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Particle Shields on a Parked Ship
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 12, 2017 11:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bren wrote:
Dredwulf60 wrote:
Do your players' blasters do more damage based on the character's blaster skill roll?
Often they do. How that is done is either via a called shot option or by a bonus to damage for exceeding the difficulty as was outlined in the Rebel Spec Forces supplement. And the same is true of melee and brawling attacks.

The parallel to that would be to increase the shield strength based on rolling higher than some difficulty number. Whether the difficulty that needs to be exceeded is based on the attacker's attack roll, damage roll, or something based on number of shields angled, arcs used, etc. is still an open question for me.


IMO the difference is you can do more damage by virtue of locating a weakspot when you hit.
But how you gonna 'goose' the shields to give More than their generator already gives?
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

By tweaking the angle of the shield to maximize its ability to deflect an incoming attack.
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Dredwulf60
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
By tweaking the angle of the shield to maximize its ability to deflect an incoming attack.


Yes, but is there an optimal?

Is there a perfect angle? Logic says there is. To tilt past that angle means you are starting to degrade the effect. You can only walk half way into a forest...because after that you're walking back out.

To put it another way; I can see where a good shot might generate a bonus to damage.

Personally I allow a player to add to their difficulty to hit, in exchange for the benefit of some extra damage, so there is some tactical thinking and decision-making involved rather than...ROLL YOUR VERY BESTEST!

But, there is, logically, an optimal increase. Against a person this might be "right in the eye socket, through to the brain"

Once you've achieved that feat of marksmanship, how do you get better than that? Dead is dead.

If I had a BB gun, and the pellet was of insufficient velocity to penetrate the target's most vulnerable location; the eye socket, could a really good roll still kill the target?

Fantasy sci-fi says...sure, why not?

I keep my version a bit more grounded to the capabilities of the hardware.

Not trying to convince you that you're wrong; just explaining why I do what I do.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very true Drey. Which is why some of the DM's i know who HAVE adopted that RoE die pooling rules/add on damage for great shots, CAP You in how much extra damage you can add in.. IIRC 3 were capped at HALF the weapon's normal damage (without a 6 on the wild die, so if you were shooting a 4d pistol, you cap out at adding in +12, half of 23 rounded up).
2 others capped the bonus Die you could add in to 1d LESS than the weapon's max, so that same pistol using the dice pooling method could only gain +3d..
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 2:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dredwulf60 wrote:
CRMcNeill wrote:
By tweaking the angle of the shield to maximize its ability to deflect an incoming attack.


Yes, but is there an optimal?

Is there a perfect angle? Logic says there is. To tilt past that angle means you are starting to degrade the effect. You can only walk half way into a forest...because after that you're walking back out.

I don't know; is there? What do any of us know about how shields function? What if optimum angle isn't the only way shields can be adjusted? Frequency modulation to maximize deflection? Flicker rate adjustment (see Renegade Legion shield rules)? Handwavium ad Technobablium? I don't pretend to know these things, but the characters in-universe do, and that is represented by skill dice. As such, a character with dice in Shields is going to know more about getting maximum performance out of deflector shields. This, in turn, is represented by a dice bonus based on how well the character rolled.

As an aside, I also apply the penalty the other direction; a bad Shields roll means a penalty, since the operator screwed up and made the ship more vulnerable.

Quote:
To put it another way; I can see where a good shot might generate a bonus to damage.

Personally I allow a player to add to their difficulty to hit, in exchange for the benefit of some extra damage, so there is some tactical thinking and decision-making involved rather than...ROLL YOUR VERY BESTEST!

But, there is, logically, an optimal increase. Against a person this might be "right in the eye socket, through to the brain"

Once you've achieved that feat of marksmanship, how do you get better than that? Dead is dead.

If I had a BB gun, and the pellet was of insufficient velocity to penetrate the target's most vulnerable location; the eye socket, could a really good roll still kill the target?

Strictly speaking, this is a false analogy logical fallacy: the assumption that because two scenarios are alike in one way, they must be alike in others. As I said above, we have no idea how shields function, so equating them to trying to kill a man with a BB gun has no evidentiary basis.

