T20 Starship combat

[endersg]

Hey folks,

Slightly confused about something. In the starship construction rules and accompanying combat rules, a weapon's damage is based on its USP which is based on the number of weapons. For example, a triple turrent with beam weapons has a USP of +3 (three weapons to equal USP of 3 per chart on pg 272) and 3d8 damage (1d8 per USP).

Now, is that 1) +3 to hit and 3d8 damage per weapon? Does the gunner roll three times?

Or is it 2) one roll for the entire turrent and 3d8 damage for the one roll?

Lastly, how does nuclear missile damage (d12 per USP) translate into rads?
It is one roll for the entire turret, how doe that jive with missiles? Does point defense shoot down the entire flight of 3 missiles? What if an entire missile bay was shooting at a ship with point defense and the ship was able to shoot down some of them? What's the damage per missile then? It seems the point defense to hit formula on page 163 involves the entire turrent USP rating versus the entire missile USP....

 

[mike wightman]

In answer to your first question, number 2 looks right IIRC.
The gunner rolls once to hit for the battery he fires, whether it is a #3 turret or a #9 ten turret battery.
The #3 turret would be +3 to hit and 3d8 damage, while the #9 battery would be +9 to hit and 9d8 damage.

 

[veltyen]

Option 2 is most correct.

It is possible to fire the three beam lasers seperately as well, in that case they only have USP 1 rather then 3, as USP is based on number of weapons in the grouping. The case has never come up for me to work out any further details, so you may want three seperate gunners calculating firing patterns, or allow a single gunner to fire all three weapons independantly and have three attacks.

I don't think there is any clear map between rads and radiation damage.

Succsessful point defence makes the attack innefective. Again there isn't any clear translation as far as I can tell to what that actually equates too. There is no individual missile damage as such, the grouping of missiles fired (whether a single weapon or ten triple turrets) are treated as a single attack.

You don't work out how many missiles lock on out of the grouping either. That detail isn't that important anyway.

A simple missile exchange with point defence could be considered as:

A battery of 30 missiles is fired. Of these 25 manage to come to bear on the target, 2 more run out of battery earlier and fail to reach the target. The point defence is fired, the gunner targetting the missiles that will hit important parts of the ship as a priority. 20 missiles are destroyed. Two missile detonates at proximity range near more armoured parts of the ship. The final missile punches through an unimportant support strut.

rather then

Missiles fire. Point success succeeds.

 

[endersg]

Alright the picture is clearer on USP and groupings.

That still leaves the Rad thing, though. Anyone guess the mechanic? Do rads affect the people inside directy? What's the damage to rad conversion? How much damage/rads to affect eltronic systems?

Thoughts?

 

[mike wightman]

How radiation damage works in T20 is one of those things that possibly needs some official clarification

 

[veltyen]

Clarification depends on how much you want to un-abstract combat.

As far as I can tell currently it is just extra damage.

I use a house rule that radiation damage does less physical damage, but rolls multiple critical rolls. Mostly to represent a particle wave that is screwing up electronics and ionising people. Radiation shouldn't affect major structures terribly much (though they will become weaker) but should really screw up electronics and organics.

Different particles (alpha, beta, gamma, proton, neutron, exotic), while exposure is generally measured in rads, have slightly different effects.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
How radiation damage works in T20 is one of those things that possibly needs some official clarification

It isn't terribly clear is it.

One other point, it is Gunnery Skill which determines to hit and point defense. With the miriad of modifiers applied to both, Missiles are rarely effective unless there are more missiles than point defense weapons. (Even a lowly factor 3 laser battery knocks down factor 9 missile attacks with annoying ease.) Anything that gets past point defense is very likely to hit. Now these modifiers are smaller on smaller craft. But if you have a good sensor operator, a Good Tac Officer (Using Ship's Tactics with a good mod) and a good commander using leadership, you are unlikely to miss much.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I have found that in T20, small ship combat, Lasers are king, unless you are dealing with heavily armored ships. The only reason for missiles is to keep the other guys lasers on point defense. (Unless you have lots of batteries.) Sand is next to worthless. Now if you have lots of turrets, again barring heavily armored targets, don't group them into batteries. Fire them individually. Against Heavily armored targets, do the same thing but pray for a crit, because a factor 9- weapon is of little use against a heavily armored target anyway. If you have Spinals, well that horse has been beat to death for some time.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by veltyen:
Clarification depends on how much you want to un-abstract combat.

As far as I can tell currently it is just extra damage.

I use a house rule that radiation damage does less physical damage, but rolls multiple critical rolls. Mostly to represent a particle wave that is screwing up electronics and ionising people. Radiation shouldn't affect major structures terribly much (though they will become weaker) but should really screw up electronics and organics.

Different particles (alpha, beta, gamma, proton, neutron, exotic), while exposure is generally measured in rads, have slightly different effects.

Yeah but how much extra damage? Is it a D12 or a D12 per factor of the weapon? Is it actually SI damage? Or is that number determined simply to determine if it penetrates defenses and causes the internal hit roll. Does it multiply on a crit? ALl of this is left out of the rules and the reason there needs to be an official clarification to Radiation damage.

