Squaring Robots Book 8 with Mega Traveller

[aramis]

Keep in mind, Sean, that robots are going to have inherent armor, while humans do not. In MT terms, this means, usually, a reduction by half vs an unarmored human, especially in common sidearms damage.

Also, don't forget the x10 Hits for vehicles in the Referee's Gaming Kit is official errata. This should be applied to robots, too.

 

[BardicHeart]

Keep in mind, Sean, that robots are going to have inherent armor, while humans do not. In MT terms, this means, usually, a reduction by half vs an unarmored human, especially in common sidearms damage.

True, but with only 1 damage point for most such robots, a single penetrating hit not only disables it but destroys it. That seems overly fragile to me. I'd rather see something more robust. Otherwise say we wanted to build a sort of Terminator style robot. I'd make it a contoured robot, start with a volume say 20% smaller than the final form. This gives me the actual humanoid "skeleton". Then cover it in a grown "skin" or molded silicon which provides no armor value and has no effect on its ability to function (its purely a cosmetic covering). The armor is on the interal skeleton, but if our Terminator takes just 1 point of damage that penetrates the armor, its destroyed... that seems a bit... odd. I would think it ought to be able to soak at least 2 to 3 points before being destroyed.

Also, don't forget the x10 Hits for vehicles in the Referee's Gaming Kit is official errata. This should be applied to robots, too.

Wasn't aware of that (apparently I don't have that.. time to go looking again), thanks for pointing it out.

So vs small arms a robot has 10/10 hits instead of 1/1, correct? If so that makes things a bit better.

 

[aramis]

Wasn't aware of that (apparently I don't have that.. time to go looking again), thanks for pointing it out.

So vs small arms a robot has 10/10 hits instead of 1/1, correct? If so that makes things a bit better.

Not necessarily. Figure out the hits by the normal proces, multiplying the volume by 10.

So, hits would properly be:
Inop: 10*KL ÷ 15
Dest: 10*KL ÷ 6

So a typical Pseudobio at 0.25KL is 2.5÷15=.167 rounding up to 1, and 2.5 ÷ 6=0.41... and is still thus 1/1.

And to be honest, 1 good hit to an electronic system SHOULD KO it.

But that requires Pen > AV, since robot armor is full coverage. The NoPen result is damage x0, not x0.1.

 

[BardicHeart]

Hmm... k... so the bots are still pretty fragile.

I can see a hit rendering it inoperative, particularly if it hit something important (like the power plant, batteries, etc.). But my understanding is the damage points are for its structure. One hit destroying the structure seems... fragile and poorly constructed.

For example, a PC on average gets 2/5 hits. Now if a point of that hit the heart or the brain, instant kill. But otherwise it takes a bit more damage to generally render the human body "dead". I would think a robot would be similar... hit the power plant and you get a quicker kill. But if I'm doing the math right, the PP is actually tougher at 1/2.

Just seems odd to me to have a bot with general damage points of 1/1 and a PP with 1/2. I would think the structure should be at least as durable as the PP.

And on the topic of hitting the electronics, maybe there should be a DP value for the robot brain for exactly the reason you give... a hit to that should KO it.

One last observation and a couple questions. In the section on figuring locomotion DP (MT Ref, pp 85-86) it states if the craft uses electronic circuit protect multiply the inop DP by 1.5 for locomotion. If this is taken as indication that the electronics are part of the structure, shouldn't this be applied the overall inop as well since we don't have a seperate DP value for the robot brain / electronics? Second, I can't seem to find the cost options for this... are they just referinng to fiber optic computers?

 

[BardicHeart]

Hmm... just noticed another problem... the volumes for the vehicle table are simply way too big for most domestic robots, pseudo-biologicals, etc. Though they work fine for big warbots, robot tanks, etc. Here's what I mean. Say average human weight is 75kg... most of which is water. So for sake of simplicity using water to convert, that neatly becomes 75 liters of volume (1 kg of water is 1 liter of volume).

