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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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 Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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25% of the vehicle's new cost.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16204
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 12:22 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | 25% of the vehicle's new cost. |
That works. I'd still like to see ideas for an optional rule here that applies terrain modifiers based on vehicle type rather than model.
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vanir
Jedi
Joined: 11 May 2011
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| Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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Well I already modify terrain diffculties based on starship type, ie. TIE without repulsorfield taxi engines fitted, relying on directional thrust vanes for manoeuvrability unlike snubnose fighters, so under some conditions have higher difficulties to perform the same manoeuvres as a craft fitted with repulsorfield engines.
Easiest example is atmospheric travel, TIE can only fly in atmospheres ballistically, not aerodynamically like an X-Wing. So all the difficulties are higher. Modify that TIE (eg. a TIE shuttle privately owned) to fit it with a repulsorfield taxi engine, for the cost of a little cargo space, and you improve atmospheric performance.
Inertial dampeners are another, TIE ones are very limited to keep them light and fast cheaply. These modifications (to counter these faults) would slow the TIE down, but may actually raise manoeuvrability rating.
The point is however it is more about implementing differential/circumstanial piloting and combat rules generally rather than specific rules for these kinds of "aircraft flying condition" modifications.
Once a more advanced basic starship piloting ruleset is in place, then these modifications and options simply reveal themselves by default.
So the trick is updated/expanding starship piloting and combat rules. That creates the special mods ideas, you'll have Players coming up with them, as they encounter situations where they keep hitting the rules in the face. |
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Bren
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Joined: 19 Aug 2010
Posts: 3868
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 1:58 am Post subject: |
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| atgxtg wrote: | | As a suggestion. rather than adding extra "terrain" die, how about you just lower the default difficulty for a given terrain? |
As I read the posts, that was my exact thought as well. This resolves the issue for me. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16204
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 2:16 am Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | atgxtg wrote: | | As a suggestion. rather than adding extra "terrain" die, how about you just lower the default difficulty for a given terrain? |
As I read the posts, that was my exact thought as well. This resolves the issue for me. |
I agree. What I'm looking for now are some ideas as to how different kinds of vehicles (repulsor, hover, wheeled, etc.) would be better suited to handle difficult terrain than others, and how that would translate to different difficulty modifiers, depending on the type of propulsion.
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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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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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| In the real world, an advantage of tracked vehicles is the tracks allow a greater surface area, which is beneficial in boggy soil and loose sand and maybe ice due to the cleats. Since treads usually run independently you can lock one tread and run the other to spin in place, but advanced independent wheels should do something pretty similar. Repulsorlift seems to have a lot of the advantages of an aircushion vehicle. Maybe one could assume it has the disadvantage of frictionless movement in that it may be a bit harder to stop or turn compared to a ground vehicle because of the negligible inertia. Other than that, of the top of my head, one of the books mentions that repulsorlift vehicles either don't work or work poorly where the gravity field is unstable. So ground vehicles would be better there. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16204
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | In the real world, an advantage of tracked vehicles is the tracks allow a greater surface area, which is beneficial in boggy soil and loose sand and maybe ice due to the cleats. Since treads usually run independently you can lock one tread and run the other to spin in place, but advanced independent wheels should do something pretty similar. Repulsorlift seems to have a lot of the advantages of an aircushion vehicle. Maybe one could assume it has the disadvantage of frictionless movement in that it may be a bit harder to stop or turn compared to a ground vehicle because of the negligible inertia. Other than that, of the top of my head, one of the books mentions that repulsorlift vehicles either don't work or work poorly where the gravity field is unstable. So ground vehicles would be better there. |
That was in the ImpSB, under the description for the Hoverscout (appropriate, as it is the only air cushion vehicle that I recall mentioned anywhere in the WEG books). It seems that there are five general types of surface propulsion modes: wheeled, tracked, walker, repulsorlift and hover (excluding water-based transport types), unless I missed something somewhere.
Considering the commonality of repulsorlift vehicles in the SWU, IMO, it's reasonable to assume that repulsorlifts would be a good baseline for a terrain modifier chart. With that as a starting point, what would be appropriate modifiers for the other propulsion types? I do think Walkers should be at higher (due to their all-terrain designation), except for their obvious susceptibility to being tripped or getting destabilized in rough terrain. As for the others, can anyone think of specific references in the WEG books about the nature of one kind of drive system over the other?
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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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vanir
Jedi
Joined: 11 May 2011
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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I give the B-Wing a lower terrain difficulty for high traffic environments because of the ability to move the CoG without changing the flight path from the pilot's point of view (much like BFM techniques tail skidding and power sliding, the Flanker's cobra manoeuvre being the most famous example).
It's kind of ad hoc attempt at enforcing a bonus for that complicated cockpit, than actually rendering any genuine physics to it. But it's exactly along the kind of lines we're discussing I think.
Thing about repulsors is you have to "zero" the ground level. But ground level varies by terrain. They usually have an altitude capability of anything from 0.5-25m which is good for most civilian use in relatively confined areas, but if you were going to go trapsing all over a continent you'd need ground vehicles, walkers or airspeeders, or otherwise you'd be stopping all the time and getting your tech crews to "re-zero" ground level settings on all your craft.
