Crusher Bob, how or if your are going to implement ATGM's that attack the top armor of the MBT? Like the FGM-172 SRAW, FGM-148 Javelin, and BILL 2 Anti-tank guided weapon.

How do non RHA's like the Chobham values technically called MMC or Metallic Matrix Composite, in the armor values?

Wearz, that's easy.

The FGM-172 has a "172" in its name, so that's its AP value. The FGM-148 has less, so we'll use (-148) for that. The BILL-2 is screwed totally, with the AP of a heavy revolver, but that doesn't matter, because these rules are "based on the real world" and "consistent".

Internal Consistency != external consistency. Crusher Bob, when you can create an internally consistent system that makes sense by itself, but when compared to what it's supposed to be integrated with is an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE off, then you may have some generalisability problems.

[Edited for inconsistent spelling of consistent]

Okay CrusherBob, I get it now. You are completely overhauling the armour values for vehicles and then adjusting anti-vehicle weapons to account for this. But then in consequence, you have to adjust the rest of the firearms to the new scale, and personal armour also. Which then spills into Melee weapons also, I would guess. Dermal armour and orthoskin? You're also going to have to extrapolate onto spirits as they have Immunity to Normal Weapons that can get quite high. That Force 8 Earth Elemental monster can survive an anti-vehicle weapon.

It just sounds like a can of worms thats going to end up with a completely different rule set. When Arsenal comes out, I'm hoping we're going to get more big vehicles than we know what to do with.

Actually, there are not a whole lot of changes to the low end armor and weapons values. See the the other thread for sample values. The only real differences for small arms are increased penetration for rifles, and the only personal armor differences are for the heavy suits.

Personally, I'd prefer to keep spirits on the lowers scale. So that powerful spirits can resists HMG and possibly assault cannon fire, but nothing heavier than that. A spirit vs tank fight is going to be based on how good the tank's wards are, not whether the spirit can resist the tank's main gun.

As for a simple way to simulate top attack munitions, I'd try the following:

Against old tanks, use the rear armor values
against newer tanks, use the armor values of the sides
Against 'nextgen' tanks use the armor value for the front.

For things like composite armor and ERA, they get an RHA equivalent vs HEAT attacks. So the tank that has 600/300/100 vs KE attacks might have something like 1200/500/200 vs HEAT attacks.

ok, not having read all of the previous posts because, well, frankly, I don't want to read pages of posts suggesting how to modernize/realize the damage system of shadowrun.

I've got a few pointers for you, which were passed to me when I took over GM'ing:

1. You're the GM, Make your own calls (nobody else knows how you run your game or what you want to be able to let your players accomplish or not accomplish)

2. Tanks from different areas are less susceptible to different things. For example, The M1A2 will NOT drop from having ATGM's shot at it, it won't drop from main gun rounds from most other tanks being shot at it. That's been proven time and time again. HOWEVER....if you have a resourceful team....they can disable it (note, I didn't say KILL it, I said DISABLE) to the point where the people inside have to come out. (There are two universal points of action for dealing with tanks. Kill their mobility, and kill the engine. More often than not you have to do the first to get a clean shot at the second. If it's got tracks, it's as simple as blowing the track off or making it break. Most tanks (especially ones with turbine style engines) have considerably less armor over the back deck and the engine cover, shoot the engine.....no more generator for the batteries, now you're on a limited air supply, which decreases with every weapon fired (main gun and coaxial mounted guns WILL vent into the turret cabin and foul their air, no power means no air filtration)

3. If it has stats, they can kill it (don't really need to say anything else here)

4. You're the GM, Make your own calls (nobody else knows how you run your game or what you want to be able to let your players accomplish or not accomplish)

I guess in terms of killing the thing, the GM will have to watch out for player sneakiness. They will undoubtedly try things that no-one could actually pull off on a battlefield (but in this case it's just crashed through the wall of the building they're in). These will include but are not limited to: lobbing grenades down the main gun barrel, firing small arms fire down the main gun barrel, stuffing objects down the main gun barrel, trolls jumping on the tank and attempting to bend the main gun barrel. Any of the former options followed by attempting to trick the tank into firing the main gun barrel. Spirits materialising in the tank, spirits flying down the main gun barrel (esp. Fire spirits), spirits using Movement, Accident and appearing behind the tanks side guns and attempting to pull them off or damage them. Characters making called shots at any sensors to blind the tank, characters throwing things over the sensors, mages using high force direct combat spells to bypass armour, mages casting high force Chaos to disable it, mages casting Ice Sheet underneath it and then the entire party sliding it down a hill, casting Control Thoughts on NPCs and getting them to stand in front of the tanks guns.

