[UT] Help! Future Combat Revolving Around Ultra-Tech Stabbery

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Unless you have a stasis web, some serious range on that EMGL, or you have some means of rapidly getting away, or you have no intention of surviving, the mini-nuke and the anti-matter grenade are seriously overrated weapons. They tend to kill everything around them, including the attacker.

Any shields that provide more than DR 50 will make mini-nukes risky, but survivable, at ca 70 yds and more. At anything over a hundred yards, you don't really have to worry about them inside your shield bubble. Shields that are able to stop TL11 energy weapons or a burst from a TL11 military projectile weapon with AP rounds will probably also make mini-nukes safe at similar ranges as fragmentation grenades are in our world.

A danger of trying to finesse the setting technological assmptions to support a given style of play is ignoring unintended consequences of the technology in existence and ending up with a world where the established tactics clearly don't make any sense and the PCs can dominate through the simple expedient of picking out the most powerful weapons in Ultra-Tech.

Probably best to avoid warfare at TL11 if you want anything resembling melee (or warfighting as we know it). Real warfare would be a matter of arcane technological skills, not fighting skills. The precision of high-energy arrays and detection equipmnt in space; sensors, ECM and ECCM elsewhere. Once you had a targeting lock, it would be dead in short order.

Civilians, police and security units might get up to melees within habitats and suchlike, but not because the shields made any other soluation impossible, but because they culturally or politically were restricted from using the most powerful TL11 weapons that would still leave structures standing.*

*Flesh-eating nano, corrosive ultra nerve gas, EMP followed up by lots of conventional shooting, etc.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Any shields that provide more than DR 50 will make mini-nukes risky, but survivable, at ca 70 yds and more. At anything over a hundred yards, you don't really have to worry about them inside your shield bubble. Shields that are able to stop TL11 energy weapons or a burst from a TL11 military projectile weapon with AP rounds will probably also make mini-nukes safe at similar ranges as fragmentation grenades are in our world.

Of course, since one of the assumptions for this thread was a range of five yards or less, nukes don't seem all that great even with high-DR shields.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, TL8 ones, sure. TL10 stats seem okayish.

Compare the UT weapns on p.134 and 140. The only advantage the TL9 vortex pistol over the TL9 15mm Paintball gun has is ACC 2 instead of ACC 1. Range and ROF are distinctly inferior.

[Seneschal]

Submitting barrier v.3, which might address the issues you guys have pointed out so far.

• The barrier isn't always active. Passive sensors (distributed around the chest-harness) detect incoming attacks, and image recognition software discriminates between harmless objects (approaching puppies) and objects that will miss (cars passing by). It also alerts the wearer to incoming fire like a Near Miss Indicator (UT, p. 188) and provides 360° Vision for those with the cognitive enhancement to process all this visual feedback.
• When an attack is detected, the emitter projects a sphere whose surface is space-warped enough to make the attack miss. Since no light is getting through, from the attacker's point of view, the target disappears for a split-second; the defender, meanwhile, is blinded. From a barrier under constant fire, one must act as if making Pop-Up Attacks.
• The barrier only needs to be active for a few microseconds - there is no need for speed limits. Sticky grenades are deflected normally. Lasers, however, cannot be detected before they hit; they will get a conservative treatment, and those small enough to be portable won't do much damage against modern armour. Individuals with Danger Sense or Precognition, however, can pre-emptively activate their barrier.
• Two spheres bent in separate directions counteract. Once two shielded individuals come within 1 m of each other, the space between them where the spheres overlap (i.e. the hex-face between their tokens) is barrier-free - they can bonk each other with sticks or fast-draw and fire from the hip. Barrier generators cannot be installed into bullets smaller than 25mm.

How does that seem? See any exploits?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

Submitting barrier v.3, which might address the issues you guys have pointed out so far.

• The barrier isn't always active. Passive sensors (distributed around the chest-harness) detect incoming attacks, and image recognition software discriminates between harmless objects (approaching puppies) and objects that will miss (cars passing by). It also alerts the wearer to incoming fire like a Near Miss Indicator (UT, p. 188) and provides 360° Vision for those with the cognitive enhancement to process all this visual feedback.
• When an attack is detected, the emitter projects a sphere whose surface is space-warped enough to make the attack miss. Since no light is getting through, from the attacker's point of view, the target disappears for a split-second; the defender, meanwhile, is blinded. From a barrier under constant fire, one must act as if making Pop-Up Attacks.
• The barrier only needs to be active for a few microseconds - there is no need for speed limits. Sticky grenades are deflected normally. Lasers, however, cannot be detected before they hit; they will get a conservative treatment, and those small enough to be portable won't do much damage against modern armour. Individuals with Danger Sense or Precognition, however, can pre-emptively activate their barrier.
• Two spheres bent in separate directions counteract. Once two shielded individuals come within 1 m of each other, the space between them where the spheres overlap (i.e. the hex-face between their tokens) is barrier-free - they can bonk each other with sticks or fast-draw and fire from the hip. Barrier generators cannot be installed into bullets smaller than 25mm.

