Topic: Suppressive Fire and Shields (SM 2nd/ SM:P)

[Aotrs Commander]

Okay. This is a simple problem. My PCs (nearly all) have barrier shields. Why should they be afraid of Suppressive Fire?

Basically, as written, a +0 to +45 OB is dangerous... To not much, really. As written, the only DB modifications are doubling the DB for cover if they take it.

I have, after seeing a brief discussion of it, disallowed Qu bonus to DB (along with any dodge or Adrenal Defence bonus*). This - while a drastic improvement! - is still not really enough. Since if you have a 90DB from shields (or higher), even the unusual success result that gives you +75 to the OB is anemic.

So. What to do? I see two possibilities.

1) Make the Suppressive Fire OB a modification to the user's OB. (Which makes it possibly too extremely deadly.)

2) Significantly increase the amount of energy drained off the shields, either incrementing or adding a bonus to the effect AE of the attack for additional rounds/energy expended over 5/10. The attacker would be inclined to then expend more than 5/10 shot's worth to significantly increase the drain as well as give a bonus on the Static Maneuver. So you could stand there, but your shields would take much more of a pounding and potentially hit the point at which they might actually drop, as opposed to just draining the power pack. I have a rule (can't remember if it's a house rule or not now that if a shield takes more than its bonus in AE in one round, it collapses (reliability check, and if passed, you get +5 DB back each subsequent round). That might just about make them worried about fairly high AE weapons (which, to be fair, the often face) dropping their shields.



This also raised another good point: If your OB is higher than 60, Tracking Shot/Spread Burst become pointless (Half OB +30 and crits down one level < normal single shot.) It doesn't gain you anything. (Aimed Burst/continuous fire gives you a small OB penalty but changes the critical type to a more lethal one.) Thoughts?



*Which I otherwise do allow as a DB verses even energy and projectile weapons, though you can only do two out of cover/ranged parry/AD - partly as a counter to the very high OBs.

[yammahoper]

I allow NO DB versus suppression fire other than cover, which is doubled for DB.

[Aotrs Commander]

That just doesn't work right with shields, though. (Or armour quality bonuses, which is the same sort of fish, really.) Aside from pure game mechanics, that doesn't make sense. (I play simulationst - which is why I play RM and D&D3.5(ish) and not D&D 4E - so "because it works in game mechanics" is an option that I am only prepared to use at the very last and only if I can squint hard enough.) Having shields just... not work... under one set of circumstances doesn't make sense.

(I'd be prepared to just right off suppressive fire period if I can't get a satisfactory simulationist answer if it really came to that.)

[markc]

I like some version of #2 above but I need to think some more on it.


I also had some problems with suppression fire when I was using it with suppression fire being used against a group of charging mindless people. I ended up ruling that they all got hit even though there were more people than shots fired., IIRC.
MDC

[Aotrs Commander]

I am leaning towards that way myself. But like you say, you need to work out exactly how it works. As it stands, SM models every bullet, so Suppressive Fire as written (with a minimum of 5 /10 and no maximum) has some abstraction in it.

I think the ruling I've been working on (as it doesn't come up very often) is that a burst does AE * number of shots (i.e. 3, 5 or 10). For Tracking Short/Spread Burst/Aimed Burst Continuous Fire - which only applies to a single target - this works okay.

Like you say, it's when multiple targets come in that the disconnect comes in, because Suppressive Fire turns it into an area-effect attack and you're not modelling every bullet/shot anymore.

So. I reckon putting some more limitations on that is in order.

Maybe say, then, that you can only make (effective) Suppressive Fire on a maximum number of targets equal to one per two bullets/shots fired. You would then let people pick how many targets they are trying to suppress (with the proviso that targets must be contiguous).

You'd work on the basis that if you're not dodging or taking cover from the fire, what shots would normally just be in the vicinity and not have any real chance of hitting the target proper ('cos they are really there to keep their heads down) will hit and degrade the shield.

So then say that the AE "on target" as far as shields are concerned, is equal to AE of weapon (x 2 if continuous weapon) plus number of bullets/shots divided by number of targets. (So if you spray, say eight targets with auto fire, you'd need for fire at least 16 bullets (and effective AE would be weapon AE+2). But you could say, fire 64 and effective AE would be (weapon AE +8).

