Energy weapons and armor piercing

[graden1]

This came up during the discussion re: battle-dress. Fusion guns (and other energy weapons) seem to come up short when compared with armor piercing projectiles; A heavy tank's main fusion gun isn't effective v. battle dress, but a 30cm 4bl auto-cannon with AP ammo has a good chance to kill it.

So, much as I hate "home rules", I'm adding an armor-piercing rule for energy weapons, IMTU. I'd like to make energy weapons more effective without totally altering the game balance, so please post some feedback on this:

Armor penetration for energy weapons:

Fusion guns, and pulse lasers get 1pt of armor-piercing per damage die, after adjustments for range and scale.

Plasma guns and beam lasers get 1pt of armor-piercing per 2 damage dice, after adjustments for range and scale.

I'm doing it this way so that personal weapons have their armor-piercing reduced against vehicular targets, otherwise the personal fusion guns would be over-powered. Armor-piercing is also reduced at half- and quarter- damage ranges, to reflect the rapid dispersal of energy weapons.

For example, under this rule, the FGMP-15 gets 4pts of AP v. a vehicle within its full-damage range. Yes, this makes the FGMP-15 more effective against grav tanks. (Groan!) Bear with me. The heavy tank's fusion gun gets 9pts of AP v. battle dress!

I'm hoping that this will "equalize" high-energy weapons with armor-piercing projectiles, and also balance out some of the issues between personal & vehicle scale energy weapons. (as well as starhip scale; I haven't looked at that yet.) But if anyone can see any game-breaking effects of this rule, please post them here so I can correct this, or scrap the whole idea if I ought to.

many thanks,

DGv2.0

 

[mike wightman]

Thanks for the ideas, I'm going to give them a try.
There is a similar problem with personal laser weapons and armour. If you wear cloth and reflec or cloth and ablat then you are immune to non-critical damage. OK, you still take stamina damage and in the case of ablat your AR degrades. I just wonder if this is the effect the game designers envisaged or if it came up in playtest?

 

[graden1]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Thanks for the ideas, I'm going to give them a try.
There is a similar problem with personal laser weapons and armour. If you wear cloth and reflec or cloth and ablat then you are immune to non-critical damage. OK, you still take stamina damage and in the case of ablat your AR degrades. I just wonder if this is the effect the game designers envisaged or if it came up in playtest?

I've tentatively applied the above AP rule to lasers, same as energy weapons, but after reading the "lasers v. armor" discussion, I'm not sure it goes far enough. Even with the above rule, personal lasers still have little or no effect v. cloth/reflec, because they get 3pts of AP.

AP rounds for projectile weapons have their AP value set at 1/2 the tech level, rounded down. This might work for personal lasers, as well, but then reflec would be completely negated by a TL12 laser. I'd recommend 1/3 the TL, rounded to the nearest whole number. This gives the following results:

TL 7: 2pts AP (ship's lasers only)
8-10: 3pts AP
11-13: 4pts AP
14-16: 5pts AP

This lets reflec keep some value at all TL's, and shows the laser improving steadily as TL increases. Of course, reflec could also improve with TL, within reason.

thanx heaps,

DGv2.0

 

[mike wightman]

Thanks for taking the time to think about the problem and offer quite an elegant solution

.
The only modification I would make is to say that laser AP doesn't apply against reflec, ablat or combat armour of a higher TL than the weapon.

 

[justacaveman]

I've been treating Hi-energy weapons and Lasers as HEAP ammo (-5 AR). I already have a house rule that halves the AP value of personal scale weapons when used against vehicles.

I like the way you do it better though, so I'm going to test it out to see how well it works. If it works as well as it looks, I'll change the energy weapon and laser AP rules, but I'll still halve personal scale slugthrower AP vs vehicles I think.

Good job!

 

[justacaveman]

After testing, I've encountered 1 major difficulty.

+1 AP per damage die after adjusting for scale/ range makes Combat Armor completely useless against FGMP's.

I tried out reducing the AP bonus to +1 per 2 damage dice, but that made the FGMP's too weak vs vehicles (PGMP's also are weak after scale reduction).

