How would you handle battle dress

[jayouzts]

The scenario: Alien vs PC in battledress. Alien wins initiative. Alien fires rifle at a person in battledress. He rolls a natural 20, so he hits, but no critical. He rolls d12 damage and rolls a 12.


How do you handle battledress? To me there are two possible interpretations:

1) Battledress is armor. The person in the battledress takes 12 points of stamina damage. He also takes two points of lifeblood damage. (12- AR of 10=2).

The scale is character vs character, so it is now the person wearing the bd's turn to shoot.


2) Battle dress is a vehicle. The damage is reduced by 5 dice (see p 149), meaning the person in battle dress is unaffected. (Impervious to small arms).

However, the person in the BD operates on vehicle scale. Since a round on vehicle scale (tactical plot) is 30 seconds, the Alien (character scale) could get 5 actions before the char in BD could act. This could be enough time for the Alien to run and retrieve the RPG in the next room.

 

[far-trader]

I was pondering this myself when Battledress was presented as a vehicle and figured the way to go would be your second choice. So a BD Marine is tough to kill but reacts slowly. Of course when he or she does fire, if its a BD specific heavy weapon, I'd say the person taking fire is toast (+5 dice for scale difference).

 

[nefus]

"However, the person in the BD operates on vehicle scale. Since a round on vehicle scale (tactical plot) is 30 seconds, the Alien (character scale) could get 5 actions before the char in BD could act. This could be enough time for the Alien to run and retrieve the RPG in the next room. "

Thats a bit stiff for personal armor. I can't imagine you wouldn't be able to fire each round even if you couldn't move.

 

[sandman]

Personally, I'd classify the BD as an ARMOR.

They used the Vehicle desing because you could incoroporate/change many features easily.

IIRC, the BattleDress is nothing more than a Combat Armor with powered limbs.

Would it have been the size of a Gear (à la Heavy-Gear), I'd have said OK, its a vehicle, but looking at those pix, I'd say it's an Armor.


Anyway, it's your TU, you can do what you like.

 

[far-trader]

Allow me to clarify my post above. By BD specific heavy weapons I meant the PGMP-13 and FGMP-14. Reviewing the text however I think I'll have to change my mind. The PGMP-13 (p203-4) may be "fired each round" and the FGMP-14 (p 204) may be "fired once every two rounds" clearly implying personal melee scale so perhaps the idea that BD is a vehicle should be struck.

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by far-trader:
<snip> implying personal melee scale so perhaps the idea that BD is a vehicle should be struck.

Would you still keep the remove 5 dice damange when the BD gets hit though? Otherwise it would be even easier to damage BD.

I'm tempted to change the internal hit location chart as well, maybe even just eliminate it and have all internal damage go to the "pilot". At the very least I'm not sure that BD would have the same range of systems/chance of being hit as a normal vehicle.

Casey

 

[nefus]

So a bunch of kids with bb guns could stop a guy in battledress? Don't seem right.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Casey:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by far-trader:
<snip> implying personal melee scale so perhaps the idea that BD is a vehicle should be struck.

Would you still keep the remove 5 dice damange when the BD gets hit though? Otherwise it would be even easier to damage BD.

I'm tempted to change the internal hit location chart as well, maybe even just eliminate it and have all internal damage go to the "pilot". At the very least I'm not sure that BD would have the same range of systems/chance of being hit as a normal vehicle.

Casey </font>[/QUOTE]The more I look at it the more broken it seems. The desciption doesn't give a personal AC rating so you can't treat it like armor, yet the chameleon option grants a personal AC bonus. The description says it can "shrug off smallarms fire and even some support weapons" which certainly implies the -5 dice for vehicle scale yet also says BD soldiers "still funtion as infantry". So I guess they attack as people scale but defend as vehicle scale?

 

[sandman]

Originally posted by far-trader:
The description says it can "shrug off smallarms fire and even some support weapons" which certainly implies the -5 dice for vehicle scale yet also says BD soldiers "still funtion as infantry". So I guess they attack as people scale but defend as vehicle scale?

Could be a good compromise.

Not as devastating as treating them as Full blown vehicle, but not as fragile as treating them as Only Infantry...

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by far-trader:
The more I look at it the more broken it seems. The desciption doesn't give a personal AC rating so you can't treat it like armor, yet the chameleon option grants a personal AC bonus.<snip> So I guess they attack as people scale but defend as vehicle scale?

Well according to the latest Standard Designs File at least BD has AC 23/ AR10.

BD as vehicle for defense/adding options but personal scale for attack seems about right to me. FWIW, TML has had some debate recently on BD
unfortunately the archive search is down, but the archives themselves are still working.

Do a find on BD, Battledress, Battleaxe, or Butterknife.

