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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Fire darting an aircraft carrier

Posted by: sunnyside Jan 16 2007, 10:17 PM

I was just wondering if any of the texted had rules explaining why a player character can't wipe out an aircraft carrier as easily as they can take out a toaster.

If they haven't put a rule out yet what do you do in your games? (I'm making the transfer to 4th ed. This hasn't come up yet but sooner or later someones going to want to drop a banshee or a cargo ship or something).

*EDIT I mean a physical combat spell not a manipulation. More along the lines of a power bolt.

Posted by: Konsaki Jan 16 2007, 10:21 PM

Easy, the body and armor of the craft is gynormous. Plus all the AA guns on the damn thing, and missles and lazers and whatever else you want to throw on it.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jan 16 2007, 10:24 PM

do you have rigger3 handy? it covers ship armor and so on.

and while the rules are not compatible with SR4, it makes for a nice yardstick...

all in all, ships have a different kind of armor to other vehicles...

Posted by: sunnyside Jan 16 2007, 10:26 PM

QUOTE (Konsaki @ Jan 16 2007, 05:21 PM)

Easy, the body and armor of the craft is gynormous. Plus all the AA guns on the damn thing, and missles and lazers and whatever else you want to throw on it.

That's the problem body and armor don't matter against physical combat spells(Is fire dart the wrong name?, should I say power bolt?).

Anyway a manipulation spell would bounce right off. But in the texts example about hitting a bike no mention was made of body or armor.

And, while the "its armaments are incredible" argument usually works in shadowrun there isn't anything keeping some mage from getting drunk and popping the thing off in port.

Posted by: sunnyside Jan 16 2007, 10:27 PM

QUOTE (hobgoblin)

Yeah I was hoping there was something like that out there.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jan 16 2007, 10:27 PM

Yeah, you used the wrong name. Fire dart implies an indirect combat spell. No problem, we understand you now.
Admittedly, it is object resistance and not an opposed roll, which hurts the carrier since it would be nice if it could roll it's 1 hojillion body dice. It would still benefit from counterspelling, though. Then, damage is applied to it's damage track of 8 + 1 hojillion / 2 (rounded up!) boxes.
So it's not quite as easy as nuking a toaster.

Posted by: Butterblume Jan 16 2007, 10:29 PM

Easy, the concept of an Aircraft Carrier has already started to be outdated. Until 2070, there won't be active carriers anymore. (most likely replaced by far cheaper stealthy drone carriers).

If you talk about just slinging a direct combat spell, a carrier is just to big (alltough there are no rules for that).

Posted by: Thane36425 Jan 17 2007, 12:16 AM

The old canon material did say there were some carriers still in existence, just not many and most of them are like the British carriers that are smaller and for vehicles like helicopters and Harriers.

Rigger 3 and Cyberpirates have rules about ships. It would be next to impossible to damage a sizable ship, even a destroyer, with magic. The GM might allow for targeting specific points with direct combat spells, aiming at weapons systems, sensors, etc. You could always pick off crewmen, too.

Ships like that are probably also warded where it counts, so sending a fire elemental after the magazines probably wouldn't work either. On the other hand, sending in a water elemental to back up the toilets might.

Posted by: Konsaki Jan 17 2007, 12:21 AM

QUOTE (Thane36425)

On the other hand, sending in a water elemental to back up the toilets might.

You evil evil man... +1 Karma.

Posted by: Thane36425 Jan 17 2007, 05:41 AM

QUOTE (Konsaki)

QUOTE (Thane36425 @ Jan 17 2007, 09:16 AM)

On the other hand, sending in a water elemental to back up the toilets might.

You evil evil man... +1 Karma.

Thanks. One runner team is was used a water elemental to plug the sewer line leading into a modest security building. Hacker reroutes the phone call to a fake plumbing service and responded to the call of "our nice cleaning building is full of shit!" By the time they got there, it was a real mess and most of the employees were outside. The Secmen didn't check all the plumbing kit too carefully and were easily dropped by stabbing narcojet darts. They picked up what they needed, hacker wipes the security camera memory, the mage dismissed the elemental and out they go, telling everyone to wait a bit before going back inside, to let the place air out. They didn't, of course, but there was enough time to get away.

