Battledress

[far-trader]

I'm a little disappointed with the design rules. I was anticipating something (waaaay back when it was in playtest and rumors were flying) that would allow building internally consistant weapons and gear from handheld to planetary size. The system tries but in reality there is no way really to convert across the three basic levels.

I think the only choice that can be made with the rules as currently is that only ships (space and star) can mount ship hardpoint weapons, only vehicles (i.e. built with that section) can use vehicle weapons (and only those included or reasonable extrapolated from them), and all the beasties are stuck with the personal weapons in the catalog.

No Sgt. Buck picking up a discarded Trepida turret (unless maybe she's operating a heavy cargo loader, as a vehcile, and then aiming is going to be very tricky).

No slapping a Beam Laser from a surplus starship turret on your ATV and going nuts with it.

It does work the other way I think. Putting a vehicle turret and weapon on a Starship, or say a Laser Carbine strapped on your Air/Raft.

As for Battledress, what a mess

The more it gets debated the more I think it should be errata. Change it to simply armor, stop calling it a vehicle. Reduce the size and weight accordingly, and you fix a whole host of troubles. So it has the same AR as a MBT, but if it's a person scale system the MBT get's a 5 dice advantage both for hitting and being hit. The BD still kicks butt all over the town when it comes to personal combat, and isn't that how it should be?

 

[graden1]

Originally posted by LordRhys:
You're right about the cost, I was looking at the wrong line, the correct cost is about 800k.

There is no errata covering the vehicle weapons on page 247 of the THB as of version 6.

Energy weapons lose damage only at 5+ range bands (page 203-204).

I stand corrected, sir! I was looking at the combat section rules on energy weapons; I think they intended the -1 die per range increment for lasers. And yes, I also looked at the latest errata, and found nothing about vehicle weapon crit ranges, but I'm fairly sure the errata isn't yet complete. (Heh, it's not Traveller without tons of errata!) But if that same rule applies to tank-mounted fusion guns, then the situation stays the same; the tanks have a huge range advantage.

Originally posted by LordRhys:
This still does not address the fact that you have INFANTRY THAT CAN WITHSTAND A POINT BLANK HIT FROM THE MAIN GUN OF A HEAVY GRAV TANK, in order to to destroy the tank, all the infantry have to do is swarm the tank, plant demo charges on it's hull and blow it up. And, there is no weapon that the tank could possibly bring to bear that has much of a chance of stopping the infantry. And other Battle Dress equipped infantry can't stop them either, because their weapons have even less of a chance against Battle Dress than the tank's do.

Battle Dress is so heavily armored, that almost nothing can stop Battle Dress equipped infantry as long as the troops can keep moving.

I agree that the tank's main gun should have a higher chance of wounding, or outright destroying, a trooper in battle dress. However, if there's a rules problem here, it might be with the tank's weapon, rather than the battle dress armor rating. Fusion guns ought to have some armor-piercing capability. (IMHO)

However, if armor-piercing weapons are needed, the tanks ought to have them. Tanks published for T20 aren't equipped to deal with this problem. But weapons against battle dress do exist! The 30mm 4bbl autocannon fires 70-round bursts. The extra damage is 8 dice. (interpolated from the Burst Fire table, THB p151) Put 4 of these in a turret, use TL-14 armor-piercing ammo, and you've got a vehicular weapon which does 12d12 and ignores 7 points of AR. Final damage to TL-15 battle dress: 4d12! Average damage is slightly over the SI of most battle dress designs. The range is 400m, which is beyond the FGMP-15's 1/4-damage range.

The other problem is sensors; many of the published tank designs are near-sighted. A 50km radar or neural activity sensor would make better use of the tank's range advantage.

Then there's the speed factor; grav tanks tend to be faster than battle dress. And their high speed also tends to raise their AC.(A slow-moving tank is, indeed, a sitting duck.) This tends to put the tank "in the driver's seat" regarding the range of attack. The tank can easily stay out of range of the FGMP-15, or break off the engagement altogether. It may be possible to put built-in grav thrusters on battle dress, but the streamlining and expensive drive train needed to keep up with a grav tank really drives up the cost of battle dress.

The fact that tanks are vulnerable to infantry is nothing new. I once had a PC who knocked out an Intrepid with a cheap tac missile. But for battle dress troops to "swarm" the tank is suicidal. Can you say "attack of opportunity"? How about "collision damage"? The tank would smash them to pieces, taking little or no damage, based on the battle dress' SI. Messy, but effective.

