What 4e Vehicles .pdfs do people want to see?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Langy

This doesn't follow. I might know I want an M1A2 Abrams for my Iraq War game because that's what I heard about on the news (or whatever), but I haven't the faintest idea how much armor an M1A2 carries, in GURPS terms or real-world ones.

Langy: Check out this website http://www.members.tripod.com/collinsj/protect.htm

M1A2 SEP (2)

Against KE (ball, APFSDSDU, any solid impactor)
Turret: 940-960 Glacis:560-590
Lower front hull:580-650

Against CE (Chemical Energy; basically HEAT and explosive jets)
Turret: 1320-1620 Glacis:510-1050
Lower front hull:800-970

the values are in mm of RHA equivalent. And 1mm of RHA equivalent is about DR2.75 (at DR70 to the inch). You'll have to play with the armor divisors, levels of hardened, etc, if you want that level of detail.

So for KE impacts, the M1 on the turret is about 950mm RHA equivalent, or DR2612 (!). I'm sure you can do the rest of the math. :-)

Harder to find are the "non-critical" angles, like turret sides, but they're usually pretty thin, relatively speaking.

[Langy]

Cool! Thanks. Was trying to find those figures a while ago, but my search-fu was apparently rather weak. Doesn't really change my position that armor's probably one of the more difficult statistics to figure out, though.

Still: bookmarked!

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Langy

This doesn't follow. I might know I want an M1A2 Abrams for my Iraq War game because that's what I heard about on the news (or whatever), but I haven't the faintest idea how much armor an M1A2 carries, in GURPS terms or real-world ones.

Why would it matter? I know this isn't The GURPS Way™, but for the most part, you don't need to know the actual value. It's a tank!
Here's the RPG-specific values you need to keep in mind:

1. It's immune to small-arms fire.
2. Can be taken out by anti-tank weapons of the proper TL and scale.
3. Carries a HUGE cannon, which is usually overkill for destroying non-tanks, and roughly on-par for killing other tanks.
4. Modern tanks have a crew that is smaller than a typical gaming group.
5. Modern tanks are NBC-sealed and have scads of comm gear, sensors, and navigation equipment.
6. Some tanks can float or "swim" across rivers.
7. Some tanks have extra weapons, like a machinegun on the turret.
8. Tanks have terrible Handling - way worse than pretty much anything but a bridge-layer. But they can turn in place.
9. Tanks are pretty stable. It's really hard to flip a tank.
10. Acceleration is poor compared to most other vehicles, since nowadays they use turbines, which have poor acceleration.
11. They have surprisingly high top speed, since they use turbines, and they go pretty fast in rough terrain.
12. HT is the one area where stats would be good - I've heard that there's a wide spectrum of reliability.

I think that list covers most of the situations where you might need "a tank". Sure, I can imagine a few situations where you really would need to know the actual armor value (or weight, or top speed on a highway, or whatever) of specific models of tanks, but I think that's pretty rare in a story-driven game.

EDIT: Because some people are going bonkers over my tone or something, let me ask it a different way:
Why do you think you need the stats for a tank? The focus of the game matters!

1. If you're playing a WWII vehicle warfare game and your opponents are very close in power, then I agree that you need the stats. Have fun getting the specs for every model of tank you need. Feel free to stat them down to things like "This one has a bulldozer blade on it that reduces top speed by 2 mph when up, and by more when you're actually bulldozing, although that amount depends on the earth being moved."
   To my mind, this is like a group of players who are all very happy to play martial arts games where everyone has lots of techniques and strange chi powers, and the difference between a jump kick and a pole-vault kick is very important to everyone. Not my cup of tea, but to each their own.
2. If you're playing a WWII vehicle warfare game and your opponents are not very close in power, then you could stat everything up (like above). Or in the interests of keeping the game going, the GM could gloss over the gritty details and say, "You can easily defeat any one of the enemy's tanks in a stand-up fight, and might have some trouble with two, but one of yours on three of theirs will go poorly for you." and let you do so with a couple of rolls against the mooks (just one tank at a time).
   To my mind, this is like a RAW game of Dungeon Fantasy: you shoot the mooks and they go down regardless of damage, but you have to track a little more detail with worthy adversaries, and a lot more detail with boss monsters. This is my cup of tea. I like this level of detail.
3. If you're playing a fast-paced, cinematic spy game, and through clever role-playing the hero(es) manage to make off with a tank (see the "Goldeneye" Bond movie), then you could stat everything up (like above) and calculate whether or not a tank can crush a police car or drive through a building. Or in the interests of keeping the game going, the GM could gloss over the gritty details and say, "You easily crush the police cars! But it looks like other tanks are following you. Quick, what do you do before they catch up and blast you?", and the player responds with "If the buildings here are not steel skyscrapers, I turn and drive through one! Those tankers aren't likely to try shooting through buildings to get me!", and the GM responds "Brilliant! You smash through a brick storefront and out the other side into a parallel road"
   To my mind, the game system BESM works well at this level of resolution. It's specifically designed without many details to keep the action and the story moving. I like this style of play even with GURPS, but my experience is that many GURPS players see the system's number-crunchiness and always play at that level, sometimes to the detriment of pacing. Again, to each their own.