Casey

 

[Richard Saunders]

Originally posted by far-trader:
Well according to the latest Standard Designs File at least BD has AC 23/ AR10.
Casey

Hello.
With an AC=23 your not going to be hit very often, with an AR=10 not much damage is going to get through either.
Battle dress is high tech Full plate armour with power but it still will have the same problem with joints if you want them to be flexable they must be weaker or less protected than a solid mass of metal.
I think the 5 dice of for vehicles is intended for armoued vehicles not all vehicles, a jeep is only tin plate not armour, a 4 ton truck is sheet metal and canvas not armour, any armoured vehicle should get the 5 dice bonus, but does the 4mm vrfgg get the 5 dice deficit if not why not its the same gun only it fires faster than the standard infantry rifle but because its fired by infantry its worse????.
If the plasma gun is fired by infantry in battle dress do they count as infantry (so they cant hurt themselves )or do they count as a vehicle.
I have more to say but i have to go.
Enjoy the arguments discusions fights.
BYE.

 

[justacaveman]

Revised Scale Rule

When firing personal scale weapons at vehicles reduce the number of damage dice according to the following table:

Vehicle Personal Scale Weapon
Size vs Vehicle

Small 0
Medium -2
Large -3
Huge -5
Gargantuan -7
Colossal -8

I use modified scale rules, and the above is part of the table I use. I also give a damage bonus for vehicle scale weapons shooting Large or smaller vehicles, and limit the maximum AR according to the size of the vehicle.

TL13 Medium Battle Dress (Size = Large) would have a scale damage reduction of 3 dice by my rules, and suffer +1d additional damage.

Example:
FGMP-14(7d20) hits TL13 Medium Battle Dress. Damage is reduced to 4d20 (scale), then reduced by armor (AR10) to 1d20-7.
Medium Laser hits the same Battle Dress. No scale reduction. Damage is increased to 4d10 (damage bonus for Large vehicle), then reduced to 1d10-7 by armor.

 

[Eric]

How would armor piercing rounds change the equation?

 

[chrisr]

Am I right in thinking that the vehicle combat round length of 30 secs(advanced) or 1 minute(basic) only comes into play when ALL combatants are vehicles? So in the above example, BD vs character, 5 is reduced from the damage dice before armour reduction comes into effect. Then the BD equipped combatant gets to attack every 6 seconds till it's all over.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

I like the compromise on the issue (treating BD as individual scale offensively and vehicle scale defensively), but how often will PC's encounter BD?

I have an art file I use to give the PC's the "feel" of Traveller, as opposed to other SciFi genre. One of the illo's is the wonderful pic on pg 209 of the T20 book.

"This is your life. This is what's left of your life when the Imperial Marine get an Op Order with your name on it. Any questions?"

 

[justacaveman]

An infantryman equipped with TL12 Combat Armor, and a TL12 Gauss Rifle fires a 4-round burst at a marine equipped with TL13 Battle Dress, and a PGMP-13.

The Gauss Rifle will do 4d12 with a 4-round burst. This is reduced by Scale Reduction (standard rules) to 1d12-2, the Battle Dress's AR of 10 reduces this to 0. If the Gauss Rifle uses armor piercing ammo with an AP value of 6 (the maximum at TL12), the damage is increased to 1d12-6. This is still not a lot of damage.

The marine fires his PGMP-13 at the Infantryman. A PGMP-13 will do 7d12 damage. The Combat Armor's AR of 7 will reduce this to 1d12-1. The advantage clearly lies with the Battle Dress equipped marine.

In addition the Gauss Rifle will score Critical Hits only on a 20 (increasing it's final damage to 1d12), and the PGMP-12 will score a Critical Hit on an 18-20 (increasing it's final damage to 13d12).

Pesonnally, unless I have tank busting weaponry to use on the Battle Dress, I'm gonna run like hell.

 

[justacaveman]

Sorry, math error.

The final PGMP-13 damage is is 14d12 on a Critical Hit.

 

[Zutroi]

Read the design system carefully, battledress is clearly a vehicle:

The volumes is given as 300vl, which sure seems to be 3 cubic meters! Inside is a 'driver' who is given 1.1 cubic meters to play around in. The rule throughout the design sequence is that the person needs at least 10% more space than the body occupies, therfore a human is considered to be 1 cubic meter. Again for the sake of simplicity we'll say a human has the same density as fresh water (I know, most people float, I for one could hold my breath and sit in lotus at the bottom of the deep end during high school). This means that the typical human weight is...

ONE METRIC TON

On the otherhand if everything is made 1/10 scale to accomodate the REAL size of the human it is clearly armor!

BTW, does anybody esle notice that a being in powered armor will lose arm wrestling competitions with Sydites, Ursans, or the typical 8th level D&D fighter?

Caveat: all this is based on the standard design in the book as published, I will respectfully withdraw all objections to anything other than the strength issue if the errata have already fixed them...

 

[justacaveman]

A human being is no way near 1 cubic meter in volume. 25% of that at most.

The official rules say that 1 vl = 1 kilogram (way too light). The THB says 1 vl = 10 liters volume, and On The Ground says 1 vl = 5 liters volume. 1 liter of water weighs about 1 kilogram (look it up). 100 vl should weigh about 500 Kg.

When the rules can't be used to come up with real world equipment, the rules must be wrong.

 

[Anthony]

Human beings average very marginally above 1 liter per kilogram weight; 1/10 of a cubic meter is actually fairly large. However, humans don't pack particularly well; it's hard to create a seat that's much under half a cubic meter, that normal people can fit into.