How effective do you feel weapons should be

[Adam Kadmon]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

I ran a campaign where the standard legal weapon was a laser that did 3d6 .. that’s 3d6 normal damage. With a bit of tweaking they could do up to 6d6 normal, but this meant they burnt out pretty quickly, depending how much extra damage you wanted. Now since nobody had any armour this made them pretty effective. Of course a lot of people found martial arts to be more effective, but that was the whole point. That's why we called the campaign Sci Fi Kung Fu.

[Brother Jim]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Seriously? I knew they weren't heavily armored by WWII standards' date=' but I had no idea they were [b']that[/b] flimsy. Do you have any references for that? (Not saying I don't believe you, just would like to see it with my own eyes.)

 

Unfortunately, no I don't have any references. My knowledge comes from 10 years in the Navy (6 on ships, 3 in a shore repair facility) so I don't have any "links filled with knowledge to share". And I think having some sort of documentation on that would probably make the gov't unhappy. But a battle rifle would be VERY unlikely to do any appreciable damage to the ship, RPG's (the rocket kind) are a whole different kettle of fish though.

 

Someone mentioned the dual layer hull, that's true down near the waterline. There's fuel and ballast tanks down there that would completely stop a battle rifle round. I could see a space ship having at least a dual layer hull all over, hull breaches are not good after all.

[tkdguy]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Unfortunately' date=' no I don't have any references. My knowledge comes from 10 years in the Navy (6 on ships, 3 in a shore repair facility) so I don't have any "links filled with knowledge to share". And I think having some sort of documentation on that would probably make the gov't unhappy. But a battle rifle would be [b']VERY[/b] unlikely to do any appreciable damage to the ship, RPG's (the rocket kind) are a whole different kettle of fish though.

 

Someone mentioned the dual layer hull, that's true down near the waterline. There's fuel and ballast tanks down there that would completely stop a battle rifle round. I could see a space ship having at least a dual layer hull all over, hull breaches are not good after all.

I strongly suspect (I don't have any proof, mind you; I'm just extrpolating) that airplanes and missiles have made armor redundant on ships. Ship-to-ship combat is a thing of the past, except for submarine warfare. Battleships have gone the way of the dodo, and cruisers are following suit.

[Tom Carman]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Seriously? I knew they weren't heavily armored by WWII standards' date=' but I had no idea they were [b']that[/b] flimsy. Do you have any references for that? (Not saying I don't believe you, just would like to see it with my own eyes.)

This is what makes some anti-ship missiles so nasty. Remember that aluminum is flammable if you get it hot enough. The warhead might not do so much if it isn't in the right place, but that burning fuel is another matter. I believe that's what happened to the Bristish destroyer that was hit by an Exocet during the Falklands war.

[LunaRagno]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Unfortunately' date=' no I don't have any references. My knowledge comes from 10 years in the Navy (6 on ships, 3 in a shore repair facility) so I don't have any "links filled with knowledge to share".[/quote']

 

That sounds good enough to me.

 

And I think having some sort of documentation on that would probably make the gov't unhappy.

Undoubtedly.

[austenandrews]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Of course if one looks at RL technology, offense is pretty much always going to be stronger than defense. We're close to the capability of pinpoint-vaporizing almost any known material. That's why armor of all types (for vehicles, personnel, buildings, etc.) is and will probably always be a secondary defense. At present force field-like technology is entirely in the realm of rubber science; and there's no reason to think that if we do develop FF tech, it will behave any differently than armor in that respect.

 

At the same time, when we speculate about advanced space travel, we almost have to assume some pretty serious defensive capabilities. The energies one has to handle at near-c and/or in extreme stellar conditions are way beyond anything we're even close to. In which case, maybe it's not so outrageous to think that a warship could repel a ground-zero nuclear blast.

 

Just thinking out loud.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Unfortunately' date=' no I don't have any references. My knowledge comes from 10 years in the Navy (6 on ships, 3 in a shore repair facility) so I don't have any "links filled with knowledge to share". [/quote']

Good enough for me too. Thanks for the info.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

In my old SH campaign, I was ALL over the board on power levels for hand weapons. I had a pair of basic scales to help me categorize man portable weapons: Tech Level and Legality. Both were a 1-5 scale.

