OK I've been thinking about Battletech, comments from Mike H. and Sydney and Raiven and I think I have a totally new (new, at least, to my game) approach to damage modeling/tracking for SSL. I wanted to throw it out and see what some of you good folks thought about it.

This is just a rough idea so keep that in mind but here we go ...

Armor, as some have pointed out, does not get "worn" away. So systems like Battletech were we keep track of "armor points" is, at best, fun, but at worst not really realistic and can easily lead to huge numbers to keep track of which results in a lot of math.

Armor, in reality, is more of a binary situation; weapons either penetrate the armor or they dont. In systems (like Battletech) where armor is "worn away" the emphasis is shifted from what's inside that machine to what's on the outside of the machine - and this emphasis is an amphasis that strays from the real reason armor is worn or fitted on a machine.

Armor is carried by a tank, aircraft, robot, etc. in order to protect the machinery, occupants, etc. underneath that armor. So, we should really only care about the guts of the machine and not the armor (when playing games and tracking damage). While keeping track of the "hit points" of an armor shell may be fun it really destroys the whole idea of attacking a machine in the first place which is to get at the systems inside it which make that machine go, move, fire, whatever and inturn disable or destroy that machine by way of destroying it's guts.

A tank with no armor but which still has it's mobility and ability to fire its weapon is still a threat. A tank with armo but no engine or weapon is nothing more than a hulking, smoking shell of steel that is no longer a threat.


So here's what I propose:
Each SSM has a shell of armor (of varying grades). Underneath this armor is the stuff that an opposing player wants to destroy. We'll call this stuff, collectively, the SSM's systems.

Now here is where things go a little differently. Each SSM has multiple, redundant systmes (much like any current day fighting machine) and can operate at 100% capacity so long as one of each system is running. So underneath the armor we have these systems and the SSM is "rated" on it's redundancy. A higher redundancy means longer battle life but at the same time it increases the chance that one of those systmes is going to get hit.


Let's start with the armor and work our way inwards. Let's grade armor, for the sake of this post, as A, B, C, D etc. and state that armor gets more stopping power as the letter gets higher. So, "A" armor stops all weapons of an "A" grade but weapons of "B," "C," "D," etc. will pass through the armor. However, armor that has been penetrated will still slow, impede or absorb some of the energy of the penetrating round, beam, missile and therefore reduce it's effectiveness. The amount of energy absorbed by the armor depends on the disparity of the weapon used versus the armor being penetrated. So, just for numbers, lets say "A" armor would absorb 75% of the energy of a "B" weapon. The more energy a weapon carries through to the internal systems increases it's chance of destroying or striking one of the internal systems.

So, now the emphasis on the game is simply employing a weapon which will get through the armor with a lot of energy and start destroying the internal systems. This is where the majority of the "chance" comes in. Just like current-day machines some may continue to operate at nearly full capcity but be shot up something horrible (none of the vital systems were reduced in capacity) while others may suffer one, "lucky" catostrophic penetration.

Let's use an example of two players running around in SSMs SSM which carries "A" armor (Player A) being fired upon by an SSM using "B" weapons (Player B).

Player B, when firing upon Player A, will roll for a location (somehow). When a location is determined that location is penetrated. I think maybe we'll say that each player will keep a running total of penetrations for each location and when "x" number of penetrations is reached the armor on that location is effectively gone. When armor is stripped away the chance of damage to the internal systems goes up.

Player A will then roll to determine what damage, if any, has been caused by the penetration. Lets say Player A's SSM has a system redundancy rating of 10. Meaning that each location has 10 cables, pipes, computers, etc./whatnot that all do the same thing. So, now, player A rolls (via a mechanic not quite worked out yet) to see if any – and/or which – systems were hit. When the system redundancy gets to zero, in that location, a penalty (location is destroyed, movement penalty, pilot death, etc.) is incurred.

This allows machines to continue fighting as they take damage in a more realistic way (see the current-day machine example above) or get unlucky and have a very bad day. It allows one to model extreme armor types but at the same time reduce player "tracking math" (right now one of my SSMs carry 1200 pts per location!) and helps to feed the bigger, badder, faster race (i.e. player/machine growth). And it may even allow exploring weapons that will simply shear a location off the body of the SSM.

I dunno I kind of like this approach and I think I'm going to head down this road but, please, blast away at it.

I think you're heading in a very good direction. 1st, it's more realistic -- in real life, tanks, battleships, or for that matter knights in plate mail don't go whittle each other's armor down in lots of little attacks; they trade shots until someone gets a good one at a weak point and then it's usually all over. 2nd, it's more interesting because it's less linear and more unpredictable. The whole idea of hit points/armor points that slowly wear away is a strange legacy of D&D and BattleTech that other games imitate without questioning, but it's not a good solution.

I'd make a suggestion for how to simplify armor a step further: Just treat it as any other system and, instead of having it wear down from E to D to C to B to A, use your redundancy rules to see when it breaks. In other words:

1. A mech is hit in a given location (somehow).
2. Subtract the level of armor in that location from the weapon's penetrating power.
3. If any penetrating power is left, some damage has gotten through. Roll a redundancy check for every system in that location -- including the armor -- with a penalty equal to the damage that got through.
4. Systems that fail their redundancy check stop working (or, alternatively, lose one level of redundancy for each level they failed the redundancy check by).
What "stop working" means in physical terms varies: powerplants go offline, weapons won't shoot, armor cracks open and no longer protects. But whatever the physical mechanism, the in-game effect is the same: a system that fails its redundancy check (or, using the alternative step-by-step system, that is reduced to Redundancy 0) is no longer usable.

