Modern/Futuristic ROS

[Kaare_Berg]

Thanks Lebo.

In game speak, I was just suggesting that not removing the modifier for armour penetration would imply that the bullet causes greater wounds since it maybe deformed by passing through the kevlar, not to mention that it may pull fine threads of Kevlar into the wound.

Being shot wearing insufficient armour is worse than not wearing armour.

[Lebo77]

Hummm... I guess I can understand that.  However, while hitting armor may deform the bullet, the loss of kennetic energy, along with flattening of the bullet will reslult in less total penetration.   With a relitively low-energy round, this could result in insufficent penetration...

[Caz]

I'd take those pics with a grain of salt.  If you watch the same on high speed film, the channel is usually caused by hydrostatic shock and sometimes bullet fragmentation, and other things I don't understand.
   In an elastic human body, that same wound channel will occur, but immediately return to it's original shape with the exception of the actual channel caused by the bullet tearing through.  But, bullets do strange things sometimes.  When a round travels through a body, it's like amplified aerodynamics.  Tumbling like the picture shows just doesn't make sense.
   At first though, I thought you were talking about the round tumbling through the air.

[Salamander]

Okay, the relevant characteristic ballistic path in media is one that is pretty much unique to at least 6 things. The velocity of the round, the diameter of the round, the shape of the round, the composition of the round, the mass of the round and the media through which it has to pass.

For starters, I think Caz is referring to the old wive's tale of 5.56x45mm NATO rounds glancing off leaves and tumbling in a breeze. These things do not neccessarily happen. As it is, any round can be deflected and made to tumble out of control, but 5.56mm is no more susceptible than any other round in the small arms medium, and no .50 BMG is NOT a small arms round (more on that another time).

On the same website there are also several examples of other rounds being fired into Ballistic Gel. These include the 5.56mm NATO round I have the most experience using. Now if you will refer to:

http://www.firearmstactical.com/images/Wound%20Profiles/M855.jpg

You will see the M855 round (Current US Issue) has deformed, fragmented and altered path in such a way as to maximize damage and create a horrendous permanent cavity as well as penetrating 34cm into the target. That's a little over a foot. This round has had such a catastrophic failure due to the above mentioned 6 things. This round has spun about and fragmented almost simultaneuosly due to the shape of the round with it's "flange" in the middle of the length of the round. This is where the crimp to the casing goes and makes for a tail heavy round. As the round travels towards it's target it remains stable in flight as it is one system with the heavy end stabilized behind the lighter tip. However when the round impacts something of enough mass to absorb its kinetic energy, the heavier end begins to swing around as the system becomes unstable. This leads to the front becoming the back and the inherent structural weakness allows the round to fail and fragment into (at least) two pieces. These two pieces have different mass and shape and thusly follow seperate paths into the target. In this case it was ballistic gel, not another human being (it's easy to shoot at paper cut outs, but another thing entirely to double tap another human being, especially when there are rounds flying by like rain). We see that the higher velocity 5.56mm does much more terrible damage than the heavier & slower rounds such as 7.62x39 BLOC or 7.62x51 NATO which both overpenetrate, wasting energy by smacking into a wall somewhere instead of lodging fully in the target. 5.56mm NATO is also a pretty good penetrator of light body armour and soft skinned vehicles. In the above discussion we saw the term "Hydrostatic Shock". This refers to the energy of the round being absorbed and transferred or transmitted to other parts by the body, which is made up of mostly water. Since the water really has nowhere to go, it is "Static". It does play an effect, but the exact effect it plays is open to furious debate. However we are here to discuss the end result, not how we achieve said result.

Now that we undertand one aspect of this whole complex idea, lets move on to the misconception of body armour. There are several types of body armour available, the most basic kind is a type of weave of ballistic nylons such as spectrex or kevlar, both of which can stop the bullet, but not so much the energy from penetrating the body. With these softer types of armour the round can (in certain crcumstances) still force the armour to penetrate the flesh and do significant damage, enough to kill you in the right circumstances, again refer to the big 6. So the round may not penetrate, but the energy from the round can still literally beat you to death. Of course, a burst of three rounds from a 9x19mm SMG such as the HK MP5 may not kill you or even breach the armour, but it will still beat the living hell out of you, all thanks to our friend, hydrostatic shock. As with all things there is much more involved... but I only have a few thousand words here...

Next best thing is a type of weave with a supplemental plate of harder material, which can spread out the impact even more efficiently than the soft armour. These plates are commonly known as "trauma plates" and have saved the lives of many soldiers and police constables/officers over the last 15 years. These trauma plates make the hit go from being a deadly pentrating wound to a blunt trauma.

Last and worst/best of all is the Hard armour, usually a composite of ceramic/metal weave plates over kevlar designed to stop rifle rounds at 100m or even closer. They are best as they can reduce the chances of casualty from ballistic incursion, but worst as they are hot, heavy and slow you down on the draw. This is the stuff the soldiers are wearing in 35 C/96F weather in Iraq right now. If you think it's not so bad, go to arizona, put on a 2-3cm thick vest of plastic.. oh and you're only allowed one bottle of water a day... now let's go running!

I am sure my post is full of holes, please feel free to point them out and when I have a chance I will share as best I can. But for now. I am pressed for time... In my gaming experience, I have encountered a few games that have tried to model these things. One of them actually came pretty darned close. So much so that DarthTang used it for his firearms combats in his Fading Suns campaign.