Tech level was rated based on standards across the campaign 'verse... 3 was average tech level. 1 was "primitive" tech, basically 20th century standard, up to 5, which was bleeding edge tech. Most mil-spec gear was tech 2-4, depending on use, application and reliability... much like today, some Milspec gear was considerably behind the times if the weapon was effective and they had no reason to replace it (a modern example would be the M2HB .50 cal machine gun)

Legality went like such:

1: Non lethal.

2: Civilian Lethal

3: Restricted: Police/Military grade small arms

4: Support/Heavy weapons

5: Special (mostly restricted for even military use due to treaties)

 

Players could buy Perks to allow possession (and often to carry) weapons up to class 4, depending on circumstances... the professional Mercenary, f'r instance, could possess up to class 4 weapons, but could only carry them in a conflict zone where he had a bonded contract.

 

with such a spectrum, I DID have hand weapons that could bring down a civilian and even some light military spacecraft.

 

In addition, I designed my spacecraft "tech" so that hulls were supported with an elaborate doublehull with lots of buffers, reinforcement and shock absorbers sandwhiched between the hulls. This was reflected with a high base DEF for all spacecraft (10 def+ 2x size class, hardened), that was largely not effective (1/2 defense, not hardened, and if the Hull armor was bought with the real armor limit then it didn't apply) from inside the ship. I did this because I wanted firefights INSIDE the ships to be dangerous (had to come up with an excuse for HtH weapons being used in boarding actions ), and because Sheild tech was uncommon in my setting (around tech 4-5)

[Seenar]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Hand-helds damaging a ship?!

 

Can a RealWorld™ soldier put a hole in a cruiser with his rifle? Not I've heard.

 

You'll have a weird feeling universe if you do that. You want that feel (space ship in danger from a 'grunt' then OK. But you're players maybe freaked :shock:

 

Actaully, they just sank a missle cruiser with machine gun fire in a test.

 

It took a lot of bullets but they did it. If Starships don't slug it out, but use deflection and what not to avoid getting hit by missiles, then their armor won't need to be all that high. It all depends on how they fight.

[Seenar]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

This is for a game I am getting ready to run:

 

SHIP WEAPONS

 

Normal Space Weapons

 

Nuclear Lasers

A nuclear laser uses a small radioactive “shell”. When the laser fires, the material drops to a lower atomic state (i.e. the material becomes the next element in its decay chain at a faster rate than its normal half-life). This energy goes out in pulse or raw power. While the laser needs minimal power to fire, internal nuclear batteries can supply this. The rest of the power comes from the transition state change.

 

Missiles

Normal space missiles use gravity drives to catch targets. They may have an explosive warhead (thermonuclear or anti-matter), mount a one shot nuclear laser, or use an impact gravity field to disrupt the drive field of the target. Missiles are hare to use in normal space because ships have powerful missile defenses that can knock them down at substantial ranges (see Point Defense, below).

 

Graviton Disruptors

Using the main drives, a ship can project an offensive gravity polarization field that degrades the effectiveness of another ship’s drive. Large ships, with power generators can eliminate the thrust generated by smaller vessels. If a target is unable to generate its own fields, the Graviton Disruptors act as crude tractor beams.

 

 

Hyperspace Weapons

Energy weapons degrade at a much higher rate in hyperspace than normal space making them almost useless. Lasers simply have no range once they leave the Q-field around the vehicle. This means energy point defense is also useless.

 

Hyperspace combat revolves around the use of Qimat Impulse Missiles, generally called Q-missiles, or “QIM” (pronounced “kim”). QIM carry their own Q-fields, and have high-energy drives that allow them to accelerate to their targets in Hyperspace. Armed with nuclear or antimatter warheads, they detonate close to their targets. It is fortunate that the nature of hyperspace inhibits energy transmissions, since shields do not operate in hyperspace.

 

QIM can be fired from ships sitting in normal space to attack hyperspace targets. The advantages of this are obvious. A ship in hyperspace can fire missiles against a normal space target that has the full range of point defense and shields. Meanwhile, it must rely on very limited defenses.

 

 

SHIP DEFENSES

 

Shields

All ships with gravity polarizers can generate quantum shields. Quantum shields are much like particle “foam” of quantum states that must be breached before energy or matter can reach the target. The particles are forced into subspace states, between normal and hyperspace. Because of the polarized nature of the shield, energy and objects can travel outward from the ship, while still maintaining the defense.

