Compared to the Elephant the bullet is relatively small - yet still manages to kill the elephant. So obviously the size of the projectile has little to do with killing big things.

Huh? No, it just indicates that the hole required to kill something is much smaller than the thing itself. You still need a bigger hole to kill an elephant than to kill a human. The typical threshold for a lethal projectile injury on a human is in the 30-40J range (about 0.5 J/kg), and a .22 short has an energy in the 120J range. That implies that the threshold for lethal force on a 4,000 kg elephant would be in the 2,000J range, and that a comfortable value would be in the 6,000J range.

 

Typical elephant guns fire projectiles with kinetic energy in the 5-10,000J range, so you would expect them to be lethal with a well placed shot, much like a .22 is lethal with a well placed shot on a human. That's actually surprisingly close to the computed value.

I agree.

 

The idea that the same attack is just as lethal no matter what the size of the target is a misunderstanding.

 

1 meter of penetration means nothing to a large enough giant.

[Warp9]

Re: Why exponential progression doesn't work for damage

 

Yes--if I understand that right, I agree. If a character in Hero with a 30 STR did 16d of damage it would be directly porportional to his lift as I understand it.

That is basically what I'm getting at.

 

Although in some ways it still seems like we are stuck with the idea that we have to resolve things back to a linear value expressed in dice. It seems like the suggestion here is that a 60 STR would have to do 2048d6 to be in line with the character's lift, but why convert back to linear values at all?

 

I am suggesting that maybe 10d6 could represent more than 5 times the damage of 2d6. What if 10d6 could represent an attack that is 256 times the power of a 2d6 attack?

 

 

I admit that it clearly does not work out that way in many cases. For example, against a 0 DEF target, 10d6 is exactly the same of 2d6 X 5. So in that case the relationship between different dice values is totally linear.

 

However, against a DEF 5 wall, 10d6 is infinitely more effective than 2d6.