Determining Damage- Realism

[Dauntless]

BTRC (or Greg :))-
I can see that damage in a structural capacity has a diminishing returns effect; as you said, a broken arm is a broken arm and there's not much other game effect to having multiple breaks (we're excluding the pain factor here).  But I think there's different kinds of damage types.  In your Spacetime and Timelord games there were also neurological effects (stunned, unconscious, etc) as well as ability impairments (presumably due to pain) and what amounted to mortal wounds.  If there were a way to incorporate Spacetime damage in EABA, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I think determining damage is a measure of where the damage path goes, how wide the damage path is, how deep it is and how the tissue is affected (curshin, cutting, impaling, etc).  Where the damage path goes determines the potential reaction of the body (how much structural, neurological, pain and critical damage occurs), and the width and depth determine its severity.  Determining the location path is moderately difficult.  It's moderately difficult because in the case of the bullet, where you hit may not wind up being where the wound channel is created.  Obviously there's a random factor, but I think the hit-roll should resolve much of it.  If you barely hit, to me this can be accounted for by saying that it was mostly a felsh wound, or the bullet deflected off a bone.

If you split up damage into its various effects on the human body, I think you can remove the "I got killed after being hit in the toe" syndrome.

In some ways my weapon creation system will be easier than yours, and in others harder.  I'm trying to develop it in an abstract way...for example, energy weapons will also have Receivers, Actions, Feed Systems and Barrels.  It may not make sense if you look at it from a literal point of view, but if you look at the purpose of a system rather than a restrictive definition it makes sense.  My system is looking more and more like the GM'll have to use a different methodology in thinking about weapon design.   Rather, I should say the algorithms (though similar)will be different.  I mean algorithm not just in the sense that the formulas are different, but also the order of steps you think about to create the weapon.

BTW, how's Stuff coming along?  My own vehicle creation rules are in its infancy, but it's definitely not going to be anywhere near as complex as VDS.  The Weapon's Engineering Manual will probably seem very familiar to 3G!, but the Vehicle Engineering Manual will be much more abstract.  So I'm interested in seeing how Stuff comes along.

[Shreyas Sampat]

So my design goal as a second priority is to model our own real world close enough.  Partially so that we can relate, and partially because reality is a great way to provide a framework of design rules with built in checks and balances.

Frankly, I think it is foolish to look to reality for a system of checks and balances for a roleplaying game of any kind. You yourself have stated that Hero, a highly popular and I can only guess excellent system, chooses to ignore causality in favor of effect because there are far too many interrelated causes to try and make a sensical, complete system out of them.

You are trying to do exactly that; from what I understand you want to quantify every factor that will possibly be relevant to your system, and set down in mechanics the relationships beween those factors based on real-world physics...even though the output of all this labor will be an abstraction anyway. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you're not working with an abstraction, because you are, and the more you try to deny that, the more it will get into your way.

It seems that you are working towards a game with some emphasic on tactics - if this is the case, then I would recommend that you consider designing weaponry based on their tactical profiles rather than their physical characteristics in the fictional world.

I feel like this post could be read as crapping on your design goals. What I mean to convey with it is this: As I understand your design goals, I think that you can fulfill your goals better by taking a different route.

[Dauntless]

Shreyas-
Don't worry, I didn't see your comments as crapping on my thougts :)

Trust me, I have no false illusions that what I'm creating is itself an abstraction.  Creating a model of something is always an abstraction of something.  The key to creating a good model is making sure that it does something you said; cover all the essential factors that are relevant to the information you need.   Because consistency is high on my priority list, I need a lot of detail to ensure that there is a built-in "reality" which determines the causal nature of how something works.

I'm not so much interested in recreating 100% reality to a T.  Rather, there must be a semblance of laws and rules which govern why the game objects have the effects that they do (and in so doing, create as little inconsistency as possible).  For example, I've split what most games would consider strength into Force and Speed.  These combined with a character's Fitness, Mass and Height determine how "strong" a character is (how much he can lift) as well as how much Power (Force/Speed) he can put into his actions.  This allows one to create a character which is slow but strong (a bodybuilder) or one who is lithe but wiry (a Bruce Lee type who may not be able to lift as much weight, but can hit you with a wallop).

