Heavily armoured vehicles: optional rules, To make high-DV negated hits still matter. Options

[Fatum]

So, I've been doing some number crunching with supposedly anti-vehicle weapons in SR books, calculating their damage against different military vehicles with one net hit, five net hit (which is what runners are likely to have) and enough net hits to punch through armor. I am far from finished, but some hilarious results are already evident, like the intimidatingly named Onotari Arms Assault Laser, which by the description "allows the operator to perform double duty as an anti-vehicle specialist", taking three shots on average to deal with a GMC MPUV.

One of the more annoying results is seeing highly armored vehicles shrug off the attacks that'd ruin them in two or three shots had they been just a bit more damaging without any kind of consequence. So, to get around this, an optional rule comes to mind:

Tanks and other heavier vehicles have armor values that allow them to negate all but the most deadly of attacks. However, having an attack one DV short of damaging the vehicle negated completely seems unfair, especially if an attack one DV higher is capable of destroying it in just a few hits. However, highly damaging attacks can affect the crew even if they do not punch through armor, primarily by concussive damage.
Thus, for attacks with effective DV higher than 10, apply half that value (round down) as Stun damage to everyone inside the vehicle, as it is tossed violently by the force of attack. This damage is resisted by Passenger Protection, Personal Armor, Rigger Cocoon and then further by passengers’ Impact Armor as normal.

Seems much more descriptive of what happens when a tank gets hit with an AT tank shell without penetration, for example, don't you think?

[StealthSigma]

Seems much more descriptive of what happens when a tank gets hit with an AT tank shell without penetration, for example, don't you think?

No.

If the armor in question is sloped armor, for example, the lack of penetration means the round skipped or ricocheted off the tank with most of the force of the round continuing with it. Reactive armor directly negates the force of something by applying an equal force in an opposite direction.

This is what armor does. It negates or significantly reduces the force of the impact so that it is not transferred beyond it.

[Fatum]

If the armor in question is sloped armor, for example, the lack of penetration means the round skipped or ricocheted off the tank with most of the force of the round continuing with it.

Well, if you draw a quick force diagram you'll notice armour's getting a fair share of force applied to it during the ricocheting.

Reactive armor directly negates the force of something by applying an equal force in an opposite direction.

Which, again, means a fair share of force applied to the armour beneath it.

This is what armor does. It negates or significantly reduces the force of the impact so that it is not transferred beyond it.

Energy doesn't disappear into nothingness. If you have a kinetic projectile collide with your solid construction, you have but a few ways to deal with the kinetic energy associated: turning it into heat, deformation, and passing it on as kinetic energy, but dissipating it over a larger mass, which armour does.
Besides, going by first-hand accounts, being in a tank that is hit by a shell results in "ears ringing about a day, according to the crew, along with a nasty headache". Which is pretty descriptive of low Stun damage in Shadowrun, imo.

[StealthSigma]

Well, if you draw a quick force diagram you'll notice armour's getting a fair share of force applied to it during the ricocheting.

Which is only applicable to sloped armor. It's not present for reactive armor. It's a significantly lesser problem for spaced armor which is often arranged in a sloped configuration anyway.

Which, again, means a fair share of force applied to the armour beneath it.

Not really. The functional difference between the reactive armor and a shell is that the shell's force is concentrated on a small point while the force of the reactive armor is spread over a much larger area which dissipates it much more efficiently.

Energy doesn't disappear into nothingness. If you have a kinetic projectile collide with your solid construction, you have but a few ways to deal with the kinetic energy associated: turning it into heat, deformation, and passing it on as kinetic energy, but dissipating it over a larger mass, which armour does.
Besides, going by first-hand accounts, being in a tank that is hit by a shell results in "ears ringing about a day, according to the crew, along with a nasty headache". Which is pretty descriptive of low Stun damage in Shadowrun, imo.

Tankers don't die if 4 rounds hit their vehicle and they don't fall unconscious after 2 which is essentially what your rule does.

[Fatum]

Which is only applicable to sloped armor. It's not present for reactive armor. It's a significantly lesser problem for spaced armor which is often arranged in a sloped configuration anyway.

Spacing should not affect the shock experienced much, as long as the whole thing is rigid. You're still thrown about violently.

Not really. The functional difference between the reactive armor and a shell is that the shell's force is concentrated on a small point while the force of the reactive armor is spread over a much larger area which dissipates it much more efficiently.

Exactly that. There is no force without counter-force, so reactive armor applies force against the plating beneath it.
And spread vs concentrated is exactly why the armour is there to begin with, what it does when it's hit hard, and why the crew get concussions instead of being torn to shreds.

Tankers don't die if 4 rounds hit their vehicle and they don't fall unconscious after 2 which is essentially what your rule does.

How do you know? Were there precedents?