Vehicles are measured in kiloliters... thus a human would be 0.075 KL... smallest vehicle chasis is 0.1 KL... or about a 100 kg person. For a "Terminator" bot... that might work, but for a small domestic robot that dusts the furniture, vaccums and answers the door we need something smaller than the vehicle chart provides for.

Also, in Book 8, it lists a 100 liter chasis the size of a human torso, I would dispute this based on the above as being too large. The more I look at this the formula for damage points and so forth just doesn't seem appropriate on this scale, not for robots on a "human" scale.

 

[aramis]

You're ignoring the effect of uniform armor, Sean. Almost all small arms will be merely redering it inop (as damage 2 or 3 rounds down to 1). Plus, properly, one has also 0/1 ratings for locomotion and controls, so it's possible to take 3 points prior to destruction, if they hit separate areas.

For comparison, a full KL is 1/2...

 

[BardicHeart]

I'm not ignoring it, I'm saying it doesn't make sense. That much metal or composite plastics or whatever its made out of simply should be able to soak more damage than a similarly sized human being, not less. Yet if we stick purely to the vehicle formulas even something 5x the volume of a human still takes less damage to destroy than a small human child... I find that hard to reconcile.

As I pointed out, the vehicle chart is also simply on a scale too large for most robots... its perhaps okay for large industrial robots, warbots and so forth... but your robot butler, or the robot mail carrier in the office building is not going to be anywhere near that large (you couldn't get it through most doorways for one thing).

The vehicle chasis chart and construction rules are simply on a scale too large. I don't want to build just warbots the size of compact cars.

What I would suggest is a separate chart for robots that uses the same hits scale as characters, set so that the max a robot would have for structure would be about 10/12 (this still rounds down to 1/1 on the vehicle scale so it still more or less meshes), with most robots having less than that.

Not every robot is going to have lots of armor... why would your robot butler or a maintenance bot have 10+ points of armor? They might have 2-4 points just for the metal value of their construction (maybe even less if its a mostly plastic body). With say an armor value of 2-3 a single shot from a combat rifle would destroy the bot. Not just render it inop... but destroyed (there's no fixin this, its now scrap metal). I could see an inop of 1 indicating that the round took out the robot brain or some other critcal system... its inoperative but not destroyed. But a single 9mm round destroying a bot... nah... I don't buy it. That seems wonky.

Of course all this assumes that a value of 1/1 or 1/2 is correct based on the vehicle chasis chart... but since that chart is clearly on a much larger scale I question whether those results can be considered valid for constructing robots on a "personal" scale. Particularly since if we're incorporating Book 8, it gives damage values much higher than this.

I'd leave the vehicle table and damage point formulas for robot vehicles and large tankbots. For smaller robots I think we need a different chassis table and a different DP formula. Maybe liters / 50 for inop and liters / 20 for destroyed. So a 50 liter chasis (a small bot, child sized or a small petite adult) gets 1/3 hits on the personal combat scale, on the vehicle scale 1 pt of damage still blows it apart (which for robots this small that's fine... that 1 pt might be a burst from a heavy machinegun that shreds our poor robot butler... on the other hand a single shot from an ACR might render poor RoboJeevs inop (who only has armor of 2... dammit Sir, I'm a butler bot not a warbot!), but woudn't completely destroy it). A 75 liter "adult" would be 2/4 and our Arniebot would be maybe 125 liters for 3/6 hits. This would work for pseudobiologicals as well as metal box bots. Otherwise we get bots that in no way mesh with those from Book 8 or other sources and I don't think that's a desireable result. Assuming our "Arniebot" also had good armor, say a value of 8-10... then he's going to be hard to stop with small arms... but a single hit from a vehicle weapon would still take him out. To me, that seems reasonable.

