Security Armor, Bringing it back Options

[Pallantides]

Since the Search function didn't seem to turn up any results, I was wondering if anyone had converted the old SR3 Security Armors over to SR4?

Never having played SR3 myself and only owning the BBB, I eyeballed the stats at 10/12/14 for each Ballistic grade, but overall the armor conversions seem pretty spotty. Does anyone else have anything cooked up?

[Shrike30]

A suit of SR4's "Full Body Armor" and the helmet that goes along with it would be comparable to SR3's "Light Security Armor", in my mind.

[X-Kalibur]

[Brahm]

I was guessing it translated roughly to Medium Security Armor, or sitting somewhere between Light and Medium. It has some of the other features of Security Armor such as an optional environmental seal.

[Brahm]

[Shrike30]

SR2's Milspec was a lot more impressive than SR3's milspec. I was almost sad to see how much they'd been toned down, actually.

SR3's Milspec armor made APDS ammunition pretty much a requirement.

[Pallantides]

Hmm, so we're looking at 10/12/14 vs 12/14/16 Ballistic? Sounds good, I'll probably side with the latter.

Milspec maybe 16/18/20 with Hardened?

[Brahm]

[Jaid]

[Shrike30]

You've got to keep this stuff in perspective with what we're slinging around, don't forget. If nothing else, use the Panther AC as a baseline.

At 10/-5, and figuring in the 1 net success needed to actually hurt something, a PAC reliably punches through 16 points of armor. With 3 net successes, it can do 18, with 5 net successes :eek: it can do 20. Hardening it means anything staged down to stun damage will be ignored.

Heavy milspec armor running 20 Hardened, then, would require 5 sucesses with a PAC to do anything to the wearer (at which point he'd probably nearly fill his condition monitor rolling 15+body against an incoming 15 DV).

Some of the fluff back in... was it Fof?... mentioned they were working towards a powered version of this stuff. If you want to assume that they've managed to pull that off in a light fashion (it's powered enough to assist with it's own weight and allow the user to sling larger weapons), then a PA-Milspec soldier's basic "rifle" might be built on an machinegun frame, probably an MMG or HMG. If memory serves, the MMG profile is 7/-3. Assume APDS ammunition, and figure in that one basic success again, and your performance is nearly the same as the PAC (you're reliably punching through 15 points of armor), except now you've got an autofire option. The PAC would probably become a Designated Marksman's weapon, packing a little more punch but being much more accurate over range than the MMG-rifle carried by most of the people in a squad. Scope it and put a suppressor on it, and you've got a decent, if slow-firing, rifle. Another option would be the WA-2100, loaded with APDS, but IIRC this won't outperform the basic rifle except in fluff terms and max range.

The PAC feels a little gimped this time around. 20 points of hardened armor is going to make someone nearly invulnerable.

My suggestion would be to eliminate the "medium" grade of both kinds of armor. Assuming they're wearing a helmet, FBA gets a user to 12/10 (IIRC). So, Light Sec Armor would be 12/10, Heavy Sec Armor would be 14/12. Light Milspec Armor would be 16/14 Hardened, and Heavy Milspec Armor would be 18/16 hardened.

This is all assuming, of course, that you want people in this kind of armor to be even vaguely killable :P If that's not the case, slap on another point or two of armor and go to town. Or you could keep the medium grades, have Heavy Security and Light Milspec overlapping at 16/14 (with the Light Milspec being Hardened), and have Heavy rolling 20/18 Hardened (and hopefully being used for extremely special applications type stuff :P ). All of these numbers assume helmets.

[James McMurray]

If you want unkillable the safest thing to do is not give stats. Surround them in a protective bubble of plotdevicium.

[Nim]

Just a side point, but I think your numbers are off by 1, Shrike. DV has to actually be ABOVE the rating of hardened armor in order to penetrate, doesn't it? Not just equal?

[Shrike30]

If that's the case, bump all my required successes by 1 :)

[Brahm]

[Shrike30]

I work under the assumption that military units in environments where you're using Milspec armor load APDS almost exclusively. If it's just a UCAS patrol out there in Armored Jackets with helmets, they might be loading Standard ammo (which would require 3 successes to do Physical damage to someone in similar armor).

APDS in an assault rifle immediately has you penetrating armor 12 with the basic 1 net success. The minute you start talking about putting APDS in sniper rifles or even LMGs, it's not going to matter if your 14 points of armor are Hardened or not. Milspec armor is designed to get hit by milspec ammo... a bunch of gangers spraying hardball-fed Uzi IV's at some UCAS troopers in Milspec should be signing their own death warrants.

If this stuff isn't hardened, then at 16 points of armor it's possible to pummel the wearer into submission by hitting him a number of times, despite the presence of body armor... it basically becomes a glorified suit of Security armor.

This stuff should not be seen on the streets of Seattle unless martial law is declared, and it should not be stuff your runners encounter unless they're in the habit of breaking onto alert-stance military bases and harassing the guards. Security armor would be viewed as being heavy enough for most encounters (I envision SWAT teams as wearing Full Body Armor with helmets, parallel to helmeted LSA, mostly due to it being a little lighter and imposing less of a problem with mobility), with HSA being deployed for groups like riot cops, HTR, and corporate enforcers. LMA would be the thing that elite infantry groups wear into the kind of combat zones where the life expectancy of some squaddie with an Armored Jacket and a helmet is measured in hours. HMA would be special deployment only, difficult to procure, very expensive, but also nearly as good as being in an APC in terms of protection for the wearer.

Like I said, I wouldn't set HMA at 20. 18's a really good, solid number to be sitting on. If you get below 16, pretty much any heavy-caliber weapon loading APDS is going to penetrate the armor simply by hitting it, and the places this armor is designed to go are pretty much full of heavy-caliber weapons.

