Chapter VII: Starships and Vehicles Comprehensive Overhaul

[P-47Thunderbolt]

@penpenpen

This is a very clunky way to say Difficulty is based on personal-scale range, upgraded twice, which is effectively the same (unless the difficulty is simple, which is it pretty much never is).

I get what you mean, but I’m trying to keep the wording/operations consistent between the various descriptions. “Difficulty is based on the target’s speed, or the targeting silhouette difference, whichever is higher. Upgrade by the lower of the two numbers.”

Since the Average directly replaces targeting silhouette (for reasons of “splash damage” outlined earlier), I thought this wording was appropriate in part because it shows that formulaic replacement.

@penpenpen

Secondly, while this solution is is quite elegant, it just kinda rubs me the wrong way that it means that smaller, dedicated, anti-infantry weapons aren’t as useful for their stated purpose as just using bigger guns for everything. The elegance of Targeting Silhouette is wasted here.

Oh, you misunderstand (I think). This is for targeting Personal-scale targets with Planetary-scale weaponry. Personal-scale weaponry works like it normally does, with the exception I mentioned for fixed mounts.

@penpenpen

I kind of like the idea that “close is close enough” with a big enough gun, and perhaps that could be expanded. If big guns are too hard to hit personal scale targets to be any threat at all, maybe add a rule for vehicle scale weapons that 3 advantages on a miss lets them deal their base damage as personal scale damage to a target, kind of like Blast.

Or you can turn things around; if vehicle scale weapons are too easy to hit with, maybe a hit on a personal scale target is a “close enough” hit, and deals personal scale damage, unless advantages are spent (2? 3? Same as crit rating?) on making it a full on hit, dealing planetary scale damage.

There would have to be some calculation beyond “as personal-scale damage” because a blaster cannon would only be dealing 4 damage, which isn’t enough to beat the soak of most targets.

Therefore, it complicates things, and essentially throws out the 1:10 ratio except in the case of personal-to-planetary.

[penpenpen]

@P-47Thunderbolt

There would have to be some calculation beyond “as personal-scale damage” because a blaster cannon would only be dealing 4 damage, which isn’t enough to beat the soak of most targets.

Nope. That’s intentional. A light blaster cannon hitting next to you would be a nuisance (and a good reason to wear armor). A turbolaser hitting next to you would be quite dangerous (around 10 damage plus breach). The idea is that it would balance out that light weapon might be easier to score hits with, but heavy weapons could still have some effect on a near miss.
It also makes it possible for vehicle scale weapons to do some damage to personal scale targets without causing instant vaporization.

[P-47Thunderbolt]

Sure, but I think that unnecessarily nerfs very powerful weapons. It is especially punishing when you compare it to attacks against mass formations (phalanxes, minion groups, etc.) which are technically personal-scale targets, but have large health pools.

[penpenpen]

It nerfs them if you need to upgrade a to a solid hit. If you can upgrade a miss to a near miss that does some damage, it’s a boost.

But yeah, the tricky part is that powerful but inaccurate weapons like artillery should be effective against a bunch of guys, but pretty unwieldy against a single guy. If minion groups or phalanxes had a larger silhouette score that would help, but I’m not sure how much that would snowball and unbalance other stuff.

I’m pretty much throwing stuff at the wall here and seeing if anything sticks.

[P-47Thunderbolt]

One example of increasing silhouette is that now it’s harder for two stormtroopers to shoot a single Ewok than it would be for a single stormtrooper to shoot that same Ewok under identical conditions.

It also doesn’t distinguish between “point attacks” like a blaster cannon and splash-damage attacks like a rocket or shell, which then requires additional rules or conditions.

At this point, I’m convinced that the best solution is what I have currently set up. I can’t think of anything that would improve on it, without increasing the complexity to an undesirable degree. The only changes I would entertain right now are tweaks to establishing the difficulty.
(That is not to say this conversation is fruitless or to shut you up; the conversation has helped me think this through in more detail and come to a more confident conclusion.)

[penpenpen]

@P-47Thunderbolt

The only changes I would entertain right now are tweaks to establishing the difficulty.

Yeah, that’s my main issue. The rest is mostly “garnish” when my mind wanders.

How about instead of average difficulty, use half of targeting silhouette (rounded up)?
It’s pretty much the same formula as difficulty for piloting checks, and pretty much the same value (silhouette-ish) so, not making things more complicated than they already are. Difficulty stays roughly the same, with winners being the smallest blaster cannons upgrading once and the losers being turbolasers and the like upgrading thrice. Pretty much everything else stays the same (off the top of my head, the only things with TS 7+ are battleship ion cannons, which would be quite a fringe case here).

I’m still considering wether personal scale range has too much of an effect here, and, assuming most armed (and armored) vehicles have decent gunsights and limited visibility, they should be at a disadvantage up close instead. While this would perhaps be more realistic and give infantry incentive to close with vehicles, it would probably also mean that vehicles would do their damndest to kite people on foot, staying as far away from them as possible. With the abstract movement and range system even the slowest vehicle can do this with ease, which perhaps again is realistic, but it’s not cinematic.

So counterintuitively if you want plucky heroes desperately fighting the armored behemoths of the enemy at point blank range in good old matiné space opera style, maybe it’s better to just give vehicles the incentive to close to suicidally short ranges. I mean, TIEs strafing ground targets should be close enough to return fire with a blaster pistol and if an armored behemoth doesn’t get close enough to board it with a thermal detonator, then what’s the point of it.