If you concentrated one just one dude though, you could suppress that one target with 64 bullets and get (AE +64) to shields. (Which will be more than you can do with most continuous weapons with an aimed burst.)

The actual attack resolution would be left unchanged (since there comes a point where, it terms of hurting people, it doesn't really matter - you'e not really aiming at them, just putting lots of fire in their vicinity). If you're shooting a horde of unshielded mooks, it works no different to normal, so you suppress as many as you can. But if you run into shielded targets, there's a benefit to concentrating your fire.

So then it still behooves a shielded target to take cover from Suppressive Fire, since while their shields mean they are unlikely to take any (more) damage from a Suppressive salvo, the concentration of fire of lots of shots pinging off your shield will mean it won't be UP for very long.

(You'd say, I guess, if you do take cover, you only count the AE as being for one bullet/shot.)

Yes? No?


Edit: I talked to some military experts of my acquaintance, they concurred that the manuals say that one bullet landing within about four feet is what they reckon is enough to make people duck, so the estimate of one target/ 2 bullets/shots is a plausible order of magnitude abtraction.

[markc]

 I guess I would rule that if you took cover then your shields would take just AE damage but if you were out in the open or charging then I would say AE x 1.5/shots. IMHO (for some reason) I think that a strait on shot should do more shield damage than a glancing blow or one in which the target is trying to take cover.
But again that is right off the top of my head and I need to think on it some more.
MDC   

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, you only take AE damage for shields for a direct shot. AE x (number of shots/number of targets) seems a bit too high, with no maximum of how many shots you can fire. (As shields usually only have 90-125 bonus, even a relative feeble AE weapon could take it down with ease.)

I'm assuming with suppressive fire that the extra AE is from glancing blows around the edges. It's just if you put a lot of those glancing blows in, it starts to add up.

The logic would basically be, if you're shooting at a shielded target, you bascially can't treat it the same way as an unshielded one. It'll shrug off normal Suppressive Fire - not unreasonably. So if you can't punch through the shields via concentrated force (i.e. OB > DB), then you have to death-of-a-thousand-cuts the shields down. So if you're dealing with a shielded target, you basically have to sink ammunition into it to whittle the shield's strength away by volume of fire, if aimed fire alone is not going to be sufficent. Same sort of operation as normal Suppressive Fire, but it's doing a slightly different job (if the target doesn't obligingly duck).

You'd only use it when you could put more fire in than you could achieve with an aimed burst or continuous fire.

So, if we have an AE 12 auto-fire Plasma weapon (co-incidently what will be shooting at the PCs...) and aimed burst would do 12*5 = 60 AE. If you sunk a third of your 170 shots into one target via suppressive fire, it'd do 12+60 = 72 AE.

Mmm. Bit low, still, isn't it? AE per shot is too high, I think... Maybe AE+1/2 AE per additional shot in the open? At that, you'd need a burst of twenty shots (12+19*6) to take down a heavy absortion shield (125 DB) if they don't duck. (Which would in this case be 20/170 shots). Eh, not wholely unreasonable.

[markc]

I do like the (charges lost= AE+1/2AE per round) formula as it will take down shields after a time depending on how many charges the shield has.


As a side note on light vehicles I could also see some fixed number of the amount of charge the shield would have in a round so as light weapons fire could get through it.
MDC

[Aotrs Commander]

I do like the (charges lost= AE+1/2AE per round) formula as it will take down shields after a time depending on how many charges the shield has.


As a side note on light vehicles I could also see some fixed number of the amount of charge the shield would have in a round so as light weapons fire could get through it.
MDC

Don't need it, as it's sort of there already. As it stands, the rules say you lose a number of charges from your shield generator power pack equal to the AE of the weapons that hit it. The rules I'm using (which I'm now half-sure are my house-rules) are that IN ADDITION, if a shield takes more AE one category (e.g. energy) than it's DB bonus in that category in one round, the shield collapses (regardless of how much power it's got left in the pack/power source). If it's not damaged, it'll start coming back slowly.

(I suspect that if it is indeed my house-rule, it was because that with high-tech powerpacks, the chances of power-pack draining shields out was just not likely to happen when the power cells/packs have hundreds of charges.)

