This feels like a very intuitive system for a player to predict how different unit types would interact in combat, e.g. what would it look like for a squad of light infantry to try and take down a tank? Using essentially the same number throughout makes it very clear, which is always helpful.
I do wonder how this will interact with weapons that do splash damage style attacks. The example I am thinking of in particular is orbital bombardment and other types of artillery. A class 7 weapon firing at a size 2 target would make the orbital gun fire at a -5 accuracy which doesn't seem right to me. If it's a giant laser from space or rod from God, it doesn't need to be that accurate, just relatively close. And we need kinetic bombardment if we're going to hit the billion mark!
Personally, I like how the system conveys danger. A Size 4 ground vehicle riding into the middle of your infantry with a Class 3 weapon is terrifying! It communicates a lot with simple comparisons.
As far as area bombardment and other large-weapon questions:
a) Those weapons aren't targeting infantry, they're targeting the ground, which is sized very differently!
b) In most cases, these weapons are NOT rolling to hit. They may be rolling to deviate from a bullseye or they may be guided/directed and don't require rolling at all. Ongoing/sustained locks or active guidance on the warhead defeats the need for rolling (except against ECM etc.).
c) For area weapons like these, I'm testing Class reductions by radius. For example, a Class 7 weapon with a destruction radius of 6" will mean anything within 6" takes the rolled Damage as if from Class 7. Anything between 6" and 12" treats the rolled Damage as Class 6, and anything between 12" and 18" as Class 5, and so on. I am not 100% decided on this yet, but I like it right now.
Reaching that billion mark will be easy once you git gud!
Oh duh! Of course artillery and the like targets the ground! So obvious I missed it.
I do like the damage radius reduction idea. I wonder how difficult it would be to model the effect terrain features would have on that. Like a hill or building blocking the blast but a wadi or street channeling it.
Either way, it certainly seems like these sorts of weapons are going to be relatively rare unless someone can build up to a true planetary invasion size force with the resources that go along with it.
> We don’t need to roll 170 dice when we want to use a battleship’s main gun—we can stick with about 20 and let the Massive Damage rule take care of the rest!
I'd wondered how you were going to address this problem, and well pleased with this solution. Too many dice become not only hard to roll, but strongly driven to the center of their potential range and undermine the purpose of rolling them in the first place. Multiplication of fewer dice seems superior in both efficiency and creating a meaningful range of possible outcomes.
I am curious, why did you choose to have outclassed weapons subject to Blocking damage instead of halving it per step? It appears that being outclassed has linearly scaling ineffectiveness, while being over-classed has exponentially scaling hypereffectiveness, but I'm guessing the apparent asymmetry comes down to expected hits being nonlinear as well?
To keep the size of these articles down, I end up leaving out a lot of small things.
Rolling only 10-20 dice is motivated by exactly what you said about the distribution losing entropy. Rolling hundreds of dice is rigging the result because the distribution collapses tightly around a single outcome.
The design of Blocking 2 per level of difference reflects the asymmetry of force/energy involved in going up vs. going down. This covers both gameplay-based reasoning and weapons-tech-based reasoning. That's the short answer. The even shorter answer is: there's more going on elsewhere.
A Full Strength infantry unit will generate, on median, 5 hits → 15 COV → 7-8 Damage. Bumping Accuracy increases this by ~1 hit → 3 COV → 1-2 Damage. Up-Sized target increases expected Damage basically by 1.5 per level. Though there is a whole world of game beyond the median, it seems like this is expected to be a wash.
But up-Sized targets have more resilience in other ways via increased Hit Points (or, for vehicles, more Damage sink components), slightly higher Protection (for hardened targets), and being able to wipe out down-Sized threats with more ease.
There are many nuances to the Class vs. Size effects. Area damage down-classing. Certain effects diminishing, enhancing, or bypassing Block. Slow rise in Protection as Size increases. As with any numeric system, playtesting will reveal whether the current design is sufficiently reasonable.
Thanks for the detailed response! That's quite interesting reasoning. And cool implications, if a crack squad of sharpshooters can potentially bring down a ship with well aimed shots. It also makes sense of the ubiquitous "shoot ineffectually at the ship with hand weapons as it flies away" scenes, it's almost always ineffective but might on rare occasion do some real damage.
Because BMD works with a default "Defender allocates Damage" concept, a ship can absolutely get something less-than-essential knocked out (sensors, landing assists, targeting computers) by the choice of the defender if those pesky marines manage to push a good attack!