In other words, I'm trying to create a set of rules which establish some fundamental laws of how the game world works.  Most game systems do this of course, but because of my desire for internal consistency, I pay more attention to the causal nature of how things work.  Notice I said internal consistency, because it's more important for me to get consistent results that follow the game setting, and then secondarily that these results are consistent with real world data.  On a scale of 1-10, my priority for consistency is a 9 and accuracy is a 7.

Am I biting off more than I can chew?  Probably.  Do I need to look at the damage factors to this degree of scrutiny?  Again, probably not.  But I do feel that how a human being is damaged is one of the most arbitrary design considerations in most game systems.   Concurring with this because they are related is how a weapon does its damage.  That's not to say that these rules don't work for that game and the setting it covers, so they are still valid choices.  No one can model reality 100%, but you can extract the factors that are relevant and get a pretty good degree of accuracy.  That's what I'm aiming for.  Eventually I'll move on to figuring out how melee weapons do their damage and consider many of the same aspects (how much tissue damage is created) and how the weapon influences this wounding capacity.

I'm creating these rules to eventually be integrated into a computer game.  It will integrate warfare from the strategic down to the personal level.  this is another reason I value consistency and quantification so much because the computer requires it.

[Dauntless]

Actually, I will be basing the game off tactical profiles, but the tactical profiles are generated from the flight characteristics or nature of the weapon.  You don't use the raw flgith characteristic data, instead formulas are used to derive them into the tactical data which is relevant to the game system.

For example, how quickly it takes to ready your weapon will be based off a mass to length ratio as well as some balancing issues (bullpup designs have a center of mass closer to the shooters own, so it will be slightly quicker for example).   The flight characteristics of the round will determine how accurate the round is at certain ranges, as well as how much damage it will do.  Pistols are not only inaccurate, but they also lose damage rather quickly, whereas rifles (true rifles) are very accurate and keep their damage over long distances.  It is the flight characteristics that determine the tactical profiles.

The reason I want these design rules is so that I don't have to arbitraily chose them, and also to allow the GM to create his own.

In the end, I could have just used 3G!, but I there were enough tiny differences that I felt I should use my own system, plus I didn't want to lose more data by converting from the 3G! system to my own game system.  Many of the tactical profiles are the same or have analogues in my system (Inherent Accuracy, Aiming RC and Damage RC, for example) where mine will have a few his do not (Cross Sectional Area, and more fine tuning capabilities for length"weight ratios and gunpowder properties) not to mention that I will figure out Damage Ratings differently than his Damage Value.

[btrc]

own game system.  Many of the tactical profiles are the same or have analogues in my system (Inherent Accuracy, Aiming RC and Damage RC, for example) where mine will have a few his do not (Cross Sectional Area, and more fine tuning capabilities for length"weight ratios and gunpowder properties) not to mention that I will figure out Damage Ratings differently than his Damage Value.

Actually, 3G3 does take cross-sectional area into account, though probably inverse to the way you want it. There are two DV's, the first is based on the raw energy, while the second factors in the diameter (same energy with a small bullet gives better penetration than a large bullet, because of energy/area). I gather you are using the cross-sectional area as a tissue damage measure. If you look at the bullet data tables in the back of 3G3, there will be two values, one for the raw energy DV, and the other using diameter to modify the penetration characteristics.

Regardless of how you figure your stats for damage, there are a few real-world factors to consider. The ability of a homogenous material to withstand energy/area penetration is a good correlation with the square of its thickness (twice as thick takes four times the energy). I use a square root formula in 3G3, so that if armor rating goes up linearly with thickness, 4x energy equals 2x DV, which penetrates 2x armor.

Even with square roots, it can make numbers uncomfortably large for thinks like anti-tank weapons, so I went to steeper scale in EABA, but the same underlying principle.

Greg Porter
BTRC

[Valamir]

Dauntless, I'm very puzzled by your use of the word "consistancy" in this context.  Consistant to what?

If I say a .22mm does 1d4 damage and a 9mm round does 1d8 damage, and every gun in my game is stated that way...that's consistant.  Its also obviously not what you're talking about.

So what do you actually mean when you say consistant.

Are you saying you want to be able to take a news report of an actual shooting, set up that situation in your game and have a possibility of the events occuring the same way in the game as it did in reality?

That would be one interpretation of consistancy.


