Help with battlesuit modifications

[apoc527]

I need some help here. In my mostly TL10 setting, battlesuits don't use mini-fusion reactors to give themselves 10 year endurances. There's also a special kind of heavy powered armor called a "body tank" that is armored using "neutronite," which is basically what GURPS would call hyperdense collapsium, which seems to grant the Hardened quality (yes, I know that the terminology in UT isn't linked to game terms, but the concept is identical).

I just need someone to "reality check" my numbers for reasonableness:

There is some outdated powered attack armor that is perfectly represented by the TL9 powered combat armor. That part is easy.

There is some modern, form-fitting-ish powered armor perfectly represented by Commando Battlesuits.

Then I run into trouble. I basically want Heavy Battlesuits without their fusion reactors and with a layer of neutronite. Removing the fusion reactor is probably 100-150 lb, but adding in neutronite is probably at least 100 lbs, so that could be a wash, but I'd probably reduce weight to 300 lb anyway. Endurance can be eyeballed to about 2E/24 hr. (It's a fact of the setting that it's tough to keep main battle armored forces going.) I'd end up with a suit that is 150/100 Hardened with EMA.

There are some suits that use fusion reactors, so those are easy enough to deal with. Adding a layer of hardening probably should tack on 100 lbs or so.

I suppose the issue here is that I'm creating a lot of headaches for myself by using a bunch of house ruled gun stats (thanks to Langy). I need main battle armor to stand up to 8dx2(3) pi gauss rifles, and that basically requires the use of Hardening. It also might be that those designed 5mm heavy gauss rifles are excessively powerful!

Anyway, I wish we had a design system for this stuff because when you don't want exactly what's in UT, you end up making a lot of crap up...

[Mathulhu]

Do your infantry really need 16d6 armour divisor 3 damage?
How deep a hole do you need to put in the building behind the guy they are shooting at?

There is a useful game on obsidian portal with some guidelines about making Ultra Tech weapons called Edgerunners.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...SLXJza1E#gid=1

[apoc527]

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

Do your infantry really need 16d6 armour divisor 3 damage?
How deep a hole do you need to put in the building behind the guy they are shooting at?

There is a useful game on obsidian portal with some guidelines about making Ultra Tech weapons called Edgerunners.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...SLXJza1E#gid=1

Yea...about that. Guess where the stats for the 5mm gauss rifle came from? :-D

Ok, just in case that's not clear enough, I actually am using the Edgerunner weapon spreadsheet for this campaign. So it was Langy's fault that this rifle does so much godawful damage. Granted, it's using APEP rounds and wastes $600 per magazine, but still.

[apoc527]

In other news, I just did the stats for the armor I want through the time-honored tradition of "winging it." And you know what, they look fine. This isn't a science and trying to treat it as such creates madness. So until a GURPS Vehicle Design comes out, I've got my numbers. I'll post 'em if anyone is curious.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

Do your infantry really need 16d6 armour divisor 3 damage?
How deep a hole do you need to put in the building behind the guy they are shooting at?

There is a useful game on obsidian portal with some guidelines about making Ultra Tech weapons called Edgerunners.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...SLXJza1E#gid=1

Funnily enough, those are the rules that he's using to design his guns. I got a ton of PMs from him over the past months asking questions, saying thanks, etc:p

Anyways, the power and weight things sound reasonable enough at first glance, so that should be fine.

The 16d (3) damage is pretty excessive, but reasonable from a 'That's about as powerful as a man-portable rifle can get' perspective. You can even get that using basic UT, really - especially if you use the ETK option found in the designer's notes (that's actually more powerful than what my house rules wind up allowing, and with fewer drawbacks).

Mind you, if you were firing a weapon built from an anti-materiel rifle rather than a storm rifle things would be different - you could have a 30+ pound weapon doing 6dx4 (3) or so damage on a boosted velocity shot.

Anyways, that 16d (3) rifle is only able to penetrate up to DR 168 - anything higher and it shouldn't be able to penetrate at all. A TL10 Heavy Battlesuit is very nearly there already - but what Apoc's describing sounds closer to a TL10 version of the Combat Walker than a Heavy Battlesuit. Even at the Heavy Battlesuit's base of 150 DR it'd still reduce that 16d(3) damage down to a paltry 1d+2 or so of actual damage.

A TL10 Combat Walker would have DR 300/180 and a few other changes; that should be plenty to counter any man-portable threats, even those using ridiculously overpowered weapons;)

[apoc527]

Oh, it's all good, Langy. I have decided how to do this. I'm using basically UT's numbers for battlesuits, but tacking on a special version of Hardened, that affects only physical attacks. It'll effectively prevent any damage from small arm projectile weapons while leaving the suits vulnerable to large particle beams.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by apoc527

Oh, it's all good, Langy. I have decided how to do this. I'm using basically UT's numbers for battlesuits, but tacking on a special version of Hardened, that affects only physical attacks. It'll effectively prevent any damage from small arm projectile weapons while leaving the suits vulnerable to large particle beams.

As particle beams mostly ignore the sort of physical durability Hardened represents (lwcamp's version only uses "Cover DR," which is basically "how much bulk matter is in the way"), that's actually a realistic way to do it. I'm uncertain exactly how lasers would work out, although I strongly suspect they're more "bulk matter" than "material hardness" as well.