This also allows us to build robots up to say 250 liters (DP 10/13) and if we divide the DP by 10 to convert to the vehicle scale damage, it still "fits" (i.e. we still get 1/1 vehicle DP). I'd stop the robot chasis chart at about 250 liters and rule that anything over that should be constructed with the vehicle rules (0.5KL and up).

 

[aramis]

All MT hits are on the same scale. That's the whole point of the system.... The effects of any weapon are immediately applicable to any item.

And, BTW, I've seen a 4 ton auto stopped by a single slug to the engine.

Unlike a person, if you hit the spot that matters, a bot dies. On the other hand, a Combat Robot with AV 10+ (Combat Armor) isn't going to be taking damage from small arms.

 

[BardicHeart]

If we're having to multiply vehicle damage points by 10 for personal combat, then clearly everything is NOT on the same scale.

I've seen a vehicle stopped by a .50 round to the engine block as well... but that did NOT destroy the vehicle, it rendered it inoperable. That's my point, if robots only have one damage point, then its all or nothing. There is no inoperable, any hit to the structure immediately destroys it. This also does not mesh with Book 8. Done your way, we cannot recreate CT robots, and adventures written for CT using CT robots cannot easily be converted. I do not see this as being helpful.

It also makes no logical sense. Now pardon me, but if you guys will sit on this board and argue thermodynamic physics in detail as it relates to starships and sensors and consider that realism to be important; then I fail to see how you can explain how a power plant that is perhaps 1/5 the mass of a robot can have more damage points (1/2) than the other 200kg or so of mass that makes up the rest of its body (1/1). That defies logic, physics and common sense.

Consider the following example:

CT with a 100 liter volume robot has 20/50 damage points and mesh armor. A rifle shot at short range does $D damage... figure average 3.5 per die gives a total of 14 damage. Two shots will disable it on average, one with a bit of luck.

Using my formula, a 100 liter robot in MT would have 2/5 damage points and again mesh armor. An Adv combat rifle (9mm) has a penetration of 4, does 3 points damage. A hit at short range would normally do full damage (3 pts) but with a marginal success this gets reduced to 1 pt. One to two hits render the robot inoperable.

Virtually identical results if it is gamed out. To my mind, if we are trying to convert CT Book 8 to MT, then conversions that produce similar or identical gaming results is the goal.

Or you can dogmatically cling to trying to treat all robots as vehicles which does not give us the same results. I do not understand this determination on your part to stick to something that defies reason.

I'll agree to disagree, I believe my method makes more sense and holds better to the spirit and playability of the rules.

 

[aramis]

If we're having to multiply vehicle damage points by 10 for personal combat, then clearly everything is NOT on the same scale.

It's an ERRATA item. It was a rules change due to a mistake in the Ref's Manual.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

I do sympathise with that view - it just doesn't make sense that the damage is not equivalent especially as Robots are made out of harder stuff than humans. I want to say that first, because I think it's a healthy instinct to want to balance things in a game.

But I've come to another view on this. The exercise of laying out all of those robots one by one gave me pause for thought. This was also reinforced by the blurb text next to each one in 101 Robots that gave the idea about the role they filled.

The first thought was, if you've got the money, why wouldn't you build an entirely robot army? You would have no morale problems - supply would be entirely in the form of parts, fuel, ammunition and replacements. What advantage do sophonts have? Over the longer term, robots certainly work out cheaper than sophont labour - this is covered in the economics of robots in Book 8. There is further discussion in 101 Robots, especially for models like the Assembly Line robot (number 2).

So, for combat (which is the only reason for introducing damage points at all, let's face it) would it not make sense to put sophonts back into the war game with their resilience as well as their initiative? Sophonts may need oxygen, food, mental engagement, emotional nurturing and all of those complex things that robots do not need. But sophonts are also capable of making quick decisions in new circumstances, and have the benefit of billions of years of evolution from the first single cell life to survive in a harsh universe.