In the case of using the bonus to boost damage, it's important to note that Killed is the highest possible result on the Damage chart, with the bonus simply increasing the chance of the Damage roll achieving that result. In addition, the bonus is directly tied to a system that makes it increasingly difficult to achieve the next level of competence the further up one gets. Crunch the numbers and you're looking at a bonus of roughly 1 for every 1D rolled. How many characters in the galaxy are going to achieve the skill level needed to push the bonus to ridiculous levels?
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Bren
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 9:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd post detailed responses, but why bother when you can just reread what CRMcNeill wrote in his last few posts. In summary,

1. You get better performance from the shields by optimizing the angle and other properties of the shields which equates to rolling better than the required difficulty.

2. If you set the required difficulty appropriately and use a modest bonus method the effective bonus will virtually never become so high as to become implausible, unbalanced, or silly.

Let's put things in perspective. Even if by the use of a Force Point and some implausible probability of great initial die rolls and repeated 6s on the wild die the shield operator obtained an enormously high total that completely negated what would otherwise have been a ship destroying result. So what? That simply means the ship has been saved for one round. But that is no guarantee of continued immunity. The next round the shield operator is even less likely to be able to roll the same statistically improbable series of die rolls. So the ship will be in danger of destruction once again.
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Dredwulf60
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 10:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bren wrote:
I'd post detailed responses, but why bother when you can just reread what CRMcNeill wrote in his last few posts. In summary,

1. You get better performance from the shields by optimizing the angle and other properties .


Bold added.

Sorry, I'm only talking about angling shields and working on my own presumption that it would be similar effect to armor.

The specific comment I responded to was "But what if Shields could be "angled" to be more effective"

To which I indicated that I do it that way.

I was then asked to elaborate, which I did.

It was then suggested that providing greater benefit for a higher roll would be preferable.

For strictly angling shields, I explained my reasoning for why this doesn't agree with my thinking, with illustrative examples on why.

But if we are going into the idea that a players skill can make shields function better because....technobabble...then...sure, fill your boots.

I can think of a lot of different sci-fi fantasy ways. And for me, I"d write a talent-type perk for each. My players can collect-em-all!

But for sloped/ angled armor, there is an optimal, and since that is what I'm basing my model on...there is an optimal shield angle regardless of player skill.

Sorry for any misunderstandings, confusions and rabbit holes. But this is a fun discussion regardless.
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ZzaphodD
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 7:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ZzaphodD wrote:
I have tried to design good shield rules bur never reached a satisfacory system.
-I want them to be a strong separate defence.
-I want them to become depleted over time, as seen in films.
-Or directly overloaded if the hit is powerful enough
-The Shields skill, now almost unused, will:
-Increase shields overall (small amount)
-Overcharge shields(larger increase but with a risk of blowing them)
-Shift shield power between arcs
-Rebuild depleted shields


Ok, the separate defence part is a bit tricky when i comes to finding the right D code. First I though Original Shield D but rolled with a different colour when rolling the usual hull + shield roll.
If the attack damage roll do not exceed double the shield roll the blast is simply deflected, disregardless of the total shield plus hull roll. If the damage roll exceeds double the shield roll damage resistance is calculated as usual, i.e. Hull + Shields (both already rolled).
This is the mechanic I'd rather use as it won't involve extra dice rolling.
I'm not sure about the number of D:s or the deflection threshold though.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 8:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm just spitballing here, but how about adding 2D to all Shield dice values, then treat it as Cover?
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ZzaphodD
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
I'm just spitballing here, but how about adding 2D to all Shield dice values, then treat it as Cover?

Could you give an example of the effect?
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 5:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, an X-Wing with 1D Shields would now have 3D.

Attacks would be rolled initially just against the 3D, with the result applied to the chart on page 94 of the 2R&E book, paraphrased here:
    Damage Roll > Shield Roll by = Damage Modifier
    0-3 = Ship is completely protected.
    4-8 = -4D to Damage
    9-12 = -2D to Damage
    13-15 = -1D to Damage
    16+ = Full Damage

So the procedure is:
    1). Roll weapon Damage vs. Shields to get the Damage Modifier.

    2). Roll the Modifier and Subtract the result from the original Damage roll.

    3). Roll the Hull Dice against the modified Damage roll, then apply the result to the Starship Damage Table.

If that makes Shields too tough, then drop the 2D Modifier to 1D instead.
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