If so, I'd have to say your pursuit of a causal link is nice theory but will never ever work to any extent worth the effort.  I say this simply because as a micro armor gamer from way back I remember well the great debates about gun calibre vs armor matchups...the great efforts some gamers would go to to get the precise thickness and angle of armor for every surface of a tank, and then insist on perfectly to scale 3d terrain so they can get accurate angles of fire, and then extrapolate the exact thickness of armor being hit by any given shot so they can compare armor hardness and calibre and muzzle velocity and range to determine whether or not a given tank round penetrated.

In the end all of these calculations provided just the illusion of accuracy, and the end result of the number crunching was absolutely no different than simply analysing the figures from a historical tank battle and concluding "70% of the hits on a Sherman by a Panzer result in mission kills.  Roll percentile and move on."  In other words 10 times the effort yielded results that ultimately were 0x more authentic.

There are tons of factors to account for in something as simple as tank gun vs tank armor.  Those factors are all well known.  They involve lots of precise mathematical calculations and the range of possibilities is relatively low.  Yet even in such a controlled environment the results of taking a Casual approach are trivially different from the results of taking an effects based approach in application.

Judging weapons fire of any time of small arm against a human target involves orders of magnitude more factors than tank gun vs tank armor.  You have to account for the angle the shot penetrated the body, the possibility of hitting or missing vital locations by the tiniest of fractions, all sorts of soft and hard cover effects, etc etc etc.  

If this sort of exercize is largely futile for something as simple as armored warfare, I can only expect it to be even more futile for man to man combat.


My suggestion really is to take an effects based approach starting with the sort of results that would seem sensible and consistant to you without violating your disbelief and then fashion mechanics that give that output.

In the end, you get to almost the exact same place with lots less headache.

[Dauntless]

Greg-
I'm using the cross-sectional area to help determine both tissue damage capability as well as some penetration capability and also as a measure of air drag (to influence the accuracy over range and damage over range ballistics of the round).

The physics looks pretty ugly, especially since my own physics knowledge is relatively limited (one semester in college, and currently in my second semester physics).

The hardest part for me to figure out is correlating the kinetic energy of the round with the Damage Rating.  For penetration it's rather easy.  Force/area equals pressure, and with a little cross sectional area/density calculations thrown in to tweak it, you can figure out penetration.  The tissue damage is partially a measure of the energy of the round multiplied by the diameter of the round as this represents the tissue trauma that's created (the larger the round the more tissue it affects).  But trying to figure out the effects of tumble, deformation, fragmentation and cavitation (or hydrostatic shockwaves) is a bit trickier.

Inelastic collisions between the human body and a bullet should probably be more damaging than elastic or partially inelastic collisions.  For those unfamiliar with physics, an elastic collision is one in which the momentum and kinetic energy of a particle is transferred to another (such as two identical metal balls attached by strings hitting each other...the second bouncing due to the collision of the first).  An inelastic collision is one in which the objects bounce away from each other such that some of the kinetic energy is lost (in reality, some kinetic energy is always lost, even in elastic collisions due to heat, sound or friction).  How does this concern terminal ballistics?  When a bullet is going fast enough, it will hit the human target and go through his body...this creates a partially inelastic collision.  This means that not all of the kinetic energy is transferred to the target.  A totally inelastic collision means that the bullet becomes embedded in the target such that all the kinetic energy is transferred.

The trick is that depending on where the target is hit, it will offer more or less resistance to the bullet, so I'm not sure this can be adequately represented other than as a purely random factor.

I actually read an article on the web (which I unfortunately lost track of )that debated that terminal ballistics was less dependant on kinetic energy of the round than on momentum, and went into detail about how the impulse of the bullet can be a better predictor of damage than kinetic energy.  If correct, it would imply that velocity and mass are equally important since momentum = mass x velocity, whereas kinetic energy equals mass x velocity^2.

[Dauntless]

If I say a .22mm does 1d4 damage and a 9mm round does 1d8 damage, and every gun in my game is stated that way...that's consistant.  Its also obviously not what you're talking about.

So what do you actually mean when you say consistant.

You're right...there are two kinds of consistency.  There can be in game consistency which measure the consistency of the rules, and then there's consistency based off of real world results.  I'm placing a higher priority to have consistent in-game rules, but I secondarily also have a high priority to be consistent with real world data.  In other words, if I have to sacrifice some real world data to be consistent within my game rules, I'll do so, but I'd like both types of consistency if possible.