Originally posted by LordRhys:
You don't have to take my word for it, take some infantry and tanks, and playtest it. Try ambushes, attacks, and meeting engagements. Take 2 tanks and 8 Battle Dress equipped troops, vs 16 Battle Dress equipped troops. See if the tanks can survive the battles. Try variations of the above, and see what the actual results are.

I'll do that, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. At the moment I'm running an exploration-themed campgain w/o much military action. Should the tank crews fight intelligently, or should they just sit there and wait to die?

Originally posted by LordRhys:
I'm not trying to be contentious just for the heck of it, I'm trying correct some defects in the system.

If anyone's been contentious, it's myself. But I do appreciate this discussion; it's given me a lot to think about. Everyone agrees there are some defects in the system, but not on how extreme they are, or what's needed to correct them.

Originally posted by LordRhys:
With the rules as written, tanks are completely redundant. The only reason that tanks even exist, is because infantry has trouble surviving assault on heavily fortified positions. If the infantry are as hard to kill as tanks, then you don't need tanks (they're just big expensive targets). You don't need the range of their guns either. That's what artillery is for (meson or conventional). A few heavier/long-range man-portable weapons can make up whatever difference there is between tank's and Battle Dress).

I agree, at least partly. I'm not crazy about the idea of battle dress as a vehicle, but if it's defined as such, it becomes far more powerful. In my experience, this hasn't turned out to be a "game-breaking" problem. I think we're also in agreement that tanks in T20 aren't as capable as they should be, and their intended role in combat could be defined better. However, it seems like many of the complaints, like the "tank v. battle dress" scenario, overlook many of the tank's strengths and the battle dress' weaknesses.

thanks heaps,

DGv2.0

 

[graden1]

Originally posted by far-trader:
As for Battledress, what a mess

The more it gets debated the more I think it should be errata. Change it to simply armor, stop calling it a vehicle. Reduce the size and weight accordingly, and you fix a whole host of troubles. So it has the same AR as a MBT, but if it's a person scale system the MBT get's a 5 dice advantage both for hitting and being hit. The BD still kicks butt all over the town when it comes to personal combat, and isn't that how it should be?

All true. "Battle dress" could be changed to a type of heavy armor. However, it wouldn't change the fact that the vehicle design sequence would still allow the same construction which is currently used for battle dress. Call it something else; "personal fighting vehicle" or "one-man tank", whatever, it's still big trouble for other vehicles. (not to mention troops!) The only way to deal with this problem is to amend the vehicle design system, or the vehicle combat rules.

For vehicles in the medium to large size range, the odds of a "driver" hit should be a lot higher. The internal damage table on THB p164 only gives a 5% chance of the driver taking an internal hit. For vehicles under 2200vl, the chance should be increased, proportionally to the driver's percentage of vehicle space. The driver takes up fully 36% of the battle dress vl on p285! Hits on this vehicle should have a corresponding chance of hitting the driver.

Another way to game this would be to simply allow called shots against the driver in battle dress. This would be my option of choice, because it makes good use of an existing rule, rather than adding on a "home rule".

thanx heaps,

DGv2.0

 

[justacaveman]

Troops in battle Dress are practically invulnerable to each other.

Example: TL13 Battle Dress (AR10) with PGMP-13 vs the same. The PGMP does 7d12, reduced to 2d12 by scale, reduce by AR10 to a maximum of 1d12-9 damage (max 3 points). At this rate it would take at least 9 normal hits from this weapon to destroy the Battle Dress (SI 25).

For those who of us who use house rules, here is my suggested solution to the problem with Battle Dress(4 parts):

A: Reduce the scale reduction of Large vehicles by 3 to a 2.
B: Give vehicle scale weapons a scale damage bonus of 3 vs Battle Dress.
C: Limit the AR of Battle Dress to TL minus 3.
D: Give Hi-Energy weapons an Armor-Piercing bonus equal to 1 per damage die after adusting for range and scale, and lasers an AP bonus of 1 per 2 final damage dice (per Digital Golem).

 

[justacaveman]

My errata for my suggestions:

A: Change "Large vehicles" to "Battle Dress".

D: Change "Hi-energy weapons" to "fusion weapons", and change "laser" to "plasma and laser".

 

[justacaveman]

After testing, I've encountered 1 major difficulty.

+1 AP per damage die after adjusting for scale/ range makes Combat Armor completely useless against FGMP's.

I tried out reducing the AP bonus to +1 per 2 damage dice, but that made the FGMP's too weak vs vehicles (PGMP's also are weak after scale reduction).

What seemed to work best was +3 AP for plasma and laser weapons (reduce by 1 at 5-7 range increments etc.), and +4 AP for fusion weapons (also reduced for range increases). This keeps combat armor useful against FGMP's, and still allows reasonable chances against vehicles.

