HIGH-TECH-Arrived-Gun Damage

[Ashrem Bayle]

Regarding the .50 cal:

I don't know if a single round can severe at the torso, but I'm pretty certain that it would remove a large portion of it. Blowing an arm off is very possible, and I bet it could take of a leg too.

I'd imagine a head shot would result in a blood spurting stump of a neck.

In short... I'd rather not be shot by a 50cal. ;)

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Ashrem Bayle

Regarding the .50 cal:

I don't know if a single round can severe at the torso, but I'm pretty certain that it would remove a large portion of it. Blowing an arm off is very possible, and I bet it could take of a leg too.

I'd imagine a head shot would result in a blood spurting stump of a neck.

In short... I'd rather not be shot by a 50cal. ;)

DeMaio's book on Gunshot Wounds (that's its title) has a photo of a corpse hit in the head by a .30-30; the top half of the head was mostly gone. The .50 BMG would be that much worse.

[Ashrem Bayle]

I was watching a special on the SEALs once and a SEAL sniper talked about shooting a man with the Barret 50cal.

He said he had set up to watch over an enemy encampment. He wasn't there to shoot people, but to disable any vehicles going in or out of the camp.

He could see the rest of his team moving in. Suddenly there was movement in the camp and he realized his team had been spotted. Unfortunately, his team didn't realize it.

He said that one of the enemy pulled out and RPG and got into position to fire at his team. Not having any other choice, he shot the man.

He said the dude just "kinda popped like a balloon". There was dead silence for a moment as the enemy just stared at their man, who had been alive a second before, but had just been splattered all over the place.

[Kromm]

Hans and Shawn used a self-consistent system that assigned damage on the basis of the same factors for each weapon -- even when the results disagreed with a weapon's anecdotal lethality. There's a mathematical basis for every weapon stat in High-Tech. The results might not always agree with war stories and "common wisdom" . . . but with apologies to dead and decorated soldiers everywhere, neither of those things is worth its weight in ants. Lots of soldiers throughout a series of wars swore by the .45 (and the 7.62×63 mm, and lots of other calibers) because, well, that's what they were issued, and they shot off a lot of rounds and killed a lot of enemies. I imagine that by the 2100s, there will be similar cults built up around a few early 2000s rounds, too.

It's important to remember that the real reasons why a round is popular nearly always have to do with time in service, with logistics and supply, and with shooting-end factors such as flash, noise, recoil, and ammo weight, rather than with wounding-end factors. "So there I was, overrun by <nickname for enemy> in my foxhole, and this @!*#ing <disparaged weapon> wasn't stopping them. I pulled out my <cult weapon>, and seven shots later, they were all on the ground!" is a compelling story, but it's sensationalist . . . most guns are as good as other guns for shooting people at point-blank range. Which doesn't detract from the myth of "stopping power." With the advent of effective, inexpensive body armor, I imagine that the new cults will all be built up around the rounds that are good penetrators.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Hans and Shawn used a self-consistent system that assigned damage on the basis of the same factors for each weapon -- even when the results disagreed with a weapon's anecdotal lethality.

It should be pointed out that one of the reasons I kept my damage calculation system "in my pants," as it were, before and during the playtest is because I'd seen their system, and it produces VERY solid results while at the same time being simpler than mine. Both models produce accurate results in the regime of most common small-arms rounds, and I'd be willing to bet that theirs is better for cannons, since I didn't calibrate mine in that range OTHER than one data point: the 16" guns of the Iowa class.

Most of the WTF! moments in stat comparison will come because people aren't satisfied with BREAKPOINT settings. There's no question AT ALL that, for example, a .40S&W will punch through body armor better than a .45ACP; it's the final wound that matters, and since the .40 and .45 are both pi+, the .40 will come out "better." Them's the breaks, and it's self-consistent breakage - meaning it's not really broken.

With the advent of effective, inexpensive body armor, I imagine that the new cults will all be built up around the rounds that are good penetrators.

Witness the cult of the PDW, which already has rather loud detractors and proponents over the "lots of small, highly penetrating, but lightweight rounds" theory.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by Ashrem Bayle

I was watching a special on the SEALs once and a SEAL sniper talked about shooting a man with the Barret 50cal.

He said he had set up to watch over an enemy encampment. He wasn't there to shoot people, but to disable any vehicles going in or out of the camp.

He could see the rest of his team moving in. Suddenly there was movement in the camp and he realized his team had been spotted. Unfortunately, his team didn't realize it.

He said that one of the enemy pulled out and RPG and got into position to fire at his team. Not having any other choice, he shot the man.

He said the dude just "kinda popped like a balloon". There was dead silence for a moment as the enemy just stared at their man, who had been alive a second before, but had just been splattered all over the place.

That's exactly what happens when a .50 cal hits a human target....it explodes.

If you hit a limb, the limb disappears.

.50 BMG is.....nasty.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Most of the WTF! moments in stat comparison will come because people aren't satisfied with BREAKPOINT settings.

Ah, well, that's just a consequence of making GURPS playable as a tabletop game. Every tabletop game has breakpoints . . . they're friendlier than on-the-fly math with continuous variables for those who don't game with a computer nearby. I guess we should really have HP heal in proportion to HP/10 instead of setting thresholds for doubling healing rate at HP 20, tripling it at HP 30, and so on. We should probably leave fractions on Basic Move, too. But in reality, most gamers would hate us for that. ;)

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Witness the cult of the PDW, which already has rather loud detractors and proponents over the "lots of small, highly penetrating, but lightweight rounds" theory.

