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:


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.

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

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.



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.



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.

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

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.

How do you know? Were there precedents?

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.

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"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unlikely.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for your very constructive feedback.

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

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.

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.





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.




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.

Okay, I guess if the art implies this, having a remote-controlled turret there is impossible by the rules, and unimaginable by any stretch of imagination, too.


So what in the current rules is stopping you from having the MPUV lose mobility after a called shot?
This is how I do that - both vehicles and opponents are prone to losing chunks of themselves due to players' actions.

Nice strawman there, Fatum. It was never stated anywhere in the original bit about the MPUV having a remote controlled turret, so I went with the supported presumption that there was a guy standing up in the gunner's position with the gun in his hands.

Neither was it stated that there's a gunner not protected by armor, so you're making an assumption and then using it as a cornerstone of your argument. Supporting that assumption with what can be guessed from implications in the art. After all, SR art is famously representative.

Not that any of this is too relevant to the effectiveness of the supposedly anti-vehicle weaponry against the armored vehicles or the problem with hardened armor they have, anyway.

I don't have the book where this vehicle is from but according to Arsenal page 148, unless the writeup specifies that it is an "armored manual control" turret, then the gunner is not protected by vehicle armor. Hope he is wearing something good.

It doesn't have a turret coming in standard at all.

Then your solution to this problem is simple.

Improved AV rounds for use against those with 21+ armor. Give it more DV or a higher -AP value vs 21+ armor while stepping it back down to something a little better (or even worse) then the lower powered version to go with the fact that the rounds are really designed to hit heavier armor (think over penetration). Price and restriction level appropriate to your game and done.

Guys, unless a turret says remote only, or manual only. It's both manual and remote. Only if it's armored does it not expose a manual gunner. Manual means the gunner can fire it using Agility + gunnery instead of some kind of electronic remote control firing method (rigging, command, pilot command, etc.).


Fatum:
Here's the problem. Your physics is bad. Two things go on in impacts... Conservation of Momentum and Conservation of Energy. You're talking about seriously damaging the crew of a 50 ton main battle tank just because a round with a small fraction of the tanks momentum didn't penetrate the armor. Really lets be generous and say the projectile is 10kg... the tank is 100,000kg. Even with the velocity that's enough to impart any kind of significant acceleration on it to shake up the crew. Excess kinetic energy goes more into mangling the vehicles armor, or is damped by the vehicles suspension.

You think a tank crew wearing effectively softweave armored vests + helmet (assuming bod 3 this is about right... +2 +2 helmet, 6/4 vest... 8/6 total for 3bod encumbrance). Plus no defined passenger protection. Is going to be soaking the huge amounts of stun you inflict on them for no good cause? Someone not in their seat sure I can see getting knocked on his ass or getting his skull rapped... Have often do you see a military vehicle with 'passenger protection' that's normally reserved to things like limousines and the like, or bikes where the vehicles armor does not necessarily protect the passengers so extra armor is added. (good example of it would be someone with that big mono-wheel motorcyle... add personal protection to enclose the center of the wheel and protect the driver).

Also if the armor fails... does the crew also take the damage as well in that case as well?! See my problems why I say your creating a problem which doesn't exist and isn't even realistic despite your assertions to the contrary.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/08/army_crows_070823w

Some Humvee's now have remote turrets.

In actuality, there are three types of turrets: manual, armoured manual, and remote. Only the first has the gunner exposed. (You can also add remote control capability to manual and armoured manual turrets, if you want, but that's taking up extra slots).

First, a tank shell weighs around 25 kilos (for example, T-90's ZVBK25 weighs 28.4).
Second, the effect on the crew is not limited to the entirety of the tank being thrown around, but also includes things like the shockwave. You can see a first-hand account up there in the thread, it's indicative of Stun damage.
Also, here's a photo (upper one) of a Panther tank with its frontal armour not pierced by a 152 mm howitzer shell, which ricocheted. Do you feel the crew would've felt great had it not been a proving ground test?

