Are tanks really that tough?

[Vondy]

Admittedly he's a frightening artillery piece, but to me survivability is the real question with Cyke.  There's no real explanation for how he can survive a thug with a gun, let alone Sentinels and Magnetos.  He's not fast or metallic or tough or bamfy or capable of flight.  In the comics he gets plot armor; in Champions he'd last a couple of phases at most.

 

He's using tactics, movement, cover, skill and luck.

 

I would build most of the X-Men with a reasonable chunk of combat luck, heroic grace, evasion, or whatnot.

[massey]

I find much of that unjustifiable based on what we know about Cyclops' power set, but I handwave it away as "mutants are tough".  And even then, in-game, a single hit from an average attack will drop him.

 

I do like the current Racer X uniform he has, though.  It looks awesome.

 

PD and ED, in part, represent your ability to stay conscious and stay alive.  Since Cyke stays conscious and alive, he should have at least a decent PD and ED.

 

I'm looking at 4th ed Classic Enemies right now.  Here are some of the defenses of characters in that book who don't have a "supertough" justification (base PD and ED, not armored costumes and the like):

 

Binder - 10/10

Charger - 15/50

Arc - 18/18

Bora - 15/24

Mentalla - 10/10

The Whip - 20/20

Bullet - 15/15

Panda - 15/15

Raccoon - 20/20

Dragon Master - 15/12

 

and so on.  It seems that someone whose defense comes predominantly from a force field or an armored suit will have much lower PD and ED.  But people who run around in spandex with nothing else tend to have higher.

[Hugh Neilson]

In general, I find most games (Hero or otherwise) place a lot more reliance on defenses (soaking up hits) rather than dodging (actively avoiding attacks) than the source materials do. Gamers like to use their actions to attack, not avoid attacks, so they want to be able to take a few hits. The average Supers, unless Defense is part of their schtick, tend to avoid attacks rather than soak them up. In games, avoidance tends to be the rarer approach.

 

The X-Men are a great example. How often do the non-bricks soak up a couple of hits in the course of a battle? In Hero, as in most games, we expect most of them to take a couple of hits and come back none the worse for wear. Of course, we could certainly design benchmarks that make a hit less likely, and set defenses and STUN low enough for the typical character that one hit will likely stun or even KO them, but gamers like to hit and roll damage three or four times, finally dropping their foe, more than they like to miss five or six times, finally landing a single blow that ends the combat.

[NuSoardGraphite]

In fact, he's less survivable that Batman/Daredevil/Hawkeye/Black Widow.

 

This, incidentally, points to the nonsensical nature of the "distinction" between Normal and Superhuman. Most "superhumans" aren't superhuman, except in specific areas.

This is exactly how I feel about it. Most superhumans are "super" in only a few ways. Nightcrawler is superhuman in his agility and his ability to teleport. Beast is superhuman in his physical abilities (str, con, bod and dex) and his senses. Jean is just a telepath and telekinetic. Cyclops can shoot plasma from his eyes. Other than those powers their characteristics should not be above human norms. If you extend human norms to above the characteristic maximum, thats fine. I decided not to do that for my games and I found them more manageable for it.

[massey]

I like more room for differentiation in my characters.  It's not just saying "Juggernaut has this Dex, the Thing has that, then Cyclops, then Cap, then Spidey."  There are hundreds of Marvel characters out there and I like more room to play around with.

 

-For the record, I give Juggernaut a 10 Dex, 4 Spd.  I feel this emphasizes his slow, lumbering nature.  Even bystanders react about the same time he does.  He has a bunch of OCV levels, but in a super fight Juggernaut goes last.

-I give ol' Ben Grimm an 18 Dex, 5 Spd.  While he's big and bulky, he was a college football player and a wrestler, so he's got some moves.  He also has several levels in hand to hand combat.

-Cyclops has a 20 Dex, 5 Spd.  Cyke is actually slower than most traditional blasters.  That's because Cyke is generally portrayed as the team's "big gun", even more than Colossus.  In the comics I read, he seemed to go later than the rest of the team.  Of course when he goes, it counts.  Cyclops would also have a lot of levels with optic blast, like 6 or 7 of them.