I think it makes sense that us ugly-bags-of-mostly-water are more resilient (as represented by damage points) even if our naked selves are more vulnerable to damage (i.e. no natural armour). On the other hand, Robots are less vulnerable to damage (i.e. routinely have at least a small amount of armour) but are less resilient. "Hard but brittle" might be a good label to apply. Of course, heavy weapons can knock out either.

In the way I visualise the Traveller Universe, I think this is a good fit.

Thanks for sharing the stuff from TNE, by the way. I've had a look at TNE briefly, but in my view I think the rules went WAY overboard. The gear-head wargaming took over from the role play game. I think FF&S was a good concept: that anyone can forge the detail in the universe but the official product comes with a heap of ready designs. But things like routinely quoting weapon weights in kg to three decimal places (i.e. we've got weights accurate to 1 gram)? Rolling for every single bullet of an automatic weapon? Refinement of where the bullet hit (when just rolling for damage is a reasonable abstraction)? Too much detail that would never make it routinely into a gaming session. Having said this, the referencing of real physics in FF&S was great for a gear head like me and I have enjoyed trying to get some of that flexibility into MegaTraveller (I put together the small arms sequence into a spreadsheet with an attempt at a MegaTraveller conversion). The concept of fully designing sub-systems was excellent, and the treatment of more obscure power sources was really interesting. But again, FF&S is very combat focussed even so.

End of rant, sorry, I've strayed from the topic a bit.

Consider this. An average human has hit points of 2/5 and armour of zero. A human-sized robot has hit points of 1/1 and armour of 4 (keep with craft design for the moment, and bearing in mind that if I got rid of the robot config, I would double the armour for most robots).

Let's ignore "exceptional success" for the moment, which tends to mean the victim is in a lot of trouble anyway. The 7mm rifle has penetration of 3 upto long range, and damage of three. If it hit a human, the bullet would do the three points of damage, rendering them unconscious. That same bullet would be reduced to 10% damage for the robot, a result of 0.3 which is rounded down to zero. So for this weapon, the robot is tougher.

But let's up rifle to a 9mm model. Now the penetration is 5 while the damage is still 3. The human is rendered unconscious as before. The robot now takes 1 point of damage (3 divided by two rounded down) and is also rendered inoperable.

Now let's try the 10mm Snub Pistol at effective range with HEAP ammo. Penetration of 6 and damage of 4. The human is rendered unconscious as before (although with 4 dice to be applied to UPP in the aftermath, they may be in more trouble). The robot, however, is now in much more serious trouble. The penetration is more than but less than double the robot armour, so damage is halved to 2 - but this is sufficient to render a "destroyed" result. The human has a chance of recovery with immediate first aid and emergency medical care, but it is probably not economic to repair the robot (2D x 2D x 5% of new price - average repair cost will be 245% of new price).

Given that Armour 4 with 1/1 damage vs. Armour 0 with 2/5 damage is reasonably equivalent but different in an interesting way, I am prepared to live with robots having lesser damage than humans for the sake of keeping the design sequence simpler and more in fitting with the existing sequence.

Lastly on the question of control. The way I have been handling it so far, robots are basically vehicles that require one operator / driver that has been replaced with a robot brain.

In 101 Vehicles the rule was given that a robot brain can replace one crewmember and/or computer, and gives a CP multipler of 250 per point of intelligence. With ED Quibell we have refined that for zero-intelligence robot brains (TL12 and below). Where a multiple-crew vehicle (e.g. a starship!) is to be fully automated, how brains, control panels, a crew stations work out is more of a problem. I am going to experiment with some starship designs to see if principles of design emerge in line with keeping it simple as possible while keeping interesting possibilities in mind.

Lastly, one more thing. An observer of this thread e-mailed to me a text file of a comprehensive draft for a robot supplement for Mega Traveller. It covers a lot of ground that I had not even considered yet. I think it is a complete waste if we don't use his excellent work for a fan-published supplement (by publish, I just mean lay out and circulate a free PDF) and of course we'd acknowledge his authorship.