For pure harassment value, a mage had a problem with certain establishment, so he sent a water elemental in to spring all the sprinklers inside and then left it inside the pipe to block the water main cut off. Really messed that place up.

Posted by: Dread Polack Jan 17 2007, 03:23 PM

Well, I suppose the Body + Armor would stop most personal weapons or indirect spells; but with direct spells, strictly according to the rules, any hits over the threshold 4 physical resistance test should be able to do damage to the carrier. I think it would have to have dozens, if not hundreds of boxes of damage. Can a power bolt punch a hole through a barrier? I'm wondering mostly if a mage could stand just outside the hull and punch a hole through it and sink it. I tend to think of direct combat spells as not doing specific location damage, as they attack through an aura. This isn't spelled out in the rules, but I think I'd have to rule that sinking/destroying a carrier or something similar would involve dropping the object all the way or nearly all the way to zero, as the entire carrier would be slowly worn down. Most casters would knock themselves unconscious or be discovered before that happened.

Dread Polack

Posted by: Jaid Jan 18 2007, 12:36 AM

i would treat the an object the size of a large ship as a collection of barriers, personally.

there is nothing that really says explicitly how a barrier interacts with direct spells, however.. this makes it a bit tricky. assuming we ignore the damage resistance part (direct spells don't have damage resist tests), i would say an aircraft carrier is "armored/reinforced material" or "hardened material", and you need 13P damage to make a hole 1m across, 10 cm deep. add in the probable wards that will be placed on it, plus counterspelling most likely, and you've got a fairly tough target.

Posted by: Jack Kain Jan 19 2007, 10:01 AM

QUOTE (Dread Polack @ Jan 17 2007, 09:23 AM)

You all might want to read the rules again FOUR is not the cap on object resistance.
THERE IS NO CAP!, a Drone or vehcle has an object resistance of 4+ according to the table.
Notice how it says 4+ not just plain 4. Using 4+ tells us they can have an object resistance above 4. So said carrier, drone carrier, battleship could have an object resistance of 24. Nothing in the rules is againts it. So basicly your archologies, battleships and other huge structures only have an object resistance of 4. If your GM is stupid enougth to allow it.
By the rules there is no limit to object resistance.

Posted by: Cray74 Jan 19 2007, 02:01 PM

QUOTE (Butterblume)

Easy, the concept of an Aircraft Carrier has already started to be outdated. Until 2070, there won't be active carriers anymore. (most likely replaced by far cheaper stealthy drone carriers).

There were quite a few active carriers built with the (SR3, Rigger-3) heavy carrier chassis in the 2060s, primarily with the Imperial Japanese Navy and UCAS Navy. I suspect there will be in 2070 as well, since big hardware like that doesn't disappear overnight.

As for Fire Darting the ship, military hardware of that magnitude has had almost 60 years to come to terms with magic, equivalent to the 1880-1940 period, which saw battleships go from wood-and-steel with auxiliary sails to the Yamato and Iowa.

The UCAS and Japan have plenty of enemies, and not just nations with big warships of their own. If the folks who protest against megacorps or the Technocrat party or racism or whatever with active vandalism found out that there's a multi-billion nuyen aircraft carrier sitting in port without magical protection, someone's going to take a magical potshot at it. Or unleash a great form water spirit/elemental.

So you can bet a big carrier has substantial magical defenses. The mage trying to fire dart the carrier will probably be beat senseless by the carrier's CAEP (Combat Air Elemental Patrol) before he can roll to resist drain.

Posted by: Dakhran the Dark Jan 19 2007, 03:02 PM

QUOTE (Butterblume)

Easy, the concept of an Aircraft Carrier has already started to be outdated. Until 2070, there won't be active carriers anymore. (most likely replaced by far cheaper stealthy drone carriers).

Actually, IIRC, according to Runner Havens there's now a UCAS Navy supercarrier group parked in one of the suburbs (Renton?), which has a "friendly rivalry" going with the Army. If there's a carrier in Seattle, not only are carriers still in use, but any game that uses Seattle as the default setting might eventually involve a run on one.