This feels like a very intuitive system for a player to predict how different unit types would interact in combat, e.g. what would it look like for a squad of light infantry to try and take down a tank? Using essentially the same number throughout makes it very clear, which is always helpful.
I do wonder how this will interact with weapons that do splash damage style attacks. The example I am thinking of in particular is orbital bombardment and other types of artillery. A class 7 weapon firing at a size 2 target would make the orbital gun fire at a -5 accuracy which doesn't seem right to me. If it's a giant laser from space or rod from God, it doesn't need to be that accurate, just relatively close. And we need kinetic bombardment if we're going to hit the billion mark!
Personally, I like how the system conveys danger. A Size 4 ground vehicle riding into the middle of your infantry with a Class 3 weapon is terrifying! It communicates a lot with simple comparisons.
As far as area bombardment and other large-weapon questions:
a) Those weapons aren't targeting infantry, they're targeting the ground, which is sized very differently!
b) In most cases, these weapons are NOT rolling to hit. They may be rolling to deviate from a bullseye or they may be guided/directed and don't require rolling at all. Ongoing/sustained locks or active guidance on the warhead defeats the need for rolling (except against ECM etc.).
c) For area weapons like these, I'm testing Class reductions by radius. For example, a Class 7 weapon with a destruction radius of 6" will mean anything within 6" takes the rolled Damage as if from Class 7. Anything between 6" and 12" treats the rolled Damage as Class 6, and anything between 12" and 18" as Class 5, and so on. I am not 100% decided on this yet, but I like it right now.
Reaching that billion mark will be easy once you git gud!
Oh duh! Of course artillery and the like targets the ground! So obvious I missed it.
I do like the damage radius reduction idea. I wonder how difficult it would be to model the effect terrain features would have on that. Like a hill or building blocking the blast but a wadi or street channeling it.
Either way, it certainly seems like these sorts of weapons are going to be relatively rare unless someone can build up to a true planetary invasion size force with the resources that go along with it.
> We don’t need to roll 170 dice when we want to use a battleship’s main gun—we can stick with about 20 and let the Massive Damage rule take care of the rest!
I'd wondered how you were going to address this problem, and well pleased with this solution. Too many dice become not only hard to roll, but strongly driven to the center of their potential range and undermine the purpose of rolling them in the first place. Multiplication of fewer dice seems superior in both efficiency and creating a meaningful range of possible outcomes.
I am curious, why did you choose to have outclassed weapons subject to Blocking damage instead of halving it per step? It appears that being outclassed has linearly scaling ineffectiveness, while being over-classed has exponentially scaling hypereffectiveness, but I'm guessing the apparent asymmetry comes down to expected hits being nonlinear as well?
To keep the size of these articles down, I end up leaving out a lot of small things.
Rolling only 10-20 dice is motivated by exactly what you said about the distribution losing entropy. Rolling hundreds of dice is rigging the result because the distribution collapses tightly around a single outcome.
The design of Blocking 2 per level of difference reflects the asymmetry of force/energy involved in going up vs. going down. This covers both gameplay-based reasoning and weapons-tech-based reasoning. That's the short answer. The even shorter answer is: there's more going on elsewhere.
A Full Strength infantry unit will generate, on median, 5 hits → 15 COV → 7-8 Damage. Bumping Accuracy increases this by ~1 hit → 3 COV → 1-2 Damage. Up-Sized target increases expected Damage basically by 1.5 per level. Though there is a whole world of game beyond the median, it seems like this is expected to be a wash.
But up-Sized targets have more resilience in other ways via increased Hit Points (or, for vehicles, more Damage sink components), slightly higher Protection (for hardened targets), and being able to wipe out down-Sized threats with more ease.
There are many nuances to the Class vs. Size effects. Area damage down-classing. Certain effects diminishing, enhancing, or bypassing Block. Slow rise in Protection as Size increases. As with any numeric system, playtesting will reveal whether the current design is sufficiently reasonable.
Thanks for the detailed response! That's quite interesting reasoning. And cool implications, if a crack squad of sharpshooters can potentially bring down a ship with well aimed shots. It also makes sense of the ubiquitous "shoot ineffectually at the ship with hand weapons as it flies away" scenes, it's almost always ineffective but might on rare occasion do some real damage.
Because BMD works with a default "Defender allocates Damage" concept, a ship can absolutely get something less-than-essential knocked out (sensors, landing assists, targeting computers) by the choice of the defender if those pesky marines manage to push a good attack!