It is by a gentleman by the name of Rob Prior. I Googled his name and e-mailed him at the address I found (which was a Traveller related website so I thought it was a good bet). I also found his name on the BITS website that sells Mac software for Traveller, so I have e-mailed the BITS contact e-mail asking after him as well. Finally, Don put out a call to the Traveller Mailing List asking for a contact. I e-mailed BITS a couple of days ago; the other attempts were months ago.

I am going to wait another week. If I have no sign of Rob, I will be putting up his text file on Box.net and providing a link here. Of course, if we get a request to take it down again from him, I will comply. If you're reading this, Rob, the permission we are seeking is to use your work to create a fan supplement for circulation for free, with you listed as the principle author.

 

[aramis]

Rob's one of the best of the MT Gurus. I just wish he'd update his world generator for OSX...

 

[OjnoTheRed]

I don't know the first thing about Rob, to be honest - but it makes sense he was a MT guru because the work on a MT supplement he did is high quality (and I want to share it!). There's only a couple of things he didn't finish covering - there might be some bits and pieces up for a bit of a debate.

Also, embarrassingly enough, I've only just realised that between reads of this thread, an entire page of debate on damage points was added between aramis and BardicHeart and I didn't read it before my last response! Most embarrassing - I've repeated a lot of what others have said.

 

[aramis]

I don't know the first thing about Rob, to be honest - but it makes sense he was a MT guru because the work on a MT supplement he did is high quality (and I want to share it!). There's only a couple of things he didn't finish covering - there might be some bits and pieces up for a bit of a debate.

Also, embarrassingly enough, I've only just realised that between reads of this thread, an entire page of debate on damage points was added between aramis and BardicHeart and I didn't read it before my last response! Most embarrassing - I've repeated a lot of what others have said.

Don't be... the thread moved REALLY fast...

 

[BardicHeart]

Consider this. An average human has hit points of 2/5 and armour of zero. A human-sized robot has hit points of 1/1 and armour of 4 (keep with craft design for the moment, and bearing in mind that if I got rid of the robot config, I would double the armour for most robots).

I don't think that is necessarily a reasonable comparison. First, how many soldiers go into battle with no form of armor. Even a leather jack gives them 1 point of armor. A bullet proof vest gives them 5 points.

I wouldn't assume the robot had an armor of 4 unless it was built for security. For an average domestic robot they typically have "jack" armor, which is only 1 point. If we stick to the 1/1, someone with a club could completely destroy a robot up 500 liters in volume (and weighing perhaps 1000kg) in two hits... one if they got lucky. o: Try to picture that for a moment... big bad cargo lifter bot rolls up and a guy with police baton hits it hard once and it literally falls apart (2 points damage, destroying the bot)... are we doing hard sci-fi or comedy? At 100 liters with 2/5 hits this bot is not superhuman (which given that at 100 liters its bigger than most humanoid sophonts and yet only on par with them for resilience), but neither is it fragile either. This is one of my chief concerns about going the 1/1 hit route... results are going to be too prone to stuff that will simply blow disbelief and open the rules up to criticism. Done that way you *must* armor all bots, which then raises the question of why is RoboJeevs over there armored like a security droid? I don't see a domestic robot being armored (definitely not a pseudobiological which will present another problem to the 1/1 high armor... pseudos aren't supposed to have armor), its probably got a plastic body made to resist mild impacts and so forth. Look at how things are built today... I wouldn't expect a domestic bot to be any more resistant to damage than say your vaccum cleaner. The difference being that at 50 to 100 liters volume its a good deal bigger than your vaccum cleaner.

Let's ignore "exceptional success" for the moment, which tends to mean the victim is in a lot of trouble anyway. The 7mm rifle has penetration of 3 upto long range, and damage of three. If it hit a human, the bullet would do the three points of damage, rendering them unconscious. That same bullet would be reduced to 10% damage for the robot, a result of 0.3 which is rounded down to zero. So for this weapon, the robot is tougher.