So, as I work on the "baleful energies" level of vehicles, you'd just apply the same logic as concussion hit damage to and from vehicles. So vehicular shields count as shield DB bonus * 10 for the purpose of determining what AE is neough to short them out, and vehicle weapons count as AE * 10 for the purposes of infantry shields. (Replace "10" with any other number you feel appropriate, maybe 5 for light vehicles, maybe 20 or more for starships.)

[yammahoper]

That just doesn't work right with shields, though. (Or armour quality bonuses, which is the same sort of fish, really.) Aside from pure game mechanics, that doesn't make sense. (I play simulationst - which is why I play RM and D&D3.5(ish) and not D&D 4E - so "because it works in game mechanics" is an option that I am only prepared to use at the very last and only if I can squint hard enough.) Having shields just... not work... under one set of circumstances doesn't make sense.

(I'd be prepared to just right off suppressive fire period if I can't get a satisfactory simulationist answer if it really came to that.)

Well...shields do not STOP bullets.  They provide DB, but any weapon can defeat them.  Sufficient energy will overcome the shield.  Since suppression fire is taking a direct hit by walking into a field of fire, survival is mostly lucked base, unless the weapon is unable to defeat the armor/shield present.

This of course means shields need to be rated against ME, LE and BE so we can know how much force is needed to over come the shield to get at the armor, but that adds a complexity only available in my mind.

An example would be Barrier Shield, ME5/14/24 (need ME5 or higher to penetrate, ME14 or higher 1/2 DB, ME24 or higher ignores shield).

Etc.

However, if the ME, LE or BE of a weapon is high enough to pierce the shield, it provides no DB against suppression fire.

Or not.

Regarding armor DB bonuses, the same logic applies.  If the armor reduces hits or crits, those bonuses would still be enjoyed.  We could add superior DB mod is subtracted from crit rolled against it from suppression fire, much like a protection versus heat spell reducing any crit suffered by it's bonus, but that is a can-o-worms indeed.

[Aotrs Commander]

That just doesn't work right with shields, though. (Or armour quality bonuses, which is the same sort of fish, really.) Aside from pure game mechanics, that doesn't make sense. (I play simulationst - which is why I play RM and D&D3.5(ish) and not D&D 4E - so "because it works in game mechanics" is an option that I am only prepared to use at the very last and only if I can squint hard enough.) Having shields just... not work... under one set of circumstances doesn't make sense.

(I'd be prepared to just right off suppressive fire period if I can't get a satisfactory simulationist answer if it really came to that.)

Well...shields do not STOP bullets.  They provide DB, but any weapon can defeat them.  Sufficient energy will overcome the shield.  Since suppression fire is taking a direct hit by walking into a field of fire, survival is mostly lucked base, unless the weapon is unable to defeat the armor/shield present.

This of course means shields need to be rated against ME, LE and BE so we can know how much force is needed to over come the shield to get at the armor, but that adds a complexity only available in my mind.

An example would be Barrier Shield, ME5/14/24 (need ME5 or higher to penetrate, ME14 or higher 1/2 DB, ME24 or higher ignores shield).

Etc.

However, if the ME, LE or BE of a weapon is high enough to pierce the shield, it provides no DB against suppression fire.

Or not.

Regarding armor DB bonuses, the same logic applies.  If the armor reduces hits or crits, those bonuses would still be enjoyed.  We could add superior DB mod is subtracted from crit rolled against it from suppression fire, much like a protection versus heat spell reducing any crit suffered by it's bonus, but that is a can-o-worms indeed.

That's never been the way I imagine shields work, or at least how I imagine they SHOULD work. They SHOULD, in my opinion, ultimately stop bullets. (Not all the time, maybe, but they should.) RM/SM actually makes it rather hard to model shields "properly", I think, since it combines attack and damage into one abstract.

Shields, in my mind (and bearing in mind I don't actually play in either of the "official" SM backgrounds, just use SM as the mechanics) - and in the other games in which I play that our RM/SM games are but a small part of - create a barrier that stops stuff hitting you (like Star Trek/Star Wars/most computer games), but one that is not immune to spot failures if energy applied in one spot is high enough (or hits it just right), allowing the odd lucky attack to punch through.

In systems were attack and damage are different, shields can have hit points or something, and when the take enough damage, they collapse (barring the lucky shots which punch through in places).

What you are talkiing about would also work rather better in a traditional attack/damage system as then it's easy to give shields hit points to be depleted and/or a D&D style damage reduction, which does both of us.