This rule is designed to work with my other house rules, and may not work for everone.

The other rules I use that apply to vehicles and Battle Dress are as follows:
1. Battle Dress only gets a scale modifier of +2.
2. The maximumum AR of Battle Dress is Tech Level minus 3.
3. Vehicle scale weapons get a +3 scale damage modifier vs Battle Dress.
4. Personal scale weapons may only score Critical Hits against vehicles if the second roll lies within the Critical Threat range of the weapon.
5. Personal scale slugthrower Armor-Piercing values are halved vs vehicles, and vehicle scale slugthrower AP is doubled vs personal scale armor.
6. When a Critical hit is scored against a target that is fully enclosed in armor (Such as Combat Armor, or a tank etc.), the AR is not ignored, it is halved.
7. Rigid armor such as Combat Armor halves Stamina damage. Note: This rule is only indirectly related to Battle Dress/Vehicle combat (It makes troops in Combat Armor a more serious threat since it increases their survivability against heavier weapons.).

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by LordRhys:
After testing, I've encountered 1 major difficulty.

+1 AP per damage die after adjusting for scale/ range makes Combat Armor completely useless against FGMP's.

I'm not sure that's a problem. Generally it's always a tight race between armor and arms. By the time your troops are facing TL14+ FGMP maybe they should be wearing BD. Either that or bump up the AR of the TL14 Combat Armor a tic. Personally I might just relable it as TL13, the last issue of it, as BD is introduced at the same time.

 

[Despasian]

....As for Battledress, what a mess

The more it gets debated the more I think it should be errata. Change it to simply armor, stop calling it a vehicle. Reduce the size and weight accordingly, and you fix a whole host of troubles. So it has the same AR as a MBT, but if it's a person scale system the MBT get's a 5 dice advantage both for hitting and being hit. The BD still kicks butt all over the town when it comes to personal combat, and isn't that how it should be?
--Dan "far-trader" Burns

Amen to that brother.

IMTU (T20) that's what I did. Battle Dress is a 'servo-compensated', powered ARMOR.

The power-assist compensates for the weight/encumbrance of the suit, but not enough to 'enhance' the wearer's abilities or qualify as independent propulsion (avoiding a vehicle definition).
The compensation is enough to give it a relatively good Max Dex bonus, minimal Armor Penalty, and the wearer keeps their base speed.

Further, I added a heavy version (taking inspiration from TNE's RCES equipment guide.)
The heavy version allows for use of heavier weapons, more protection, but not quite as agile.

While working on that, I ended up looking at the Modern Armor Table as a whole. Edit here and there, and before long, I had a completely new table. It includes a few intermediate levels of protection I thought were missing, and some different scaling in price (massive increases for the high-end armor), and stats (attempting to discourage munchkinism).

I just started running a new T20 campaign, with a group of Traveller first-timers, a few weeks ago.
If my numbers/balance seems to hold up under playing conditions (and when I finish my text descriptions), I'll post my revised list for critique & suggestions real soon.

 

[savage]

You've all done some excellent play testing and considered many factors which I'll have to give
a try in MTU.

You have my vote for a Travellers Aide. Hopefully, it would address several issues other than those important rule modifications.
- different types of BD: powered Armor or Walkers
- Application of each at various tech levels.
- Application of advanced armor in various cultures.
- Use of computers, power plants, etc. I'd rather not have a fusion plant strapped to my back, no matter how cheap. And a small limited I/O computer is necessary to monitor the driver health, vehicle operation. And just make decisions if the driver is "out cold".

Savage

Savage

 

[Despasian]

I think once you get into 'bigger/better' than Battle Dress, such as walkers, your running right into the realms of "Mechs".

A heavier (vehicle) type battle dress just screams ELEMENTAL to me. And you could get bigger from there.
IMHO, Battle Dress should be the effective pinnacle of personal armor.
(and treated as armor)

Anything more pulls itself into a vehicle description, and right into Battletech stuff.
Which btw, I want to eventually try to figure a workable T20 compatible system for.
Like maybe as a suprise for my players when they discover the "other" interstellar empire in the galaxy

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Despasian Cruesa:
I think once you get into 'bigger/better' than Battle Dress, such as walkers, your running right into the realms of "Mechs".

Anything more pulls itself into a vehicle description, and right into Battletech stuff.
Which btw, I want to eventually try to figure a workable T20 compatible system for.

I suggest you go and get a copy of the d20 Mecha SRD and take a look at DP9 and GOO's mecha books. Note: mecha includes all mechcanical designs for a show so you can do cars, planes, etc. .