[Iduno]

I would also question how different types of weapons would affect it. If you're getting a concussive blast from a laser, I would be interested in knowing how.

I can't imagine more than 1 or 2 stun would be likely from something like this, so the rule may need tweaking once someone does the math.

[Mäx]

but some hilarious results are already evident, like the intimidatingly named Onotari Arms Assault Laser, which by the description "allows the operator to perform double duty as an anti-vehicle specialist" , taking three shots on average to deal with a GMC MPUV.

So a street sam armed with one can destroy 2 lightly armored cars in 3 seconds or less, i would call that "performing double duty as an anti-vehicle specialist"

[Udoshi]

He does have a point, though, in that the anti-vehicle weapons are kind of lackluster - especially compared with the recent glut of military vehicles that come with armor over 20, which is something arsenal wasn't even designed to consider.

Basically all armor piercing or anti-tank weapons - those designed specifically to lay the smack down on armored targets - need to get AP half vs them.
None of this silly mixed AP-x vs all targets, but TWO MORE ap vs vehicles crap.

[Bearclaw]

How many hits does it take to get a heavy pistol up to an effective DV of 10? Having done some actual training against actual light armored vehicles I can say without question that no matter how many times you shoot an M113 APC (which is 1960's technology) with a .45, the people inside will not be stunned. No matter how good of a shot you are. Nor are you going to affect the occupants of an M1 with a Barrett. Never. No matter how good of a shot you are. That is the point to armored vehicles after all.
I think the idea isn't bad, but it needs some work. And a desire to slow down an already very slow moving combat system.

[Fatum]

I would also question how different types of weapons would affect it. If you're getting a concussive blast from a laser, I would be interested in knowing how.

I can't imagine more than 1 or 2 stun would be likely from something like this, so the rule may need tweaking once someone does the math.

Actually, substances hit by high-power laser impulses explosively evaporate. Which is why lasers still have a chance to knock a character hit down, for example.

So a street sam armed with one can destroy 2 lightly armored cars in 3 seconds or less, i would call that "performing double duty as an anti-vehicle specialist"

Yes, he'd be able to destroy a lightly armoured car in about one and a half seconds. It's taking the machinegunner half a second to cut him down.

He does have a point, though, in that the anti-vehicle weapons are kind of lackluster - especially compared with the recent glut of military vehicles that come with armor over 20, which is something arsenal wasn't even designed to consider.

Basically all armor piercing or anti-tank weapons - those designed specifically to lay the smack down on armored targets - need to get AP half vs them.
None of this silly mixed AP-x vs all targets, but TWO MORE ap vs vehicles crap.

Frankly, I don't even know how this can possibly be fixed. As of now, you need cruise missiles to shoot tanks, and ships get 16P AP -half lasers as their main armament.

[Fatum]

How many hits does it take to get a heavy pistol up to an effective DV of 10? Having done some actual training against actual light armored vehicles I can say without question that no matter how many times you shoot an M113 APC (which is 1960's technology) with a .45, the people inside will not be stunned. No matter how good of a shot you are. Nor are you going to affect the occupants of an M1 with a Barrett. Never. No matter how good of a shot you are. That is the point to armored vehicles after all.
I think the idea isn't bad, but it needs some work. And a desire to slow down an already very slow moving combat system.

Could change that to "with basic DV of 10", I guess. I just went with the definition of a high-power blow in Arsenal's Smart Armor description.

Although net hits represent hitting vulnerable places - I dunno, optics or something like that. It is ridiculous a bit, of course, but it's less ridiculous than an Armour 20 vehicle shrugging off infinite DV 20 hits only to be destroyed by two DV 21 ones.

[Mäx]

Yes, he'd be able to destroy a lightly armoured car in about one and a half seconds. It's taking the machinegunner half a second to cut him down.

Unlikely.

[Fatum]

Quite likely, actually. Especially if the gunner is comparable to the sam in skill - say, was chargenned with the same amount of BP.

[StealthSigma]

How do you know? Were there precedents?

There's plenty of precedent set for tank armor and tank combat during WW2. For examples, see Italian M11s against British Matildas because the 37mm gun that they had was no where near up to task. Even Panzer IIIs that were upgraded to 50mm guns had a lot of difficulty with the British tanks and the most significant anti-tank damage for the Germans in N. Africa came from Type 88 75mm guns and Panzer IVs which had 50 or 75mm guns installed.

The primary flaw with your rule is that is does not perform any sane scaling if any scaling at all. As long as your weapon deals 11 damage you will have an effect. Staging an assault rifle up to 11P damage without using burst fire is fairly trivial. It also means that beyond a certain value additional armor serves no mechanical effect.

[Fatum]

You do realize the difference between the WWII era guns (right, 37 mm) and the modern 120+ mm ones? Including the difference in kinetic energy? Just to put things in perspective, Su-152 shells have been known not to locally puncture German tanks, but break them apart, turning into a mess of twisted metal, purely on the energy of the hit.