And etcetera.

Not even a real MBT, but a heavy thunderbird. One that the runners in the scenario are likely not prepared to handle, of which to max out the armor at 22 will not only make it a serious threat but one that can still possibly be dealt with if they don't run out of AV missiles before they whittle it down.

…the funny thing to all of this, for I beleive all Ferret825 wants is to have a tank show up as a shock element. Whether or not it takes AV or Naval damage to destroy is moot for I do not think that is what he is looking for. Basically he wants the runners to realise they are up to the necks in drek and that the owners of the research site mean business.

Oh, and to shoot at a helicopter your guns need AA capability (unless the chopper is on the ground in front of it). Most coaxial guns do not (with the exception of a dedicated ADV like the Rhurmetall Falkener). The mini turret on the Leopard has AA capability the main turret does not.

As to the rocket launchers, the Leopard has 2 banks of 4 tubes

Here's a quick & dirty conversion:

For armour, The Banshee in SRIII had Armour 18, The Leopard in SRIII had 40 (more than twice that of the LAV). In SR4 the Banshee's armour remains the same (though body is upped to 20 from 6) hence you could just leave the MBT's armour at 40. The SRIII body of the Leopard is 12, converting it to SR4 (using the Citymaster as the basis) would make it 38. Keep in mind this is not a support or light tank, this is the heaviest MBT on the market and it should be formidable when facing ground based troops.

The biggest threat to the tank is from magic. Powerbolt and Wrecker spells will have a tough time having much of an effect due to the object’s resistance but spirits are another matter. To keep Spirits from mucking with it, either have the body shell of the tank warded, or have it guarded by a spirit as suggested above. Unless the team's mage can see into the tank, Direct and Indirect combat spells are useless for there is no LOS to an individual inside (unless he performs Ritual targeting which of course needs more time than the runners would have in this situation).

The idea of a fully automated MBT is also a good option to defeat magic, but remember then it is prone to being hacked and commandeered by the runners. That could turn the whole scenario inside out.

Problems arise when we get into things like battleships and aircraft carriers and bunker-buster bombs.

You are trying to reflect the difference between an armored truck with an inch of armor and an AFV with a meter and a half of armor. You think a 10 point difference reflects this effectively? Why?

...that is why I suggested just taking the armour value directly from SOTA63 and converting the body stat to SR4 based on the Citymaster. This gives a total resistance of 78 which equals 19 auto hits to shake down (or off) the damage (this is suggested in the on p. 158 under vehicle combat)

With a body of 38 that gives a condition monitor of 27 boxes of damage to fill until the vehicle is trashed.

Keep in mind, if a weapon's modified DV does not exceed the modified armour of the vehicle, it does no damage, zilch, nada.

Even a heavily armored truck doesn't plan to stop 12.7mm rounds. 7.62mm AP if you splurge.

Riot Control Truck specs

Typical top line MBT armor is equal to over a meter of steel vs HEAT rounds at current, and it has been steadily increasing. That's why AT warheads have also increased. The late 60's AT-3 had a warhead able to go through some 400mm of steel, while the modern AT-14 is claimed to be able to penetrate 1.2 meters.

Far as I know, nobody has managed to penetrate the frontal armor on an M1A1 or later, and people have tried.

Link here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour

Read down the Effectiveness, a M1 penetration is sited in that paragraph.

We have lost M1's in Irag pretty much the Israelis have in the Sinai. Mostly due to very large IED's.

I would like to see a Challenger II versus a M1a1 combat, starting at 10k distance from each other.