Thus, it would help to know when that twink-idiot, err, player, decides to throw all of your best-laid plans by trying to sink it, they'll blow their brains out on drain before they can scratch it...

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Jan 19 2007, 03:20 PM

QUOTE (Cray74)

So you can bet a big carrier has substantial magical defenses. The mage trying to fire dart the carrier will probably be beat senseless by the carrier's CAEP (Combat Air Elemental Patrol) before he can roll to resist drain.

Agreed. With something like 1500-3000 crew, in addition the 2000+ soldiers of the air wing, I would expect a large carrier to at least have a platoon of mages. This would allow for the whole outside of the ship to be warded and for a "fire team" of mages to be constantly on guard duty (or a full squad in potentially hostile waters) with their full selection of elementals, some on patrol and some in reserve.

Posted by: Jaid Jan 19 2007, 06:11 PM

QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)

QUOTE (Cray74)

probably a few long term bound spirits (using karma) with magical guard on the ship as well.

Posted by: Thane36425 Jan 19 2007, 06:19 PM

As I stated in an earlier post, a carrier probably has powerful and permanant wards in key areas like magazines, fuel storage, engine spaces, CIC and the bridge. If they had a group of military and contractor mages working together, they could put up a stronger wardand not lose much karma since the cost would be divided amongst all the mages. Weaker, temporary wards could be set up and maintained by mages in the crew. Long-term bound spirits are a probability too, along with all the spirits the crew mages could summon as well.

A carrier is an expensive piece of kit, several billion for the current model and about 3 times that for the next generation design. There is no reason to think this trend would stop in the future. On the other hand, today's carriers are rather lightly protected compared to their cost. Just a couple of missile launchers and about 4 Phalanx guns. There's no reason to think the politicians in the future wouldn't also skimp on magical security in SR, too.

Posted by: Eryk the Red Jan 19 2007, 06:37 PM

Moon-Hawk hit it right on the head for this one. The most important reason why you won't be powerbolting a carrier into oblivion has nothing to do with Object Resistance or magical defense. Its Body rating of 4000 (maybe an exaggeration, doesn't matter), gives it 2008 damage boxes. I've yet to see someone cast a Force 1004 Powerbolt.

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 19 2007, 07:07 PM

QUOTE (Eryk the Red)

I've yet to see someone cast a Force 1004 Powerbolt.

Perhaps that's an indication that you give out too little Karma on your runs.

Posted by: Butterblume Jan 19 2007, 07:11 PM

The most important reason why you won't be powerbolting a carrier into oblivion is common sense. All else is just justifying that in the framework the rules provide .

On Carriers: Carriers are even bigger and far more vulnerable than battleships were even before WW2. I know, they are canon, and since carriers won't come up in my games soon, I won't dispute it... much .
My hero is Lieutenant General Paul van Riper, who sank most of an US Carrier Fleet in a major wargame in 2002 (Millenium Challenge 2002), with basically fishing boats and civil aircrafts (see this article: http://www.exile.ru/2002-December-11/war_nerd.html )

On magic security on capital ships: Sure, they may have a squad of security mages on that ship. So, the enemy assembles a company of mages for the specific purpose of destroying those ships, one after the other. They might come up with an underhanded move the defenders didn't think of, or simply overpower them. The attacker always has the initiative, and in the long run fire power always wins against armor.
I know, that's easier said than done, but the attackers have to get lucky only once .

Posted by: Thane36425 Jan 19 2007, 07:18 PM

QUOTE (Butterblume)

The most important reason why you won't be powerbolting a carrier into oblivion is common sense. All else is just justifying that in the framework the rules provide

.

On Carriers: Carriers are even bigger and far more vulnerable than battleships were even before WW2. I know, they are canon, and since carriers won't come up in my games soon, I won't dispute it... much

.
My hero is Lieutenant General Paul van Riper, who sank most of an US Carrier Fleet in a major wargame in 2002 (Millenium Challenge 2002), with basically fishing boats and civil aircrafts (see this article: http://www.exile.ru/2002-December-11/war_nerd.html )

On magic security on capital ships: Sure, they may have a squad of security mages on that ship. So, the enemy assembles a company of mages for the specific purpose of destroying those ships, one after the other. They might come up with an underhanded move the defenders didn't think of, or simply overpower them. The attacker always has the initiative, and in the long run fire power always wins against armor.
I know, that's easier said than done, but the attackers have to get lucky only once

I was thinking about that exercise when I was writing that other post but couldn't think of it. Thanks for the link. Like I said, carriers are very lightly defended for their value.

