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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16400
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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 Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Dustflier wrote: | | Honestly, not only should such explosions depend on the size of the ship, but the size of the reactor, munitions, direction and speed of travel, shape of the hull, materials from which the hull is made, and the manner in which the ship's explosion originates. Just as it would be a lot of math to figure out the size of a devastating internal explosion that destroys an ICBM submarine or modern aircraft carrier (particularly nuclear powered ones), it would be a lot of math to predict ship explosions in the Star Wars universe that remain consistently accurate in every case. |
Technically speaking, in the event of the loss of an SSBN or CVN, the reactor wouldn't detonate, but it might suffer a melt-down. Per treaty, the US no longer deploys nukes aboard surface ships, but even if it did, nuclear warheads do not generally "cook off" from combat damage (an integral part of their design is that they have to be armed to detonate). Even conventional bombs are constructed from chemicals that are designed to resist damage from ship-board fires; the explosive compounds are less likely to cook off in fires, and the bomb casing is painted with fire-resistant coatings.
In the SWU, we are looking at a different scenario, as most starships operate off solar ionization or hypermatter reactors that (presumably) react badly to damage. The reason I proposed a damage effect based on Hull Dice is because it is a number that remains relatively constant. After all, if consumables are factored in, we begin to entertain questions like how much has the ship used? After all, the only ships operating at maximum consumables are the ones who just cast off from the supply ships or space stations.
All the other stuff you mentioned would certainly be a factor, but that's why we use dice. Rather than calculate what piece would go where and what blast of plasma energy would shoot out in which direction, we roll the dice, and some ships take more damage than others. Personally, if my players just blew up a Star Destroyer at point blank range and are trying to dodge debris and blasts of plasma from the ruptured reactor, I don't want to put the entire combat action on hold just to calculate how much damage is inflicted where. I want one roll that can be plugged into a simple formula to determine how much damage their ship takes, and whether or not they can avoid it, and of the options suggested, Hull Dice is the only one already in dice form. Plus, the randomness of the dice roll would cover all the other variable factors mentioned.
My current working theory is that ships within the same unit as the destroyed ship take damage equal to the Hull dice of the ship, and that damage is then reduced by 1D for every additional unit of distance. Other capital ships can't evade the damage, but may roll to resist as normal. Starfighter-scale ships can make a full reaction roll and add the success value of their reaction roll to their roll to resist damage (representing how a more skilled / lucky pilot, like most PCs, being able to evade flying chunks of debris the size of buildings). This covers all three of the factors that Garhkal mentioned: Ship's with more Hull Dice have a larger blast radius, and its more difficult to dodge the blast.
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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.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Praxian
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 30 Mar 2010
Posts: 190
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: |
All the other stuff you mentioned would certainly be a factor, but that's why we use dice. Rather than calculate what piece would go where and what blast of plasma energy would shoot out in which direction, we roll the dice, and some ships take more damage than others. Personally, if my players just blew up a Star Destroyer at point blank range and are trying to dodge debris and blasts of plasma from the ruptured reactor, I don't want to put the entire combat action on hold just to calculate how much damage is inflicted where. I want one roll that can be plugged into a simple formula to determine how much damage their ship takes, and whether or not they can avoid it, and of the options suggested, Hull Dice is the only one already in dice form. Plus, the randomness of the dice roll would cover all the other variable factors mentioned.
My current working theory is that ships within the same unit as the destroyed ship take damage equal to the Hull dice of the ship, and that damage is then reduced by 1D for every additional unit of distance. Other capital ships can't evade the damage, but may roll to resist as normal. Starfighter-scale ships can make a full reaction roll and add the success value of their reaction roll to their roll to resist damage (representing how a more skilled / lucky pilot, like most PCs, being able to evade flying chunks of debris the size of buildings). This covers all three of the factors that Garhkal mentioned: Ship's with more Hull Dice have a larger blast radius, and its more difficult to dodge the blast. |
Same, which is why I came up with the setting I did. Not sure if I explained it well using hexes, but the blast radius is 3x the size of the ship. Anything beyond that is safe from the blast damage.
As it pertains to rolling damage, it's 3.5 x the Hull rating (so a capital ship with a Hull Code of 3D when it blows up rolls damage of 10D+2 for damage as 3*3.5 = 10.5).