In the end all of these calculations provided just the illusion of accuracy, and the end result of the number crunching was absolutely no different than simply analysing the figures from a historical tank battle and concluding "70% of the hits on a Sherman by a Panzer result in mission kills.  Roll percentile and move on."  In other words 10 times the effort yielded results that ultimately were 0x more authentic.

There are tons of factors to account for in something as simple as tank gun vs tank armor.  Those factors are all well known.  They involve lots of precise mathematical calculations and the range of possibilities is relatively low.  Yet even in such a controlled environment the results of taking a Casual approach are trivially different from the results of taking an effects based approach in application.

Judging weapons fire of any time of small arm against a human target involves orders of magnitude more factors than tank gun vs tank armor.  You have to account for the angle the shot penetrated the body, the possibility of hitting or missing vital locations by the tiniest of fractions, all sorts of soft and hard cover effects, etc etc etc.  

If this sort of exercize is largely futile for something as simple as armored warfare, I can only expect it to be even more futile for man to man combat.

I understand where you're coming from.  Ultimately, everything will eventually boil down to an abstraction.  But I at least want to have my abstraction based on as much detail as possible in order to cover as many contexts as possible.  In your example, you say how figuring out the angle of incidence (the angle at which the round strikes the armor) impacts the penetration capability of the round as well as other factors.  Ultimately, there are hundreds if not thousands of possible factors that may have to be accounted for.  Since these can not all be accounted for, there will be some inaccuracy as a result.

The best way I can analogize it is thinking of significant figures.  How accurate do you want it to be?  If you have to measure an object and your tool can only measure in centimeters, then you can't base your answer in milimeters.  Perhaps there are elements that I will forget to include which may have a significant impact on the results, but if this turns out true, then my game results should be fairly inaccurate compared to real world statistics.

That's the other approach one can use.  Take the statistics and develop your rules around matching those statistics.  While this can account for the end result (the effect) it's not very good at allowing you to design things.  If I made a game so that the players and GM could only play with what I provided, then this would be a lot simpler to do and I'd probably go this route.  But because I want the player and GM to be able to create their own things, I have to look at the causal side of things to make sure that there is consistency within all the objects.

In the end, I know that what I create won't mirror reality.  But I hope that it will provide lots of tactical options, and that it makes the players aware of some of the factors that are important to their decision making.

[daMoose_Neo]

I don't get anything about bullet trajectories or anything like that. I don't personally care about physics. I would much prefer a game thats fairly simple TO PLAY.
Just because something is rules light doesn't mean for a player its going to be easy. The rules have to handle the world, yes, but precision isn't always neccesary- role playing is, after all, about stories and characters. Realism can add to it yes, but 'breaking character' is the worst thing in the world if we're going the acting analogy.
I agree with the salesman pitch. Thats all acting is- very good salesmanship, except you're selling the character or environment. A good actor, and in here by extension a good player, will sell almost any environment. The writer, or in this case the GM, needs to set a good foundation. An actor can do bupkiss with a play thats a piece of crap because the blocking is all wrong, the character dialoge is choppy and other details are out of whack.

(DISCALIMER: THIS ISN'T NECCESARILY A SYSTEM DOESN'T MATTER STATEMENT!) When it comes to 'hard fought battles' and 'memorible sacrifices', the system doesn't totally matter. Its the players, its the GM. The bulk of the weight rests on the GM to take the rules and create something within it to challenge the players- if the player hasn't fought tooth and nail against all odds to win, its not all the systems fault- thats more the GM, for not knowing the players, knowing their capabilities or knowing their characters. Doesn't matter if there is a perfect simulation of reality- if the GM stinks at scenerio organization, the adventure is going to stink. If the system ISN'T right, the GM can still scale the system to meet their needs, especially if there are guidelines on consistancy.

Just saying more of what you're posting is leaning to the "ultra-realistic as possible" as opposed to "easily scaled within realistic parameters". If you were to create more of a scale than a lesson on phyisics and enegineering I'd say that'd work out a lot better- you can do your realism as much as you want and the Average Joe can properly scale their new Quantum Bolt Rifle within the standards laid out.

