Cybernetics...

[KageRyu]

[Zarm R'keeg]

[thedemonapostle]

[vanir]

[garhkal]

True, it may seem accurate, but when you have baddies having to fire such high power weaponry to even 'dent (for lack of a better term) the big strong aliens, it normally winds up being so overkill that if those same weaponry were targeted at the normal humans (or the not so strong aliens) they die instantly.... So it winds up being a balancing factor..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[thedemonapostle]

[Bren]

[vanir]

[Fallon Kell]

[garhkal]

[thedemonapostle]

[vanir]

I use the 2e scaling system so almost always wind up describing the scene of an X-Wing strafe attack actually hitting a character something along the lines of, "He's blown to small pieces, would you like to perform first aid on one of the pieces?"

On average damage is 20pts over hmm, anyone, you understand.

But then vehicle scale weapons and artillery is like that. Just the .50BMG fired from rifles in game hunting will reportedly kill anything it hits with a lung shot at over 2000yds, you don't even have to be that accurate to instakill with that, the smallest of common anti-vehicle weapons.

As an aircraft gun in WW2, the .50 was noted as an armour penetrator so was installed on bomber interceptor designs like the P-47 instead of an oldsmobile 37mm or licensed Hispano because a bank of them would do the same job. Half as many in a P-51C would take down any German fighter or twin engine fighter, well armoured aircraft.
It's no antitank gun, it's not an aerial cannon like the MK108 or DEFA or Vulcan, it's design was for use against soft targets like trucks and light armour APCs so it translates well to a measure of a speeder scale weapon versus a character scale or starfighter scale weapon. It's right in the middle there.

And I've seen footage of a .50 round literally taking the head off an insurgent in Iraq. One second a head, next a cloud of blood and no head.
The fifty you hit once, it's dead. It'll kill a rhino no problem and you don't even have to be that accurate.

I like the idea of PC second chances to save instakill scenarios, against other character scaled weapons I like the stamina roll to keep clinging to life despite mortal wounds, but against artillery or vehicle weapons, which don't just "wound you for 16+ pts over" but what they do is "blow you to itsy bitsy pieces for 16+ pts over"

So for those personally I'd rather use something like a survival roll to leap out of the lethal blast radius and suffer a mortally wounded result, but at least you're in one piece and your companions don't have to scrape you up and collect you in a tin for the funeral.

My players run 2 or more PCs each though, so while nobody likes the idea, killing a PC isn't really something we won't do, especially if it suits either the drama of the scene or promotes suspension of disbelief, like a character being hit with artillery not just chesting it and cracking a one liner. Which I say because if you could chest it, well I'd crack a one liner, who wouldn't? Point is it's unlikely you'll be in one piece.

[thedemonapostle]

[vanir]

From what I can tell without looking it up again, back when we used it was 1e and crackens tech book, essentially for enhanced cybernetics the ratings were limited by credits but no formal restrictions. Presumably the assumption was that in SWU tech you could conceivably construct a cyborg with the strength of a starship load lifter and the armoured hull rating of "omg nothing will damage that" if you had enough credits, although biological remnants would still be vulnerable.

The issue with this was cybernetic points and their restrictions, plus the guideline that enhanced cybernetics should be stark and machinelike in appearance, terrifying to pedestrians, where cybernetic replacements made to look like natural biological parts have no enhancement value.

So the balance was sort of ad hoc and contained within these guidelines.


With antivehicle calibres, for gaming purposes I tend to translate WW2 guns for scaling so that speeder scale weapons range .50BMG or similar up to a 5cm light field gun (antitank), any 3" gun or bigger moves to a small ship mounted weapon or GP field gun (75mm/76.2mm) and is also a heavy AAA calibre (the 88 is basically a rechambered bofors-75) so moves into the walker/starfighter scale which ranges up to about 8" howitzers and ship guns you find on heavy cruisers. Your heavy siege guns and battleship guns (11" and up) is where we get into capital scale.
Sort of helps me group different blaster artillery/vehicle weapons into expanded house rules on scaling and handiness in combat.

A WW2 destroyer which I'd rate starfighter scale and has 5" guns won't take a hit from a battleship main guns very well, but it can stand up to a couple of hits from a cruiser's 8" guns before going down in flames. The german pocket battleships were given that name because they used a WW1 battleship calibre of 11" on the main battery despite being a mid-sized cruiser that should've had 6" guns. So the line seems drawn there on capital scale for visual effect, battleship guns. And at 3"/75mm I think for walker/starfighter scale. So .50BMG for speeder scale.

I try to keep that sense of battlefield lethality of heavy weapons, I just don't sit well with characters running around taking broadsides from battleship guns. So I try to keep the scaling in mind when looking at blaster weapons and other SW tech of different scaling.

[garhkal]