Again, assuming it has 4 points of armor. You said your concern was that people would build "droid armies". Well, either with 1/1 of 2/5 hits, put 10 points of armor on there and droid armies become very viable assuming you can afford the expense. If you are building warbots or heavy security droids I'd expect them to have considerable armor. And this doesn't even consider the 20 ton warbot hiding in some dark corner of my brain. :devil:

But let's up rifle to a 9mm model. Now the penetration is 5 while the damage is still 3. The human is rendered unconscious as before. The robot now takes 1 point of damage (3 divided by two rounded down) and is also rendered inoperable.

Hmm... maybe we have diff editions, mine gives a pentration of 4. A 13mm hunting rifle has a pen of 5, damage of 4 (which again, would make a mess out of most of my robots in 1 or 2 shots, potentially destroying a 100 liter robot with mesh armor in just two shots, so again, I'm hardly suggesting robosupersoldiers). An 9mm ACR has a 6 if using a sabot round. Which with a sabot round against mesh armor (2 pts), poor RoboJeevs even with 2/5 hits is going down hard with one shot.

Given that Armour 4 with 1/1 damage vs. Armour 0 with 2/5 damage is reasonably equivalent but different in an interesting way, I am prepared to live with robots having lesser damage than humans for the sake of keeping the design sequence simpler and more in fitting with the existing sequence.

One apparent difference between myself vs you and Aramis is that you're assuming robots, even domestic ones, will have much more armor than I would allow. I'm converting straight from Book 8, so we have armor of 1 or 2 for most domestic robots and even a cargo lifter (industrial) still only has 2 points of armor. The only case where I see more armor would be for security droids and warbots, where it makes sense... and there, with sufficient armor 1/1 or 2/5 or 10/12... the problem isn't how many hits it can take but finding something that can even dent the armor. Going on my suggested rule, anything over 250 liters would be treated as a robotic vehicle and built exactly according to those rules, which for the hapless guy with a rife just makes things worse. Frankly, if you're going to build a warbot... why wouldn't it basically be a robot tank? I wouldn't want to spend 100s of thousands of credits on something that had a low survivability, would you? So my combat rated warbots would be several dTs+... all the way up to the 20 ton nightmare which would essentially be an automated heavy tank. Course you aren't going to find any of those in someone's apartment because they simply won't fit.

Lastly on the question of control. The way I have been handling it so far, robots are basically vehicles that require one operator / driver that has been replaced with a robot brain.

Yup and this would be one of the problems with the proverbial droid army... being able to control it. Course if you have coms that are reasonably secure from being jammed, and maybe some sort of special base ship with lots of controllers to command units... what the heck. Real world armies are using more and more drones now... I can easily visualize armies of the future using lots of drones and robots, perhaps more than was originally visualized for Traveller. I could especially see heavy infantry and commando units that had maybe one such robot as part of their squad, it gets all the really dangerous jobs and so has to be heavily armored, needs hits, etc. Need a machinegun nest taken out... Pvt Gears on the double... need a sachel charge tossed in a bunker... Pvt Gears front and center... need somebody to take point down that enemy tunnel.. Pvt Gears on point! You get the idea.

In 101 Vehicles the rule was given that a robot brain can replace one crewmember and/or computer, and gives a CP multipler of 250 per point of intelligence. With ED Quibell we have refined that for zero-intelligence robot brains (TL12 and below). Where a multiple-crew vehicle (e.g. a starship!) is to be fully automated, how brains, control panels, a crew stations work out is more of a problem. I am going to experiment with some starship designs to see if principles of design emerge in line with keeping it simple as possible while keeping interesting possibilities in mind.

Yup... another concern I have is that when you start trying to build robots on a scale that would be routinely encountered (again the "human sized" robots of 50 to 100 liters, things you'd find in someone's home or office, etc.) those vehicle rules will prove insufficient to the task... I just don't think they considered anything like this when they were designed. I haven't, however, yet had time to really dig into it.