After reading the rules, it sounds like it might be additional SI Damage, one die per factor of the weapon. Making an additional attempt to penetrate the armor/damper and subtracting from SI and doing an internal hit on the radiation damage table if it causes any SI damage. However that doesn't feel like a radiation attack. (At least the additional SI damage part of it.)

Personally, I do the above but don't subtract SI. Just roll on the internal damage table if it would cause SI damage. And yes, I ignore armor on a crit. (Since it doesn't cause SI damage anyway if you ignore armor then it will get an internal hit roll whether you multiply or not.)

 

[veltyen]

Personally, I do the above but don't subtract SI. Just roll on the internal damage table if it would cause SI damage. And yes, I ignore armor on a crit. (Since it doesn't cause SI damage anyway if you ignore armor then it will get an internal hit roll whether you multiply or not.)

I do something similar. Radiation damage is resolved, for each 10 points (or part thereof) radiation does a single SI point of damage and a critical roll.

It does mean that ionising weapons (Nukes, PA, Meson) disable targets very quickly.

 

[mike wightman]

How much would T20 ship combat - or personal combat for that matter - change if armour was not ignored on a critical hit?

It's always struck me that the extra damage from the critical should be enough of a reward, especially against fully armoured targets.

Does a critical hit ignore a black globe

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
How much would T20 ship combat - or personal combat for that matter - change if armour was not ignored on a critical hit?

It's always struck me that the extra damage from the critical should be enough of a reward, especially against fully armoured targets.

Does a critical hit ignore a black globe

Actually for most starship weapons, depending on how you read the chart, a Starship crit does either x1 damage or an additional x1 (x2?). Which is why in my starship combat rules I limit starship crits to x4. Then ignore armor. (And yes fields are armor.) In the case of the Blackglobe it happened to exactly catch the flicker. (If the BG isn't flickering at all then it isn't armor and the damage is applied to the field, with the multiplier, not the ship.) So you have to ignore armor for any damage from most crits. Only Fusion Guns and Mesons have decent multipliers and they are off the chart, coincidnetally they also use the biggest dice for damage. (Which is why I limited the multiplier, x4 is still double standard weapons and more than all the others.) Further even compared to a nuke a Fusiongun of the same factor is still going to do more damage on a crit.

Meson Guns ignore armor anyway. (And they are the really broken part of the system.) Keeping the Armor doesn't help. (I looked at it before coming up with my rule fixes.) Though I go back and forth on Gunnery Skill, the rules I have implemented appear to work, so far. We shall see soon. (You reading this Dan?)

For the list of my starship combat mod rules click on my link to my page on my signature.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by veltyen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Personally, I do the above but don't subtract SI. Just roll on the internal damage table if it would cause SI damage. And yes, I ignore armor on a crit. (Since it doesn't cause SI damage anyway if you ignore armor then it will get an internal hit roll whether you multiply or not.)

I do something similar. Radiation damage is resolved, for each 10 points (or part thereof) radiation does a single SI point of damage and a critical roll.

It does mean that ionising weapons (Nukes, PA, Meson) disable targets very quickly. </font>[/QUOTE]Too quickly, which is why I leave it at one roll. YOu are already getting two rolls on internal damage, vs, 1. Hitting someone with a barrage of factor 3 nukes are going to disable too big of a ship too easily.

 

[endersg]

Wait, wait, wait. Critical hits ignore armor, but they still do SI with their enhanced damage and get internal damage rolls, correct? Or is it that they just get more rolls on the internal damage charts?

Next point: Nukes do a minimum of 5d6 damage which leads me to believe that missiles could have variable damage (and thus variable USP) regardless of the number of weapon systems in the mount. It would seem to me the logical advantage of a missile would be that you could fire a really powerful missile from a crappy launcher. If this is not the case, the fluff language in all the supplements indicating planet's have big ship killing planetary defense missiles is bogus and really means they have a ton of missiles instead a couple of big ones.

As for radiation damage - I see the points being made about internal damage, but how would you translate it on the rad damage chart?

 

[veltyen]

5d6 isn't a lot against an armored vessel with a damper. A USP 1 nuclear missile attack also has a hard time hitting home, but when it does it can be quite deletorious for an unarmored target.

To get to the high end missile attack spectrum you need a missile bay. Optionally these fire fewer larger missiles rather then vast arrays of smaller ones (50 for the smaller launcher, 100 for the larger). In the maximised case they fire single missiles that are up to 5 dTon each. This is approximately the same size as a Trident missile.

Just as there are larger ground based beam weapons there are also larger missiles. A small ground installation would be using something similar to a 100 dTon missile bay firing missiles a similar size and shape to ICBMs. Not very scary compared to a large deep meson facility, but far far cheaper and much lower tech. At the larger end you would be firing large extreme velocity missiles from some kind of fast catapult such as a mass driver launching system, from a facility that covers several square kilometres.