Misc Factors I use:
x 1/2 Hyperdrive =
+1D
Experimental Weapons / Rigged Weapons for more damage =
+1D per +2 additional Damage (so a weapon with +1D1 in an explosion yields an additional +2D for explosion damage). This also goes for regular weapons that are manufactured to give a higher damage output than normal.
and that's it for what I use. There's a bit more, but that's based off of something I'm not quite finished typing up yet to put up on the boards to show for other players review (involved power plants that's in the ship). |
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Dustflier
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Posts: 140
Location: Upstate New York
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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I was hoping people would glance over those technical details and not call their factual inaccuracy into question.
Also, I like the method you have proposed. It gets the DUSTFLIER OFFICIAL SEAL of APPROVAL!
"Its surprisingly not a trap!" - Admiral Ackbar
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Also known as Kiss My Wookiee on Discord and Reddit. |
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Praxian
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 30 Mar 2010
Posts: 190
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Dustflier wrote: | I was hoping people would glance over those technical details and not call their factual inaccuracy into question.
Also, I like the method you have proposed. It gets the DUSTFLIER OFFICIAL SEAL of APPROVAL!
"Its surprisingly not a trap!" - Admiral Ackbar |
lol.
That's the catch though. No matter what, there's going to be a TON of inaccuracies depending on everyones viewpoint.
We're just giving you the way WE do it in our games to keep things simple for us.  And hoping one of our ideas works for you! (: |
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Darth_Hilarious
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 17 Apr 2013
Posts: 129
Location: Somewhere over there --------->
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| Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2013 8:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Here on this messed up rock we call home, one astronomic unit is equal to the distance between the earth and the moon. or roughly 275 thousand miles. In my games i always used the diameter of the nearest major planet as the length of a single space unit. |
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Quetzacotl
Commander
Joined: 29 Jan 2013
Posts: 281
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:27 am Post subject: |
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Correction:
1 Astronomical Unit (or AU in short) is the same length as the distance from the Eart to the SUN, not the Moon. |
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atgxtg
Rear Admiral
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
Posts: 2460
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| Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:44 am Post subject: |
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| Quetzacotl wrote: | Correction:
1 Astronomical Unit (or AU in short) is the same length as the distance from the Eart to the SUN, not the Moon. |
Yeah, it approximately 150 million km, or 93 million miles.
Not sure how it helps regarding big ships going boom.
As for big ship explosions Space Units can be prewtty large, and we see ships witin 1 tuns movement from a death star survive when they explode. SO how about.
Hull Dice damage if in the same SU
Half the damage (round pips down) for each SU away from the explosion.
Damage is in the same scale as the ship (Captail, Death Star, etc.)
So a Captail Ship with a 7D Hull wo do:
7D at 0 SU
3D+1 at 1 SU
1D+2 at 2 SU
2 pips at 3 SU
1 pip at 4 SU |
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14341
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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How's about convertig that to SF scale too..
so 7d cap 0su
3d+1 cap 1su
7d+2 ftr 2su
3d+2 ftr 3su
2d ftr 4su
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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
Joined: 18 Jan 2013
Posts: 2295
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:18 pm Post subject: |
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I like crmcneill's version (above). The only change I made was adding the word "original" in (to make it clearer that ships should take damage based on the original Hull total, rather than one that might have been reduced).
Starship Explosions
Starships within the same space unit as a starship when it is destroyed take damage equal to the original Hull value of the destroyed ship. That damage is reduced by 1D for every additional space unit of distance away. Capital ships may not evade damage, but may resist it as normal. Starfighter-scale ships are allowed to make a full reaction roll, adding the total from their successful roll to their total to resist damage.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green |
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atgxtg
Rear Admiral
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
Posts: 2460
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| Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | How's about convertig that to SF scale too..
so 7d cap 0su
3d+1 cap 1su
7d+2 ftr 2su
3d+2 ftr 3su
2d ftr 4su |
Sure, except I'd probably suggest converting to SF scale at the beginning. |
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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
Joined: 18 Jan 2013
Posts: 2295
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2013 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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For the one I added, I suppose it would be clearer if I add in that the damage is taken at the scale of the exploding ship as well.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green |
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