And yeah, the armour serves no mechanical effect against concussive damage. It allows you to ignore the damage to the vehicle, and it reduces Stun damage in half; but when you're hit by quarter metric centner going at a thousand meters a second, it matters little whether you have 10 or 15 millimeters of steel between you and it, it's still an extremely unpleasant experience.
It could be changed, for example, for simple "convert DV into Stun, reduce with vehicle Body+Armour as normal, and then apply to the crew", but that's not really changing much on the typical armour ranges while adding at least one additional test to roll.
Plus the rule seems to be producing reasonable results for the typical SR DVs (10 for man-portable assault cannons, 20 for AT GL rockets and AT missiles, 30 to 50 for cruise missiles) and reasonably armoured crew.

As for the assault rifle criticism, as I've said above, I've run with the definition of a significant hit from Smart Armor description (the one that makes it detonate, reducing its effectiveness). That one is easily patched up by changing "effective DV" to "basic DV" in the wording. Then assault cannons will cause concussions, but anti-matériel rifles won't.

[StealthSigma]

As for the assault rifle criticism, as I've said above, I've run with the definition of a significant hit from Smart Armor description (the one that makes it detonate, reducing its effectiveness). That one is easily patched up by changing "effective DV" to "basic DV" in the wording. Then assault cannons will cause concussions, but anti-matériel rifles won't.

So a Barret firing flechette ammunition will deal 5S to occupants inside the vehicle while any of the assault cannons deal no damage since their base damage is 10P in most cases and assault cannons ammo only deals listed weapon damage. If you want to stage it down to 10P damage rather than 11P to deal damage internally then almost any sniper rifle firing flechette ammo deals as much damage to the occupants as an assault cannon.

[Fatum]

Basic being "before modification for ammo type used"?

Although I must say I am ready to hear your suggestions.

[StealthSigma]

Basic being "before modification for ammo type used"?

Although I must say I am ready to hear your suggestions.

The base DV has always been the DV modified by ammo.

Looking at Arsenal, not including War!, I don't see any problem with listed damage and armor values. Arsenal contains no stock vehicle with more than 20 armor and anti-vehicle rockets deal 16P/-6AP damage which is sufficient to deal damage to a 20 armor vehicle.

You're chasing after the wrong problem. Failing to deal damage to a vehicle isn't a huge problem. The problem is that with vehicle is happens very nearly be a total kill or at worst 2 shots to no damage what so ever. There's no median ground which makes it very difficult to disable vehicles without destroying the contents.

[Fatum]

War? I see you've been keeping up with recent publications. Thank you for your opinion.

[Warlordtheft]

How many hits does it take to get a heavy pistol up to an effective DV of 10? Having done some actual training against actual light armored vehicles I can say without question that no matter how many times you shoot an M113 APC (which is 1960's technology) with a .45, the people inside will not be stunned. No matter how good of a shot you are. Nor are you going to affect the occupants of an M1 with a Barrett. Never. No matter how good of a shot you are. That is the point to armored vehicles after all.
I think the idea isn't bad, but it needs some work. And a desire to slow down an already very slow moving combat system.

First what warhead are you using in the AV round? HEAT, AP, APDSDU, HESH? Various types of warheads do different things to armor. Armor comes in basic vanilla steel plating, composites, and reactive (overly simplistic view but it serves to illustrate what I am about to say).

Steel plating is the lowest form of armor type (you can make it thicker, sloped but the properties is the same). All types of anti-tank weapons are effective against this. Hits that fail to penetrate (with the exception of Hesh) will just not get into the vehicle interioir, either bouncing off or failing to punch a hole. There might be a dent in the armor. Given the lack of hit location in SR this dent is a moot point.

Reactive armor is good against Heat and Hesh rounds. It redirects the exposive force of the attack away from the tank. Not good against AP or APDSDU.

Composite armor (which I believe is what most armor in SR is) is relatively good at absorbing and distributing the impact from almost every type of round imaginable. HESH rounds are somewhat more effective though as they try to cause spalling rather than directly penetrate the vehicle.

Small arms (which to clarify I mean everything up to an HMG) should have a hard time affecting armored vehicles. HMG's are kind of the mid point and may be able to affect lightly armored vehicles like scout helicopters, aircraft, armored secuirty vehicles and such. Many rocket warheads would have trouble with heavy armor as they are designed to take out armored vehicles like IFV's and APCs. To take out an MBT though woul require a luck shot/top shot. Might it rock the boat a little? Yes. Might the persons inside get jolted and take damage? Maybe--depends on quite a bit.

[Falconer]

Fatum... poorly concieved, poorly executed. Waste of time.

You make out every hit to more or less be a ram attack. Which it falls far short of.


You should also brush up on your actual science... you're making assertions which are very very questionable.