What seemed to work best was +3 AP for plasma and laser weapons (reduce by 1 at 5-7 range increments etc.), and +4 AP for fusion weapons (also reduced for range increases). This keeps combat armor useful against FGMP's, and still allows reasonable chances against vehicles.

This rule is designed to work with my other house rules, and may not work for everone.

The other rules I use that apply to vehicles and Battle Dress are as follows:
1. Battle Dress only gets a scale modifier of +2.
2. The maximumum AR of Battle Dress is Tech Level minus 3.
3. Vehicle scale weapons get a +3 scale damage modifier vs Battle Dress.
4. Personal scale weapons may only score Critical Hits against vehicles if the second roll lies within the Critical Threat range of the weapon.
5. Personal scale slugthrower Armor-Piercing values are halved vs vehicles, and vehicle scale slugthrower AP is doubled vs personal scale armor.
6. When a Critical hit is scored against a target that is fully enclosed in armor (Such as Combat Armor, or a tank etc.), the AR is not ignored, it is halved.

 

[graden1]

Originally posted by LordRhys:
After testing, I've encountered 1 major difficulty.

+1 AP per damage die after adjusting for scale/ range makes Combat Armor completely useless against FGMP's.

I tried out reducing the AP bonus to +1 per 2 damage dice, but that made the FGMP's too weak vs vehicles (PGMP's also are weak after scale reduction).

What seemed to work best was +3 AP for plasma and laser weapons (reduce by 1 at 5-7 range increments etc.), and +4 AP for fusion weapons (also reduced for range increases). This keeps combat armor useful against FGMP's, and still allows reasonable chances against vehicles.

This rule is designed to work with my other house rules, and may not work for everone.

The other rules I use that apply to vehicles and Battle Dress are as follows:
1. Battle Dress only gets a scale modifier of +2.
2. The maximumum AR of Battle Dress is Tech Level minus 3.
3. Vehicle scale weapons get a +3 scale damage modifier vs Battle Dress.
4. Personal scale weapons may only score Critical Hits against vehicles if the second roll lies within the Critical Threat range of the weapon.
5. Personal scale slugthrower Armor-Piercing values are halved vs vehicles, and vehicle scale slugthrower AP is doubled vs personal scale armor.
6. When a Critical hit is scored against a target that is fully enclosed in armor (Such as Combat Armor, or a tank etc.), the AR is not ignored, it is halved.

I figured something like this would come up--there's just no way to account for everything when monkeying with the rules. (That's why I *&^%$#@! hate home rules. Oh well...) Thanks for posting that, LR!

And I thought, if that's true, then only battle dress would stop a fusion/plasma gun, which would explain why battle dress is considered vital for high tech troops in Traveller. But then, I realized that (in T20) there are a lot of other weapons which neutralize combat armor; specifically, any gun firing TL-14 AP rounds. For instance, a gauss rifle with TL-14 AP ammo firing a 10 shot burst does 5d12 and ignores 7 points of armor. Also, its damage and AP don't fall off with range, and its range is longer than energy weapons to begin with.

Up to this point, I had considered high energy weapons to be a completely different class of firepower, compared to slug-throwers. But under the T20 rules, there is more "overlap" between the two than I had realized, and I'm glad to see that. The game is designed better than I thought.

So maybe this is, as LordRhys said, a "major difficulty", but on the other hand, it might be necessary for energy weapons to keep up with those high-tech slugthrowers. This just keeps getting more and more interesting. I think I'll keep some of that AP7 ammo on hand, just in case.

many thanx,

DGv2.0

 

[justacaveman]

FGMP's do at least 2 more dice than a 10-round burst from a Gauss Rifle, and they're doing d20's compared to d12's so I think the straight +4 AP bonus for fusion guns will be quite sufficient for my purposes. Plus I halve personal scale slugthrower AP vs vehicles (including Battle Dress) (while FGMP's get their full bonus), FGMP's have a Critical Threat range of 18+, while Gauss Rifles have a 20, and a Critical Hit from a 10-round Gauss rifle Burst will do 7d12 and, a Critical Hit from an FGMP-14 will do 14d20 damage.

Anybody not wearing Combat Armor will be toast if an FGMP strikes them, and don't have very good chances even with the armor.