Yeah, and why wouldn't it? If anything, it'd make sense to change the type of the damage to P.

So, Stonewall possibly getting damage only from Aztechnology Itzcoatl or anti-ship or cruise missiles is not a problem? Vehicles like Ruhrmetall Wolf II ignoring 18P hits, but being utterly annihilated by 19P ones?
I guess if it's not a problem for you, you can just not use the optional rule.

And your rule hasn't changed that at all. You have failed to address the "no damage to vehicle or 1 shot vehicles" problem.

There's three things that are involved in this problem.

#1 - Vehicle damage track
#2 - Weapon damage
#3 - Vehicle armor

The way to fix the problem is to fix #1 or fix #2/#3 together. What has happened is that in response to increasing weapon damage, vehicle armor had to necessarily increase to give a vehicle enough damage resistance that their condition track isn't immediately filled. Along with hardened armor rule to prevent small arms fire from destroying a vehicle that should be immune to small arms fire.

If you go about trying to fix #1 then you either need to raise the base hit boxes from 8 or decrease the ratio for additional hit boxes from 1:2 to 1:1 or 1:1.5. I don't know if this solution would work.

If you go about fixing #2/#3 then you need to play the numbers game and lower weapon damage and armor. My initial thought is to halve damage dealt to vehicle targets since it is probably desirable to keep the current DV for meatbags. The hardened armor rule that entire negates damage applies to the base DV of the attack and it only determines if the attack is capable of damaging the vehicle and not whether it will damage the vehicle.

So, assuming 24 armor (assume 20 body for 18 hit boxes), a weapon that deals 18P/-4AP vs vehicles will be able to deal damage if there is two net hits to stage the weapon damage up to 20P. Resolve the damage as normal so 40 dice which reduces damage from 20P to 10P. Then halve the damage applied (rounded down) to 5P. Such a weapon would take about 4 shots to destroy the example vehicle.

Fatum:

Try reading the actual rulebooks for once rather than making up things. Remote does not take extra slots.

Adding Manual control adds +1 modification... adding remote control adds +0 modification. In fact the vast vast majority of published weapon mounts are either remote only, or remote + manual. (armored or not really isn't relevant to this... an internal remote mount for example armors the weapon... but not the gunner so it's completely off target).

Once again read the example vehicles, and you'll see remote is the most common followed by remote + manual. Manual-only is very rare. (and the first thing I'd do as a rigger is spend the +$500 to add remote capability to those mounts since it takes no modification space). So it's both cheap and common to do.



Secondly, you really need to double check your figures. TOTAL shell weight doesn't matter, that includes the casing, the propellant, etc. The only thing we care about is the PROJECTILE weight. In the case of a M829 APFSDS round. The TOTAL weight is 18kg. 8 of that is propellant, the penetrators range from about 5kg to 10kg. Bigger heavier shells don't derive their power from their KE (that's purely kinetic penetrators which is why I used them as my baseline for anti-vehicle). Those derive their power from high explosives, high explosives which in anti-tank rounds get -6DV/m damage degradation for anti-armor shaped charges.

The rules ALREADY COVER THAT!!! (page 171, damage and passengers; In the case of Ramming, full-auto and area-effect attacks, both passengers and vehicles resist the damage equally). Anti-tank missile strikes side of tank... both driver and gunner are say 2m away from impact point... since it's an area attack... they already soak damage as if it were a grenade. The passengers gain the protection of the vehicles armor WHICH YOU IGNORE. Which is why I keep saying you're making up house rules that are completely unnecessary. Making claims which are false, and don't understand physics of impacts.



You never once address the physics problems I relate to you, and in fact something like an abrams is actually heavier than 50tons. (they're closer to 60). I kept the numbers round just to show the sheer order of magnitude differences in momentum. Since the impacts aren't 100% elastic all that extra KE goes into deforming the penetrator, the armor, or deflecting the shell.

Your optional rule is BS because we regularly see guys in abrams hit by anti-tank rounds which bounce, and the crew might be shell-shocked for a second, but this isn't stun damage. (it won't knock out the crew).