 

The quantum “foam” is ablative in nature. As they are stuck, energy is diverted into moving the shield particles into a normal state. With each quantum bubble “popped”, the shields lose some defensive value.

 

It takes most military ships about 5 minutes to fully build up its shields using its main drives. During this time, no other drive activity is possible, despite the energy being poured into the drives. Once raised, shields require ongoing maintenance energy.

 

Shields cannot be repaired “on the fly” by the ship generating because shields are built from the outside in (with the outer shell first), and damaged in the same direction. Thus, shields cannot be repaired without being dropped. It is possible, however, for an allied ship to repair the shields of another ship. Both ships must stop thrusting and be in close proximity.

[Sundog]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Hand weapons run into the problem of energy density.

 

Basically, the chemical-kinetic guns we use today are about as efficient as we can do for hand weapons. More power would require greater energy density, resulting in either A) greater recoil or more heat production. Dealing with either will result in a heavier gun. The problem is, our most powerful handweapons are close to the max on all three - weight, recoil and heat.

 

From here on, improvements in hand weapon technology will be governed by efficiency. The more efficient weapon will be the more powerful, because more of the energy will be used rather than wasted.

 

I suspect the actual result wil be a cheat - give the soldier a gun he can only use while wearing his tactical battle armour. Eliminate the weak link - which is, in this case, what the human can handle.

[Jhamin]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Hand weapons run into the problem of energy density.

 

You are correct on this point. However, 90% of all sci-fi assumes that a spacecraft's power plant is able to generate several orders of magnitude more power than any modern power source is able to given it's size and weight.

 

So if we are assuming that a spacecraft has a powerplant able to generate the kind of just nessecary to get into hyperspace, jump, or break lightspeed, then the real question is how far have portable power sources come?

 

One of the the thing I actually liked about TOS Star Trek was that they had hand weapons that could disintegrate anything that wasn't protected by a force field (or a plot device). Given how advanced their power generation was, it made sense that they could carry that much around in a hand weapon.

[Starwolf]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Whether a firearm can pierce a modern Naval vessels hull depends on where you draw the line on small arms. The cruiser mentioned above was fired on by a 20mm gatling gun, not exactley a weapon the average person can pick up and shoulder fire. Even the .50 BMG was initially designed as an anti-tank weapon in WW I. However having spent many years aboard aircraft carriers (I am a retired Navy veteran). I can tell you that the idea that an AK can shoot through an Aircraft carriers hull is ridiculous. The Saratoga (my first ship) had 3" thick hull plating solid steel. The Superstructure was thinner... only 2" of solid steel. The flight deck is 2 feet thick solid steel. The only armored ship in the current fleet profile is the USS Abraham Lincoln (an Aircraft Carrier) and in addition to her 3" thick Hull plating she has another 6" of side Armor Plating. All other armored ships have been retired from active service, as modern missiles can penetrate the armored hulls fairly easily. Armor being not very effective is too expensive to mount on modern vessels, as the Navy learned when it built the Lincoln.

 

In TUV there is some great guidelines for those that want to make vehicle weapons vs smaller targets more realistic. It advises to not adjust the damage, but to add a level of penetration, and possibly armor piercing for each size catagory larger then the target the firing vessel is. It does advise not to adjust damage downward if the firing vessel is smaller. So a size 8 vehicle firing on a size 2 vehicle with a 3d6 RKA attack would still only do 3d6 but it would have 6 levels of penetration, while if the reverse where true the smaller vessel would simply roll the 3d6 RKA with no penetration added. Of course it is important for the vehicle designer to take the vehicle type into consideration. Based on size a C5A Galaxy would be very tough indeed (almost as tough as a tank), but because it is built of lighter materials it can be penetrated by smalls arms fire. While a Tank is tougher than its size might inidicate. So the DEF of these vehicles must be modified upward or downward to more realistically represent how though they really are.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Based on size a C5A Galaxy would be very tough indeed (almost as tough as a tank)' date=' but because it is built of lighter materials it can be penetrated by smalls arms fire. [/quote']

 

It's also important to keep in mind, when statting out vehicles, that just because something can penetrate doesn't mean it's going to cause any real damage. I'm sure it would take a hell of a lot of small arms fire to bring down a C-5, more than is likely to be brought to bear on one unless it decides to land in the middle of an enemy battalion.

