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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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 Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 4:30 pm Post subject: The Effects of Scale on Terrain Difficulty |
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A couple scenarios...
An AT-ST is pursuing a character on foot. To evade the AT-ST, the character runs into an area of extremely tight terrain (such as a stand of trees, or between two buildings). The character can pass through this area (either normally or with some difficulty), but the AT-ST would face much greater difficulty maneuvering through that terrain, if it could at all. In game terms, the terrain difficulty is lower for a character (at Character Scale) than it is for an AT-ST (at Walker Scale).
A Star Destroyer is pursuing a light freighter through an asteroid field. The field is dense enough that the light freighter is forced to maneuver around the asteroids at greater difficulty. However, the field is not dense enough to overly trouble the Star Destroyer, which simply bulls its way through the field, brushing off any impacts on its shields and using its heavy weaponry to blast any asteroids that might prove a threat. In game terms, the terrain difficulty is lower for the Star Destroyer than it is for the Freighter.
My point is that, depending on the circumstances, a given Terrain type will (or should, at least) have different Difficulty depending on the Scale of the vehicle or creature attempting to traverse it.
There is another factor, as well; one that was mentioned in Zahn's Vision of the Future. An AT-AT attempting to traverse a jungle or forest was being slowed by the terrain until it began using its weaponry to blaze a trail, literally blowing up trees or obstacles in its path to reduce terrain difficulty. A smaller vehicle might not have the firepower to duplicate this, but then, it might not need to if it was small enough to simply maneuver around the obstacles in the first place.
To sum up:1). How would you rule the differences in how scale affects terrain difficulty?
2). What would be a good rule of thumb for the Soak rating of various kinds of hazardous terrain should a larger vehicle choose to blast a path, or simply plow right through it as if it wasn't there.
Just me rambling. Discuss.
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"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.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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I could see half the scale mods (so a walker going through a character made terrain would suffer 2d vice the 4d) modifier to the terrain base difficulty for maneuvering.
As for soak of stuff. Treat trees as anywhere from 3d character up to say 4d walker depending on size. A 4 yr old willow tree is not going to be as tough say as a 100 yr old oak.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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Or just use the 2D=7 rule to generate flat modifiers. The AT-ST example, with a scale difference of 4D, would increase the Terrain Difficulty by +14, while the Star Destroyer example, with a scale difference of 6D, would actually reduce the terrain difficulty by -21.
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"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.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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That still leaves the question as to which terrains would require the modifier to shift the difficulty up or down.
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"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.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | As for soak of stuff. Treat trees as anywhere from 3d character up to say 4d walker depending on size. A 4 yr old willow tree is not going to be as tough say as a 100 yr old oak. |
This could come in handy on the Battle tech crossover topic; walkers with hands would be particularly useful for clearing obstacles, and there by reducing terrain difficulties...
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"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.
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Savar
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| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Think this one is to subjective. Would have to be a case for case. GM discretion. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 2:47 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | That still leaves the question as to which terrains would require the modifier to shift the difficulty up or down. |
IMO that should be already based on the terrain. Forested, rough, hilly, jungle all should increase the diff for speeders on up, just like they do with characters.
Same with asteroid fields, cramped orbits (lots of debris and satellites) for cap ships.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 2:41 pm Post subject: |
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For speeder it would depend on their ceiling. Things like marshes that could bog down characters, wheeled vehicles and AT-STs alike, would be easy for most speeders to just glide over. Speeders than can fly 100 meters up can zip over most obstacles, and ones that can go a few kilometers up can get over anything,
Heck, there are spaces that a TIE fighter can slip through than an X-Wing cannot, so even just adjusting for scale won't cover everything.
So any sort of shifting difficulty would either need to be done on a case by case example, or we'd need an rather extensive table, or we'd need to extend vehicle stats to include things like ground clearance, gradient, minimum width and minimum height required.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 3:34 pm Post subject: |
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Point taken on the height/ceiling aspect.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | | For speeder it would depend on their ceiling. Things like marshes that could bog down characters, wheeled vehicles and AT-STs alike, would be easy for most speeders to just glide over. Speeders than can fly 100 meters up can zip over most obstacles, and ones that can go a few kilometers up can get over anything. |
But airspeeders have their own terrain issues to deal with up in atmospheric flight. An airspeeder being chased by a capital ship in atmosphere (which is feasible, depending on the circumstances) would be much more likely to be battered about by a thunderstorm than would the capital ship.
| Quote: | Heck, there are spaces that a TIE fighter can slip through than an X-Wing cannot, so even just adjusting for scale won't cover everything.
So any sort of shifting difficulty would either need to be done on a case by case example, or we'd need an rather extensive table, or we'd need to extend vehicle stats to include things like ground clearance, gradient, minimum width and minimum height required. |
Orrrrr we can limit it to the topic at hand, which is how bigger vehicles may not fit into the same spaces as smaller ones, but they may be too tough to have to worry about it.
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"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.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: |
But airspeeders have their own terrain issues to deal with up in atmospheric flight. An airspeeder being chased by a capital ship in atmosphere (which is feasible, depending on the circumstances) would be much more likely to be battered about by a thunderstorm than would the capital ship. |
Interesting. Not so sure it it would be true though. The capital ship would be larger and thus would present a larger surface area and get hit by more wind. But I guess the sqaure-cube law would favor the capital ship.
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Orrrrr we can limit it to the topic at hand, which is how bigger vehicles may not fit into the same spaces as smaller ones, but they may be too tough to have to worry about it. |
But this is the topic at hand. The X-Wing is larger than a TIE and can't fit into some of the same spaces due to the greater wingspan. Although it isn't too tough not to worry about it. In fact, depending on just what the terrain and situation is, toughness might not be that much of a factor. Bigger, heavier vehicles would hit harder and inflict more damage to themselves. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | | But this is the topic at hand. The X-Wing is larger than a TIE and can't fit into some of the same spaces due to the greater wingspan. |
And the boxier dimensions of the TIE means that there will be circumstances where the X-Wing will fit through spaces where the TIE will not. This was used in one of the X-Wing novels to take out an Interceptor, by leading it into a narrow gap between two buildings. While the X-Wing (or may have been a Z-95, but same effect) could fly through the gap if it turned up on its side, but the Interceptor was both too wide and too tall, and moving too fast to pull out. Scratch one Interceptor.
The point is, I'm proposing terrain difficulty differences based on vehicles that are officially larger or smaller than each other (per their stats), whereas as you are arguing minutiae of the dimensions of similarly scaled vehicles using criteria that can't be quantified using just the stats, and would require a lot of extra work to modify all existing stats to reflect dimensions, which isn't something I feel like doing.
| Quote: | | Although it isn't too tough not to worry about it. In fact, depending on just what the terrain and situation is, toughness might not be that much of a factor. Bigger, heavier vehicles would hit harder and inflict more damage to themselves. |
Unless they are bigger and tougher and designed to take a lot of damage, which would especially be the case for things like the AT-AT, the Juggernaut and the Floating Fortress. In fact, the write-ups on the Floating Fortress specifically states that its design allows it to go through obstacles rather than around them. Since the Fortress is designed for urban conflict, obstacles means buildings and other artificial structures.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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Or like modern icebreakers.. Some vessels are built TO Go through obstructions, so are going to suffer less damage than others which try to go through the same obstruction.
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CRMcNeill
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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Exactly. A bigger vehicle isn't going to take more damage just because it is bigger, especially if it is designed to take damage in general, or if it is designed to be resistant to a specific type of damage.
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"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.
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Savar
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