[Dauntless]

I think a lot of people are confusing my design rules with the actual play rules.  What I'm looking for are some suggestions based on real world data that could help me determine how damage is applied to the human body (specifically in the context of conventional small arms).   I need this information to help me design the Engineering Manual I'm working on which allows users to create their own weapons, vehicles, system components and the like.

I need the hard data based on real world data so that I can make a more simplified, yet hopefully still somewhat accurate and consistent model.  In other words, I'm not taking the hard physics and physiological data and applying it directly in the game.  Instead, I need the data in order to create the algorithms (the game rules) that cover these topics.

I'm looking at the real world so that I can create the "virtual game world reality".  Instead of real life physics, I'm condensing it into "game physics" and "game pathology and physiology".  The game laws don't have to be 100% compatible with the real world, but the more the better.  As I've said, internal logical consistency is my #1 goal followed by a good approximation to what happens in the real world.

So I think a lot of people's issue with my word realism is a matter of degree.  I also feel that many people have different concepts of what exactly roleplaying is.  I think the new trend is to emphasize the roleplaying while deemphasizing the game part.  In other words, roleplaying has been going down the road of improvisational theatre and storytelling.  An adherence to reality for this play style is not only unnecessary but depending on the kind of story you wish to weave, may be detrimental.  

I think the one of the first design rules should be, "what kind of experience do you want to give to your players".  From this, all other decisions stem.  I'm creating a system with lots of tactical choices for several reasons.  Firstly, I disagree that it's only up to the GM (within the system rules) to create a hard fought battle for the players.  What matters is the realization for the player that it was his decision making and choices that allowed him to persevere and triumph.  The fewer options that are given to the player, the more it becomes a simple die-roll, and where is the feeling that the player actually accomplished something in that?

I'm actually not aiming for ultra-realism, as I'm willing to sacrifice some realism to create logical consistency.  There goes taht word again :)  What do I mean by that?  It means that given the setting, the technology and the rest of the game system, everything fits together seemlessly without requiring a suspension of belief.  Let me give an example.  Let's say that I create rules that allow a hand-sized weapon to destroy a tank.  Okay, that's possible...that's what some AT weapons are like right now.  Okay, but now let's say that I create rules that also allow it to be the size of a pistol.  Well, okay...that's still possible depending on the technology.  Who knows, maybe in the next 50 years or so it could happen.  But right now it can't.  And to include the rules to design such a weapon would be inconsistent with not just our own sense of reality, but it would also be inconsistent within the design rules itself.  In other words the design rules should not even allow for the creation of such a weapon even as an "oddity".  why would it be inconsistent?   Because the "virtual game world reality" has laws that says that at a given technology, only so much energy can be created within such and such a mass.  And this energy is what determines the damage potential of the weapon.

I'm going to clearly state upfront how I think the game will best be played by describing its strengths and highlighting its weaknesses.  It will be a relatively slow moving game when it comes to combat, but unlike many other game systems, hopefully combat will be rare.  Also, in my system, combat is going to be quite deadly, and one or two hits will probably take the character out of the game (it may not kill him, but he'll probably be incapacitated).  The trick is in not getting hit (and most games make it FAR too easy to hit your enemy...in real life, it's amazing how hard it is to hit someone...in the famous LA bank heist of 1998, over 1000 rounds were fired, and less than half a dozen officers were hit in a firefight that ranged less than 20meters).  As Sydney Freeburg pointed out in his thread, I think many combat systems miss the point of the utter confusion, fear and chaos that fighting is.  The martial combat system will be fairly unique in that it's both technique based as well as theory based (sort of like spontaneous magic in Ars Magica).  So even the melee combat will be relatively bogged down.  I'm also going to have some extensive emotional mechanics so that the players' choices are tempered by the character's psyche and the context of the situation.

As a consequence, my game will probably not appeal to those who want a fast-moving game or one in which the protagonist always does what the player says.  It will appeal more to wargamers or people interested in trying to understand some of the factors that go into combat (they may not be 100% real, but at least the players have to think about these factors).

[btrc]

It will be a relatively slow moving game when it comes to combat, but unlike many other game systems, hopefully combat will be rare.  Also, in my system, combat is going to be quite deadly, and one or two hits will probably take the character out of the game (it may not kill him, but he'll probably be incapacitated).  

