When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

[Khael]

Working on a gritty Mechwarrior game. Starting the process of translating all of the 'Mechs in to HERO and came upon this quandary. When do you use Advantages such as AP and Penetrating as opposed to higher damage dice?

 

If, for instance, the Madcat clobbers an opposing 'mech the damage done could be represented by either high dice for a higher overall penetration of the target's defenses or an advantage to cut through them. The issue comes into play when you hit a smaller more vulnerable target with that same weapon. Surely a weapon that can sheer through inches of steel and fibrous armor would splat a human victim into the afterlife. It seems to me that higher damage would suit. But that can't always be the case. What are the two aforementioned advantages for? Do you use them to represent something with incredible penetration yet little visual damage, such as a laser? Why have both?

[SpydirShellX]

Re: When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

 

Hmmm....

For one, I'd make weapons that go through armor better than others, but do low damage be armor piercing. For example instead of the missile weapons (which in Mechwarrior, are small warhead weapons that hit multiple times), I might design it as a combination armor piercing and autofire. They don't do that much damage, but go through armor better due to a better chance at hitting weak spots in the armor (rolling a crit). Lasers probably would be penetrating... they get damage through in a tight beam. PPC and Autocannons probably leave a normal damage. The LBX shotgun ammo would be possibly penetrating with reduced penetration (if the construct is allowed) since the scattered parts are more likely to hit weak spots, but less effective as a whole against the armor.

 

Basically, I'd give the lower damaging weapons some of the Armor Piercing and Penetrating abilities. Evens out the costs a bit at the same time making them at least somewhat effective against the higher armored opponents.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

 

Working on a gritty Mechwarrior game. Starting the process of translating all of the 'Mechs in to HERO and came upon this quandary. When do you use Advantages such as AP and Penetrating as opposed to higher damage dice?

 

If, for instance, the Madcat clobbers an opposing 'mech the damage done could be represented by either high dice for a higher overall penetration of the target's defenses or an advantage to cut through them. The issue comes into play when you hit a smaller more vulnerable target with that same weapon. Surely a weapon that can sheer through inches of steel and fibrous armor would splat a human victim into the afterlife. It seems to me that higher damage would suit. But that can't always be the case. What are the two aforementioned advantages for? Do you use them to represent something with incredible penetration yet little visual damage, such as a laser? Why have both?

 

From a purely mechanics standpoint there is always a breakpoint where either 8d6 AP or 12d6 normal is better. What determines the breakpoint is the average defenses in the campaign and how common Hardened defenses are. As with the similar choice between Normal vs. Killing attacks, it all boils down to Rock, Paper, Scissors in the end.

[Eosin]

Re: When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

 

Since you mentioned "gritty," I might recommend looking at the Resistant Piercing rules. This would allow you to craft weapons with a minimum of wild stun lotto but still be able to simulate weapons that cut through armor like butter.

 

Penetrating gets used in our games when at least some of the damage is unavoidable (massive concussion or arcane bolts that worm their way through anything).

[Thia Halmades]

Re: When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

 

Also go to the Star Hero boards - either The Question Man or Lord Liaden can aim you to a boat load of pre-built and pre-converted MechWarrior material. no need to reinvent the wheel (unless you can improve on it - Lord knows I hate the wheel, all ... ROUND and stuff. Stupid wheel!)

[Sean Waters]

Re: When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

 

I assume that mechs are built as vehciles so the stun lotto is not a problem - you just have the Body lotto to worry about.

 

AP is used for weapons that are designed to go through armour better. Simple as that. As has been mentioned (and I paraphrase in light of my opening gambit), 4d6APRKA and 6d6RKA have a breakpoint (14 defence).

 

Either will splat a human. The AP will be less effectvie against light mechs (but then they can take less damage - it will still HURT), and more effectvie against heavy mechs.

 

To be honest I'm not sure Hero is the best system to simulate mech damage and combat, at least not running it 'straight'.

 

I'd be inclined to build mechs with relatively low defence but absolutely tons of body: not an 'efficient' Hero build, but quite proper for a game where players are chosing from a pre-defined list of mechs, and maybe adding mods, rather than scratch designing their own.

 

If you don't do it that way then weapons like machine gun arrays will HAVE to be built with penetrating to have any effect at all.

 

Another mech staple is heat.

 

Can I make a suggestion?

 

Use END.

 

You'll need a custom rule regarding incoming damage: all mech weapons impart some heat to their targets (as well as causing it for the weapon user): assume that you can buy dice of 'normal damage' as follows: 1d6 EB (stun only, damage taken as END) no KB AVLD (power defence - I'm assuming you won't be using adjustment powers in a mech game, so power defence is 'code' for heat reflective armour, and should eb really quite rare) 5 active and real points. Then you can build things like flamethrowers that do insignificant damage to mechs, but really up their heat quotient.

[Zeropoint]

Re: When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

 

To duplicate the effects of the Battletech classic rules, mech "armor" would just be extra Body. Of course, if you want to duplicate every aspect of Battletech exactly, the easiest way to do that is to play Battletech.

 

So. What constitutes Reduced Penetration, unadvantaged, Armor Piercing, or Penetrating attacks? Some real-world examples might be helpful.

 

High-Explosive Squash Head rounds consist of a plastic-cased, plastic explosive warhead and a fuse that allows a very slight delay between impact and detonation. This allows the warhead to spread out into a relatively thin layer over the target's armor before it detonates. This causes a shock wave which can cause chunks of armor to come off the inside and do damage to the vehicle's contents, even though the armor is never actually penetrated. This is a classic example of the Penetrating advantage: damage is done even though the attack doesn't have enough damage to get through the armor.

 

Also consider either a High-Explosive Anti-Tank shaped charge warhead or an APDS round (hmm. AP? any guesses as to what advantage this one is going to have?) These rounds are specifically designed to punch through thick armor, and are better at it than their raw damage dice would suggest: they get the Armor Piercing advantage. I might even give an Abrams' APDSFSDU ammo double Armor Piercing.

 

Reduced Penetration is for attacks that tear the ever-loving crap out of soft targets, but just bounce off of hard targets. A classic example is a shotgun: the dozens of individual wound tracks caused by all the pellets will be devestating to an unprotected human, but all those tiny pellets are rather easily blocked, too. On a vehicle scale, flechette rounds would be similar: while they might turn a Hummer into a seive, they'd just scratch the paint on a tank.

 

 

In the end, though, it all comes down to your judgement. As is so often the case with Hero, there's no one right way to build anything. If you and your players are happy with the build, that's the only standard that matters.

 

Zeropoint

[tgrandjean]

Re: When do you use advantages like Armor Piercing?

 

*chuckles*

Heh. Well, you'll get no arguements about when to apply AP and Pen; when the weapon calls for lower damage/ higher penetration. However, which weapons call for which is going to be your concern.

And of course if you are going to address those questions, you're going to have to decide whether or not armor is hardened or not.

As a side note, if you are going to give mechs a serious advantage over vehicles you might consider making most if not all weapons AP or Pen and vehicles don't have hardened armor.

Personally, I'd call the AC2,AC5 Autofire 5 (10 for Ultra), AP weapons. The AC 10 is standard (what I consider the 120mm cannon). And the AC20 is a large dice, reduced pen, Autofire 15 weapon.

The flamer would be a low dam, reduced pen, Autofire 10 weapon with a linked Drain End/Rec.

The LRM/SRMs would be a somewhat low dam (~5d6 and 6d6 respectively), reduced pen, Pen, Autofire (varies), Indirect, weapons.

Ect...

Consistancy should be the overriding consideration.