WOIN AP Rounds in NEW
If I may briefly steer the conversation back to its original course, I think something that would be highly beneficial (at least for me) would be to describe in detail what AP and HP rounds are intended to do. If we can quantify how good they're supposed to be (or how you'd tell overpowered vs nerfed), it becomes much easier to work on. If we can answer questions like, at what SOAK should HP rounds be effectively useless? Above what SOAK are AP rounds necessary? I may be trying too hard to look at this like some constrained-optimization problem, but that's what I know how to deal with. Ideally, if we could come up with ranges of SOAK where you'd want HP, normal, and AP rounds (obviously with some overlap), I think it'd be a bit more straightforward to figure out how to set rules for the ammo to work with that.
tl;dr: if we know what we want the different ammunition types to do, it's easier to figure out how to make them do those things.
Do you think this is a useful approach to this topic, or is my inner engineer showing through too much?
tl;dr: if we know what we want the different ammunition types to do, it's easier to figure out how to make them do those things.
Do you think this is a useful approach to this topic, or is my inner engineer showing through too much?
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raspberryfh
First Post
That was roughly what my intention was at the very start, even though I'm not an engineer
I hadn't set out specifically to pick a specific SOAK target like you're suggesting, but just by trial and error, I came up with SOAK 8 being the split point. This sorta makes sense, since it's where medium armor transitions to heavy armor.
Conceptually, HP rounds should be murder (more than just a bullet murder anyways) to someone in no or light armor. AP rounds should be most useful against heavily armored opponents (whether you want to pick this as SOAK 8 since heavy armor starts there or take it a bit higher/lower is up for debate). The problem becomes tricky with the gradation between armor types being so narrow (and having so few medium armor options).
raspberryfh
First Post
Jumping back to the tangent! You could also just make it an upgrade for the weapon in question (i.e. a ballistic-weapons-only upgrade that switches over to AP rounds as a free action, ditto for HP). Make it cost like 20% of whatever the weapon is (price could be tweaked for balance... just came up with that number).
To be transparent: we’re not rewriting the book. Errata means changing phrasing and numbers. A rewrite would be 2nd edition of the game, which isn’t in the stars right now.
Of course, I think our goal here is to tweak the numbers to something that works and feels better. If this ends up as something more than an errata something will have gone wrong somewhere.
That was roughly what my intention was at the very start, even though I'm not an engineer
I hadn't set out specifically to pick a specific SOAK target like you're suggesting, but just by trial and error, I came up with SOAK 8 being the split point. This sorta makes sense, since it's where medium armor transitions to heavy armor.
Conceptually, HP rounds should be murder (more than just a bullet murder anyways) to someone in no or light armor. AP rounds should be most useful against heavily armored opponents (whether you want to pick this as SOAK 8 since heavy armor starts there or take it a bit higher/lower is up for debate). The problem becomes tricky with the gradation between armor types being so narrow (and having so few medium armor options).
Were I to assign numbers for ranges of SOAK, it'd probably follow the breaks between armor weights. HP would be intended for SOAK in [0,5], normal rounds for [3,8], and AP for [6,15]. Above SOAK of 15 I think you should be packing more than small arms. I would try to tweak the rules so a weapon dealing 2d6 should be at least usable in all three of those SOAK ranges.
This is an old thread, but i was thinking of a possible solution.
Note, i haven't played the game yet, this is theorycrafting, but:
how about using AP/HP rounds to get at least some assured damage agaist a target? This comes from the days of Jagged alliance, where sometimes you hit enemies and deal 0 damage because of their armor.
The game already has a mechanic where any "6" on damage dice goes through SOAK.
Maybe AP could increase that value. Balance should be tested, but how about you ignore soak and deal damage on 5 or 6? I don't know how often dealing 0 damage comes up in the game (maybe almost never) but that's an idea. If zero damage doesnt come up often enough, how about "if your attack deals less than X damage due to SOAK, for each (5 or) 6 that you rolled"?
Also, maybe HP rounds can have exploding damage dice (maybe even exploding on 5-6, depending on balance), but only if the target has no Armor (which doesn't mean no SOAK -- large animals have likely some SOAK, but lack armor, and HP bullets are effective against wildlife)
Note, i haven't played the game yet, this is theorycrafting, but:
how about using AP/HP rounds to get at least some assured damage agaist a target? This comes from the days of Jagged alliance, where sometimes you hit enemies and deal 0 damage because of their armor.
The game already has a mechanic where any "6" on damage dice goes through SOAK.
Maybe AP could increase that value. Balance should be tested, but how about you ignore soak and deal damage on 5 or 6? I don't know how often dealing 0 damage comes up in the game (maybe almost never) but that's an idea. If zero damage doesnt come up often enough, how about "if your attack deals less than X damage due to SOAK, for each (5 or) 6 that you rolled"?
Also, maybe HP rounds can have exploding damage dice (maybe even exploding on 5-6, depending on balance), but only if the target has no Armor (which doesn't mean no SOAK -- large animals have likely some SOAK, but lack armor, and HP bullets are effective against wildlife)