How does that seem? See any exploits?

Boomsticks make a comeback. Also expect UAVs to become weird but deadly.

[Seneschal]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Boomsticks make a comeback. Also expect UAVs to become weird but deadly.

Boomsticks might be fun, and they don't affect game balance too much. To stick someone with an explosive powerful enough to kill him, you'll have to be within Reach 1 (so, it's more of a boom-sword), otherwise his barrier will activate. And when you're that close, your barrier is cancelled out too, so the blast affects both of you. In fact, since barriers reflect everything, they'll contain the explosion like an enclosed space does. Sounds pretty dangerous.

I don't see how UAVs would be deadly. You mean they'd go into melee? Like those little slasher-helicopters from Half-Life 2?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

Boomsticks might be fun, and they don't affect game balance too much. To stick someone with an explosive powerful enough to kill him, you'll have to be within Reach 1 (so, it's more of a boom-sword), otherwise his barrier will activate. And when you're that close, your barrier is cancelled out too, so the blast affects both of you. In fact, since barriers reflect everything, they'll contain the explosion like an enclosed space does. Sounds pretty dangerous.

At this point, all you get from shields is that range is reduced, but combats are still most likely solved in one successful attack.

Originally Posted by Seneschal

I don't see how UAVs would be deadly. You mean they'd go into melee? Like those little slasher-helicopters from Half-Life 2?

Yeah. Except they wouldn't be based on choppy research, they'll be based on dakka. Get in 1 metre of distance, shoot a gyroc at the target.

A UAV (either NAI, or teleoperated) is still cheaper than growing and training a human soldier, particularly if your states don't use conscription and rely on above-Average troops.

[Seneschal]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

At this point, all you get from shields is that range is reduced, but combats are still most likely solved in one successful attack.

Sounds about right. At Reach 1, you can do a forward Retreat and Parry someone that's trying to shoot you. At Reach C, firearms suffer Bulk penalties. Knifing of boomsticking someone becomes viable (if not the first choice). The point was to make it so that highly skilled sword-wielding characters won't get slaughtered in combat, not to make everyone, even professional soldiers, only use swords.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Yeah. Except they wouldn't be based on choppy research, they'll be based on dakka. Get in 1 metre of distance, shoot a gyroc at the target.

A UAV (either NAI, or teleoperated) is still cheaper than growing and training a human soldier, particularly if your states don't use conscription and rely on above-Average troops.

Ok, I can see how this would be a problem. Errr.... barriers don't protect against EMP, perhaps?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

Ok, I can see how this would be a problem. Errr.... barriers don't protect against EMP, perhaps?

OK, but do barrier generators suffer from EMP? Does other stuff? Electronics become ubiquitous by TL9. You also fry most of your habitat if you 'carpet bomb' your rooms with EMP.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Icelander

A danger of trying to finesse the setting technological assmptions to support a given style of play is ignoring unintended consequences of the technology in existence and ending up with a world where the established tactics clearly don't make any sense and the PCs can dominate through the simple expedient of picking out the most powerful weapons in Ultra-Tech.

No, you don't allow players to pick just anything from Ultra-Tech. For an obvious, straw-manny example, you wouldn't let someone pick a Disintegrator in a hard sci-fi game, for example. If you want a melee-oriented game, you'd only allow lame, gimpy ranged weapons and allow over-powered melee weapons, or you'd focus on defense systems that negate ranged weapons. For example, if everyone in the TL 11 setting have beam adapted armor and shields that stop extremely fast (as in, near c) weapons and you allowed only lasers and vibroblades, then vibroblades would have a huge advantage.

The problem here is straining the SOD of the players. They may begin to ask "Okay, but where are the AK-47s?" They may be lower tech, but they can bypass the shields and ignore the beam adaption of the armor, and while they don't have the penetrative power of the lasers, you can load other TL 11 ammunition in them, like HEMP or HD rounds. So you need a plausible reason to say that AK-47s don't exist either (perhaps this is so far in the future that people haven't made them for thousands of years and it simply doesn't occur to the civilization to explore explosive-powered ranged weapons).

Though, in my experience, the moment you start crafting a semi-plausible sci-fi setting where melee is the focus, most people turn off their brains and prep for Star Wars or Dune; Space Opera, in other words. So we're probably overthinking things. Not everyone has the need for the rigid physics and future-history that the forums seem to enjoy very much, if the Rule of Cool is in effect (and really, the Rule of Cool is the only possible way melee weapons can compete with field-jacketed X-ray lasers)