Spaceship DR and damage

pawsplay · 05-30-2009, 01:03 PM

I don't own 4e stuff on ships and their weapons. Can someone benchmark me a few ships and weapons? Also, does Tales of the Solar Patrol use a similar scale?

Stormcrow · 05-30-2009, 01:39 PM

The Basic Set has general rules for vehicles. These rules cover all kinds of situations. If vehicles aren’t going to play a primary role in your game, the rules in the Basic Set are plenty. Tales of the Solar Patrol uses only these rules.

The Spaceships series includes detailed rules for the design and use of all kinds of ships. Use these rules if spaceships are featured heavily in your game and you like the detail. Whereas the Basic Set uses normal scale for DR and other statistics, Spaceships uses decade-scale (including dDR). Page 470 of the Basic Set explains how to convert from normal-scale to decade-scale.

The spaceships in Tales of the Solar Patrol do not convert perfectly to the Spaceships system. The problems include fitting the listed damage for atomic guns to the Spaceships tables and working out the correct acceleration and speed of the Electron Drive (the flight times in Tales of the Solar Patrol do not match those in Spaceships, or any realistic flight times).

Quadrone has attempted a conversion. I have been looking at this recently myself, and I can see some room for improvement.

pawsplay · 05-30-2009, 01:52 PM

I don't need rules, exactly. I want to know approximately how much damage a ship's laser cannon does, and what it would take to penetrate a small ship's DR. The basic set has a couple of star ships with DR 100, which seems almost nonsensical.

vicky_molokh · 05-30-2009, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pawsplay

I don't need rules, exactly. I want to know approximately how much damage a ship's laser cannon does, and what it would take to penetrate a small ship's DR. The basic set has a couple of star ships with DR 100, which seems almost nonsensical.

Assuming an SM+5 spaceship, you get 20 dHP (200 HP) for the ship, and about 5 dDR (50 DR) per extra 5% of mass dedicated to armor (on one of the three sides - front, rear, or mid) at TL9 (more at higher TLs or with Force Fields).

Scale HP and DR with SM the same way you scale penalties on the range table, i.e. 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50, 70 etc.

Langy · 05-30-2009, 02:06 PM

How's 100DR 'almost nonsensical'? A tank has roughly 1000DR. There are suits of ultra-tech armor with more than 100DR.

Depending on tech level, a small spaceship - roughly fighter size - might have around 30DR. The bigger they are, the more armor they have. Same with their weapon damage. The laser cannon in Ultra-Tech does around 6dx10 damage and would fit on a heavy fighter sized spaceship.

pawsplay · 05-30-2009, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Langy

How's 100DR 'almost nonsensical'? A tank has roughly 1000DR. There are suits of ultra-tech armor with more than 100DR.

Nonsensically small.

vicky_molokh · 05-30-2009, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pawsplay

Nonsensically small.

I hope you realize that this DR hangs on a metal box that wants to be as light as possible. Spaceships are not as dense as tanks, you know. If they spend 50% of their slots on armor, they won't be very useful.

05-30-2009, 01:03 PM	#1
pawsplay Join Date: Sep 2007	Spaceship DR and damage I don't own 4e stuff on ships and their weapons. Can someone benchmark me a few ships and weapons? Also, does Tales of the Solar Patrol use a similar scale?

05-30-2009, 01:39 PM	#2
Stormcrow Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Ronkonkoma, NY	Re: Spaceship DR and damage The Basic Set has general rules for vehicles. These rules cover all kinds of situations. If vehicles aren’t going to play a primary role in your game, the rules in the Basic Set are plenty. Tales of the Solar Patrol uses only these rules. The Spaceships series includes detailed rules for the design and use of all kinds of ships. Use these rules if spaceships are featured heavily in your game and you like the detail. Whereas the Basic Set uses normal scale for DR and other statistics, Spaceships uses decade-scale (including dDR). Page 470 of the Basic Set explains how to convert from normal-scale to decade-scale. The spaceships in Tales of the Solar Patrol do not convert perfectly to the Spaceships system. The problems include fitting the listed damage for atomic guns to the Spaceships tables and working out the correct acceleration and speed of the Electron Drive (the flight times in Tales of the Solar Patrol do not match those in Spaceships, or any realistic flight times). Quadrone has attempted a conversion. I have been looking at this recently myself, and I can see some room for improvement.

05-30-2009, 01:52 PM	#3
pawsplay Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Spaceship DR and damage I don't need rules, exactly. I want to know approximately how much damage a ship's laser cannon does, and what it would take to penetrate a small ship's DR. The basic set has a couple of star ships with DR 100, which seems almost nonsensical.

05-30-2009, 02:06 PM	#5
Langy Join Date: May 2008 Location: CA	Re: Spaceship DR and damage How's 100DR 'almost nonsensical'? A tank has roughly 1000DR. There are suits of ultra-tech armor with more than 100DR. Depending on tech level, a small spaceship - roughly fighter size - might have around 30DR. The bigger they are, the more armor they have. Same with their weapon damage. The laser cannon in Ultra-Tech does around 6dx10 damage and would fit on a heavy fighter sized spaceship.