-Storm and Iceman probably have a 23 Dex, 5 Spd.  They're standard superhero blasters.  The Hulk also falls into that range.  He's much faster than people give him credit for.

-Hawkeye, Black Widow, and other human "skill" characters are in the 26 Dex, 6 Spd range.  They rely primarily on agility, and not on raw defense, to get by.  They need the higher Spd to dodge more, and the better combat values so they don't waste phases missing.

-Captain America and the Beast get a 30 Dex, and either a 6 or 7 Spd, depending on my mood.  They're in the borderline superhuman scale for me.

-Nightcrawler has a 33 Dex, 7 Spd.

-Spidey gets a 35 Dex, and either a 7 or an 8 Spd, depending on my mood.

 

That's roughly where I put characters, and I've found it works very well.  Dexterity and Spd aren't just about agility -- it's primarily how quickly you react in combat, how you keep your cool under fire.  An Olympic gymnast might be awesome on the balance beam, but in a crisis situation she just stands there, bewildered.

[Vondy]

I

-Cyclops has a 20 Dex, 5 Spd.  Cyke is actually slower than most traditional blasters.  That's because Cyke is generally portrayed as the team's "big gun", even more than Colossus.  In the comics I read, he seemed to go later than the rest of the team.  Of course when he goes, it counts.  Cyclops would also have a lot of levels with optic blast, like 6 or 7 of them.

 

Another mechanical interpretation of his going later is that he is built with heroic talents like Combat Intuition and I Know How He Fights that require x-phases observation and an analyze or tactics roll to get his skill level boost. He would then be biding his time and analyzing his opponent's weak spots before opening up with his big blasts. Or, as the team leader, he's holding his phase, making tactics rolls, giving orders (another super-skill: Team Effort!) to keep his team on top, and waiting for the key moment to deliver a finishing blow to an enemy.

[Altair]

Me & my crew were talking Champions, balance and advancement last night; Cyke and the X-men came up. Beast's player diversifies, Storm's shores up her weaknesses (GM makes a note to give Storm some opportunities to show off her new Martial Arts), and Cyclops? His player just dumps all his xp into his Optic Blasts multipower.

 

When everybody else is kinda balanced, dropping 12 d6 attacks and such, Cyke can whip out a 7d6 killing attack when he haymakers his optic blasts (rips off his visor). 

 

Related: how do the X-Men deal with a tank? They get out of the way and let Cyclops pulverize it.

[Netzilla]

Speaking of Cyclopes and how he doesn't get pulverized even those he's described as close-to-human resilience other posters have noted the 'unstable molecule' uniform and that he almost never seems to get hit (like a lot of other characters).  I'm pretty sure it's cannon that Unstable Molecules make the uniform act like armor (similar to Kevlar though much lighter and more flexible AIR).  So, that's pretty easy to simulate.  As for how he doesn't get hit without having Olympic gymnast level agility it's a combination of skill and tactics in my estimation.  That's easily simulated by CSLs but it's not necessarily efficient (more less depending on edition) and has the downside of one lucky GM roll and he's pulped anyway. 

 

One idea I use for such hard-to-hit but "normal" characters is to buy extra DEF or Damage Reduction with DEX-Based and Requires Endurance/Heroic Action Point limitations.  As the character runs out of END/HAPs they're less able to dodge/roll with attacks and thus get hit more solidly.  This allows characters to have lower DEX/CV/base PD without being complete glass cannon.  Cyclopes built along such lines could be one of the more resilient X-Men (as he's usually the last to fall) without looking like it and not being able to survive having a building dropped on his head.

[massey]

They still have Combat Luck in the new edition, right?

[Altair]

They still have Combat Luck in the new edition, right?

 

Yep! And that's immediately what I thought of. 

 

Though, help me out here; barring price, there isn't any mechanical difference between the defense bought as Combat Luck, and defense bought the normal way, right? So it's basically defense with an SFX of Luck, yes?

