Gary

Darn it! How dare you be so reasonable! I was having fun being opinionated. Seriously this is a great idea, but there may be problems when dealing with non-armored items like walls and rocks. At what tech level do natural objects have half defenses?

The penny would only do 5D6 if it was a thrown object. If it was a fired object like a bullet, it'll do as much damage as the weapon firing it was rated. If it 'splashes', it might be even more dangerous. We're talking about the equivalent of 2-3 kilotons of energy at work here. Each 'drop' will have enough remaining energy to devastate whatever it hits.

Re: Another thought Let's assume 1 gram for the weight of the penny. .5 * (.001) * (150,000,000)^2 = 11.25 trillion joules of energy. Roughly a 2-3 kiloton nuke. Anyway, if the weapon can accelerate the penny to .5c, it can certainly accelerate it to .01c or some reasonable number. It can be used in combat, just not at full power.

Star Hero warships have 75 total defense. I'd say that this would require higher damage. The orbital military installation has 95 total defense. Of course we can do more damage with big guns! We simply choose not to. A 16" shell is basically a big hunk of high explosive. There are so many futuristic possibilities to deliver large chunks of explosives on target, that it's not even funny. For example, a fuel air bomb is far more powerful than a 16" shell and that's today's technology. If you add possibilities like rail guns or gauss guns, I think it's safe to say that we haven't scratched the surface of big gun technology. And the missiles that we use against hardened targets like bunkers are far more powerful than a 16" gun. We can and do easily scale up the damage of a missile to adjust for tough targets. I don't think that futuristic weapons will do merely the same damage as a 16" gun. We're already doing more damage today, and it'll be trivial for a futuristic warship to do lots more.

If you find weakness at a high level in your framework, could you drop the points in the framework to the level you made the roll by? For example, a multipower has find weakness on 15- for 30 active points. The character rolls a 11 and finds weakness. Can the character then drop the points 'locked' in the multipower to 10, or is he stuck having to use the full 30 points?

Suppose a character has find weakness in a multipower or vpp. When he changes slots, does he lose any weaknesses already found?

Re: Unless you plan on mixing present and future vehicular weapons together in one game A problem arises if advanced cultures meet more primitive cultures like with Star Trek or Hammer's Slammers which is very common in science fiction. If the futuristic pc's go to a planet with 20th century tech, it would be nice to not have to lower all the 20th century damage ratings across the board. The system has to be consistent as a whole, not just within its genre.

First of all, I dispute that today's conventional missiles don't do as much damage as a 16" shell. They're a lot more expensive, but the warheads are gigantic on some of them. The advantage that the battleship has is that shells are cheap compared to missiles, and thousands of them can be carried by one ship. Second, the reason we don't have weapons that are far more destructive today is because there aren't any targets with that much armor. The Iowa class battleships were designed to take on Bismarck and Yamato class battleships. You can bet that if Russia had ships with armor that heavy, that the weapons today would be a lot more destructive. However, uparmoring ships is a losing proposition. For the price of 1 battleship, you can have a fleet of destroyers and frigates. Third, assuming weapon technology stays static, defies belief in a universe where FTL travel is possible, and weapons have tens of thousands of km range. This technological leap is at least as great as a 1700 warship to a 1945 battleship. Last of all, even if damages were consistent within era, the possibility of time travel as raised by the book would quickly make hash of things. You'd find that at close range, the WW2 and modern weapons are as good as or better than the 'futuristic' ones.

And against a hardened target like a tank, they'll both do 15 body. That's even assuming that an AP shell from a battleship doesn't have AP in game terms, which might be questionable. They're still in the same ballpark, unlike a 1700 warship vs a 1945 warship. The mecha is severely underpowered. An army of them would get annihilated by a squadron of modern day tanks.

The point is that the damage shouldn't even be this close. A cannon from 1700 could fire all day at a target that a WW2 battleship could destroy in one shot with a tertiary weapon, let alone a primary or secondary weapon. A futuristic warship should be able to do the same thing. The warship isn't the only example. The 4D6 RKA of a mecha is significantly weaker than a tank gun or even a Tow missile.

Re: Apples and oranges, I think... Actually, Star Hero does have a chapter on time travel, so it is possible for WW2 era weapons to fight futuristic weapons. Based on the writeups for Star Hero, the WW2 and modern era weapons will do quite well. Hero is supposed to be a universal system, so having separate damage ranges per genre isn't right. You should be able to take characters and weapons from any setting, and drop them anywhere else.

I'd give it a -2 limitation. It has to be large, but not so large that it becomes area effect. Area effects can't be deflected. This limits the number of possible objects considerably.