And there is your problem. There is no problem in my mind with coming up with extremely realistic and detailed algorithms for a given encounter (in this case combat), but the enjoyment for most players is in the play, not the rules. Your detailed algorithms should give results appropriate to the situation, with the minimum amount of complexity, which I think has been pointed out elsewhere. I'm sure I could come up with a large number of tables, rules and exceptional cases to decribe in game terms what happens when you stick a pin in a balloon. Someone else might just put in the rule "it pops".

If your system is such that one or two hits incapacitate a person (saying perhaps that the person absorbs a certain amount of kinetic energy), then that can have very simple rules to implement. Similarly, if most shots miss, then most of your combat modifiers will simply be minor adjustments to an already small base chance, such that most people won't find it worthwhile to take the good modifiers or worry about the bad (e.g. should I aim and increase my chance to 15%, or just take two quick shots at 10%?). Again, it greatly simplifies combat.

You still end up with the results you want, but you don't have to slow the game to a crawl to get them.

EXAMPLE: Army Medical Service report that I mentioned previously. For anything from a medium-caliber pistol on up, the results are:

Extremity hit: You live, 50-50 the limb is incapacitated
Torso hit: 50-50 you die*, if you live, 50-50 you're incapacitated
Head: Dead

*Before you get to a field hospital

Those simple rules are accurate for 90+% of the cases where you have no armor and are an hour or more from a medical facility. They are distilled down from thousands of data points and several hundred pages of text to that minimal level, a level which is not much fun from an rpg standpoint, but which is still realistic and accurate.

Greg
BTRC

[Ben O'Neal]

It will be a relatively slow moving game when it comes to combat, but unlike many other game systems, hopefully combat will be rare.

This basically sums up my problems with this idea. You are spending way too much time and including way too much detail on an option that you want to occur only rarely. As I read this topic I thought "wow, this is gonna be one hardcore shooter", but then you say you want combat to be rare? I'm going to be annoying and invoke Mikes Standard Rant #3: Combat Systems here, because I think it needs invoking.

-Ben

[Dauntless]

Combat will be rare not because it won't be a focus of the game, but rather because hopefully the players will try to avoid it at all costs when they can.  If the players want to be combat monsters, it's their prerogative...as long as they don't mind rolling up new characters a lot.  In fact, for one of my game settings, I was thinking of borrowing another game idea from Ars Magica, that of playing a "troupe".  This way, if you lose one of the characters it's not as traumatic, plus you can't see your group as just cannon fodder.  Let me put it this way, combat will be at least as deadly as The Riddle of Steel and Phoenix Command.  

When I was running a Phoenix Command campaign set in Vietnam many years ago, both myself and the players learned how deadly combat was.  Over time, the players truly learned to fear combat, which is something I can honestly say I've seen no other roleplaying system do.  It was the only game I've played that didn't require any form of emotion mechanics to make the players make their character's duck their heads when the bullets came flying in their direction (and some of my players were the grandstanding, "what??  It's just a dragon, we can take it out without breaking a sweat" kinda players").  

I hope to recreate that sense of dread that combat brings to the table even though combat is sometimes unavoidable.  If anyone is familiar with the Phoenix Command system, I'd say mine's a little bit more complex than it is right now because I have some additional tactical choices the player has to make.  One of its main criticisms was that it played pretty slowly due to the number of charts you had to look up as well as the record keeping required to determine the characters' actions and who went first (both it and my system use an action cost system where actions cost a certain amount of points to do...the more time consuming the action, the longer it takes to finish, hence sometimes it's not as important to know who starts an action first, but rather who finishes an action first).  But of the 8 people that played in my campaigns they all unanamously agreed it was the best RPG they played (admittedly, most of them also did some wargaming).

As for how complex the combat will be?  Well, a lot of my ideas are still rough ideas or even just placeholders.  I'm nowhere even near the playtest stage yet so I'm not sure what I can and can't trim to make things play right.  Determining damage will be rather complex due to the many forms of damage a human body can take.  But basically it'll boil down to figuring out where you got hit, and with what kind of weapon.  One roll to hit, how well you hit modifies damage and/or placement, and a damage roll should be all that's required.  I'm also pretty sure I'm going to have to make charts bodypart by bodypart and damage form by damage form, as I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to do it just with the dice, but an algorithm has eluded me.