Cool ... what do you think of this.

As you know I'm tryingto stay with using (1)d20 in the game. With that in mind let's rate the armor as follows; Armor A is "rated" at 12. Armor B is rated at 14. Armor C is rated at 16. Armor D is rated at 20.

These numbers represent the pentration value of the given armor. As such, this is the number a player must roll (after rolling a location, of course) to see if the armor was penetrated. The diference between the number rolled and the armor rating is the amount of damage that goes through. I.E. A location is rated at 12. After rolling a hit on that location a player then rolls for a penetration check and rolls an 18. 18 is larger than 12 and thus the location is penetrated. The difference of 6 would represent that chance of striking an internal system. This chance is represented by making the defending player roll 1/2 the difference to see if that penetration struck an internal system (difference is 6, defending player would roll three times on that given redundancy check).

So, a play sequence would go something like this:

Player Attacker rolls for location (some how ... thinking my target map)
player rolls a valid location
Player Attacker rolls for a penetration check (lets say Player Attacker is firing on A grade armor which has a value of 12).
player Attacker rolls a 13 on the pentration check.
Player Attacker is finished (this process would repeat for each weapon used).

Player Defender marks on "rating point" off the armor for that location because it was penetrated (had the shot failed to penetrate the armor would remain at it's current level).
Player Defender then rolls a redundancy check
player rolls once (1/2 of 1 rounded up is 1) and nothing is struck (some how).
Player Defender records any applicable damage.

Make sense? More streamlined?

I think it's a little more realistic than simply stating "weapon C" will penetrate "armor A" because glancing shots can be deflected by a material as delicate as even glass if the angle is not correct. So to assume a weapon will go through an armor is a little too simplistic. This also takes care of the redundancy check for the armor itself as the mroe times the location gets penetrated the easier it is to do it a second, third, fourth time etc. I could even through in a "critical" redundancy check for the armor. Say if the difference between the penetration roll and the pentration value is more than, say, 10 (or some value yet to be determined) the armor is ripped off the location.

To make things simpler, how about having only one roll? Grade weapons the same way as armor, but use numbers instead. For example, you have armor rated at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and weapons rated at 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. When a weapon of X rating hits armor of Y rating, you subtract Y from X, and the result, Z, is the value that gets through. So I fire a grade 5 weapon at armor of grade 2, and so the resulting penetratin is equal to a grade 3 weapon. Then you could simply have each system inside rated similarly, such that Z systems with a rating less than Z would be destroyed, so some systems are more susceptible than others. The one roll would be the roll to see the location of the hit, and the rest would be basic subtraction and comparison. You could simply build "glancing shots" into the hit-loation roll, replacing "misses" (which I don't like) with "hit, but didn't penetrate".

But I'm not a fan of each player making rolls for one player's action.

As for removing armor, you could simply have a bunch of check-boxes for each piece, and tick one off everytime it is penetrated. When all check-boxes are filled, the armor is useless and no longer detracts from weapon ratings. Maybe some weapons types, in addition to their piercing rating, could have another rating that measures how many check-boxes get ticked off when they penetrate, so a sword would do heaps of armor damage, while a bullet wouldn't, but both may be equally effective at destroying systems.

But I like where you are going with this, focusing on the systems involved, and how losing them effects your robot-thingy. I do have one suggestion though, in the interest of energy efficiency, nearly all reduntant systems do not run the redundant parts until the main parts fail. When they do, something is triggered and the backup kicks in. So to make things interesting, and provide more options for upgrading, I recommend having it so that players can specify which systems in which areas are currently active, and which are not. When a currently active system is destroyed, the function it provides is gone for one round, until one of the backups kicks in. If an inactive system is destroyed, well, it simply isn't there if you need it. This also opens up the possibility of energy management, if you want, but it isn't necessary. But as for upgrades, you could buy stuff for individual systems that makes the transfer of control instant, rather than lagged by a round. It also brings in another layer of strategy.

I dunno, just throwing ideas around for you to mess with. It's great how you are really starting to come up with some interesting stuff though. Keep at it!

-Ben

Aviation and Space Weekly recently had an article describing the newest developments in the US, building a bunker-busting weapon, to succeed the current US bunker-buster, the MOAB. To achieve destruction of the latest designs of bunkers available from Western countries, the weapon designers are looking to make the bunker-buster weapon being a two "part" weapon deployed a few seconds apart from 40,000 feet from a bomber. The first weapon makes a hole in the bunker all the way through, which won't necessarily destroy the bunker. The second weapon goes into the hole, and counts up the layers of bunker armour to determine the optimal location to explode at so as to destroy the contents of the bunk with blast and fragmentation.

I felt the above would help give an indication of where current and very-near-future weapon technology is at, to avoid the problem of designing a high-tech setting game system that is invalidated by current technology.