So for a military, a large formation of vehicles required to explore varied terrain across distances, ground vehicles or walkers are definitely better. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16204
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:58 am Post subject: |
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| vanir wrote: | I give the B-Wing a lower terrain difficulty for high traffic environments because of the ability to move the CoG without changing the flight path from the pilot's point of view (much like BFM techniques tail skidding and power sliding, the Flanker's cobra manoeuvre being the most famous example).
It's kind of ad hoc attempt at enforcing a bonus for that complicated cockpit, than actually rendering any genuine physics to it. But it's exactly along the kind of lines we're discussing I think. |
At this point, I'm limiting my rules purely to ground vehicles. There may be mods in the future for starfighters and space transports, but space is a relatively uniform environment until you get into congested areas (like asteroid fields and such)
As far as the B-Wing, it's an interesting idea. I would think that any advantage from the gyro-stabilizer would be off-set by the pilot having to constantly be aware of which direction his giant wing is pointing, and how he will maneuver it to get around the next obstacle in that high traffic area.
| Quote: | Thing about repulsors is you have to "zero" the ground level. But ground level varies by terrain. They usually have an altitude capability of anything from 0.5-25m which is good for most civilian use in relatively confined areas, but if you were going to go trapsing all over a continent you'd need ground vehicles, walkers or airspeeders, or otherwise you'd be stopping all the time and getting your tech crews to "re-zero" ground level settings on all your craft.
So for a military, a large formation of vehicles required to explore varied terrain across distances, ground vehicles or walkers are definitely better. |
That brings up another interesting question. How does altitude affect terrain difficulty? If a landspeeder with a max altitude of 1 meter is traversing terrain at Moderate difficulty, how does the difficulty shift for the same terrain being traversed by a speeder bike or swoop traveling 20 meters up? Are the obstacles the same across 19 meters different in height?
Also, are you saying that the repulsorlift vehicles are set at a constant height by the techs, and that the techs have to manually re-set them if they want to move higher or lower?
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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
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 2:03 am Post subject: |
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Think of that "re-setting" as like the "zero ing in" you do on weapons, or the cross-point the 4 shots from an Xwing need. You have to use techs to do them.
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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: Fri Dec 30, 2011 2:52 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Think of that "re-setting" as like the "zero ing in" you do on weapons, or the cross-point the 4 shots from an Xwing need. You have to use techs to do them. |
I always considered the altitude range on vehicles to just be a variable altitude that was controlled by the pilot from the cockpit, in that he could just twist a dial or something for greater or lower height depending on conditions. Perhaps zeroing might be appropriate when the vehicle is first deployed to a planet, tuning it specifically for that planet's unique gravity field. Is that what you are getting at?
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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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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:05 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | Think of that "re-setting" as like the "zero ing in" you do on weapons, or the cross-point the 4 shots from an Xwing need. You have to use techs to do them. |
I always considered the altitude range on vehicles to just be a variable altitude that was controlled by the pilot from the cockpit, in that he could just twist a dial or something for greater or lower height depending on conditions. Perhaps zeroing might be appropriate when the vehicle is first deployed to a planet, tuning it specifically for that planet's unique gravity field. Is that what you are getting at? |
Since X-wings and skyhoppers and Venator star destroyers can all land and take off on repulsorlifts, it seems to me they should be variable altitude and controllable from the cockpit.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | atgxtg wrote: | | As a suggestion. rather than adding extra "terrain" die, how about you just lower the default difficulty for a given terrain? |
As I read the posts, that was my exact thought as well. This resolves the issue for me. |
I agree. What I'm looking for now are some ideas as to how different kinds of vehicles (repulsor, hover, wheeled, etc.) would be better suited to handle difficult terrain than others, and how that would translate to different difficulty modifiers, depending on the type of propulsion. |
EABA/Stuff! has a suspension stat that does something similar. As fas a D6 SW goes, I could see doing up a table with some standard terrain mods by vehicle type, with and special mods noted with the vehicle description.
For example, Repulsorlift vehicles could ingore terrain difficulties that were below their altitude rating. So a speeder with a altitude of 0-3m could fly over obstacles that were only 2m tall-treating it as clear terrain. The same speeder coulldn't fly over 10m high trees, though, and would have more trouble movin through a forest.
A vheicle that uses cover, would have to take the full terrain difficulty. So if a speeder wanted to use some rocks for cover, it would have to deal with the problem terrain.
Since most vehicles have an altitude rating listed this would help to work up "off road" capability without a big rewrite.
Walkers could/shopuld get a similar mod, based on their hieght/clearance, and any tank like vehicle would probably get the mod as well. Some vehicles, might not only ingore the terrain modifers but might even be able to bull thier way through the obstacles. Like a tank going right through a building or tree. I bet an AT-AT could stoll through Mos Eisley without much trouble. |
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jmanski
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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I like that thinking. Makes the altitude mean something.
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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 Dec 31, 2011 12:08 am Post subject: |
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Me too. I'd very much like to see some more detail on that.
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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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