I'm continuing work on my hybrid system, and as I'm doing it, I'm thinking about how to integrate a purely penetration-based mechanic with vehicles.

In initial explanation, the system's combat, once the hit roll is made, pretty much discounts the normal hit point deduction, and for organic targets, tracks a relative amount of damage based on the depth of penetration, size, and velocity of the penetrating hit.

In regards to non-organic targets, rather than tracking a physical damage (PD) value, it just tracks the systems that are hit based on the penetration, automatically considering them disabled, and after the engagement, during BDAR it determines the severity of the damage.  All this is based on Living Steel's system, although I'm working to simplify it, mostly because I detest rolling d1000 for location (although I'm fine with rolling d%).

So, as an example of it,

Spoiler

This is an example of a single hit location from a Living Steel power armor.

Location Roll:            39-39
Area Hit:                 Heart
Inner Suit Layer:         Auxiliary Pack 7
Pilot Damage:            4000PD
Rear Suit Layer:          BICOMP
Battlepack Loc:           3 or 4
Rear Suit Layer:         3[/list]

This would be the location roll.  If the shot hits the target, a roll is made to determine if the shot glances off the armor (this replaces the roll to damage in a normal system, instead of hit/location/damage it's hit/location/glance) and could be considered to be analogous to the Armor Save in Warhammer.  The chance to glance is adjusted by the relative penetration of the round compared to the amount of protection the armor is providing.

In this case, if the round penetrates and doesn't glance, the glance roll will determine how deep the round penetrates.  If it only penetrates to the inner suit layer, whatever modular system the PA has in Aux Pack 7.  If it penetrates to the rear suit layer, it also passes through the pilot, dealing 4000PD in the process (a significant amount of damage, an immediately life threatening, but not instantly fatal), then damages the Bicomp (on board computer) of the power armor.  If the shot is coming from the rear, the suit layers are reversed for penetration purposes (obliques are a special consideration, I won't go into those here)

A hit location from a vehicle would be resolved the same general way, with the possibility being present that motive mechanisms, engine, passengers, etc could be hit.

During combat, systems that will disable the vehicle are marked on the status sheet, and systems that are damaged are marked off as they are hit and disabled.  

After combat, during BDAR, the players can check to see how difficult the damage would be to repair, and this is where the size of the impact comes into play, for determining the relative level of damage, which are Minor, Major, Replace (good only for salvage), and Destroyed.


SO, my question for discussion is:  what sort of pitfalls do you think I'm going to run into if I'm using this system?  I've already thought about the difficulty of having to make a hit location table for every vehicle that I want to use.  The saving grace for that comes from the setting, which is sci-fi and so has generic vehicles for the most part that don't require a lot of individual expression.  I think I'll probably only have to work out about 6 or 8 total, and some of those will be direct ripoffs of virtually identical concepts from modern vehicles.

How does it actually play out? I mean does the player have to stop for a few minutes and recalculate bonuses and so on? The less accounting the better, really.

I aggregate certain vehicle functions to a single score, avoiding specifics, meaning I can use the same hit table for everything, although I might run off a seperate one for small vehicles since they are both more likely to be regularly used and wouldn't have the depth of systems that a full submarine or ship would.

Quote from: The Traveller;568399How does it actually play out? I mean does the player have to stop for a few minutes and recalculate bonuses and so on? The less accounting the better, really.

I aggregate certain vehicle functions to a single score, avoiding specifics, meaning I can use the same hit table for everything, although I might run off a seperate one for small vehicles since they are both more likely to be regularly used and wouldn't have the depth of systems that a full submarine or ship would.

I actually haven't run it myself yet.  I put together the initial shell of it, and someone else ran it (I was fiending for the setting and he volunteered) but it had a lot of problems, not the least of which was that he wasn't really feeling the setting.  The nature of the setting is that there isn't likely to be anything larger than an APC used.  

As far as recalculating bonuses, in the scope of power armor, depending on the system that's damaged, there could be some adjustment, but nothing more affecting than, say, taking damage in a Shadowrun game.  The to-hit roll is kind of complicated at the face of it (using combat actions to counteract large negatives as you bring a weapon system into alignment, as well as a table of situational modifiers that can affect shot performance like stance and target size... it's not a simple game, more of a simulationist type), but it's the sort of addition that I'm used to for my games.  I GM'd Cyberpunk for a long time and this isn't much more complex than that.

For the most part, if a system is damaged then in the scope of the combat it's just considered offline.  You determine how badly it's offline after the fight, if it matters.  So if a player shoots a laser at a HMMWV and pierces the front tire and engine compartment, then the vehicle is probably DRT.

If the fight proceeds and they don't wind up scavenging the battlefield afterwards, there's no reason to determine how badly damaged it was, just that it took a mob kill and was probably abandoned.  Certain systems have the chance for a catastrophic kill as well, like hitting the fuel supply or ammunition, but for the most part, just like a real vehicle, there isn't an ablation of armor/SDP/MD, it's more of a "Boom.  Engine Broken" kind of environment.

I agree that a single unified hit table for the major types will actually cut the tables I need to create down to about 4 or so, not counting each type of power armor (the setting doesn't exactly revolve around them, but they're kind of central, so I'd like to give them the treatment they deserve) and I can just pull tables from Phoenix Command for anything else that randomly pops up.  I like that idea, thanks.

In fact, I could just tableize the various major subsystems (motive, critical electronics, powertrain, etc) and instead of having multiple tables, have one table with the locations specified across.  That would work for small arms.. but I think that for some of the heavier weapons I'll still need the major table with the penetration relationships outlined.  Hmm.  I'll have to look into that some.

Well here's a quick look at my system for comparison:

1-3: Hull damage*
4-5: Hull damage plus crew losses
6: Hull damage plus cargo losses*
7: Hull damage plus speed (-1)*
8: Hull damage plus maneuverability (-1)*
9: Hull damage plus Shipboard systems
10: Hull damage plus weapons*
*Can be specifically targeted and hardened

Several of those have subsequent rolls attached, like how many crew or what subsystem was damaged, but basically while the players may care and have listed that they have a top of the range Elementronics Delta Datacentre (tm) installed (+2 navigation), they don't care what enemy ship number 6 has, and its not important to the game for anyone to know this information, unless they go scavenging afterwards. They can go into any amount of loving detail they want (and it will usually affect the stats), but the pertinent mechanics are very simple in use. Optional front loaded complexity if you will.

Its great because it has scope for capital ships to blaze away at one another in extended firefights, as well as allowing lone gunman "Death Star" attacks, but thats a seperate set of mechanics of course.