…

Tangentially related, how do shooting at personal scale targets from planetary scale ranges work? Just considering it extreme range seems simple and reasonable, assuming there is a way to even detect the target (forward observers, powerful optics, sensors). The check at extreme range would be pretty hard, but not so hard that it’s not worth trying, and not still terrifying to be on the receiving end of.

…

Also, somewhat tangentially, with planetary weapons vs personal targets comes upgraded difficulties and that means despairs. I’ve been thinking about what kinds of fun and interesting consequences these inevitable despairs might mean for the firing vehicle, particularly if it’s plugging away at targets from relative safety. The gun jamming/running out of ammo is a classic but can be overdone.

*Collateral damage is always fun. A missed shot is quite likely to hit something else, possibly of value to someone.
*Terrain modification. Heavy weapons are invaluable tools for the indiscriminate and possibly unintentional landscaper. Blowing a crater in the ground might provide a place to take cover for the intended targets. Blowing a hole in the wall might give them an escape route. Knocking something down might block the gunners line of sight.
*Overkill vs battlefield awareness. A that only sees a smoking crater where his target used to be might assume that the target has ceased to be and move on with his life convinced that nobody could’ve survived that. Works well with npcs shooting at pcs and is good way to end an an encounter that is going unexpectedly bad the pcs. Not all players are fine with just “playing along” with being told that the enemy got killed by an obviously failed check and will insist on “making sure”, but as a GM, you can usually still work with that.

@P-47Thunderbolt

(That is not to say this conversation is fruitless or to shut you up; the conversation has helped me think this through in more detail and come to a more confident conclusion.)

I’m glad we’re on the same page here. I haven’t come up with a solution I can confidently say
I think is better, they all come with their own issues, and I’m you sure you’ve already considered a lot of them beforehand.
I’m pretty sure there is no perfect solution, but I’m going to stab away at it until I come up with something I feel is outright better or I’ve convinced myself that this is the best (or least worst) option.

Other ideas I’ve considered but (mostly) discarded as unfeasible or unneccessary:
*Vehicle weapons having “reversed” personal range (ie if it has medium plantary range it can only be used at medium personal range or longer, and optimum range (easy difficulty) is at extreme personal range and increases as you get closer). Might have some merit, but as mentioned above, it might also acheive the wrong thing.
*Inaccurate rating based on TS against personal scale targets. Needlessly convoluted and makes one stat do two similar but different things, which is just confusing.
*As difficulty against small vehicles is based on speed, increase/upgrade difficulty vs personal scale targets for every move maneuver taken by personal scale target. Also means that running out in the open is far safer than taking cover.
*Planetary scale blast reaches to short personal range, so reduce difficulty or reduced cost to activate blast on miss against personal targets. Might be needlessly complicated and too powerful though.

[P-47Thunderbolt]

@penpenpen

I’m still considering wether personal scale range has too much of an effect here, and, assuming most armed (and armored) vehicles have decent gunsights and limited visibility, they should be at a disadvantage up close instead. While this would perhaps be more realistic and give infantry incentive to close with vehicles, it would probably also mean that vehicles would do their damndest to kite people on foot, staying as far away from them as possible. With the abstract movement and range system even the slowest vehicle can do this with ease, which perhaps again is realistic, but it’s not cinematic.

Right. The reason for setting difficulty by range is that a humanoid is a small target, and the farther away the vehicle is the more movement can be placed between the target’s position when the gun is fired and the target’s position when the round impacts.

Additionally, the farther away the target is the more intervening terrain or other obstacles there could be. While that is partly covered by cover, sometimes there can be a certain degree of passive application thrown in with the difficulty. If you’re just firing at an immobile, man-sized target in an open field with high-tech optics and a vehicle that serves as a stable gun platform (i.e., ideal conditions), no check would be necessary. However, the more space you introduce the harder it is to hit.

I also specifically say that it’s up to the GM whether attacks can be attempted at Short range. The sweet-spot for vehicles targeting personal-scale targets is 20-60 yards/meters.

@penpenpen

With the abstract movement and range system even the slowest vehicle can do this with ease, which perhaps again is realistic, but it’s not cinematic.

And that’s why I actually tweak movement so that ground vehicles in personal-scale engagements move a number of range bands equal to their speed, rather than just zipping around wildly. That helps with something like a squad of soldiers advancing behind a tank, or running away from a speeder (they might get a round or two before it catches them), or even just to give a solid metric for how fast the enemy is advancing without the GM “pulling his punches” or having them fall on top of the PCs immediately.

@penpenpen

Tangentially related, how do shooting at personal scale targets from planetary scale ranges work? Just considering it extreme range seems simple and reasonable, assuming there is a way to even detect the target (forward observers, powerful optics, sensors). The check at extreme range would be pretty hard, but not so hard that it’s not worth trying, and not still terrifying to be on the receiving end of.

I have not considered it, but I would say Close range (beyond Extreme) is Formidable and anything else is too far away to precisely target. Let’s say at 2 miles (~3.2 km) you fire a blaster bolt moving 800 meters a second. It takes four seconds to reach the target, which is plenty of time for an unaware target to stop or change direction, and for an aware target to try to dodge.

@penpenpen

Also, somewhat tangentially, with planetary weapons vs personal targets comes upgraded difficulties and that means despairs. I’ve been thinking about what kinds of fun and interesting consequences these inevitable despairs might mean for the firing vehicle, particularly if it’s plugging away at targets from relative safety. The gun jamming/running out of ammo is a classic but can be overdone.

Right. I have halving damage as one option, but that would only apply on a successful check. Most of the time, I’d simply say “the guns are overheating” (see “The Deserter”) and not allow them to fire for +1-2 rounds.

And yes, all those other options are good.