A Spruce class destroyer is a far cry from an Iowa class battleship. The Spruce has 5" guns which are a lot less destructive than the 16" guns of a battleship. The 5" gun has roughly the destructive power of a tank cannon which is 120 mm. Considering that the Iowa class battleship has 9 of these puppies and lots of lesser guns, I think it's safe to say that it has far more raw destructive power than the Star Hero warship. That would be as silly as a Napoleonic era Ship of the Line vs the Iowa class battleship.

Their ground based weapons don't seem to do a lot more damage. The sample mech in Star Hero does 4D6 AP, which is much less damage than a Tow missile or a 120 mm tank shell.

The Empress wins because it has higher defenses, not because of more damage or better ROF. If both the Empress and Missouri fired upon a third stationary target, the Missouri would probably destroy it quicker because it has 9 16" guns and dozens of 3-5" guns. I don't think it's too much to expect that the futuristic warship should do more damage as well as better accuracy and rate of fire. The 20+ D6 values for TE sound better to me.

I don't think it'll explode since otherwise the limitation isn't a limitation. I put this question up on the Rules Questions board, so we'll get an official answer soon. The battleship merely does 8D6 with its 5" guns. With its 16" guns, it's probably going to do at least 10D6. It also has dozens of 3" or lesser guns that probably do 6D6. They're still pretty gruesome.

Hi Steve, If an area effect or explosion attack has a 'can be missile deflected' limitation, or a physical limitation 'can be missile deflected' like the nuclear missile in Star Hero, what happens when it gets deflected? Does it simply do no damage, or does it still explode and do damage if you're caught in the area effect?

I had a player who did a lot of detective work in tracking down a desolid thief who was stealing valuable items. He did a great job in tracking down the thief and managed to predict when the thief would strike next. At the appointed time, he saw the thief desol into the museum. He desol'd in after the thief. To make a long story short, the thief won the fight and managed to frame the PC for all the desolid crimes!

The nukes have a physical limitation that they can be missile deflected. Still not a draw. I'm not talking about firing at each other. If a 30th century warship and a WW2 battleship fired at each other, the warship wins because of higher defenses. I was talking about firing at a third target. The WW2 battleship will take out the third target faster than the 30th century warship. Superhumans shouldn't be fighting toe to toe with a battleship. They should infiltrate and destroy the warship from the inside. The ones who can fight toe to toe should be 1500+ point monstrosities like Mon-El or Superboy. If the warship doesn't have high defenses, then they're in the position that a WW2 battleship could take one out.

Not quite enough. A normal man has only 2 pd after all, so the nnd part isn't that useful. He'll still survive a terminal velocity fall since he would merely be at -4 body. A tough man or body builder wouldn't even be negative. The only way to truly fix this is to set the baseline stats for a normal human to 5, instead of 10.

Congratulations! Now you have a system where velocity damage meshes with the rest of the system. Unfortunately, now every human being above about 6 years of age will now survive a terminal velocity fall...

Actually, the .50 cal does 3D6 according to the FAQ, and it's listed as 3D6 under the M-1 Abrams listing. The warships have missile deflection, so the nuclear warheads probably won't hit. The warship will still win. Besides which, the warships have nukes as well. OK, I'm being nitpicky. However, even the secondary weapons on a WW2 battleship, the 5" guns, are quite a bit more powerful than a TOW missile. So if both a 30th century warship and a 20th century battleship took broadsides at the same target, both will destroy that target in the same amount of time. Actually, the 20th century battleship will destroy the target quicker because it has 9 16" guns, and dozens of 3-5" guns. Just doesn't make sense to me. I think there has to be some separation between 20th and 30th century technology, otherwise it doesn't feel right.

The warship actually has 75 def. 25 base, 40 force wall, 10 force field. Of course, after the first hit, the force wall will go down and it'll take a minute to erect it again, so a fight between 2 warships would probably take about 1 turn. However that's not the point. If a Tow missile is 6D6 AP RKA, and a tank shell is 8D6 RKA, a 16" armor piercing shell is probably at least 10D6 AP RKA. That would mean that a 30th century warship and the battleship New Jersey has the same level of attack. Both will destroy a third warship in a equal amount of time! It just doesn't make sense that a 30th century warship has merely the same destructive power as a 20th century warship. Incidentally, an orbital military base has 10D6 non-AP RKA, and 95 Def including 60 forcewall. It's attack will bounce off the 40 ED forcewall of the warship on average, while the warship's AP attack will knock down the 60 forcewall easily. This means that a single warship is more likely to take out the military base than the base is to take out the warship! Incidentally, the merchant ship's weapons are just about the same level of power as a .50 cal machine gun. Very wimpy for a space laser.

Re: What does the word 'Geodecent' mean? A Prizm. The Metro doesn't qualify.

How about a 16" shell, which would be a lot more powerful than 64 times a tank shell. A warship of the 30th century would do less damage than a 20th century battleship? 25D6 sounds a lot more likely for 30th century tech. Of course, the 30 damage classes of a 30th century warship would merely do the same damage as a terminal velocity fall.