Challenger have been lost by;
"In one encounter within the urban area a Challenger 2 came under attack from irregular forces with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. The drivers sight was damaged and while attempting to back away under the commander's directions, the other sights were damaged and the tank threw its tracks entering a ditch. It was hit directly by eight rocket propelled grenades from close range and a MILAN anti-tank missile, and was under heavy small arms fire for hours. The crew survived remaining safe within the tank until the tank was recovered for repairs, the worst damage being to the sighting system. It was back in operation six hours later after the repairs. One Challenger 2 operating near Basra survived being hit by 70 RPGs in another incident.[5]

There have been only three Challenger 2s lost in combat:

* A friendly fire ("blue-on-blue") incident on 25 March 2003 in Basra in which one Challenger 2 mistakenly shot another, destroying the second tank and killing two crew members
* August 2006 - the driver of a Challenger 2, Trooper Sean Chance, lost three of his toes when an RPG-29 penetrated the frontal armour during an engagement in al-Amarah, Iraq.[6]
* April 6, 2007 - in Basra, Iraq, an IED shaped charge penetrated the underside of the tank, resulting in the driver losing a leg and causing minor injuries to another soldier. The BBC quotes a British MoD spokesman as saying Challenger 2 was:

M1a1
"The Abrams remained untested in combat until the Gulf War in 1991. A total of 1,848 M1A1s were deployed to Saudi Arabia. The M1A1 was superior to Iraq's Soviet-era T-55 and T-62 tanks, as well as Iraqi assembled Russian T-72s, and locally-produced copies (Asad Babil tank). The T-72s like most Soviet export designs lacked night vision systems and then-modern range finders, though they did have some night fighting tanks with older active infrared systems or floodlights — just not the latest starlight scopes and passive infrared scopes as on the Abrams. Only 23 M1A1s were taken out of service in the Gulf[2] and none of these losses resulted in crew deaths from Iraqi fire. Some others took minor combat damage, with little effect on their operational readiness. There were only 3 tank crew members wounded beyond doubt by enemy action.

The M1A1 was capable of making kills at ranges in excess of 2500 m. This range was crucial in combat against tanks of Soviet design in Desert Storm, as the effective range of the main gun in the Soviet/Iraqi tanks was less than 2000 meters (Iraqi tanks could not fire Anti-Tank missiles like their Russian counterparts). This meant Abrams tanks could hit Iraqi tanks before the enemy got in range - a decisive advantage in this kind of combat. In friendly fire incidents the front armor and fore side turret armor survived direct APFSDS hits from other M1A1s. This was not the case for the side armor of the hull and the rear armor of the turret, as both areas were penetrated at least in two occasions by friendly DU ammunition during the Battle of Norfolk.

Nearly all sources claim that no Abrams tank has ever been destroyed as a result of fire from an enemy tank, but some have certainly taken some damage which required extensive repair. There is at least one account, reported in the following Gulf War's US Official Assessment (scan), of an Abrams being damaged by three kinetic energy piercing rounds. The DoD report indicates that witnesses in the field claimed it was hit by a T-72 Asad Babil. The KE rounds were unable to fully penetrate and stuck in the armor, but the damage was enough to send the tank to a maintenance depot. This is the only verified case of an M1A1 knocked out by an Iraqi MBT.

Presumably the impacts set the storage boxes on fire. The tests at the impact point indicate the sabot shells were conventional, since no radiological trace was found there.

On the night of February 26, 1991, four Abrams were disabled in a suspected friendly fire incident by Hellfire missiles fired from AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, with the result of some crew members WIA.[5] The tanks were part of TF 1-37,[6] attacking a large section of Tawakalna Republican Guard Division, their numbers being B-23, C-12, D-24 and C-66. However, C-12 was definitively hit and penetrated by a friendly DU shot and there is some evidence that another Iraqi T-72 may have scored a single hit on B-23, besides the alleged Hellfire strike (see Iraqi T-72 article).

Tanks D-24 and C-66 took some casualties as well Only B-23 became a permanent loss. The DoD's damage assessments state that B-23 was the only M1 with signs of a Hellfire missile found nearby.

