WOIN AP Rounds in NEW

[daniiren]

I agree on your first point. AP rounds are too cheap for how effective they are against heavy armor.

You are correct on your second point, which is why I also tested halving SOAK rather than ignoring 10.

I also think the elephant in the room is energy weapons. Someone raised this point a few threads ago. With easy access to cheap AP and HP rounds, there's literally no mechanical reason to take a burner over a bludger.

 

[raspberryfh]

I agree on your first point. AP rounds are too cheap for how effective they are against heavy armor.

You are correct on your second point, which is why I also tested halving SOAK rather than ignoring 10.

I also think the elephant in the room is energy weapons. Someone raised this point a few threads ago. With easy access to cheap AP and HP rounds, there's literally no mechanical reason to take a burner over a bludger.

Halving SOAK isn't a bad idea, but it creates odd situations where an AP round doesn't quite ignore the SOAK of really flimsy armor or ignores 20+ SOAK when someone decides to shoot the mobile battlestation. It still leaves the possibility of being too good at times while simultaneously breaking the illusion of disbelief. Also, halving SOAK instead of subtracting X from it seems even fiddlier during a session.

The someone who brought up laser vs. ballistic weapons was also me

One of my players and I created a larger variety of weapons to make more of a choice. Also, I gave lasers access to the pinning bonus as long as LOS is maintained. In other words, even if the target moves or isn't in cover, as long as you attack them in consecutive turns without breaking LOS or attacking another target in the meantime, you'll get +1d6 to attack. So far, that has seemed to work well, and my players have been successful with both ballistic and heat-based weaponry.

Another solution would be to increase the amount of armor options, such that some armor is much more resistant to ballistic or is weak to heat. That sorta thing.

 

[Morrus]

I wouldn't worry about the cost of the rounds. That's changed in v1.2 anyway, in favour of a more abstract system.

 

[raspberryfh]

I wouldn't worry about the cost of the rounds. That's changed in v1.2 anyway, in favour of a more abstract system.

Any details on that?

 

[Morrus]

Any details on that?

It's in one of the EONS articles, but basically rather than tracking them individually, you have a countdown pool to see when you run out, and you can spend credits on more dice in that pool (each dice costing more than the last). You roll it at the end of each combat. It abstracts buying, using, wasting, losing, etc. ammo.

You can still do it the old way (more expensive than currently though) too. But the abstract way I find is much more fun, and tends to be tracked more accurately by players.

 

[raspberryfh]

It's in one of the EONS articles, but basically rather than tracking them individually, you have a countdown pool to see when you run out, and you can spend credits on more dice in that pool (each dice costing more than the last). You roll it at the end of each combat. It abstracts buying, using, wasting, losing, etc. ammo.

You can still do it the old way (more expensive than currently though) too. But the abstract way I find is much more fun, and tends to be tracked more accurately by players.

I'm an EONS supporter, but I don't remember seeing this. Is it already posted or to-be-released?

 

[Morrus]

I'm an EONS supporter, but I don't remember seeing this. Is it already posted or to-be-released?

Quite a while back. Offhand I can’t recall which article it was in, though!

 

[raspberryfh]

Quite a while back. Offhand I can’t recall which article it was in, though!

Found it. Game modes. Interesting concept. Maybe make specialty ammo cost increased by some multiplier (either 2 or 5).

I worry that it breaks down with HQ or single-shot weapons though. Bullets shouldn't necessarily be more expensive just because the gun is better engineered. And someone firing a high-powered sniper rifle isn't going to run through their ammo in uncertain bursts. How would you recommend addressing those cases?

 

[Morrus]

Found it. Game modes. Interesting concept. Maybe make specialty ammo cost increased by some multiplier (either 2 or 5).

I worry that it breaks down with HQ or single-shot weapons though. Bullets shouldn't necessarily be more expensive just because the gun is better engineered. And someone firing a high-powered sniper rifle isn't going to run through their ammo in uncertain bursts. How would you recommend addressing those cases?

Honestly, I’d recommend just not worrying about it. Unless tracking ammo is actually pleasurable for you, handwaving it with an abstract system is fine. If you want to make exceptions for single shot weapons, I guess that’s fine - I don’t think I would bother myself.

 

[raspberryfh]

Honestly, I’d recommend just not worrying about it. Unless tracking ammo is actually pleasurable for you, handwaving it with an abstract system is fine. If you want to make exceptions for single shot weapons, I guess that’s fine - I don’t think I would bother myself.

I have no interest in tracking ammunition, but I'm pretty sure one of my players would be upset that I made his sniper rifle "so much more expensive" lol...

 

[Morrus]

I have no interest in tracking ammunition, but I'm pretty sure one of my players would be upset that I made his sniper rifle "so much more expensive" lol...

Tell him from me his ammo is free from now on.

Problem solved.

 

[daniiren]

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?

 

[Morrus]

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.

 

[raspberryfh]

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?

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]

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).

 

[daniiren]

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.

 

[Madeiner]

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)