Still, I don't see determining damage as taking any longer than it did for Phoenix Command or Spacetime.  I think the harder part is just simply the bookkeeping.  Since I have at least 6 System Tracks that measure the various levels of health (structural, neurological, support, psychosis, fatigue and critical) it can get messy pretty quick, especially since some like neurological and fatigue can fluctuate turn by turn.

In the end, I'd rather start with something too complex and through playtesting realize what I can trim than to start too simple and have to add rules later.

[psychophipps]

An interesting article I read a while back had some intereseting information on firearms and the wounds they create. This FBI agent had done helli-grips of research on fatal and incapacitating wounds and came to a few, simple conclusions about dropping people with the greatest of expedience:

1. Hydrostatic shock is a myth.
2. Temporary cavitation is just that, temporary.
3. The best way to drop someone is to hit the CNS and/or major blood-bearing organs/vessels.
4. In order to have an "effective" offensive/defensive firearm it simply must possess the ability to propel a chunk of lead into someone with enough force to strike the aforementioned areas from any angle and enough energy left over to disrupt them.
5. It's all about shot placement.

Taking all of the numbers and data into account, this simple list of rules is serving our law enforcement and military communities quite well. It also shows that the use of hollow-points can actually hinder the incapacitation process in certain circumstances as the added area of the bullet can keep it from penetrating the target enough to hit the MBBO/V and CNS (see above).

It's all subjective, of course, but a little more info never hurt anyone,
Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

[Dauntless]

BTRC and Psycho-
I wish I coud find some military/police data on wounds.  If it seems like the caliber of a round is largely independent of how incapacitating a wound is, then I'll account for that in how I determine damage.  It's this sort of statistical data I'm looking for to help me figure out how to calculate damage.  Do any of you have links or books sa suggestions I could read?  From what I've read so far, it does seem like the biggest factor in determining damage is where the wound channel is (what tissue gets damage) and secondarily the severity of tissue trauma (how much of that tissue is destroyed).  But on the other hand, I've read some accounts of soldier reports from Somalia to Iraw saying how they had hit targets with multiple 5.56mm rounds to the torso and the target continued to fight.  There have been enough of these after action reports that the Army and Marines are seriously looking at replacing the 5.56mm round.  I've also seen several pictures of some 82nd AA troops in Afghanistan using the older M14 battle rifle as they said they prefer the weapon there (there's not as much house to house fighting there, and the fights take place at longer ranges...plus they say the 7.62 has greater manstopping power).  I've also read an Army after action report saying that only 60% of the troops felt confident in the M9 Beretta, and many troops are requesting the older .45 instead.  Not only is the 9mm sidearm not very good at putting down the enemy, they say it has a very high failure rate and is tough to clean.

While real world data may make playing the game seem too depressing or anti-heroic, I can always tweak the data just a little bit.  I'm not after 100% realism but rather a system which coincides mostly with reality and doesn't require a stretch of the imagination to believe.

In the end, I want my game to be able to make what's possible in the "real" world (even if very unlikely) possible in the game (and equally as unlikely), and what's impossible in the "real" world impossible in my game.  Why did I put quotations around "real"?  Because the game core rules should be able to handle alternate realities which are similar to ours but still follow the same basic physics laws but may have different technology capability or may lean towards some mystical or paranatural abilities.

This may seem to circumvent my desire for a consistent "virtual game world", but again, it just points out that I have to make the game world consistent with everything.  My favorite example is creating a magical world in which teleportation is possible.  If this is possible then you have to think about the ramifications of this technology.  If teleportation exists, then what's to prevent one Lord from sending his troops or assassins directly into the castle of a rival Lord?  As another example suppose you have FTL travel which is akin to teleportation.  In such a case there will be no warning if a force is going to invade another planet.

So the "real" world is the setting of the world and how it works.  If it's impossible in the setting of the world, it should be impossible within the game system.  This also means that my game system is only partially Universal.  It has a Core system that all settings must use, but then there are "plug-ins" that expand how the setting of the world works.  For example, the Engineering Manual I'm creating only works for worlds with no magic, and only covers technology up to the next 75+ years from now (give or take a few years).  Another "plug-in" will describe how my martial arts setting will work, since it relies on some pseudo-mystical and parahuman abilities (that aren't beyond the realm of belief, but seem almost impossible.  But if you've read of the accounts of some modern martial arts masters  like Morihei Ueshiba, you'd think they were fairy tales).