Also during Operation Desert Storm, three Abrams of the 24 ID were left behind the enemy lines after a swift attack on Talil airfield, south of Nasiriyah, on February 27. One of them was hit by enemy fire, the two other embedded in mud. The tanks were destroyed by US forces in order to prevent any trophy-claim by the Iraqi Army.

During the major combat operations in Iraq, Abrams crew members were lost when one tank of the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division, and US Marine Corps troops, drove onto a bridge. The bridge failed, dropping the tank into the Euphrates River, where four Marines drowned.

A destroyed USMC M1A1 Abrams rests in front of a Fedayeen camp just outside of Jaman Al Juburi, Iraq on April 6, 2003.

During an early attack on Baghdad, one M1A1 was disabled by a recoilless rifle round that had penetrated the rear engine housing, and punctured a hole in the right rear fuel cell, causing fuel to leak onto the hot turbine engine. After repeated attempts to extinguish the fire, the decision was made to destroy or remove any sensitive equipment. Oil and .50 caliber rounds were scattered in the interior, the ammunition doors were opened and several thermite grenades ignited inside. Another M1 then fired a HEAT round in order to ensure the destruction of the disabled tank. The tank was completely disabled but still intact. Later, an AGM-65 Maverick was fired into the tank to finish its destruction. Remarkably, the tank still appeared to be intact from the exterior.

On November 27, 2004 an Abrams tank was badly damaged from the detonation of an extremely powerful improvised explosive device (IED). The IED consisted of three M109A6 155 mm shells, with a total explosive weight of 34.5 kg, that detonated next to the tank. The tank's driver received lethal injuries from shrapnel. The other three crew members were able to escape.

On December 25, 2005 another M1A2 was disabled by an explosively formed penetrator IED. The IED penetrated through a road wheel, and hit the fuel tank, which left the tank burning near central Baghdad. One crew member, Spc. Sergio Gudino, died in the attack.

On June 4, 2006 two out of four soldiers died in Baghdad, Iraq, when an IED detonated near their M1A2.

Some were disabled by Iraqi infantrymen in ambushes employing short-range antitank rockets, such as the Russian RPG-7, during the 2003 invasion. Frequently the rockets were fired at the tank tracks. Another was put out of action in an incident when fuel stowed in an external rack was struck by heavy machine gun rounds. This started a fire that spread to the engine.

There have also been a number of Abrams crewmen killed by sniper fire during times when they were exposed through the turret hatches of their tanks. Some of these attacks were filmed by insurgents for propaganda purposes and spread via the Internet. One of these videos shows a large IED detonating beneath an Abrams and nearly flipping the vehicle, though the tank landed back on its treads and appeared to have suffered no serious damage as it was still mobile and traversing the turret following the attack, a testament to the Abrams' survivability.

Complaining Shadowrun doesn't have "proper" stats for tanks, battleships and bunker-buster bombs is like complaining your mountain bike can't take you to outer space - the game wasn't made for that sort of scale.

If you want to play something where all this stuff features regularly and is balanced with each other, you're better off with some sort of modern or SF strategy game. I think Classic Battletech included rules for thanks somewhere, for example.

Heck, you can make up your own strategy game - it'll still be better than trying to strap booster rockets to that mountain bike.

To recap:

------------

1 Tanks, bunker busting bombs, ATGMs, all all that other stuff exist in the world of SR.

2 The rules necessary to model these things should not cause breakdowns on the normal scale of SR (which normally would top out around cash-transport type armored cars).

3 While SR is not a wargame, the SR rules for tanks, etc should, at least, not be embarrassing.

4 There are a whole host of wargames devoted to modeling this sort of stuff.

5 Ideally, the rules for SR should allow an easy interface with these wargames, so that the stats can simply be ported into SR.

--------------

So, what basic changes are needed to switch to my system?

1 When dealing with vehicular armor, the assumption is that one point of vehicular armor ~= 1mm RHA

2 Rifles lose 1 point of damage and gain 4 points of AP value. (Example: AR goes from 6(-1) to 5(-5)) (this brings RHA penetration of rifles into the right general neighborhood).