Originally Posted by Langy

Armor, handling, stability rating, and health are all statistics that aren't obvious even for people who know the real-world vehicle very well. Load, occupancy, and speed/acceleration are all things that are easy to figure out if you have the real-world stats - it's those other ones that are difficult.

You're right. But I'm not pontificating against putting in any stats at all, but I think it's a bit overkill to need stats for more than a few primary examples, and I can't imagine ever wanting more than half a page of history and details on a specific model of tank. Far more interesting is having a general description of crew and operations commonalities of WWI tanks, another for WWII tanks, another for Cold War tanks, and so on, plus perhaps a few notes on some special cases. I think it would have broader appeal to have a book on "Tanks Through the Ages", or maybe split it up into pre- and post-WWII, so you could include the tank-related vehicles like tank transports, bunker busters, bridge-layers, etc.

I'll reiterate my main point: The suggested topics for these vehicles PDFs (e.g."WWII Axis Tanks 1944-1945") is scoped too narrow. For broader appeal, the subject matter would have to be broader and more generalized.

Demi

[Langy]

Why would it matter? I know this isn't The GURPS Way™, but for the most part, you don't need to know the actual value. It's a tank!

What if I'm doing GURPS Tank Warfare? Would be useful to know how much damage that Iraqi T-60 (or whatever they used when they actually had tanks fighting the US) can do to my M1. Can it shoot through the frontal glacis plate, or can it only be taken out by hitting the side armor? Stuff like that.


In any case, I'm not arguing against the rest of your post. I just think 'know you want a specific model of vehicle' and 'know the exact stats for that vehicle' don't follow. I agree completely with your last few paragraphs and the majority of the rest of your last post.

[PK]

Originally Posted by ectropy

I think that list covers most of the situations where you might need "a tank". Sure, I can imagine a few situations where you really would need to know the actual armor value (or weight, or top speed on a highway, or whatever) of specific models of tanks, but I think that's pretty rare in a story-driven game.

That's hardly generic and universal. In fact, that's a method of play specific to a somewhat narrow set of assumptions.

What if I'm playing in a modern warfare game and my soldier has a LAW with HEAT rounds? How many hits will it take to bring down the tank?

What if we're playing a supers game, and I want to build a brick who's as tough as a tank -- how much DR do I give him? How much damage should his punch do, if I want it to be as damaging as a tank shell? (The latter is in High-Tech, granted, but that's beside the point.)

What if Godzilla is attacking the city and I drive a tank into him at top speed -- does the collision do enough damage to hurt him at all?

While the answer to these questions can be "The GM decides," The GM decides," and "The GM decides," that just brings RPGs back to the days of Cowboys and Indians ("I hit you! You're dead!" "Nuh-uh, you missed!"), except that only one of the people playing the game gets to decide ("Man, Mark must be in a bad mood tonight -- he keeps saying that none of our attacks are hitting."). The reason rules, statistics, and dice rolls were added to RPGs was to give the group a reasonably impartial and fair way to figure out what happens when (say) you launch a 1-ton boulder out of a TL3 trebuchet at a Sherman tank.

[HANS]

Originally Posted by ectropy

Why would it matter?