 

Similarly, a 17th century cannon could penetrate a wooden hull, but few ships were ever sunk by gunfire.

 

How you take this into account depends partly on the vehicle in question, and partly on the GM's preference. Adding extra BODY, DEF, or Damage Reduction are all valid.

[JmOz]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Well I've decided that weapons with the beam limitation will not be able to do body damage, but will be able to effect systems if they roll high enough to do body...

[LunaRagno]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

Whether a firearm can pierce a modern Naval vessels hull depends on where you draw the line on small arms. The cruiser mentioned above was fired on by a 20mm gatling gun' date=' not exactley a weapon the average person can pick up and shoulder fire. [/quote']

 

Thank you for that information. I was about to ask Seenar for a citation for what he said.

 

That however isn't necessary, now that I know what he was talking about was not a handheld weapon (which is the situation JmOz was positing).

[Starwolf]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

I was actually suprised at how much damage a ship can absorb depending on circumstances. It was generally taught to us in Damage Control that the Sara could take as many as 21 direct, under black water line hit with a MK 21 tordedoe and survive... of course this assumed full battle stations (with the ships watertight integrity maxed out due to closed hatches, and us doing our damn jobs in damage control. On the other hand during the Falklands conflict the British cracked the hull of an enemy cruiser with a single exocet missile... It was later explained to me that the target vessel was caught with their pants down and did not have all their water tight doors sealed, and she was only about 1/4 the mass of a carrier. Another interesting test the Navy conducted was on the hull of the old Saratoga (the WWII/Korea era vessel). She was towed out to the nuclear test range (I am not sure if the location is still classified)... and they dropped a 10Mton nuke on her flight deck. With all hatches open. She took 3 days to sink... The USS Forrestal (we called her the USS Forestfire because of this one) caught fire due to an accidental zuni missile explosion and burned for 2 days, killing 134 men... and survived.

[Zeropoint]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

I was told, in my damage control training, that a Nimitz class carrier would be unlikely to survive three hits from a torpedo similar to a Mk. 48 ADCAP.

 

I consider "small arms" to mean anything smaller than a .50 BMG round. A .308 (7.62 NATO) would definitely penetrate any of the non-load-bearing bulkheads on the ship, which would violate watertight integrity, but cause little structural damage. A Nimitz-class is all steel construction, but I don't really know how thick the skin of the ship is. It's not thick enough to be considered armored above the waterline, though.

[Outsider]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

An option that has not been mentioned for dealing with small arms vs large vehicles :

 

Buy the vehicles extra DEF with the limitations that it applies to onlyh certain kinds of damage (or not against certain kinds) and doesnt prevent crew casualties or damage to some (or most) vehicle systems. This way, one can shoot the bejeesus out of the vehicle, possibly greatly impairing its function, but not actually destroy it so easily.

 

It would work well to simulate the previously mentioned difficulty that napoleonic era ships had in actually sinking one another (A difficulty shared by later steel ships, few of which were sunk directly by gunfire) The extra DEF in such situations would apply to solid/cannister/chain shot, but not to daamge from explosive shells, rams, torpedoes, or secondary effects like fire or magazine explosions.

 

Adopting a similar mechanism for a "swashbuckling" flavor Star Hero game would be good because it makes the accidental destruction of an opponent's ship less likely & leads to an increase in opportunites for personal scale interactions (like boarding)

 

 

 

Another option that would be a bit more complicated :

 

Rather than giving a vehicle a higher DEF to make it dificult to damage, or a higher BODY to make it harder to destroy, just dont keep track of every BODY done to it as regular HERO system BODY damage.

 

Instead, have the number of BODY done after defence count as a die modifier on a secondary "What happens to the vehicle" roll, similar to the roll used to determine basic automaton's loss of function on taking BODY. The higher the secondary roll, the greater (or more important) the loss of function to the vehicle. Some types of damage could result in BODY damage along Standard HERO lines also.

 

Example :

 

IF one does BODY to a vehicle, the vehicle is forced to roll on the vehicle damage table. Add the BODY rolled to the die roll, and subtract the size class of the vehicle.