[Sir Mathodius Black]

well weve gone a bit off topic here, but are there any other things besides weapons that would need to be altered?  Im thinking about rules for cyborgs/cyborg enhancements.  basically, your race priority can be anywhere from F (little or no impacting cybernetic implants) to A (heavily modified human, how even moslty robot) depending on how cybernetic you would want to be.  Any thoughts on this?

[Salamander]

well weve gone a bit off topic here, but are there any other things besides weapons that would need to be altered?  Im thinking about rules for cyborgs/cyborg enhancements.  basically, your race priority can be anywhere from F (little or no impacting cybernetic implants) to A (heavily modified human, how even moslty robot) depending on how cybernetic you would want to be.  Any thoughts on this?

Well, in the interest of maintinaing the Sci-Fi feel, perhaps something like this?

Priority A: Psionic/Alien Species
Priority B: Psychic/Genetically enhanced human
Priority C: Full mod Cyborg/Android (It's all fake baby!)
Priority D: Partial Mod Cyborg (1-2 limbs replaced)
Priority E: Implanted Devices
Priority F: Plain 'ole Human.

[Salamander]

well weve gone a bit off topic here, but are there any other things besides weapons that would need to be altered?  

NO! GUNSGUNSGUNSGUNS!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

But seriously, the firearms thing needed to be addressed, at least in my world. :) As for weapons of the Future (Your fault Sir Mathodius...)

What ideas do you have? I'll share if anybody is interested, but you have to share right back.

Also, what kind of cultures would you predict for your Sci-Fi world? Is interplanetary/stellar travel a large, even vast, undertaking? Or can a guy go day tripping to Betelguese (~90,000light years distant)?

[deltadave]

I like to use the Traveller universe from GDW. it's been around for a long time and has been fairly well fleshed out.  There is actually a new d20 conversion out that can be put into TRoS terms fairly easily.

[Sir Mathodius Black]

For a future setting, I was thinking along the lines of something between the years 3,000 and 4,000.  Humanity has colonized some of the nearby star systems.  To make it playable, some sort of warp drive would have been discovered so that PC's can actually go from one planetto another in one lifetime.  

There would most likely be a Stellar (more effective) version of the UN to handle big issues and each planet or system would mainly govern its own day to day issues.  

No alien races would be discovered, but cyborgs and mutants would not be all that uncommon if you look hard enough.  Perhaps instead of magic the human race is discovering its psychic potential (although the system would probably remain largely the same for magic, just replace the word magic with phychics or somehting).  


As far as priorities go, i would put this list off the top of my head:

A: Psichic Mutant or Phychic Cyborg
B: Full Mutant (real extreme alterations to the body), heavily cybernetic (were talking terminator with possibly a human brain to make it "human")
C: Mostly cybernetic with some organs still in place, or half mutant.
D: some cybernetic modifications and enhancements, but recognizably human, or minor mutation
E: few cybernetic modifications (arm, eyes, leg ect...) or little or no mutation.
F: average puny human.


Im thinking that all playable cyborgs would still have at least a human brain to make them human.  Cybernetic enhancements would only be attainable midway through a game either through government experience or for an outrageously high price on the black market.  
Mutation would most likely be something that has to be prearranged and cant happen midway through game.  Im thinking that mutation would have effects like increased physical characteristics and/or mental characteristics, some sort of physical deformity (most likely having to take the ugly flaw), and any other modifications you can think of.

[Caz]

I'm wondering how you can get the priority system from going to crap if the PC decides to make himself regular human when he generates his character, and then shortly thereafter goes to the doc and makes himself a cyborg?
   Perhaps the cyborg priority is for people whos bodies will accept cybernetic parts, other priorities reject them for some reason?

[Sir Mathodius Black]

that could also be a reason, but take in mind a few things about starting at normal human and upgrading:

1) It is outragiously expensive, time consuming, and hard to find someone who can perform such an operation

2) it is illegal unless the governmnet condones it for a sanctioned experiment

3) as you said, not all bodies will take the implants

im thinking that if you start out as a normal human then get the upgrades, there is a chance that your body will reject the implants and there would be negative reprocussions  (possibly make a health check and every success lowers the negative effets??).

Im also trying to think of some of the negatives for taking the cyborg priority.  you would have nice mental and temporal ability bonuses, but what could we have as negative modifiers if any???

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I was going to add a knockdown stat to the guns in my mod... I figured they could represent the blunt trauma aspect mentioned as well as general stopping power and use existing rules for knockdown. just my two cents.

[Caz]

Thinking up negative aspects for cyborgs....
   Perhaps repairs and spare parts are hard to come by, and expensive.  You can't heal.
   Perhaps there are actually negative mental consequences.  Perhaps it's harder to learn, easier to go insane, and quite likely to reduce your Soc over time.    It's not like you could get a date if you're mostly made of metal.  
   Chances are, the major reasons for it would be military, and as such if the cybernetics are obvious, it would be a stigma or a liability.  
   After all, your fully human characters wouldn't walk into any old place in their armour 24/7.  Just some ideas...

[Kaare_Berg]

Ashren Va'Hale wrote

I was going to add a knockdown stat to the guns in my mod...

Newtons third law of physics makes this redundant. Looks cool though!

Before we go into that discussion; I am toying with the idea of using the TROS system in the alien universe.
Any suggestions of how to handle acid spray (bleeding critters and such)?

[Caz]

Just off the top of my head, maybe the wound level in feet for the splatter effect.  If a character is close enough, give em a reflex roll to avoid it, the target # being wound lvl + 2 or 3.
   Acid that splats onto armour takes AV rounds to eat through, neutralizing after 10 rounds or so.  The acid damage is 1 wound lvl per round?
   Hope this gives you some ideas at least