Lastly, one more thing. An observer of this thread e-mailed to me a text file of a comprehensive draft for a robot supplement for Mega Traveller. It covers a lot of ground that I had not even considered yet. I think it is a complete waste if we don't use his excellent work for a fan-published supplement (by publish, I just mean lay out and circulate a free PDF) and of course we'd acknowledge his authorship.

Sure, ideas are good.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

BardicHeart, I think the question of how much armour a robot has routinely in the Traveller Universe goes to the heart of your concerns. What I am arguing is that, yes, in Traveller robots will routinely have an armour value of 4.

There's a bit of history behind this debate already in this thread, but in summary this is the way my ideas have developed:

1) In Book 8, robots are mostly granted "mesh" armour - the open frame (armour zero) and pseudo-bio configs are relatively unusual in the designs outlined in the spreadsheets I attached.

2) After correcting for what seemed to me to be accidently added zeroes, the hull sizes in book 8 compare precisely to values in MT Craft Design by multiplying mass by 2 and cost by 5.

3) In each of the designs, I included a "robot config" with a multiplier for mass by 2 and cost by 5. The idea was that robots in MT should be balanced with robots in Book 8 by price and mass in this way. But as this thread has developed, we have also considered this to be the price for an "extra bracing" kind of thing to scale more damage points to human sized robots

4) The act of actually entering all that data for robots has taught me that the "robot config" multipliers - which applied only to the hull price and mass - turned out to be a trivial addition to overall cost and price.

5) In keeping with the idea that most robots have "mesh" - i.e. Armour 2 - I used that in all designs (except pseudo-bio which gets armour "as Jack" and openframe which is not allowed armour).

6) If we remove the added complication of a "robot config" completely, this still leaves me with all of my designs having had hull mass multiplied by 2 and price multiplied by 5.

7) To give all robots armour of 4, I recalculate cost and leave the mass the same.

Thus, assuming I remove the "robot config" modifier, most robots will routinely have an armour value of 4. That balances the game, in my view and is the simplest resolution to what I will now refer to as the "toughness dilemma". Armour value of 4 is 1cm of hard steel - but is 2.6mm of Superdense (at TL12), or 1.4mm of Bonded Superdense (at TL14). At the higher tech levels where these robots are constructed, this is a trival investment for a return of armour value of 4.

The cost and weight of armour of 4 at higher tech levels for these tiny hull sizes really is utterly trivial. There's no reason a cargo bot would not be armoured in this way. An armour value of 4 is a multiplier of 1 to cost and mass of the hull (after config modifiers).

This still leaves the difficulty of someone with a club taking out a robot with one swipe if it has no armour or is open frame. I look at it this way. A robot with an open frame has exposed components, including delicate electronics. The analogy I would use is - imagine you take off the metal covers on that tower case on the desk, exposing the motherboard, drives, and expansion cards. Now get out a baseball bat. I bet in one swipe you COULD render that computer non-functional! While this gets more problematic in-game for slightly larger sizes, it's not completely out of the ball-park, as they say.

Lastly, you are right: if you're going to design a warbot, you wouldn't mimic human infantry (well, see design 80 - it was experimental but largely failed because it didn't give money's worth according to the 101 Robots fluff text), you would probably construct a grav-module based ball bristling with weapons. But in fact warbots can have a variety of roles, see designs 79 through 88 in the spreadsheet. I'm rather fond of design 83 the Medium Zhodani Warbot because that put some rules and numbers on the concepts in the Zhodani Alien Module.

 

[BardicHeart]

2) After correcting for what seemed to me to be accidently added zeroes, the hull sizes in book 8 compare precisely to values in MT Craft Design by multiplying mass by 2 and cost by 5.