Personally I'd lean more towards Shirow's landmate and other designs or Votoms/Heavy Gear scale.

Casey

 

[justacaveman]

An FGMP-14 firing at TL14 Combat Armor (AR8), would do 6d20 Lifeblood damage if the AP value of fusion guns was set at +1 AP per damage die after scale and range adjustments. Since your typical 6th level Imperial Marine has Lifeblood 14, and Stamina 44 (THB page 424), there is very little possibility of of survival from such a hit. And a hit from an FGMP-15 would do 9d20 Lifeblood damage with a hit.

Example: FGMP-14 hits TL14 Combat Armor (AR8), the rolls are 12, 10, 7, 7, 6, 4, and 2. The AP bonus of +7 reduces the the armor's AR to AR1, so the smallest die (a 2) is removed, and the Lifeblood damage is 46 points . The result is -32 Lifeblood (instant death), and 48 points of Stamina damage to boot (Which boosts the Lifeblood damage to a total of 50 points, with a final result of -36 Lifeblood points.). Increasing the AR by 25% to AR10 would have little effect on the final result (And that's just the FGMP-14.).

If you halve Stamina damage for fully enclosed rigid armors such as Combat Armor, and limit the AP bonus of fusion guns to +4, you have some increase in survivability (not much), and Combat Armor isn't completely useless against such weapons).

 

[Libris]

As discussed earlier, the volume to area ratio for armour is somewhat (totally ) glossed over.

I think that an AR bonus could be introduced (rather than the current Personel, Vehicle, Starship scale) giving larger vehicles an "AR Bonus" if you like for having thicker armour, although the same AR, based on:

1. Their size
2. Their Actual "Designed" AR

However, the big problem as far as I see is to keep the numbers reasonable and decide a baseline from which to start. Since the current AR values are clearly not linear (although they are in current game terms ) a geometric scale could be devised. This would eliminated the need to change any of the existing designs and as it would be an "Add-on" refs would have the option of using the detailed method or the current by-the-book simplier system.
I am thinking of a starting point of about 250vl with a +1 AR Bonus for every doubling (or some other, yet to be decided, factor) of size and an AR Bonus equal to Design AR^0.667 (not to exceed the size bonus). This sounds complicated but a couple of tables would sort it out quite easily and so far it feels nice.
Of course, weapons need to be fiddled with as well but the current damage scales lend themselves quite well to this with their different dice types and numbers.

Loading Excel as we speak...

 

[graden1]

Originally posted by Libris:
As discussed earlier, the volume to area ratio for armour is somewhat (totally ) glossed over.

I think that an AR bonus could be introduced (rather than the current Personel, Vehicle, Starship scale) giving larger vehicles an "AR Bonus" if you like for having thicker armour, although the same AR, based on:

1. Their size
2. Their Actual "Designed" AR

However, the big problem as far as I see is to keep the numbers reasonable and decide a baseline from which to start. Since the current AR values are clearly not linear (although they are in current game terms ) a geometric scale could be devised. This would eliminated the need to change any of the existing designs and as it would be an "Add-on" refs would have the option of using the detailed method or the current by-the-book simplier system.
I am thinking of a starting point of about 250vl with a +1 AR Bonus for every doubling (or some other, yet to be decided, factor) of size and an AR Bonus equal to Design AR^0.667 (not to exceed the size bonus). This sounds complicated but a couple of tables would sort it out quite easily and so far it feels nice.
Of course, weapons need to be fiddled with as well but the current damage scales lend themselves quite well to this with their different dice types and numbers.

Loading Excel as we speak...

There are a couple of possible short-cuts I'd look at, Libris, depending on how much of an "adjustment" is needed.

1. An AR bonus equal to (or based on) the vehicle's AC size penalty would be the simplest fix. Battle dress would get +1; most grav tanks would get +4. (or some multiple of those numbers)

2. An AR bonus based on a fraction of the vehicle's SI; 5% would give about the same results as the first option, above.

DGv2.0

 

[Despasian]

I suggest you go and get a copy of the d20 Mecha SRD and take a look at DP9 and GOO's mecha books. Note: mecha includes all mechcanical designs for a show so you can do cars, planes, etc. .
-----Casey

Hey, thanks. Fate conspired to make me blissfully ignorant of those resources.
That's where I'll start, when 'the next big thing' beyond battle dress is needed.

 

[savage]

get into 'bigger/better' than Battle Dress, such as walkers, your running right into the realms of "Mechs".

As I recall didn't 2300 have walkers?

Either way, if it works in the system, the Imperium has 10k plus worlds...someone would try Mechs.


Savage