Artillery.

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

imo its cause not everything has to be so streamlined to 4 blast zones...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

A lot of the Clone Wars-era equipment was equipped with projectile weapons, including the AT-TE, AT-AP and UT-AT (although Wookieepedia identifies the UT-AT's cannon as a turbolaser turret, even though it is externally identical to the main gun on the AT-TE). Do you think these projectile cannon could also operate in an indirect fire mode?
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

Heck yes. Any form of projectile artillery can operate in direct fire or indirect fire mode.
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

Another thought...

Most ballistic artillery has a minimum range, in that it can't be used effectively against targets closer than a certain distance. For the purposes of SWU rules, I'm thinking of not allowing indirect fire weapons to fire at targets in the Point Blank range bracket. Projectile cannon with both direct and indirect fire capability can switch from one round type to another, but must spend a round reconfiguring and swapping out ammunition when doing so.

So, with only 3 range brackets to work with, the Scatter value would shift to 1/3/5 for Short / Medium / Long ranges. For simplicity's sake, I think I'll use those Scatter values as standard, then crunch the numbers for the Scale modifiers in combination with my earlier suggestion on ignoring Scale modifiers against smaller Scale targets.

I have the evening off tomorrow, so I'll be devoting some time to this.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

Very good point. Heck some such as mortars, even the 'short range' slot might have issues with timing of the shell before it arms..
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

Okay, so, regarding the 1/3/5 scatter values, here is what I've got so far.

Assuming the following,

Gunner Skill of 4D
Fire Control of 2D
Stationary Character-Scale Target
The 2D=7 Bell Curve
My Scale System

an artillery weapon can be expected to miss by the following values, depending on weapon scale and Short, Medium or Long Range.

Dice Roll Results (Unmodified)

Speeder 3 / 8 / 13
Starship 10 / 15 / 20
Walker 17 / 22 / 27
Frigate 24 / 29 / 34
Destroyer 31 / 36 / 41

1/3/5 Scatter Modifier Results

Speeder 3 / 24 / 65
Starship 10 / 45 / 100
Walker 17 / 66 / 135
Frigate 24 / 87 / 170
Destroyer 31 / 108 / 205

1/2/3 Scatter Modifier Results

Speeder 3 / 16 / 39
Starship 10 / 30 / 60
Walker 17 / 44 / 81
Frigate 24 / 58 / 102
Destroyer 31 / 72 / 123

The Scatter Modifiers are the likely Distance in Meters by which the round missed.

This is a starting baseline for how accurate you want a weapon to be. To make it more accurate, either shift the FC or give it a larger or smaller blast radius. Naturally, as the scale of the target increases, so does the likelihood of a hit, but the target will, of course, be harder to damage. Also, this doesn't reflect any bonuses that might accrue from the use of a spotter or precision guided munitions, etc. etc.

It's also possible to use both sets of modifiers, with 1/3/5 used for Frigate and Destroyer Scale, and 1/2/3 used for Walker, Starship and Speeder.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

Looks nice.. Maybe we should work with some of the others, on a new fan book, working on artillery and other mods you have worked up..
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

Well based on my Mortar (the mark 82 thumper) and my AT-HP i have already wrote out stuff for
High Explosive-Anti Vehicular (HE-AV)
High Explosive-Anti-personnel
Groundball Scatter ( larger area AP)
Incendiary
High Explosive-Shrapnel scattering (greater AP)
HARM
LAMP (incendiary)
Indirect mine round..
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Zarn]

How about a superconducting filament ground rod (SuFiGR)? Used to drain off energy from a shield or something?

Or even just disperse small spidermurderbots, like the Seppie Assassin probe. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Assassin_probe

[CRMcNeill]

Both very good ideas. The murderbot dispenser sounds very Star Wars, as it's something we've seen before in the films and TV shows, plus it's artillery used in such a way that it can be opposed on an individual level apart from ducking and covering in a hole somewhere.

Step 1, though, will be establishing a baseline for accuracy. The numbers I generated above are analogous to Circular Error Probable ratings, so if we assume that the Scatter modifiers are accurate, we need to decide how big a blast radius a shell will have to offset the Scatter.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

Okay, what I'm talking about is this...

I'm assuming your mortar is Speeder-Scale, so using the 1/2/3 Scatter Chart, your mortar can be expected to miss a Character-Scale target by a mean distance of 3 meters at Short Range, 16 meters at Medium Range and 39 meters at Long Range. However, now you factor in Blast Radius. Assuming you're using the AP round, with its 16 meter maximum, you are practically guaranteed a hit of some kind at Short Range, and a pretty good chance of one at Medium, while you will be hit-or-miss at Long Range.

The central question is, is that too accurate, just right, or not accurate enough?

Depending on which chart we settle on, Fire Control and Blast Radius will shift the deadliness of any given round, so we need to settle on a baseline, preferably some sort of general purpose HE round, and then from there, we can start tweaking stats to achieve specific results.

Personally, I'm leaning strongly toward the 1/2/3 chart, with weapon blast radii roughly around the same radius as the Medium Range Scatter value, but I'd like to crunch some numbers and see how that works out for target survivability.

However, even if a character is in the blast radius, the outer ring will only be inflicting around 2D damage, so most PCs should be fine apart from a bad roll.

Thoughts?
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index