[Vondy]

One idea I use for such hard-to-hit but "normal" characters is to buy extra DEF or Damage Reduction with DEX-Based and Requires Endurance/Heroic Action Point limitations.  As the character runs out of END/HAPs they're less able to dodge/roll with attacks and thus get hit more solidly.  This allows characters to have lower DEX/CV/base PD without being complete glass cannon.  Cyclopes built along such lines could be one of the more resilient X-Men (as he's usually the last to fall) without looking like it and not being able to survive having a building dropped on his head.

 

Good ideas.

 

In published books, Evasion from Fantasy Hero and Heroic Grace from Pulp Hero both port to superheroic games fairly well.

[Vondy]

Yep! And that's immediately what I thought of. 

 

Though, help me out here; barring price, there isn't any mechanical difference between the defense bought as Combat Luck, and defense bought the normal way, right? So it's basically defense with an SFX of Luck, yes?

 

The power modifiers for Combat Luck reduce its utility compared to defenses purchased without those same modifiers.

 

It doesn't work vs. AoE attacks, if the character is asleep or unconscious or immobile, etc.

[assault]

A thought: if we want an "apples to apples" comparison, maybe we could be talking about Hawkeye and Cyclops.

 

They are quite similar in a lot of ways - big attack, lots of skill levels, normal but highly trained otherwise. The most obvious difference is the special effect of their attacks.

[Altair]

Which Hawkeye? West Coast Avengers goofball with the hover-bike, Ultimates (basically Bullseye), New Avengers "Ronin" martial artist, Cinematic spy, or Matt Fraction Hawkguy? Or some other iteration that slipped my mind? Granted, you can do this with Cyclops as well (Love that Racer X Style), I've just seen a lot of variation in the character's power in the hands of different writers.

 

Having said that, I think you're not incorrect - both are pretty ordinary dudes with gear and training keeping them from getting squashed, who dumped the majority of their points into their primary attack multipowers - and I think the variations depend on what campaign they're in.

[assault]

There's only one Hawkeye. Plus the movie version, I suppose. Ultimate and other alternate versions don't count, unless otherwise specified.

[Ninja-Bear]

A few thoughts.

 

Firstly, you don't have to destroy a tank to remove it from the fight. You can flip it on its side, blow its treads off, pull the turret off and use it on the undercarriage as a club, etc. You could also pick it up and shake it so that the crew turns to splat on the inside, or heat it up so that they sizzle, and leave the tank in tact. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Secondly, Hero vehicle design doesn't really account for weak-points or critical hits against vehicles very well. Its just not that granular. If you want those options, you have to create them. I also agree, overall, that official Hero builds are somewhat inflated due to its roots in - and focus on - the Champions superheroic genre.

True but the op was talking about iirc ripping a tank apart. Its much more sastisfying to rip a turrent off a tank than to flip it over. : )

[Altair]

 

There's only one Hawkeye. Plus the movie version, I suppose. Ultimate and other alternate versions don't count, unless otherwise specified.

 

Fair enough - but West Coast Avengers through Disassembled Hawkeye is portrayed differently than Post-Secret Invasion "Ronin" Hawkeye, who is portrayed differently than Bendis' Hawkeye. All of them are the same Earth 616 Clint Barton.

 

I am absolutely picking nits here. 

 

Back on topic.  Hawkeye - in any iteration - shoots the tank with some manner of arrow. Feel bad for the tank.

[Doc Democracy]

Wow.  Gone for over two months and we are still talking about this!!  

 

443 posts on how tough tanks should be...  

[L. Marcus]

Why so surprised?

[Lucius]

Wow.  Gone for over two months and we are still talking about this!!  

 

443 posts on how tough tanks should be...  

No we are not. The thread goes on and on but it stopped being about tanks some time ago.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary remembers when this thread was about tanks. Tanks for the memories.

[assault]

It's turned out to really be about benchmarks. Tanks are one aspect of that. Characteristics and related stuff are another.

[Lucius]

It's turned out to really be about benchmarks. Tanks are one aspect of that. Characteristics and related stuff are another.

So the thread didn't drift - it just expanded from the specific to the general, and to other instances of the same general topic??

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says true thread drift would be talking about some guy named Mark sitting on a bench

[Altair]

Champions: Tankyo Drift.

 

...