The rules as published only give certain cases where the occupants as well as the vehicle are attacked. And those are published. In those cases, the crew benefits from the armor of the vehicle as well as appropriate. Which you ignore and claim total immunity (example full auto HMG spray, or explosives).

Similarly, a 19P hit on something like that is not going to totally annihilate the vehicle, it's going to have a very bad day. (probabably lose a half it's HP but not be completely destroyed. Remember vehicle crews are also good ways to handle group edge. NPC's can get it as well. Take that as a bit of GM advice... give the vehicle crew as a whole 1 or 2 points of group edge. If the PC's are really really unlucky don't spend it, if they are doing too well. Use the edge to help with the damage soak. Rerolling 20 dice can easily alter soaking say 8 damage up to soaking 15 of 19 damage. No need to fudge dice (I utterly hate that.. why bother with dice at all if you're just going to arbitrarily decide things).

And in the end, you end up with extra slots taken and extra costs.

Let's take MilSpecTech for example. Ferrari Appaloosa has an external turret armoured manned. LAV-98 - external flexible manned. LAV-103 - external turret armoured manned. BAE Centurion - external turret armoured manned. Four out of five ground vehicles have purely manual weapon mounts. And I can't think of any remote+manual weapon mounts coming in standard off the top of my head.

I guess the explosives do not add the energy generated in the course of a chemical reaction to their kinetic energy, they just substitute it. And the kinetic energy disappears into the vast nothingness.

Do you really think that a better rule than what I suggest? Seriously?

Why two and not anywhere from zero to nine (a length of a tank)? Are you ready to argue the distance to the players who'd prefer their characters to soak the DV reduced by 36 and not 8? What mechanical arguments will you possibly produce?

Oh, and where is that written in the rules? In that "resist the damage equally" bit?

So what you're saying there's no shockwave inside the vehicle after it's hit by a shell, and everyone proceeds as if nothing has happened? The accounts I've read differ a lot from that description, including blood from ears and other such niceties. Anything to contradict that?
You can, of course, suggest some mechanical representation of constant ringing in the ears, headache and aforementioned ear bleeding other than Stun damage.

Vehicles either ignore damage at all, or die in one to two hits. This is verifiable for most weapons used on most armoured vehicles.


What is your problem? I was under the impression we're discussing a game here, not our emergency plan in a capsule with oxygen running out that's freefalling to fiery reentry.
If you don't like the rule suggested, nor see the problem it's trying to address, you can freely abstain from using it. We are not exactly writing Core errata here, either. I just fail to see any reason to be so irritated and rude about it.
Nor to claim others should be reading more rulebooks after making a few plainly wrong statements about the rules yourself, for that matter, too.

Well, if you look at it formally, of course. But the rule is addressing the fact that the weapons that do not penetrate the high armour values have no effect at all - although they still have no effect on the vehicle, admittedly.

I don't think so - instead of vehicles that are either immune to damage or die in around 2 hits, we'd be getting vehicles that are either immune to damage or soak it up while dishing out hurt.

That's essentially rewriting half the stats in the system.

Same thing as the first ruling suggested - the issue as I see it is with incredibly high damage tolerance granted by the hardened armor; this way you're still having vehicles that ignore 20DV hits, but are destroyed by 21DV ones, it'll just be even harder to achieve.

And that is the problem, an attack with 18 P (which is massive unless using something like the overlapping grenades from W!) does nothing, not even a scratch, whereas one extra point means the poor Wolf has to soak 19 P and loses ~half of its CM.

Something I recently though of (didn't do any calculations, so feel free to rip it apart): Hardened Armor gets the equivalent of a Stun track, 8 + (Armor/2) boxes. Any damage which would normally ping off the armor goes onto this monitor, resisted as normal, and once the "Armor Monitor" is full it overflows onto the "Body Monitor"...

Minding that the only vehicles that are capable of soaking up the damage that gets through their armour on average are cargo planes, you may be on to something. Name it Metal Fatigue and call it a day.