One way to stop a ship would be to have water or air elementals cause cavitation around the propellor making it work less effectively and perhaps not at all. The same goes for the rudder. However, that is probably something military mages would be expecting and would be prepared for.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Jan 19 2007, 07:21 PM

...with fishing boats, civilian aircraft, some gunboats and corvettes, and lots and lots of anti-ship missiles.

Posted by: Butterblume Jan 19 2007, 07:36 PM

Don't know about the corvettes, but the lots and lots of anti ship missiles were crucial, of course.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Jan 19 2007, 07:57 PM

Could be they were limited to just patrol craft. Just seems like a pretty silly limitation, when Iran had at that time 2 corvettes and 3 frigates, in addition to their 23 dedicated missile attack craft.

Posted by: Butterblume Jan 19 2007, 08:54 PM

Doesn't really matter if there were corvettes or not. They wouldn't have been stealth corvettes (like the swedish Visby class) and therefore a few more fishing boats to launch anti ship missiles from would probably more useful.

In confined areas like the gulf submarines like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine would be a real danger.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Jan 19 2007, 08:59 PM

Any reason to expect the fishing boats were actually capable of firing missiles? I though they only served as decoys.

Posted by: Butterblume Jan 19 2007, 09:11 PM

Textual evidence, no (somehow it's not that easy to find ). But figured if anti ship missiles can be fired from a ground vehicle, you can just load the vehicle on a ship.

Posted by: sunnyside Jan 19 2007, 09:17 PM

Off topic but this is basically why they invented the destroyer in the first place. Just now they launch anti-anti-ship missles instead of keeping torpedo boats away.

But yeah some good answers here. (lots of body for being able to handle lots of damage, maybe layers of mana barriers, maybe going high on the 4+ object resistance).

Now to steer things a little bit in reality I'm not expecting my players to go after a carrier. However I'm more worried about what they might do to a multi million nuyen Banshee. Their body isn't that high. I'm liking the threshold and mana barrier business. What would you guys consider "fair" numbers.

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 19 2007, 10:04 PM

With an Object resistance of 6 you would need 7 hits to generate Force +1 boxes of Damage. A Banshee is Body 20 so it has 18 boxes of damage. If you assigned a object resistance of 6 it would be immne to all force 6 spells. As to the probability of attaining net hits on a object resistance of seven here's a little chart.

CODE

Dice Probability of at least 1 net hit (Rounded to the tenths place)
8 0.3
9 0.8
10 2.0
11 3.9
12 6.6
13 10.4
14 14.9
15 20.3
16 26.3
17 32.6

So as you can see you need an awful lot of dice to make that work, with even just a 6 object resistance.

Make it an 8 and you imidiatly ignore all force 8 or less spells and it gets much harder.

CODE

Dice P(min 1 hit)
11 0.1
12 0.4
13 0.9
14 1.7
15 3.1
16 5.0
17 7.5
18 10.8
19 14.6
20 19.1
21 24.0
22 29.3
23 34.9
24 40.6

So I'd say 6 to 8 sounds reaosnable, if a mage is powerful enough to do anything significant to it with a Physical Direct Combat spell and still take the drain then I'd call him a T-Bird killer and let him cruch all he wanted until he died from the drain.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jan 19 2007, 10:17 PM

Wow object resistance of 6 or 8 for an aircraft carrier? Damn, I had never thought of increasing the object resistance that high for something so big, but that's a darn good way of handling it. I mean, the table says 4+, but I never really thought about taking it much past that. But using the level of technological complexity as a base and then increasing the OR for something that's REALLY FRIGGIN' BIG is a really good idea.

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 19 2007, 10:22 PM

Heck I'd give 6-8 to a GMC Banshee, Even 5 or 6 to a Bulldog stepvan.