3 The HMG does 8(-12) (assumes 50 BMG), assault cannon 9(-27) (assumes 25mm HEDP)

4 Other anti-tank weapons as provided by google/your favorite wargame.
4a For weapons with RHA penetration in excess of 100mm, damage is 1/10th the total penetration, the other 90% is AP value. For example, the M72 LAW penetrates around 350mm RHA. This gives it a SR damage value of 35(-315).
4b For weapons with less penetration, around 25% for the penetration being damage seems to work.
4c Weapons that do are not specifically gears toward armor penetration but still have some ability to penetrate armor should have a higher proportion of damage to AP value. For example, 155mm artillery firing HE over open sights might penetrate around 50mm RHA and giving it a damage rating of 50(-0) might work out.

Anyone have a better rule of thumb for the distribution of damage vs AP values?

5 Body values for heavy vehicles will take some seat of the pants estimates. For APCs/IFVs values of 10-24 seem to work. For light tanks 25-45, for heavier tanks 45 on up, with most MBTs having around 60 body.

Some other minor rules tweaks are helpful (slight shift in heavy armor suit values, for example), but that is the core of it.

Actually, the real point of this thread is to create stats for a heavy thunderbird that will take some work to take down by a group of runners. Not an invincible super Deus ex Machina that even a converted-from-3rd-Edition Tactical Nuke would have no chance in hell of stopping.

Assuming we are talking about man-portable ATGMs vs tanks:

A top-attack ATGM like the US Javelin penetrates 'in excess of 600mm RHA' so we'll give it a damage of 60(-540) HEAT

Against a MBT:
Body 60 (condition monitor 38 boxes)
600/300/100 vs KE
1000/500/200 vs HEAT

The javelin attacks the weaker top armor of the MBT, and we'll assume that this is a current MBT, so we'll say that the top armor is the same as the side armor.

So we are looking at:

armor 500 body 60 vs 60(-540)
The armor is penetrated. 60 dice of armor are left over, giving the tank a total of 120 dice of soak. the tank gets 40 hits to soak and takes 20 points of damage. Thus, it takes around 2 Javelins to take out the tank.

If we assume that the javelin penetrates closer to 750mm RHA (it might) then its damage would look like: 75(-675).
And we'd have the following:
armor 500 body 60 vs 75(-675)
The tank gets 60 dice to soak, giving 20 hits. The tank takes 45 hits and is killed by a single Javelin.

[edit]
If we want to use an ATGM that dosen't have top attack capability we'll try the 9M133 Kornet. It penetrates around 1200mm of RHA, giving it a damage of, say, 90(-1110) HEAT (penetration is over 1000mm RHA so 10% rule thumb will probably need changing. Will try 7.5%.

Hitting the tank on the front:
armor 1000 body 60 vs damage 90(-1110)
tank gets 60 dice to soak, gets 20 hits. Takes 70 damage and is toast.

Is the tank was 1200mm vs HEAT on the front the it would look like:
armor 1200 body 60 vs damage 90(-1110)
armor is penetrated 90 armor is left over for soak
Tank gets 150 dice to soak, gets 50 hits, takes 40 damage.

[yet another edit]
The AT4 LAW is rated for 500+mm RHA, which means you'll need two hits to kill it from the bank (each hit doing around 30 damage), and you'll need around 3 hits from the top or side to kill the tank (each hit doing around 13.33 damage).
If we assume that the AT4 penetrates closer to 600mm RHA, then it becomes 1 hit to the back kills and 2 hits to the side.

The M72 LAW (350mm RHA) can only threaten the tank from behind, and even then you need three hits to stop the tank. Of course, the M72 has been discontinued because it didn't provide adequate power against modern tanks...

Nope. Talking about the Aztechnology Striker, Shadowrun's version of a LAW. The one that shoots AV missiles that do 16P damage with a -6 AP bonus again vehicles. Not convulted-overcomplicated-makes-no-sense-whateverso-rules-of-utter-ridiculousnessville. Yeah, that one. The one you just said can take down a tank just fine.

