Topic: Vehicle Combat Stats

[Mungo]

Hi,

In the process of designing an gravitic APC (=armoured personnel carrier), I took a closer look at the existing vehicles and there are some issues I have.

a) For me it is logical (and according to real world experience), that there is a clear hierarchy of things when it comes to Hits, Armor and armarment. I.e. a tank should have more DB and more hits than e.g. truck and so on. When looking at the actual numbers in the table from 12.5.07, this is in most cases true, but in my opinion the differences are too small.

Example: I want to design this APC. In real life it has MUCH less armor, hits and armarment than a tank. So I looked up the gravitic tank as reference (assuming it is a main battle tank)(the gravcarrier is for me no APC, so it was not useful). The tank has 48 hits -> an APC would have perhaps 35 with my gutfeeling. But then I see that a truck has 42? Going further with Armor, the tank has 30. So I would say an APC has 20-25 on the front and 15-20 on the sides. Then I see that the truck again has 15 and even a car has 10?

Now one may argue that I am wrong with my APC design, but looking at the criticals, I see that in most cases you need a difference of 10 to get it lowered by one result. In other words, a car receives (up to an adjusted attack roll of 80) a result 2 slots higher than a tank. Which means that when a car gets hit with a 60 (autocannon), the tank receives nearly the same result, just takes 3 hits less.... With his shields on he gets 6 hits less and has no -20 penalty.

So my bottomline is, that the tank is either too weak or the car too strong in rule terms. And I am sure, this is the case with many of the vehicles.

b) In the playtesting thread I already posted about Mk # and range. I don't want to repeat this here, but those arguments should also be taken into account here:

In real life, a cannon/weapon system requires a weapon platform, which must be pretty big. Anything smaller than that can not sustain a cannon but has medium and heavy support weapons. The smallest weapon platform in real life are trucks or APCs, and they use normally the smallest cannon available (although there are tank hunter versions with larger cannons on APC platform avaliable).

If this concept is also valid in HARP SF (which I would like to see) and is also valid for future energy weapons (which I also would like to see), then all weapons with Mk # should be removed from anything smaller than an APC, and also trucks should only have them in case the whole truck's purpose it that of a weapon's platform. And then this APC should get the smallest cannon available, i.e. Mk. 1 or Tiny.

At the moment there are tiny cannons on bikes...

As an addition note: For me it helps to try to find real life equivalents for each Mk #. In my eyes Mk 1 would be then (in caliber) 2-4 cm (which is used by APCs and fighter planes), Mk 2 would be up to 11 cm (which is used by small cannon based tank hunters and infantry support vehicles), Mk 3 would be 11-16 cm (which is used by any kind of main battle tank and medium artillery). Mk 4 would be 16-25 cm (which is basically any larger kind of artillery) and Mk 5 would be >25 cm (which is only used on battleships or railway based weapon platforms).

And Mk 1 would then also be burst capable -> do we need to extend the rules for burst fire to vehicles?

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

HARP is not real life. HARP SF is also not Spacemaster. There will be more simplifications and compromises. Your input is nevertheless welcome.

There is currently the potential for tiny cannons on gravbikes etc because support weapons did not exist when the vehicles were originally produced. Now that support weapons do exist, those sorts of weapons  are likely to replace the smaller cannon on smaller vehicles.

With regard to hits, structural hits for vehicles are determined by tonnage with some boundary cases. The scale is linear for specific tonnage ranges - the aim at the low end is to prevent someone with a pistol destroying a car with one shot, the aim at the high end is to keep the hits within manageable values (i.e. big spacecraft should have hundreds of hits, not thousands), while still keeping the vehicle critical tables usable for both space and vehicle combat. That also has an impact on other vehicle stats.

The vehicle stats are likely to receive a significant revision once I get the vehicle creation rules pinned down to a final format.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer.

I am aware that you will rework the vehicle section - therefore I wanted to get my feedback in before.

Concerning real life: you are completely right. And it is not my intention to emulate real life with HARP SF. My style of GMing is that I try to tell a story and don't want to look at the rules often, only when there are some difficult situations and so on. But that means that for me real life concepts must be easily transferrable into HARP SF rules. So when I tell my players: "There is a tank" and they start asking detailed questions, then I would like to come up with a fast and correct answer also in rule terms, not because I know them by heart but because I know the algorithms behind the rules. And to remember these algorithms, I like them being based on real life observations. Therefore, and only for that reason, cannons on bikes make me nervous in a HARP SF rule book.

Otherwise you clarified one point I thought about as well: what are hits and what is armor. So hits represent the size of the object and armor (as a function of DB) represent its hardness. Is this correct?

And what about burst fire for Mk. 1? Too complicated? If you agree to include that, I think a sentence like "The same manuevers as for hand weapons apply" would be enough.

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Otherwise you clarified one point I thought about as well: what are hits and what is armor. So hits represent the size of the object and armor (as a function of DB) represent its hardness. Is this correct?

Hits are determined by size/mass. Armor is its hardness.

And what about burst fire for Mk. 1? Too complicated? If you agree to include that, I think a sentence like "The same manuevers as for hand weapons apply" would be enough.

I don't want burst fire for "Mark I" (Tiny Vehicle weapons) because that turns them into Small Vehicle weapons. I also don't want the maneuvers for personal weapons to apply because a number of them are all about increasing or ignoring damage caps, which makes it more likely that vehicle combat will lead to vehicles being destroyed in one shot, increasing the chances of "total party kill" and campaign over. As it is, I'm expecting that I'll have to put a SysOp's Note in regarding what to do if the SysOp gets a destruction critical on a PC vehicle.

That means there is likely to be a discontinuity in vehicle mounted weapon systems - Real life "Mark I"'s that might have burst capability will be pushed down into the support category and Tiny may be Real-Life Mark I.5 and II's, if you see what I mean.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi,

Understood.

But then I would suggest to reconsider e.g. for a Blaster the RIs for Huge weapons.

BR
Juergen