War! Gear & Rules, What's good, iffy, needs fixing or a complete revamp? Options

[Draco18s]

ah, yes. here we go: http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/29/the-c...eagleman-video/

Interesting video.

[Daishi]

Oh, I've just been writing on capital ship weaponry, and I needed to stat up a 250 mm gun for battlecruisers.
So I glanced upon the howitzer rules.
What the hell, CGL?! Every heavy weapon in the game until this book has been using the same range description, going like: "use assault cannon ranges, increase Extreme range to 3km". Howitzer gets its own table, with 30 (!!!) km being the max range. Okay, fine, let's let this slide for a moment, after all, there are howitzers like this in RL, no matter that there's nothing with comparable range in the system.
Now, I opened the howitzer shells table.
54P?! -10AP?! What the ever-loving god? Tank cannons do 17P! Cruise missiles - whole planes stuffed with explosives, - do 40 to 64! What is this, the Big Bertha? Judging by the howitzer's stats in the vehicle section, no, it's tank-sized (although somehow it got an extra-large sensor package and turrets with lazors only statted up as "missile defense system [stabby lazors hell yeah!]").
What the frag? What will a capital ship primary weapon damage codes look like, if a single goddamn howitzer does damage on THOR-shot scale? Oh, and that's without that "darling-I-broke-the-game" targeting system.

The AT and AA damage codes are too much of a jump from what was previously established, but they should be noticeably higher than anything in Arsenal. I figure it's at least a 155 mm (current standard NATO heavy artillery), and possibly closer to 180 mm given the damage codes. Ship guns these days are pretty much entirely under 130 mm (127, 76, and 57 are all fairly common in the west.) Smaller faster guns are more useful to ships these days (small fast targets like missiles, planes, skiffs, etc are the big danger - for other ships, you fire an anti-ship missile while they're 100 km away). The one exception is when providing supporting fire for an amphibious landing. Bigger is better in that case. There has been some discussion of reviving larger guns on ships for that fire support role, but nothing serious has come from it. Most planners are content to rely on precision missiles and airpower in the case of an opposed landing. The War! howitzer would be the main gun if you wanted to revive the big-gun capital ship.

[Fatum]

Oh ri-i-ight, it must be as large as 155 mm, maybe even 180 mm. Just think about that, chummer!
How large is a tank cannon (which does 17P, let me remind you)? 120 mm at the very least?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Oh ri-i-ight, it must be as large as 155 mm, maybe even 180 mm. Just think about that, chummer!
How large is a tank cannon (which does 17P, let me remind you)? 120 mm at the very least?

The Tank Cannon is likely based off of American Equipment... 105mm (Soviet is 120mm)
Naval 16" Guns (New Jersey Class Battleships) are 406.4mm for comparison Purposes (2000 lb. Warhead)...
The Typical American 5" Deck Gun is 127mm...

[Fatum]

Okay, be it 105 mm.
Moving from 30 mm of an autocannon to 105 mm of a heavy tank cannon grants us a damage increase from 11P to 17P. It is not in any way linear for a 210 mm gun to do 34P.

[Stahlseele]

105 x 2 = 210mm
17 x 2 = 34p
maybe not linear, more proportionally?

[Fatum]

Not equally proportional, yeah.
30/105 != 11/17.

[Stahlseele]

Well, 11/3*2=7,33333333333333333333
7,33333333333+11=18,3333333333333
so a BIT more than 2 thirds more damage for a 3 times as big bullet.

[Fatum]

And why exactly raising the caliber two times more would raise the damage two times, as well?

[KarmaInferno]

Remember it's not just the diameter that tends to increase. The length of the shell does too.

Also, explosives tend to behave oddly when you increase the amount. It's not always a straight 2x amount = 2x effect.



-k

[Fatum]

Aha, as does the quantity of the explosive you need to lob the shell with a parabolic trajectory, as opposed to direct fire.
Also, if you look at RL howitzers, they are, of course, destructive, but not too much more destructive than tanks (not twice, that's for certain), and especially less destructive than MLRS (that does around 12P).