 

Thanks, I'll just see myself out. 

[Markdoc]

Coming late to this thread, so apologies for getting back on topic

The short answer is "No, tanks are really not that tough". The perfect example is the battle of Norfolk (which despite its English sounding name, actually happened in Iraq during the first gulf war). There, the 2nd armoured division engaged Iraqi forces - when some of the US forces penetrated the Iraqi lines and turned round to re-engage, they were mistaken for hostiles, leading to a short Abrams vs. Abrams confrontation in which 5 Abrams were rapidly destroyed. The results are instructive.

 

First off, it showed that a US-crewed Abrams was far more dangerous to another Abrams than the Iraqi forces - almost all the US AFVs lost were lost to friendly fire. Crew training and discipline counts for almost as much as armour - a fact often overlooked, but brought into prominence by the many Abrams lost by Iraqi forces recently against ISIS.

 

Anyway, with regard to what happened. The first tank, B-66, was hit by three rounds against the front of the tank. The first penetrated under the turret, killing the gunner and wounding the commander, the second set the tank on fire. I can't find an indication of where the third round hit, but the tank burned and then exploded. The claim that "the frontal armour of an Abrams has never been penetrated" is technically true - the first shell to hit did not penetrate the frontal armour plate, according to the US army report - but it still went through the tank's frontal defences. The second tank (B-22) was also hit frontally, by one shell. Again, the round did not technically penetrate, but it still caused internal damage, and the crew abandoned it when they were unable to extinguish the burning electronics. The tank was disabled but not destroyed (it was alter decommissioned because of radioactive contamination in the crew compartment: I'm not quite sure how to square that with the claim that no penetration occurred, unless it was from spalling of the depleted uranium armour. The third tank hit (A-14) does not specify the location, though it was probably also frontal since the only casualty was the driver. The tank was disabled by one hit and then caught fire and burned out. The 4th tank (A-31) took a hit in the left rear - this disabled it, but it was not destroyed, being repaired and returned to service. The last tank (A-33) was adjacent to A-14 and it was also struck in the side at the rear (this time by an anti-tank missile, thought to be from a Bradley). This disabled the tank, but as the crew was evacuating, it was also hit by a round from an Abrams on the side armour. This went right through the tank, hitting on the left and exiting via the right. Yeah, you read that right - the round went through two layers of side armour.

 

Add that to the fact that ISIS has apparently been using the Kornet missile with reasonable success against the new generation of Abrams (according to Jane's there have been at least 6 cases where the missile has penetrated the armour, though they do not say where) and it's pretty clear that the armour on the Abrams can be penetrated by modern weapons. The US lost at least 2 Abrams to Kornets when the Iraqi insurgents were using them, and those tanks had reactive defences as well.

 

So what does that mean in Hero system?

Well, one round from the Abram's main gun can go through the frontal defences of another Abrams and disable it in one hit. The fact that this happened on more than one occasion suggests that it wasn't a freak accident. Under the current rules, that requires you to roll at least 31 BOD and then roll a 3 on the damage table and assume a disablinghit. It's not impossible, but we're talking a good roll and the GM deciding that the tank's largest power is "movement". Alternatively, since the tanks were using DU rounds, you could go for double AP, but you'd still need a good roll.

The incident where a round went right through an Abrams would require a roll of 41+ BOD. You know, I'm just not seeing that on 8d6. Either the gun as depicted in the rules is underpowered (and really, I don't think we need to go above 24 freakin' damage classes, here) or the armour given is unrealistically high. Given that we have several incidents of Abrams being destroyed in one or two hits - and it has 25 BOD - we're actually talking about hits that are putting 8-12 BOD through that armour.

If we look at the other attacks, wire-guided missiles are listed at 8d6 double AP (ouch!) That'd mess the Abrams up pretty good, frontal armour or no, doing an average of 28 bod vs 15/10 defence (after halving) The light antitank weapon would do nothing against frontal armour, but would have a chance of penetrating the side armour, which is not too out of line. They have no chance of destroying one in a single hit though, even though we know that they can do so in real life.