It doesn't to you. That has (almost) zip relevance, I'm afraid. I'm not saying that your suggestion to include MORE than just stats and detail on specific vehicles is wrong, far from it. But your conclusion that stats and detail are useless to all or even just a majority of gamers is based on generalising your own outlook -- and therefore wrong from the start. There are many ways to play, there are many genres and styles etc.
Since GURPS has that pesky "G" for Generic in the title, it strives to provide material for all (or at least most) situations. What happes if you don't have "antitank weapons of the proper TL and scale"? Can you take it out with magic? Superstrength? A boulder from a cliff?

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]Can be taken out by anti-tank weapons of the proper TL and scale.

From which side? Do I need one or several hits (actually way more common in real-life)? What is the proper scale?

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]Carries a HUGE cannon, which is usually overkill for destroying non-tanks, and roughly on-par for killing other tanks.

What is "usually"? What is "on-par"? How does that even remotely figure into the way GURPS handles these things (with skill rolls and damage rolls etc)?

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]Modern tanks have a crew that is smaller than a typical gaming group.

Again with the generalisations. Modern tanks have 3-4 crewmembers (and which have which?). That's the exact size of virtually all my gaming groups since 1983.

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]Modern tanks are NBC-sealed and have scads of comm gear, sensors, and navigation equipment.

What's the range on those comms and sensors? How do these interact with PC skills?

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]Some tanks can float or "swim" across rivers.

Which ones?

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]Some tanks have extra weapons, like a machinegun on the turret.

Which tanks have which extra weapons, and what are their stats? Which skills do you need to operate them? Against which targets can you use them?

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]Acceleration is poor compared to most other vehicles, since nowadays they use turbines, which have poor acceleration.

Wrong overgeneralisation. Most modern tanks actually still use multifuel diesels. The reason for the (relatively) slow acceleration has nothing to do with the turbines and everything with the weight of the things and how their transmissions work.

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]They have surprisingly high top speed, since they use turbines, and they go pretty fast in rough terrain.

Has nothing to do with turbines but rather with the overall power output.

Originally Posted by ectropy

[*]HT is the one area where stats would be good - I've heard that there's a wide spectrum of reliability.

So the only stat you need for a tank is HT?

Originally Posted by ectropy

I think that list covers most of the situations where you might need "a tank".

Not in my book.

Originally Posted by ectropy

and I can't imagine

Sorry, but there is your mistake. Other people can.

Cheers

HANS

[DouglasCole]

Even for armor, the lowest set of assumptions you probably want to put down covers something like:

how well protected is my tank from the front, sides, rear, above and below.

Checking that website I posted, and looking at various tanks, one might (over) generalize that certain frontal areas get DR X. Other frontal areas that can fully expect to take fire sometimes get about DR X/2 to DR 2X/3. Examples here are the Turret Front, which tends to be about the strongest protected in modern tanks, and the glacis and lower front hull get slightly reduced protection.

Now, the turret sides seem to be much worse off, often around X/3, while the hull sides also seem to be pretty easy meat, something like X/6.

Top and bottom seem hard to find. but if we go with 1000mm RHA protection for the turrent front of a first-line modern tank (that's DR2750!), we'd find DR1375 to 1800 on the rest of the front arc. The Turret Sides would be around DR900, and the hull sides around DR450. Now, if DR70 is one inch of RHA, then "chinks in armor" on these areas at DR/2 would be as low as DR225 or so, still the equivalent of 3" of RHA steel (although RHA isn't particularly GOOD armor, so the actual LOS thickness will be much lower).

One might even suspect that the rear, especially, might even be lower than this; the prevalence of top-attack and anti-tank mines that surely existed during the design phases of such modern tanks might preclude too much reduction on the top and bottom, but one never knows.

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

What if I'm playing in a modern warfare game and my soldier has a LAW with HEAT rounds? How many hits will it take to bring down the tank?

I agree, that's a great reason to have stats for the specific model of tank and LAW in that scene.

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

What if we're playing a supers game, and I want to build a brick who's as tough as a tank -- how much DR do I give him? How much damage should his punch do, if I want it to be as damaging as a tank shell? (The latter is in High-Tech, granted, but that's beside the point.)

What if Godzilla is attacking the city and I drive a tank into him at top speed -- does the collision do enough damage to hurt him at all?

