Damage thoughts

[olivertheorem]

So, this is more or less what I have in mind for handling damage without having to order every system first. For examples, we'll use a hypothetical ship with 5 S, 5 A, and 10 internal systems of 1 HS each

General
As normal, shields take damage first, then armor. Shield-skipping still works. Where it changes is that once 1 or more A are damaged, there is a proportional chance for the next hit to damage a now unprotected spot. For our example ship, once the first A is damaged, there is a 20% (1-in-5) chance for the next hit to avoid armor altogether. If armor is bypassed, then each internal system has a chance to be damaged based on its HS. Again with our example ship, if no internal systems are damaged and the ship takes a no-armor hit, each system has a 1-in-10 chance to be hit. If a system took up 2 HS, it would have a 2-in-10 chance.

Obviously, this is going to require a fair bit of random number generation on my part.

Deep Hits
If a deep-hit weapon (like the needle beam) hits armor, it destroys that armor and 1 internal system. If a deep-hit weapon misses armor, it destroys internal systems up to the number of points of damage (unless an internal system takes more than one 1 damage point to destroy).

Precision
Precision weapons can "call their shot" IF the firing ship (or a ship in its datagroup) is sufficiently close to an enemy ship to know the location of its systems (I need help with this as I still struggle with the scan range stuff).


I am open to suggestions.

[Cralis]

Maybe I missed it in the original post, but what version of Starfire are you playing with?

I can tell you right now that having "leaky" armor but not "leaky" shields is going to dis-incentivize armor heavy designs and most players would swap to mostly shields. As a result, shield penetrating weapons (L, precision weapons, Lw, etc.) will be most commonly used.

[Whitecold]

How are you planning to keep track of hit chances? Also the increased hit chance for large systems will give systems like Kc a significant disadvantage, and those systems already suffer from low HtK

[olivertheorem]

Cralis: Current Solar rules. I was thinking the same thing about S vs. A, and was thinking of increasing HS and/or cost of S to compensate, so that it's harder to load up on that security blanket.

Whitecold: Lots of notes, unless/until I can figure out how to automate it in Excel. I've pondered treating each system the same for hit chance to avoid that problem with large systems.

[olivertheorem]

New thought. Simpler too. S and A behave as normal, it's just the system damage that's random. I know basing it on system HS punishes larger systems, but it feels more legitimate.

[Cralis]

Sitting here before the start of a wedding (I wasn't kidding about the last 45 days being torturously busy...), I've been thinking about your idea.


The idea of leaky shields and armor isn't a bad one. I once considered a variant where shields and armor had a chance of being missed based on how much was damaged, with each salvo checking separately. The neat thing with it is that armor becomes very important as a second layer of passive defense, and even large ships have a chance of minor damage even if their passives aren't destroyed. It makes life... more interesting. But you will repair ships more often.

[olivertheorem]

So, something like I originally described for armor, only applied to shields as well?

[Cralis]

Before I continue, keep in mind I'm just trying to give you some ideas. I'm not necessarily saying they are the best or most balanced, but since you are doing a solo game that hardly matters! What is important is that your game is played how YOU want it, and it makes your story unique.

So, something like I originally described for armor, only applied to shields as well?

If you do it to one, IMHO you should do it to both. Although when I did it, I FRD to the nearest tenth% (i.e. 14% FRD down to 10%), so that it could always be rolled on a d10. It will increase the amount of work you do in combat, however.

Another possibility is that you only do this with non-explosive weapons, meaning R K Pt and G couldn't penetrate (though Lw would). This gives more incentive towards SRW, especially in a mixed-weapon environment. In a way it makes sense because they aren't hitting a small area, but rather do an amount of damage over the whole target.

(And another note, now that I think about it, I'd probably let K not be an explosive weapon for this purpose. It would definitely make it a more interesting weapon... just be careful when testing to see if it's more powerful than the other LRW. Some people will probably think it won't be because they argue it's too weak now.)

Other ideas...

Deep Hits:
Remember that deep hit weapons don't do a deep hit unless they hit an internal system. It has to leak normal, but if it does then do a deep hit. They have their own chart.

Precision Hits:
Also remember that there are several kinds of precision hits. I'd probably leave them all "as is" ... most function by bypassing shields and armor anyway. But if they hit shields or armor, let them work as per the rules.

Idea for handling large HS HTK:
Your "X chance to hit based on HS size" -- one possibility you could do to offset this, would be to increase HTK of the larger systems. This is another idea we considered but didn't do for simplicity. Don't do it on a 1:1 basis, but I'd probably do a 1:3 or 1:4. Thus those big Kh guns would have lots of HTK... Kha would have 8 HTK (at 1:3) or 5 HTK (at 1:4). Have the chance it fails be equal to the % of HTK lost, but always disabled after battle.

Anyway, I'll keep thinking.