[Udoshi]

the best way to fix your Concussive idea is to tie it not to DV but to Weapon Class: Heavy Weapons or Vehicle Weapons only.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Yes, he'd be able to destroy a lightly armoured car in about one and a half seconds. It's taking the machinegunner half a second to cut him down.

Only if he's an idiot. Even if he "Destroys" the car, unless he coaxes a hollywood explosion out of it with that laser, the machine gunner and that pintle gun are still going to be capable of firing at him. Solution: Shoot the gunner first. He is sticking waist-up out of a vehicle and you have a frigging laser, so unless he's wearing milspec armor with Antiradiation 6 (not likely, if he's the gunner in a GMC MPUV,) he'll burn down in one shot from that laser if your Sam's as good as he's suggested to be.



Also, might I suggest that the rules for vehicle combat treat vehicles like metahumans is flawed; deal enough damage and they stop working completely. This is unlikely unless you're hitting it with a big damn missile or something, and if you want to reduce even a light armored car to scrap metal with that laser, you probably are going to have to sweep the gun around it a few times. Most vehicle kills aren't "scrap metal," they're some form of utility or mobility kill; destroy/disable the motive system and that vehicle just became a very poor improvised pillbox. (Tanks which wind up this way in terrain held by the enemy are often destroyed by their own crews when they evacuate.) Destroy/disable the main gun, and they usually turn around and head for home.

What's really needed is a better system for called shots against vehicles, making it easier to disable it, and still requiring something big and nasty if you want a scrap metal kill.


Also, my players killed a few GMC MPUVs in one shot in their last game. How? Ares MP-LMGs - hardly a bastion of antivehicular work - simply by calling their shots to the driver's seat and punching through the weak vehicle armor and the driver's armor to deliver enough stun to force the vehicle to go uncontrolled.

[Fatum]

Fatum... poorly concieved, poorly executed. Waste of time.
You make out every hit to more or less be a ram attack. Which it falls far short of.
You should also brush up on your actual science... you're making assertions which are very very questionable.

Thank you for your very constructive feedback.

the best way to fix your Concussive idea is to tie it not to DV but to Weapon Class: Heavy Weapons or Vehicle Weapons only.

Well, saying "base DV 10 or more" is pretty much the same thing anyway.

Only if he's an idiot. Even if he "Destroys" the car, unless he coaxes a hollywood explosion out of it with that laser, the machine gunner and that pintle gun are still going to be capable of firing at him. Solution: Shoot the gunner first. He is sticking waist-up out of a vehicle and you have a frigging laser, so unless he's wearing milspec armor with Antiradiation 6 (not likely, if he's the gunner in a GMC MPUV,) he'll burn down in one shot from that laser if your Sam's as good as he's suggested to be.

Uhhhh you've heard of remote-controlled weapons, right?

As for the rest of your post: we have rules for called shots, the issue is assigning results to hits against vehicles. I can see no obvious way to formalize it: for example, blowing an engine off a ground attack plane is not nearly the same as blowing one off a light fighter. Besides, this way or another, that'd mean adding one more subsystem to combat, which is already pretty clunky. Some basic rules, akin to wound modifiers, could work, I figure...
Also, I don't believe SR ever specifies that a vehicle that has run out of health is blown into tiny pieces of shrapnel, so nothing's stopping you from ruling it disabled in any way you like: its electronics are burned out, stopping you from using any of the weapons or even starting it; a shell detonated making it little more than a burned out husk, or whatever suits your fancy.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Uhhhh you've heard of remote-controlled weapons, right?

Have you looked at the MPUV art? I mean, really? Sure, you could mount an RC turret on it, I guess, but it's pretty blatantly intended to have a hummvee-style gunner's position.

As for the rest of your post: we have rules for called shots, the issue is assigning results to hits against vehicles. I can see no obvious way to formalize it: for example, blowing an engine off a ground attack plane is not nearly the same as blowing one off a light fighter. Besides, this way or another, that'd mean adding one more subsystem to combat, which is already pretty clunky. Some basic rules, akin to wound modifiers, could work, I figure...

When it comes to playing with the big toys (vehicles,) clunk is a trade-off many would consider acceptable to bring both sanity and an option for cinematic awesomeness to the game.

I dunno about your games, but it's not every game in mine when battles take place with vehicles involved. It'd be nice to have something exciting to do with them.

Also, I don't believe SR ever specifies that a vehicle that has run out of health is blown into tiny pieces of shrapnel, so nothing's stopping you from ruling it disabled in any way you like: its electronics are burned out, stopping you from using any of the weapons or even starting it; a shell detonated making it little more than a burned out husk, or whatever suits your fancy.

No, but the point is that a GMC MPUV should be MUCH easier to mobility-kill with a laser than it is now - taking three shots from a wired-up street samurai.