Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth
...How did DR suddenly jump into this, and what do you mean by "the actual DR of a weapon"? That phrase should mean the DR that applies when the weapon itself takes a hit, but that's clearly not what you are talking about.
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...I wroit that post vary gud. :D
Anyway, let me try that again.
On page 14 of Pyramid #3/37, in the article "Beam and Laser Design", under the section header "Shots", it lays out the math for how many shots a power cell can hold. The math uses 1d damage as the baseline for the number of shots provided to various weapons from a "C" power cell of Tech Levels 9, 10, 11, and 12.
The short of it is, you take the number of shots provided to a 1d damage weapon by that tech level, number, and size of power cell, and divide it by the dice of damage, cubed.
For example, using a theoretical power cell which provides 1,000 1d shots, and a theoretical weapon which does 7d+2 damage, the formula would be:
(1,000) / 7.5^3 = 2.3 (we then drop the fraction to get 2 shots).
There are two relevant parts for the first conclusion. The first one is that power usage scales with the cube of the damage dice. The second is that energy weapon efficiency is flat; for example, as I understand it, laser weapons are 50% efficient.
The efficiency term, being a flat number, can then be dropped when deriving how much "raw power" a shot has - it's "actual value".
So, for example, 7d+2 (7.5d) damage has a raw power, in abstract numbers, of 421.875.
From there, a DR of 30 has a raw power, in abstract numbers, of 27,000.
Making these "raw power" numbers equivalent is then a matter of multiplying 7d by 4, then adding 2, getting a total of 30, and a "raw power" of 27,000.
Or, dividing the DR by 4, getting a total of 7.5, and a "raw power" of 421.875.
I am uncertain of the utility of this, but it does give us a linear scale for damage and DR.