An aircraft carrier I'd probably be more inclined to treat it as a series of barriers and not give it a single astral form. You want to breech the hull you better be ready for some seriously hardened armor. A bulk head would be eaiser, but again calling an aircraft carrier one single thing that can be targeted by a spell would be like saying I'm targetting the Renraku Arcology with a spell. Even if we were talking an office building you'd call them barriers not just call the whole place one object that can be targeted.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jan 19 2007, 10:26 PM

Right, sorry, I know you said that, but I was distracted while posting. I had some Banshee/Aircraft Carrier confusion, but the point remains, it's a good idea.
So, just to quantify what you're saying, something like vehicles have an object resistance of 4+1 per 5 full points of body, or something like that?

Posted by: Butterblume Jan 19 2007, 10:30 PM

Why stop at the Renraku Arcology? During sunny days, you'd have a clear line of sight to the sun - and since the sun is a natural object, the threshold would be one .

Posted by: Jaid Jan 19 2007, 10:39 PM

QUOTE (Butterblume)

Why stop at the Renraku Arcology? During sunny days, you'd have a clear line of sight to the sun - and since the sun is a natural object, the threshold would be one

SSHHHHHH!!! Winternight will hear.

though, in all probability, the sun has an astral form a lot like the earth's. since we don't really have stats for the earth's astral form, that doesn't really give you anything specific, mind you, but i'm sure it has a lot of damage boxes, and can heal really fast because of it's ginormous body score

Posted by: Demerzel Jan 19 2007, 10:41 PM

QUOTE (Moon-Hawk @ Jan 19 2007, 02:26 PM)

So, just to quantify what you're saying, something like vehicles have an object resistance of 4+1 per 5 full points of body, or something like that?

Yea, that was exactly my thought some function of body. if as you recomend a Bod/5 round down mechanic would leave drones at 4 (Where IMO they should be) and raises the Banshee to 8, bulldog at 6. Good numbers IMO.

QUOTE (Jaid)

a lot of damage boxes, and can heal really fast because of it's ginormous body score

Is the earth or the sun every really resting to heal?

Posted by: Jack Kain Jan 19 2007, 10:51 PM

Well the thing about the earth is. Blow up a mountian and all the material that made up the mountain is still a part of the earth. Any force powerful enougth to destory earth would first wipe out all life and all mana with it. The spell would never go beyond that.

Posted by: hyzmarca Jan 19 2007, 10:56 PM

If you attempt to destroy the sun you'll be facing some heavy glare modifiers. Aim for the moon instead, its destruction will be just as devastating as the sun's destruction due to the stabilizing effect the moon has on the Earth's tilt. No moon = wobbly Earth = middle of summer one hour and dead of winter the next. Massive climatic instability.

Posted by: Butterblume Jan 19 2007, 11:12 PM

Doesn't the moon have it's own manasphere (or whatever it is called), and therefore isn't a mere object? I didn't try to destroy the earth with a direct combat touch spell for the same reason .

Posted by: hyzmarca Jan 20 2007, 12:27 AM

The best reason not to cast One Less Earth is the fact that you'd be on the Earth at the time.
I once calculated the number of damage boxes that can be caused by a magician with a certain drain resistance pool casting an extremely limited target combat spell without risking drain (buying successes). I don't remember exactly where I posted it, but the gist is that, even if the Earth has a huge number of hit points, a sufficiently large group of mages with increased reflexes in sustaining foci working 12-hour shifts can destroy it given enough time.

For that matter, a RAW blood spirit of sufficient force can cause millions of boxes of damage per day.

Posted by: Austere Emancipator Jan 20 2007, 12:43 AM

Assuming a supercarrier, a 100,000-ton lump of iron, has a Body rating of, say, 500, it would make sense for the Earth, a 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-ton lump of iron, to have a Body rating of ~3 x 10^19, for 15 quintillion and eight boxes. How quickly would it heal, say, a billion boxes of damage at rest, on average?

Posted by: SL James Jan 20 2007, 01:02 AM

I don't know. How long do you think it will take to heal itself once we all kill each other?

Posted by: hyzmarca Jan 20 2007, 10:47 AM

QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)

Assuming that Arsenal doesn't include a separate damage scale for navel vessels and beyond, due to how horrific the system is when hundreds of dice are involved.