 

3-8 Cargo/non-essential ship damage (Cargo bay, ship's recreation facilites, etc are hit) Vehicle takes 1 BODY if it is above 50% its starting BODY

9-12 Minor Damage (-1 SPD, -5 or 10 STR, -5" movement, - PERS roll (sensor damage, etc) Vehicle takes 2 BODY if it is above 25% of its starting BODY

13-15 Serious System Damage (temporary loss of all function in a ship's system... may be repaired in short order (make those skill rolls!) Ship takes 3 BODY if it is above 10% of its starting BODY

16-17 Critical System damage (a ship funciton ceases working and cannot be repaired in combat) Ship takes 5 BODY

18 Catastrophic ship's system failure (Magazine Explodes, Reactor Explodes, etc) Ship is destroyed

 

 

The number of BODY taken in each circumstance (and its frequency of occurrance) can be played with, of course. The overall intent of the idea is to allow small ships a chance to damage large ones without the possibility of that small damage accumulating enought to actually destroy the large one. A ship may only be -destroyed- if it is taking critical or catastrophic damage, which it is unlikely to take if it is significantly larger than what is attacking it.

[Markdoc]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

I simply treat vehicle (and building) damage on an area basis. Thus firing a hand-held weapon inside an aircraft carrier might make a hole in an internal bulkhead.

 

OK, so now you have a hole in an internal bulkhead. So? It might cause some grief to the squabby on the other side of the wall, but it has more or less exactly zero meaning with regard to the integrity of the ship. To actually damage it you are going to need to go and fire at something useful (preferably the captain, but I guess the cooling lines for the reactor might do if you had enough ammo and time).

 

If you had a 8d6 Explosive RKA missile, then you end up with much bigger holes in multiple bulkheads - that might mean something if you also make a hole in the hull....

 

cheers, Mark

[Ternaugh]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

I was actually suprised at how much damage a ship can absorb depending on circumstances. It was generally taught to us in Damage Control that the Sara could take as many as 21 direct' date=' under black water line hit with a MK 21 tordedoe and survive... of course this assumed full battle stations (with the ships watertight integrity maxed out due to closed hatches, and us doing our damn jobs in damage control. On the other hand during the Falklands conflict the British cracked the hull of an enemy cruiser with a single exocet missile... It was later explained to me that the target vessel was caught with their pants down and did not have all their water tight doors sealed, and she was only about 1/4 the mass of a carrier. Another interesting test the Navy conducted was on the hull of the old Saratoga (the WWII/Korea era vessel). She was towed out to the nuclear test range (I am not sure if the location is still classified)... and they dropped a 10Mton nuke on her flight deck. With all hatches open. She took 3 days to sink... The USS Forrestal (we called her the USS Forestfire because of this one) caught fire due to an accidental zuni missile explosion and burned for 2 days, killing 134 men... and survived.[/quote']

 

The location of the test on the Saratoga isn't classified, in fact, the military lists it in this history as the Bikini Atoll:

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers/histories/cv03-saratoga/cv03-saratoga.html

 

As for other takes on the durability of starships:

Traveller assumed that starships had to be armored to a minimum value in order to survive micrometeoroids and other debris. This effectively meant that small-arms fire would have no effect on bulkheads, unless explosive rounds or energy weapons were used. One exception in published canon would be viewports, which are usually listed as having a less durable nature (which would seem to imply that it's a bad thing to use them as windshields--see Safari Ship for an example).

 

In the reimagined BSG, the Galactica was able to take a hit from a nuclear device, with structural damage that was repairable. Civilian ships, however, have been shown to be of lighter construction, and could not stand up to a nuke. I'd still bet that small-arms fire would cause limited danger on most civilian ships, unless viewports or domes were targeted.

 

Now, both of these lack force field tech*. If force fields are reliable, then they could replace a considerable amount of armor mass. If force fields can be turned on anywhere (ie in an atmosphere), then the situation would resemble Star Trek, where armor is mainly for structural purposes and emergency shielding. If force fields are outside atmo only, then landing craft would be armored more heavily than space-only craft.

 

JoeG

*I know that Traveller has Black Globes and White Globes, but neither really matches the type of force field that we are discussing.

[Old Man]

Re: How effective do you feel weapons should be

 

I simply treat vehicle (and building) damage on an area basis. Thus firing a hand-held weapon inside an aircraft carrier might make a hole in an internal bulkhead.

 

Yup. Unless ships are shooting at ships, then those ships are just terrain.

 

REASON could do it but that was special case.