Re: (3244) GEnie: MegaTrav design flaws

Scott Kellogg writes:
> Subject: (3244) GEnie:  MegaTrav design flaws
>
> The TDR folks had an idea which makes sense:  Have the
> chassis damage points of a vehicle be related to the weight of
> the chassis.  Thus a heavily armored chassis would be able to
> take more low penetration damage than a light one of the same
> size.  (The example was one of school bus vs. main battle tank)
> But I don't know much about it.  {Rob can you give us a run down
> on it?}

But of course...I'll append the appropriate sections of "TDR Vehicle
Design V1.1" below.  The basic idea is, as Scott says, that the current
damage point system is easy, but strange.  An M-1 tank is smaller
than a school bus, therefore it is easier to destroy in MT, where damage
points are equal to hull volume in kl divided by 6.  When I made up the
rule suggestion below, I arbitrarily decided that 1 ton of weight should
be exchanged for 1 kl in the old system...probably because the default
weight of any object in MT is 1ton/kl.  This would have the effect of making
a heavier object harder to destroy than a light object of the same volume.
The reason that the numbers below use /1.5 and * 1.7 instead
of /15 and /6 is an errata which said that damage values
should be multiplied by ten for use in personal combat (by which they meant
everything except the High Guard derived starship combat system).  You'll
see that /1.5 = /15 *10 and *1.7 = /6 * 10 (rounded off).

COACC is a terrible offender in this regard, and I recommended using a weight
based approach to aircraft damage (cribbed from Striker, where else?) at
the same time.



        TDR VEHICLE DESIGN SYSTEM
        VERSION 1.1
        20 DECEMBER 1990
        ROB DEAN

        ***************************************************************
        Remarks will be delineated with rows of asterisks at the
        beginning and end.
        ***************************************************************

        DESIGN EVALUATION

        This section can be retained as is, with the following excep-
        tions.

        Damage:  Calculate based on weight, not volume.  Also figure in
        the factor of ten for personal combat rules to allow more differ-
        entiation of vehicles at lower sizes.  So new hull values become
        Weight/1.5 (inoperative) and Weight*1.7 (Destroyed).  Values for
        power plant and locomotion are figured as before, on a percentage
        of the weight rather than the volume.



Well, that's all there was to it...

Rob Dean