That still leaves the Rad thing, though. Anyone guess the mechanic? Do rads affect the people inside directy? What's the damage to rad conversion? How much damage/rads to affect eltronic systems?

A Rad is just a measure of how much energy is absorbed. Like determining when a turkey is cooked. How the rads are absorbed, for example over what time period or how energetic the particles are, changes how they effect you.

The US EPA has a good rundown of what common radiation sources are and some of the ways a variety of particles effect people are.

If you do want to account for different particles and their effect on organisms the unit you want is the sievert
which takes into account these differences. For example an alpha-particle emmiting genital piercing is far more detrimental then a large dose of low strength gamma radiation. One leaves you sterile in short order, one gives you a tan.

In T20 radiations effect of destroying electronics and killing organics is represented by the alternative radiation damage table, with damage to crew and damage to electronics being well represented on that table.

Most particles effect electronics in much the same way that it effects organics. Particle emmisions change delicate structures (DNA in organics, silicon pathways in electronics) by physically changing the properties of atoms. Some radiation sources have consequent EMP effects, which destroy more robust electronics as well, this is more a side effect of nuclear devices rather then a direct effect from radiation as such.

 

[endersg]

I'll attempt to simplify my question. If a nuke missile does 5d6 blast + 1d12 "Radiation" damage, but one does not actually use the radiation damage chart, why is the radiation chart there then?

What good is it for?

What does 1d12 radiation damage translate into on the radiation damage chart which is measured in Rads not d12s?

 

[veltyen]

I think I understand.

Are you talking about the environmental exposure table on THB page 388?

Read the section below, it talks about prolonged exposure where you do use that table vs blast effect radiation from weapons use that doesn't.

There is no correlation.

The table is there to account for environmental exposure. Solar Flares, ingesting radioactive dust, walking around in a hot spot and so on.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Endersg:
Wait, wait, wait. Critical hits ignore armor, but they still do SI with their enhanced damage and get internal damage rolls, correct? Or is it that they just get more rolls on the internal damage charts?

Next point: Nukes do a minimum of 5d6 damage which leads me to believe that missiles could have variable damage (and thus variable USP) regardless of the number of weapon systems in the mount. It would seem to me the logical advantage of a missile would be that you could fire a really powerful missile from a crappy launcher. If this is not the case, the fluff language in all the supplements indicating planet's have big ship killing planetary defense missiles is bogus and really means they have a ton of missiles instead a couple of big ones.

As for radiation damage - I see the points being made about internal damage, but how would you translate it on the rad damage chart?

Nukes do 1d6 per factor plus an additional 5d6. All weapons that do a minimum of one point of SI damage after reduction for armor and shields get a roll on the internal damage table.

In my interpretation Radiation damage that would cause one point or more of SI damage gets a roll on the Internal damage "radiation" table, without actually doing additional SI damage. In the actual rules it appears that the intent is that they do SI damage in addition to the internal "radiation roll" but it isn't exactly clear as to how much damage they roll, or how that damage is applied and whether it is multiplied on a crit and whether it ignores armor/shields on a crit.

Normal Crits do "an additional x1, x2, x5 or x10" that is increased SI damage, (not exactly clear but it appears to be actually damage x2, x3, x6 and x11) they also ignore armor and shields and will get a roll on the internal hit table. Unlike vehicle damage which gets multiple rolls or affects all systems in that section, or some such nonsense.

If you look at the charts you will find that most ships lose combat effectiveness at between 10 and 20 internal hit rolls, regardless of size, armor, type or shape. Regardless of size, factor or type of weapon fired.

I am not going to get into Spinals and Mesons here, they are adequately covered elsewhere on these boards.

Against typical Cruisers and bigger small factor Nukes are useless. (The ship gets and additional armor factor equal to the Nuclear Damper rating, generally cancelling out the +5D6 and then some.)

On the point of larger missiles. There is one other point of errata. There is nothing in the rules to indicate how many missiles are fired by a 100 ton bay or a 50 ton bay. (And how many rounds they have before they are exhausted, and how many tons magazines are for them.)

 

[veltyen]

On a side note vehicles only take critical rolls on actual criticals, whereas starships take a critical table roll if they take any damage.

This balances up the difference in staging (5 vs 10) to some extent as well.

 

[endersg]

Alright let's do an example so we are on the same sheet of music.


A nuke missile doing 5d6 + 1d12 successfully attacks a ship with AR 3.

The rolls are: 5,5,6,1,3 + rad(iation) 6.

The AR takes away the three lowest rolls (1,3,5) leaving the 5,6 and rad 6.

Subtracting 3 from 11 you get 8, so the ship takes 8 SI from blast and an additional rad 6.

Are we saying we should roll twice on the internal damage, once for the 8 points and once again for the 6 rad?

What if the same ship had AR12 and no blast damage got through? Would the ship still take 6 rad SI damage (regardless of AR) plus 1 roll on the chart?

Would the crew take radiation damage at all regardless of AR? (I would agree that depending on the angle of attack, a pretty thick ship could stop gamma radiation from hitting crew deep within the ship, unless it was right outside a viewport that the crew happened to be looking out).