Could you clarify this specifically, I'm not sure I'm following you correctly and I want to make sure I am. An example or two, page refs, etc. should do the trick.

And please, call me Sean.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

My full discussion of hull sizes and reconciling Book 8 with MegaTraveller craft design is on page 1 of this thread.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

I've had a bit of a re-read of this thread from the beginning, because I have been mulling over the Toughness Dilemma.

BardicHeart's argument about a club taking out a 500 litre robot with no armour - in one swipe - is persuasive. My argument with the analogy to bashing exposed motherboards doesn't quite scale to that size.

To get this into some perspective, however, 500 litres is slightly smaller than 80cm x 80cm x 80cm. That can fit onto a table top - and if it was an unarmoured box, a good smack with a club could well render it inoperable, although I agree - destroyed beyond viable commercial repair is a stretch.

The other thing to mention is that the "destroyed" result doesn't necessarily mean "totally obliterated" - the repair cost in the UTP rules for a "destroyed" result on the mishap table is 2D x 2D x 5% of the cost of the item - usually resulting in the item being discarded because a new one is cheaper. But it does allow for that crucial "rig it up" kind of scenario for players who want to get that crucial bit of information / salvage that part / whatever. I'm thinking here of Ripley rigging up the destroyed Bishop in Alien3. Having said this, if Bishop had been hit with a 750MW beam laser and had taken 40 points of damage, it would be unreasonable to say that there was any salvage-able parts. (he he, teach the players the principle of "application of sufficient but not excessive force" the hard way).

But I'm in a bind. Along with aramis, I favour treating robots as an extension of craft design for the sake of a completely scalable system that includes animals armed with nothing but their claws through to starships with spinal mounted meson guns. But it does not make any sense that a club could take out a 500 litre robot in one swipe.

There's also another problem. The way that the craft hull damage points are calculated overall has been thoroughly discussed in this thread. The most common result is 1/1 for robots. But when you calculate locomotion and power plant damage, it usually comes out at 1/2. So if the hit happens to be on the locomotion or power plant, that club would render it inoperative but not destroyed. But if it had been a structural hit, forget it, it would destroy the whole thing.

I would propose two fixes. Firstly, for hull damage points we leave the calculations the same, but we say that the destroyed damage points have a minimum value of 2. This leaves the result of 1/2 for most smaller robots (and craft).

Secondly, though, if we want that 500 litre robot to be resistant to being taken out with a club, the fix I would propose would be an armour fix.

My second idea would be to say that all craft - not just robots - automatically get armour of either (2) or (4) even if no armour value is built into the design (or some other value that we all agree on). That is to say, the armour value would operate exactly the same way as Jack - a value listed in the tables as (1) and noted for only being effective against melee weapons. The value we choose would not literally represent armour, but be a simple way of including a rule that lets the entire combat system still be scalable, but still resolve the toughness dilemma for smaller sized craft - including robots.

Would love to hear feedback on this - is this a playable solution?

Lastly - 5 more days until I post Rob Prior's work in total.

 

[conanlibrarian]

So this thread is still going on, and returning to the discussion of damage points.

Let me remind you of this quote, citing the Referees gaming kit (and thus being "official"):

Specifically for Robots.

Middle page of the DGP Ref's Screen:

Vehicles: all values x10
Animals: as generated
Robots: vol in litres / 15 (inop)
vol in litres / 6 (destroyed)
Characteristics: from life force:
(table of life forces)

Using these (official) rules, the "big bad cargo lifter bot" (500 litres) get hits 33/83, and the human size (100 litres) gets 7/17. These values are also in line with how damage values of book 8 compare to humans (in that system.)

So this is what the official rules says - but the main problem is the compatibility with vehicles: A ground car has hits 20/50, and is weaker than the cargo lifter. Also, the question how boarderline cases are to be handled is disturbing, since a robot has 100 times the hit capacity than a vehicle of the same size.

Because of this, some of us feels that a new way of computing damage is needed.