[I re-sent this mail to the list and modified the subject line to be
more meaningful -- James]
While we are on the subject of weapons (i.e., mayhem), I have a subject
I thought might interest people. One of my biggest problems in designing
a combat system (something I would not wish on my worst enemies...well,
maybe a couple of 'em) is that the system seems to break down in the
medium range between weapons clearly designed for people and those clearly
designed for vehicles. If you use a straight multiplication to determine
damage from muzzle energy, etc., you get something that means no one can
survive being hit by a rifle round--true, rifle rounds do produce a lot
of damage, but much of it ends up being wasted...literally, blowing through
the person and on into the air or space behind him. If you try to use a
curve of some kind, you generally get better results, overall, but you
always seem to get an realm of vehicles and/or weapons that seem either
overprotected or underpowered. For example, using my system, a full battle
tank with case-hardened steel armor (most contemporary tanks) has armor
protection up to 200 points (300 in front), and its 50-ton body gives it
about 240 points of "body." A tac missile (TOW, etc.) generally does
between 300 and 600 points of damage, depending on the type. Since you
need twice the body of a vehicle to destroy it (the first level is for
disabling it, but not so badly it could not eventually be repaired), this
means you need between 700 and 800 points to utterly destroy it. Now,
you can get this with a TOW-type missile with a lucky shot (maximum for
the three kinds of weapons, including double damage for very good shots,
are respectively 864, 1152, and 1728 points), but from what I have heard,
the average shot of a TOW should do a tank pretty well.
Now, of course, it cannot be very good for the player characters inside
the tank who take a couple of hundred points of damage, if they are hit by
what is left of the blast after penetration (which my system tells you to
check for), and there is also the chance that fuel or ammunition will be
hit, and perhaps this is why the TOW is so dangerous, since most of its
damage is in the form of extreme heat. Perhaps this is what is meant by
"a killed tank"--it does not matter to the crew inside the tank that their
vehicle could eventually be rebuilt, even after a bad hit, if they are
now crispy critters.
Is the system underpowering weapons? Perhaps...but under the same system,
the average 15-ton fighter aircraft it blown right out of the sky by a single
missile hit, unless it is an enormously unlucky shot.
I have "solved" the problem by adding fudge rules that say the GM can declare
any hit that penetrates the hull of a vehicle to do crippling or killing
damage (which is very useful for getting rid of NPCs once the plot no longer
requires them). I do not really like this, but it seems to be the best way
to keep my system both fairly realistic and playable.
I was wondering if anyone else had similar problems, suggestions, comments,
etc.
Mark