Just a thought to add on the automated tank area of the discussion, I think that's viable and you could IC the thing until it's blue, but putting a single crewman in would make sense. Tanks need multiple crew at present because they can't do things for themselves and their complex to drive (I imagine). A single, hot-simming rigger could probably manage most of the tank and use autosofts to supplement that would be quite as good as almost any metahuman. But what's most interesting is that with 2070 technology, he doesn't have to be awake and sitting in a comfortable chair. He can go into full VR for the duration and they can just slide his comatose body into the coffin-like compartment. It would be a claustrophobes nightmare except that in his mind, he is a tank that can roll anywhere and over anything. This even prevents spirits from manifesting in the compartment as there wouldn't be room.

Dwarves would make the ideal pilots because you can squeeze them into even smaller spaces and their willpower is an asset. Proper, state of the art medical equipment could actually keep the body healthy and functioning for weeks or more. I imagine these tank pilots would be easily distinguishable by their poor muscle tone, sickly complexions and tendancy to hold their arm out in front of them like a main gun when they're not concentrating.

Actually, given the long immersion time, it would be plenty of time for unnoticed conditions to become manifest. I have this vision of a dwarf with very early stage HMVV being unwittingly put in his tank and having it develop whilst inside. The poor dwarf wouldn't even know, but in the meantime, you've got a flesh-hungry Goblin Tank out for blood! Woo! Yeah!

And my Grand Dragon only does 8m5 (or whatever it did the the original SSC)

All heavy weapons are re-written by the new rules, and you complain that a weapons under the old rules doesn't work anymore?

Finally a post in this thread that's truly fitting to the setting of SR. YOU ROCK KNASSER!

Part of the reason that tank crews haven't really shrunk is

1 the need for the crew to preform maintenance on the tank. I'd assume that SR tanks carry some number of drones designed to do things like change the tracks and so on, so this is not too big of a problem.

2 Stand watch.
1 guy can't stay alert all the time, he needs time to sleep. also, the tank still needs to remain combat effective if one of the crew gets sick, or cuts his throat shaving, or some other miss-adventure.

[edit]
Putting a vat grown brain into the tank and having a spirit posses the brain might get you some result too. Then you can have a collection of 'tanks gone wrong' somewhere. For example, the dumb one that follows you around, asking to be told a story.

Of a bug hive infiltrates the tank possession factory and a bit later a bunch of tanks with wasp wings come rumbling out...

But the problem with the current system is that there is no range of armor available for the system to simulate. The stonewall is obviously not the most heavily armored thing in the SR world, since it flies. But it has to have more armor that a citymaster, since the stonewall is supposed to be kinda tank -like. But we can give the stonewall only armor 22 (or maybe 24) at the max without making all the published anti-tank weapons useless! Any what if we want to have a stonewall vs a ground based tank with 'heavier armor'? How much armor should the ground based tank have? Then, why can't my weapons (the ATGM) designed to kill tanks actually do anything against the ground based tank, that has armor heavier than the stonewall?

If we assume that the ground based tank should have armor 30, then should the real stats of the ATGM be something like 24(-8)?

And then, if I'm going to have to change all the stats, I might as well use a system that is robust.

The SR4 BBB does not have stats for anti-tank weapons. The anti-vehicles warheads listed are pretty much for taking out regular cars and lightly armored vehicles, not tanks. There are no stats to change.

Which is why it's called an AV round, not an Anti-tank or anti-armor round.

The Striker is a light SAM, it's for taking out light planes and helicopter.

I expect to see AT missile having stats in th 20-25(-6 to -12) area.

The stonewall is supposed to be way tougher than a Banshee (which is a light scout vehicle) RBB suggests it's one of the tougher tanks around.

I'd give it about 30 body and armour (so 23 condition moniter). I wouldn't throw it a t a team. I'd use it as an IC "Don't use the front door" plot hammer... If I was sending a tank against Shadowrunners I'd use a lighter tank maybe in the 20 body 25 armour range So good shots (4+ net hits) on it from missiles statted dent it a bit and make the runners work at some tactics to deal with it.