As a last point, there are reports of Abrams being disabled by small arms fire in both the first and second gulf wars, not through penetrating the main armour, but by igniting external fuel tanks, and of disabling hits from RPG-7, and even one Abrams disabled by what was described as "medium-caliber automatic weapons system such as a 12.7 mm DShK heavy machine gun" and another knocked out by a 25 mm light anti-tank weapon firing into the rear armour.

 

When I look at these rules, it is clear that there's an imbalance in the weapons damage listed and the armour of the Abrams. In real life, lighter weapons can disable an Abrams that have no chance to inflict damage in Hero system - even if it happens rarely (meaning a very high roll, essentially ) But part at least of the problem is down to the way that vehicle rules work: they are designed to let people "chip away" at a vehicle, destroying various components until the vehicle is completely destroyed. In real life, a vehicle can actually take a ton of damage, and still function - just as long as nothing vital is hit. At the same time, "1 hit = 1 kill" is not uncommon in real life. When a vital system is hit, basically the vehicle ceases to function. But when looking at how the rules work, the very high defences of the Abrams exacerbates this problem, because you require a ton of damage to penetrate it, and to destroy it you need to do that over and over. To actually destroy it in one hit - which we can see happens - you'd need to do 45-55 BOD, so we're talking 12d6+ killing attacks.

 

My own feeling is that the vehicle rules make vehicles too durable. I understand that you don't want vehicles to be too fragile, but look at it this way. The main gun on an Abrams does 8d6: on average 28 BOD. An Apache helicopter has 10 DEF and 20 BOD. As the rules are set up now, most of the time, if you fired the main gun of an Abrams into an Apache, it would take a major amount of damage, but could still fly off and operate with some minor reduction in its efficiency. Is it just me, or does that just seem wrong?

 

So I think we have two problems here. The Abrams itself is out of line with pretty much everything else in the system in terms of durability, and the higher-end weapons have been set up with the Abrams/MBT baseline in mind, meaning that they are pretty gross (compared to superheroes) in terms of damage output. That's one problem. The other problem is that even when an attack penetrate defences, it is actually pretty hard to put vehicles out of commission - they tend to lose minor functionality when their defences are penetrated, meaning you need multiple hits to stop anything with decent armour. At the other end of the scale, a couple of good hits from a .45 will destroy (as in blow to bits, not disable) a midsize car. The other thing that comes up again and again, in real life is that hits to vehicles often end up incapacitating or killing the crew (as noted in the examples above) even though the vehicle is not destroyed. That's not really covered in the basic rules.

 

All up, looking at the vehicle rules, I'm inclined to say they're not fit for purpose. Fixing them is a bit harder, and I'd be interested to hear suggestions.

 

What I've done in the past (I posted this to the forums a while back in the One person versus a starship? thread) is a bit more complex in terms of write up, but - in my opinion anyway - works better. That's to divide the vehicle up into sections. I even mentioned the Abrams in that thread, dividing it up into crew compartment, turret and engine (in retrospect I'd probably add tracks as an additional section). The purpose is two-fold. Since each section has the amount of body we attribute to the vehicle currently, it can take a lot of distributed hits, allowing you to decrease the DEF significantly. The second thing is that it allows you to work out pretty much instantly what the effect of destroying/damaging a section is. In some cases that will disable a vehicle, in others, the loss of a section will effectively destroy it - and in some cases, damage to a section might have little effect. I apply this rule to buildings too, making walls able to be smashed though, without the building being comically fragile.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

I got an update note that another example of an Abrams disabled by 25mm autocannon fire, was at Najaf - this was apparently friendly fire (again!) from a Bradley against the rear of the engine compartment. Since a 25mm comes in at around 3 1/2d6 RKA, this is almost impossible under the current rules, again suggesting that the armour values are too high. I've got to admit, I would never have expected that you could take an Abrams out with a heavy machine gun or a light autocannon, but obviously that can and does happen, even if infrequently.

 

Looping back to the original post, if light support weapons or cheapo shoulder carried RPG-7's can disable an Abrams (and we now have quite a lot of cases where they have proven that they can), I'm guessing the Mighty Thor should be able to mess one up pretty good.

 

cheers, Mark