RM's combined attack/damage system, though just does have some problems, especially in sci-fi where accuracy verses penetration becomes more important. It's something that I've always felt was a limitation (an unfortunately unavoidable one) of the system. (If I could have thought of a better way to fix it, I'd have done so long ago.) In addition to the way shields work, things like focussing bonuses, or multiple weapon mounts - or as I said in the OP, the tracking shot/spread burst - suffers from not being able to differentiate between attack and damage. You can - as I do - just sort of work around it, but sometimes it feels almost as bad as trying to use D&D/PF to model something that doesn't use Vancian casting (i.e. memoried spells)¹ it just doesn't feel right.



¹For my main D&D 3.5 campaign world, I actually scrapped spell memorisation altogether and gave everyone mana points instead. RM was always winning on that score!

[yammahoper]

That just doesn't work right with shields, though. (Or armour quality bonuses, which is the same sort of fish, really.) Aside from pure game mechanics, that doesn't make sense. (I play simulationst - which is why I play RM and D&D3.5(ish) and not D&D 4E - so "because it works in game mechanics" is an option that I am only prepared to use at the very last and only if I can squint hard enough.) Having shields just... not work... under one set of circumstances doesn't make sense.

(I'd be prepared to just right off suppressive fire period if I can't get a satisfactory simulationist answer if it really came to that.)

Well...shields do not STOP bullets.  They provide DB, but any weapon can defeat them.  Sufficient energy will overcome the shield.  Since suppression fire is taking a direct hit by walking into a field of fire, survival is mostly lucked base, unless the weapon is unable to defeat the armor/shield present.

This of course means shields need to be rated against ME, LE and BE so we can know how much force is needed to over come the shield to get at the armor, but that adds a complexity only available in my mind.

An example would be Barrier Shield, ME5/14/24 (need ME5 or higher to penetrate, ME14 or higher 1/2 DB, ME24 or higher ignores shield).

Etc.

However, if the ME, LE or BE of a weapon is high enough to pierce the shield, it provides no DB against suppression fire.

Or not.

Regarding armor DB bonuses, the same logic applies.  If the armor reduces hits or crits, those bonuses would still be enjoyed.  We could add superior DB mod is subtracted from crit rolled against it from suppression fire, much like a protection versus heat spell reducing any crit suffered by it's bonus, but that is a can-o-worms indeed.

That's never been the way I imagine shields work, or at least how I imagine they SHOULD work. They SHOULD, in my opinion, ultimately stop bullets. (Not all the time, maybe, but they should.) RM/SM actually makes it rather hard to model shields "properly", I think, since it combines attack and damage into one abstract.

Shields, in my mind (and bearing in mind I don't actually play in either of the "official" SM backgrounds, just use SM as the mechanics) - and in the other games in which I play that our RM/SM games are but a small part of - create a barrier that stops stuff hitting you (like Star Trek/Star Wars/most computer games), but one that is not immune to spot failures if energy applied in one spot is high enough (or hits it just right), allowing the odd lucky attack to punch through.

In systems were attack and damage are different, shields can have hit points or something, and when the take enough damage, they collapse (barring the lucky shots which punch through in places).

What you are talkiing about would also work rather better in a traditional attack/damage system as then it's easy to give shields hit points to be depleted and/or a D&D style damage reduction, which does both of us.

RM's combined attack/damage system, though just does have some problems, especially in sci-fi where accuracy verses penetration becomes more important. It's something that I've always felt was a limitation (an unfortunately unavoidable one) of the system. (If I could have thought of a better way to fix it, I'd have done so long ago.) In addition to the way shields work, things like focussing bonuses, or multiple weapon mounts - or as I said in the OP, the tracking shot/spread burst - suffers from not being able to differentiate between attack and damage. You can - as I do - just sort of work around it, but sometimes it feels almost as bad as trying to use D&D/PF to model something that doesn't use Vancian casting (i.e. memoried spells)¹ it just doesn't feel right.



¹For my main D&D 3.5 campaign world, I actually scrapped spell memorisation altogether and gave everyone mana points instead. RM was always winning on that score!

I see.  RM/SM has never been a realistic system.  It is best at broad, romantic generalizations off set by the danger of simulated wounds in combat.  Thus the 10 second melee and the logic behind OB/DB.  I find rules designed with this in mind work best.  Most rpg's break down in the heavy details.  It is in their nature.