So, with the super who is as tough as a tank, does it matter if he's tougher than a M1 Abrams, but not as tough as a Ukrainian T-84 (finding the mathematical mean of their DRs)? Or would you be satisfied with giving him DR that's roughly the right range, perhaps rounded to a nice value? Or is the descriptor "tougher than a tank" supposed to mean "immune to small-arms fire"?

With Godzilla, I'd say the answer depends on how the GM is using the giant, radioactive monster:

• If Godzilla is one of several giant, radioactive monsters attacking the city, and the heroes are in the hierarchy of the defending forces, then it probably does matter what the actual DR/HP/HT values are for all units - defeating Godzilla quickly saves more lives over the course of the monster invasion, and ultimately the PCs are expected to defeat the monsters in a protracted series of fights. In this case, the GM probably has stats for Godzilla tweaked just right to use up a specific amount of the defenders' forces, or tweaked so that the defenders realize they must try a different technique ("Ok, so let's lead Godzilla into a trap where we use the whole tank division to shoot off it's ankle, which will slow down the rampage.")
• If Godzilla is the supernatural threat, the MacGuffin, that drives the plot (something like "Uniting humankind to battle the effects of global pollution gone wild"), then no mere tank can stop him, and might just barely be able to distract him for a moment. Here, Godzilla is the stand-in for either "The Gods" or "Nature" in the reductionist list of story plots (i.e. "Man Against The Gods" or "Man Against Nature"). In this, actual values are not needed for tanks and airplanes and so on, because the tanks are merely fodder (from DF2, page 27) that are dispatched with ease. Here, the story-telling technique uses the tanks to highlight Godzilla's awesome might - "That tank driver valiantly rammed Godzilla's foot and fired his cannon at point blank range, and Godzilla crushed the tank like an ant! Godzilla is too powerful to defeat with tanks and bombs. We must find another way." In much the same way as the ancient Greeks told of the villain's arrow/spear/etc slaying the hero's charioteer with a single blow - to show that the villain is so bad-ass, that he can kill a soldier with a single blow, and the hero escaped that same fate by the grace of the gods.

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

The reason rules, statistics, and dice rolls were added to RPGs was to give the group a reasonably impartial and fair way to figure out what happens when (say) you launch a 1-ton boulder out of a TL3 trebuchet at a Sherman tank.

Again, that's a great reason to have specific stats. But do you care that the tank is specifically a Sherman tank? Or would a Pershing also fit the story? If it has to be a Sherman, does it matter if it's a M4A1 with a one-piece cast hull instead of a M4A2 with a welded hull (which probably have different armor values) or a M4A3E2 with the extra thick armor (which certainly has different DR)? I would hazard a guess that the actual model is not that important - you're using "Sherman tank" as a stand-in for "late WWII tank".

But to bring this back to my original point, which was that the e23 wishlist is asking for subjects that I find to be too narrowly scoped. If they all end up being as specific as "WWII Axis Tanks 1944-1945", then I'm unlikely to buy any.

But, I'd be ok with a book on "WWII Fighting Vehicles", wherein one could find a generic description of late WWII tanks, with specifics for any one of the Sherman tank models, and some notes on how German/Italian/whatever tanks were different (in the same manner as High-Tech describes the Glocks).

Demi

[Stripe]

*--->ROBOTS!!!<---*

Just like the 3e Book, which is my #1 all-time favorite GURPS book.

I loved tweaking the motive drive vs. DR weight and such.

One suggestion: make each individual part able to be cheap/fine/very fine quality (in 3e, the whole robot was one quality). That way, when you're junking, you can exclaim, "Oh! I found a Five Star arm servo! Those are the best!" Or, "Sorry. We had to replace your unit's power supply with a Lone Star. They're junk, but we didn't have any Five Star in stock. Bring it back in and we'll swap it out when the parts arrive."

Oh, how I love 3e Robots.

[Hai-Etlik]

Bush Planes (The Beaver in particular)
Flying Boats
Modern LAVs (It seems like almost everyone wants this one)
Modern Tanks
Civilian Armoured Vehicles (Armoured Limos, Armoured Vans, SWAT Vehicles)
Sailing Ships
Steam Ships
Airships
Lots of WWII stuff.