[James McMurray]

As a clarification (not that I think anyone has mentioned it yet): burst fire does not count when determinging if an attack penetrates armor.

[Shrike30]

Nah, but it's real good for upping the damage once you've blown through.

Hell, even if you *don't* blow through, putting a 10-round burst from a submachinegun into someone wearing 16 points of non-hardened armor (assume they've got body 5) is going to do 15-(21/3)=8 points of stun, on average (there's a reason I houseruled the armor a bit, but this discussion is RAW). Change that to an assault rifle, and 2 net successes would likely have this character flat on his ass unconcious (6/-2, 17-(19/3)=10.66 points of stun, round to 11, on average).

EDIT: This gets even more ridiculous the minute you load something besides Standard ammo. Assault rifle loading Explosive ammo (not EXEX, just EX) sits at 7/-3. Fire a short burst (the typical "I can hit this guy" burst) and you're looking at doing an average of 4 points of stun with every burst that makes the requisite 1 net success.

This post has been edited by Shrike30: Jun 21 2006, 08:28 PM

[Brahm]

The numbers for APDS and Ex-Ex are a whole other ball of stupid.

But that aside Shrike30, drawing from current day realities of military that isn't actually true. The heaviest armor still stops most FMJ rounds from penetrating out past a fairly short distance, but armor piercing certainly isn't the norm for military load outs. Then you are putting them up against taking direct 10 round narrow burst? OMG, no shit they shouldn't be walking away from that.

But just moving past Reality™, it makes thing get really AWESOME (read:stupid) from a gaming point of view to have that sort of super high end armor. That APDS? It might penetrate, but your numbers are still off on damage sponging. Body 5 people aren't going to be wearing 14 Armor because they won't be able to move much less fight. So you are looking at 21 dice minimum.

[Shrike30]

Body 5 lets you wear up to 10 points of armor without noticeably slowing down. Wearing 14 points of armor incurs a -2 die penalty on a variety of things (as the +2/+2 helmet does not count towards the armor rating for purposes of calculating encumberance).

What I was trying to demonstrate was that someone firing a pistol-caliber weapon on full auto loading normal ammunition was not only capable of putting someone wearing 16 points of unhardened armor flat on his ass, he was probably going to manage to pull it off. Simply swapping to a weapon more likely to be seen in the field (an assault rifle) made it likely that eating that burst would knock the armored target unconcious in one volley, despite not having made it through the armor. I added the "AR short burst of explosive" example to put this in a context people might be more familiar with.

As for AP ammunition not being the norm for military loadouts, we aren't talking about a normal military loadout (which would likely see troopers wearing armored jackets and helmets, like I described). The minute you start talking about sticking people into full body suits that make them look like something out of a sci-fi movie (which certainly matches the few pictures we've got of SR's milspec armor), you're beyond the scope of a normal military deployment.

Shadowrun has stats for jet fighters, t-birds, and (if you duck back into previous versions) aircraft carriers. Putting together stats for the heaviest body armor built to date and having them able to survive a few plinks with an assault rifle, then saying "you should pray to your deity of choice that you never fight someone wearing this unprepared" doesn't sound unreasonable.

Please explain to me where I blew my math on the soaking. I figured in the 1 net hit required to do damage, and the average 3 body/armor = 1 less point of damage... no, wait, I found it. EDIT: no, I didn't find it. Those numbers are correct, as far as I can tell.

This post has been edited by Shrike30: Jun 21 2006, 08:29 PM

[Shrike30]

As a small addition to that, 7.62x51mm SLAP ammunition and the 5.56x45mm M995 round (with a tungsten carbide penetrator) have been around for a while in US military service. I'm not sure how commonly they're deployed, but I get the impression it's not super-rare.

[Apathy]

What makes us think that they'd have stuff that was any sturdier than the security teams? Ballistic armor that our soldiers wear today isn't really any better than high-end security armor. Additionally, my [limited] experience has been that the Army has a much more callous perspective about the inevitability of casualties (Can't sue the Army for dangerous/insufficient equipment, but that sort of thing happens in private industry all the time.) At most, I'd think the difference between security and milspec would be the hardening.

Today's armor is much more about blast- and shrapnel protection than stopping bullets. Soldiers are expected to use cover and concealment to avoid the bullets. Additionally, the Army tends to think about the lowest common denominator. 'We can't use armor that's too heavy/restrictive, because the really un-coordinated (low agility) privates won't be able to shoot straight.'

The one exception I could see to this rule would be the uniform for MPs (military police) or other 'occupying forces' in 'hot' zones. They don't get the normal options of hiding and taking cover, and usually aren't using as many active skills (spending most of their time standing around acting as a visual deterrent.) I could see the Army throwing some extra layers on those guys, but still only a few extra points.

[Nim]

The problem with looking at modern-day usage of body armor in the military as a basepoint is that it's in a state of flux. Compare the use of body armor in today's militaries to the usage in the same forces just 20 years ago. My perception, at least, is that is far closer to being standard issue now, where it was used only in special circumstances just a couple decades ago. Keeping that in mind, it seems safe to assume that continuing advances in the state of the art (especially with renewed interest in the entire field right now) will have the situation 20 years from NOW bearing little resemblence to today...either because armor will improve, or because weapons will improve, or both.

There's really no point in guessing based on 'armies today do X'. Probably better to just look at the situation as it's outlined in the book (in terms of the effectiveness of armor versus the weapons of the day, and the cost / disadvantages of using that armor) and go from there. What will win wars best?

[Shrike30]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[James McMurray]

AE, where are those numbers from?