. . . while the .45 is simultaneously ragged on for having no penetration against body armor and praised for "stopping power." My conclusion is that if a round fails to drop a bad guy, people will seize upon any excuse to disparage it. "Doesn't penetrate well!" and "Doesn't wound effectively!" are two examples. And no matter which one you fix, the other will end up being the big problem. The biggest problem of all being that if someone is dead-set on killing you, and you don't shoot his brain or spine out, no handgun round is really going to stop him before he falls upon you and eats your face. If you routinely face berserkers in body armor, bring a proper long arm. Or a saber.

[HANS]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Most of the WTF! moments in stat comparison will come because people aren't satisfied with BREAKPOINT settings. There's no question AT ALL that, for example, a .40S&W will punch through body armor better than a .45ACP; it's the final wound that matters, and since the .40 and .45 are both pi+, the .40 will come out "better." Them's the breaks, and it's self-consistent breakage - meaning it's not really broken.

Doug has it exactly nailed -- as he did in several earlier posts. GURPS Dmg is based on penetration, which is a function of muzzle energy and cross-section (ie, calibre). This means that ALL damage figures in HIGH-TECH actually stand in a specific, mathematically arrived relation to each other. They have not been eyeballed or based on anecdotical evidence.

Now, to the specific issues mentioned.

1. The .40 S&W is a better penetrator than the .45 ACP. This can be easily verified by anybody who cares to look. Hence, Dmg of the .40 S&W must be higher. 2d+2 vs 2d. Check.

2. The .45 ACP makes a bigger hole, evident from its bigger calibre. Here is where GURPS doesn't work quite as well as it should -- the reason is that there is only ONE wound type modifier between 10mm and 15mm, pi+. If the .45 ACP gets pi+ (1.5), then .40 S&W should get less. However, there is no smaller wound modifier available. You could, as a house rule, work with 1.2 instead; this would certainly mirror reality better, but then you'd need to give that modifier to every other .40/10mm type bullet, as well -- and stuff in the .50/12.7mm range should get 1.7-1.8, etc. You quickly get dozens of different wound type modifiers, instead of the four we have now (pi-, pi, pi+, pi++). That's basically what Doug's more detailed damage system does. However, I (and David Pulver, who designed most of the damage calculation system, and Kromm) don't think that's very gameable (you need a calculator all the time), and that's the reason GURPS opts for the simpler, less accurate solution here -- and has for nigh 20 years now, since HIGH-TECH First Edition.

3. I personally have no problem with this at all. Sure, the .40 S&W comes out a bit better than the .45 ACP in the game. But a. the "legendary" .45 ACP is likely overrated. b. game-logically, the .40 S&W has the advantage of two TLs over the .45 ACP. c. this serves as (one, out of several which don't actually play into the "damage" discussion) explanation for the prevalance of the .40 S&W cartridge, whose official users in police and military service today outnumber the .45 ACP by a large margin.

So in short, there is nothing really wrong with the Dmg figures in HIGH-TECH (if you pardon this author saying it). If you prefer more realism in that particular department, use a different wounding modifier as house rule -- but don't forget that you'll need to change it also for other rounds . . .

Cheers

HANS

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Ah, well, that's just a consequence of making GURPS playable as a tabletop game. Every tabletop game has breakpoints . . . they're friendlier than on-the-fly math with continuous variables for those who don't game with a computer nearby.

In the words of Mira Furlan (Ambassador Delenn): "Abso-fraggin-lutely...."

The biggest problem of all being that if someone is dead-set on killing you, and you don't shoot his brain or spine out, no handgun round is really going to stop him before he falls upon you and eats your face. If you routinely face berserkers in body armor, bring a proper long arm. Or a saber.

Or a long-arm that shoots sabers. Or a saber wielded by a really long arm.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by HANS

However, I (and David Pulver, who designed most of the damage calculation system, and Kromm) don't think that's very gameable (you need a calculator all the time), and that's the reason GURPS opts for the simpler, less accurate solution here -- and has for nigh 20 years now, since HIGH-TECH First Edition.

And to pile on, as the author of the detailed system and lead playtester, I would have had ample opportunity to whinge about needing more breakpoints in the playtest. Which I didn't do, and I don't recall (granted, thousands of posts and a long time ago) remember anyone else doing either.

This is because while intellectually satisfying, it'd be stupid. In a game disparaged for requiring a Cray MP to do chargen, this would be over the top. Add 50% is "bad" enough. I'm much more concerned with playability these days than uber-accuracy (though I like the uber in the background, as it is with High Tech).

If we expressed armor as dice, you could have levels of bullet size modifier like "after you subract the dice of DR of armor from the dice of DR of the weapon, apply the following modifiers based on bullet size: -2/die for really tiny rounds; -1/die for small rounds; roll existing damage for normal rounds; roll +1/die for Xmm to Ymm rounds, +2/die for Ymm to Zmm rounds; double damage dice for 15mm and up, etc."

Whether this should be size based, or some funky combination of square roots of square roots of energy and cross section and momentum (like my fomulas are), it would allow more granularity and fairly easy "beyond armor" effects. It would also be irritating, requiring either abstruse notation on the stat sheet (pi -1, pi -2, pi +3, or something like that for adds per die) or a lookup table.

Icky, no matter how you slice it. Simplicity wins, with prejudice, here.