Changing the way armor works in CT (again I guess)

[Supplement Four]

Agreed, although you must admit that you thought it was broken at one time.

You've got me there. :smirk:

Perhaps I just haven't attained the same degree of Enlightenment yet

Ah, you're an intelligent dude. I have faith that you'll get there! o:

I'm not sure that I agree with you on differentiation.

I need to re-familiarize myself with AHL and Striker (and note that my comments above were directed more towards T4 and MT rather than AHL and Striker), as I've never used it in-depth (just read through it). But, I think you are missing the point.

What I meant was two-fold: (1) CT lends itself to roleplaying better because of the various modifiers it uses in combat, leading to differentation in weapons--and finding the "right" fit for a character. A PC will probably have a favorite--the one he hits best with.

(2) CT makes it easy to come up with a weapon in the same class--but slightly different...enough difference to make the weapon "cool" for a player.

A planet may be known for its manufacture of carbines. Their carbines are like the generic carbine in Book 1 except that it shoots at Short Range one point better. The GM wants to keep a handle on this weapon, so he makes the calibur some off-universal size so that ammo can only be purchased on the world itself.

This type of thing can really add to games--making little "drops" for the characters to find an be rewarded. It's not unlike finding that cool +3 vorpal sword in D&D.

CT lends itself to this type of thing whereas T4 and MT don't. (I don't think Striker and AHL do either, do they?)

 

[tbeard1999]

CT lends itself to this type of thing whereas T4 and MT don't. (I don't think Striker and AHL do either, do they?)

Yes, I think that they do. To recap, Striker/AHL weapons are rated for penetration and to hit bonus (usually reserved for autofire/shotgun/flechette) at 3 ranges -- effective, long (-2 to hit) and extreme (-4 to hit). These ranges are defined for each weapon. So a standard 7mm Carbine has the following ranges, penetrations and to hit bonuses:

Effective Range: 100m (2) +0
Long Range: 180m (1) +0
Extreme Range: 300m (0) +0

So your "better carbine" could have its penetration increased by 1 and/or its range bands increased and/or its to hit bonus increased by 1. An over-the-top, fully tricked out version might look like this.

Effective Range: 150m (3) +1
Long Range: 300 m (2) +0
Extreme Range: 450m (1) +0

This weapon is materially better than a basic carbine, but is still mostly inferior to a Rifle in raw performance, which has these stats:

Effective Range: 300m (3) +0
Long Range: 600 m (2) +0
Extreme Range: 900m (2) +0

You could also increase the carbine's ammo capacity. Or assume it fires DS rounds. Weapons that fire ballistically optimized ammo (like APDS) have *no* extreme range, which improves accuracy. So a 9mm ACR has range bands of 300m, 600m and 900m if firing slugs, but 450m and 900m if firing APDS. So, the DS-firing utterly tricked out carbine would look like this:

Effective Range: 220m (3) +1
Long Range: 450 m (2) +0

Much better than the base carbine, but still not quite as good as a rifle.

So yes, I think that there's plenty of room to customize weapons in Striker.

I've toyed with blending Striker and T4's system. Essentially, use the Striker to hit rules, then use the T4 armor/damage mechanic.

 

[Supplement Four]

So yes, I think that there's plenty of room to customize weapons in Striker.

Looks like there's more room with Striker than either T4 or MT for customization, but not as much as with CT.

With my carbine example earlier, it's just a small tweak--the change to the carbine at Short Range, leaving the rest of the weapon DMs the same as generic (DEX, Range, Armor DMs).

 

[aramis]

MT has Pen and attentuation, damage, max range, and which to hit profile is used.

Personally, my preference is for adding a damage stat to Striker... but Striker and MT use the same pen, atten relates to the drop in pen over range in striker...

The two are very similar approaches.

 

[tbeard1999]

MT has Pen and attentuation, damage, max range, and which to hit profile is used.

Personally, my preference is for adding a damage stat to Striker... but Striker and MT use the same pen, atten relates to the drop in pen over range in striker...

The two are very similar approaches.

It's literally been decades since I used MT's combat system. When MT came out, we played it. But after a couple of months, I went back to my Striker derived combat system because I felt like it played better.

I've blown hot and cold on hit points. I'm currently in a "pro hit points" mode. In the past, I've toyed with making the Penetration roll a damage roll instead, but that magnifies the distortion of equating Penetration and Damage. It also didn't scale so well with animals in my experience.

But now, as I said earlier, I've been toying with using Striker's rules for range, "to hit", etc., then using the penetration number as damage and use the T4 armor mechanics. Some retooling of the penetration numbers (especially in the 1-4 range) would be necessary, but it looks to me like it might work pretty well.

The main problems are pistols and other low penetration weapons. In Striker, most pistols have a penetration of 1 or 0. Using the above suggestions, these weapons would be insufficiently lethal.

To address this, I'd add a rule for "low penetration" weapons. Armor protects double against such weapons. That way, you could increase the Penetration to 3 without making them unreasonably lethal against armored targets.

So, a rifle with a penetration of 3 would get 3 damage dice, with armor reducing the number of dice (flexible armor would reduce the indicated number of dice to 1). I think Cloth should be 2 points. That would mean that a Rifle would do 1D+2 damage if it hit. A low penetration pistol with a damage rating of 3 would do 3 points of damage (handled as three discrete 1 point hits) against a cloth armored target.

At the end of the trail, you have two rolls. A 2d6 to hit roll (which can allow for multiple hits in the case of automatic weapons) and a damage roll.

 

[sabredog]

I use Striker because the penetration vs. armor values make a lot more sense. Under CT the problem was that weapons like the ACR firing DS loads can go through battledress like a hot knife through butter, yet a laser might have trouble. The worst part of that is that since it got 2 chances to hit with very low chances to miss the shooter could do up to 6D6 damage...which is not reduced by the effect of the armor slowing down the rounds at all.

Under Striker the guy with the ACR might hit the battledress a lot but do minimal damage to the guy inside. To me that makes sense, particularly when you think about automated trauma kits, etc that suits like those ought ot have. Even today's ballistic cloth armor (no ceramics, just the soft) will not just prevent certain rated rounds from penetration, but the energy distributing effect of the way the armor works helps reducing the injury from larger rounds. Only up to a point, but I think you see my point.

To reflect this I use Striker for to hit and penetration. The damage range against characters is 2d6/4d6/6d6/8d6 for light through special wounding. The effect of energy and HE type weapons is to kick the damage lvl to the next step. In the above example of the ACR vs battledress the penetrating rounds would likely only result in 1-2d6x2, if anything at all. A laser rifle or FGMP would range from 4 - 8d6 (if not killed outright by the FGMP - which is why I prefer the dice to the hit table results in Striker).

To allow the enhanced use of character skills I allow the players to add their skill to EITHER thier to hit chance, or add it to penetration. This way if they want to wait till everyone else fires they can take an aimed shot that might do more damage; like hit the weak joint on a combat armor or something.

Armor value stays the same, so using autopistols against battledress with this isn't likely to do a lot, but it's what I could come up with.