Keeping Recon Alive

[slade the sniper]

OK, still working on the damage charts, really. As a matter of fact here is what I have so far:

Spoiler:

12.7mm/damage = 1d6x10

14.5mm/damage = 1d6+10

20mm/damage = 1d10x10

25mm/damage = 2d6x10

30mm/damage = 2d8x10

35mm/damage = 3d6x10

40mm/damage = 2d10x10

45mm/damage = 2d10x10+20

50mm/damage = 4d6x10

60mm/damage = 3d10x10

70mm/damage = 6d6x10

80mm/damage = 4d10x10

100mm/damage = 5d10x10

105mm/damage = 5d10x10+20

115mm/damage = 5d10x10+50

120mm/damage = 6d10x10

140mm/damage = 7d10x10

155mm/damage = 11d6x10 + 100

64Mj railgun/damage = 1d8x100+50

177mm or 7” gun /damage = 11d8x10

200mm or 8” gun /damage = 10d10x100

255mm or 10” gun /damage = 2d6x100

280mm or 12” gun /damage = 3d10x50

330mm or 13” gun /damage = 2d8x100

355mm or 14” gun /damage = 2d6x100+150

380mm or 15” gun /damage = 3d6x100+50

405mm or 16” gun /damage = 2d10x100

430mm or 17” gun /damage = 2d10x100+100

460mm or 18” gun /damage = 2d10x100+200

That is for Megaversal stuff...for RECON pure, multiply the damage by 1.5. Also, the damages are for ball ammo OR high explosive...more to follow on all the other types and how to get the blast radius, etc.

One issue I have is that a lot depends on the target when dealing with other ammo types, whether soft (humans and unarmored vehicles) or hard (armored vehicles). Case in point, High Explosive Pre-Fragmented warheads are devastating on soft targets...and utter worthless on hard targets, regardless of what the weapon system of delivery is. I am thinking that I am going to have to make 4 seperate charts in order to cover the gamut of worlds/target sets. The four damage rating charts would be:

SDC world soft targets
SDC world hard targets
MDC world soft targets
MDC world hard targets

The types of rounds/warheads I am working on stats for are:

Ball: standard round AKA hard ball AKA FMJ (Full Metal Jacket)
HE: High Explosive
AP: Armor Piercing
APFSDS: Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot
HEAT/HEAP: High Explosive Anti-Tank/High Explosive Armor Piercing
HEP/HESH/HESH: High Explosive Plastic/High Explosive Squash Head/High Explosive Plastic
HV: Hyper Velocity
HVAPFSDS: Hyper Velocity Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot
HVAPFSDS-DU: Hyper Velocity Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot - Depleted Uranium
I: Incendiary
SLAP: Semi-Light Armor Piercing
PELE: Projectile Enhanced Lateral Effect
T: Tracer

This is not covering such things as fuzing and fire control, ECM, ECCM, etc. Apparently modern weaponry is pretty complicated, imagine that

I already have all this data for my homebrew (to include mines, artillery, missiles of all types, rockets, bombs, etc.) but it is complicated and not user friendly in the least.

Ideas always welcome... I think I might just make an excel spread sheet that can auto calculate the damage, but that would be lame and lacks the fun of tossing dice...

-STS

[Alrik Vas]

*starts to drool* Keep...it...coming...*drooling*

[slade the sniper]

Sorry for the lateness...

Small Arms modifiers for modern projectiles
Dual Purpose: ½ SP ½ damage if wearing armor; if no armor damage x 1.5
Armor Piercing: ½ SP, ½ damage
Wadcutter: damage x 1.5, armor x 2, ½ range
Semi‑wadcutter: damage x 1.25, armor x 1.5, 3/4 range
Reverse semi‑wadcutter: damage x 1.5, armor x 2, 3/4 range
Full Metal Jacket: standard damage
Total Metal Jacket: SP ‑ 1
Solid construction : SP ‑ 3
Soft Point: Damage x 1.25, armor x 1.5
Pointed Soft Point: Damage x 1.1, armor x 1.25
Ballistic Tip: Damage x 1.25
High Pressure: Damage x 1.1
Very High Pressure: Damage x 1.25
High Velocity: Damage x 1.25, range x 1.25
Ultra Velocity: Damage x 1.5, range x 1.5
Hollow Point: Damage x 1.5, armor x 2
Fragmenting/Frangible: Damage x 2, will not penetrate any armor or cover
Ramjet ammo AKA "Gyroc": Damage x 2, range x 2
Blended Metal Jacket: Damage x 1.25, armor x 1
Tungsten Core: Armor x 1/3, damage x1/2
SLAP: Armor x 1/4, damage x 1/4
sabot: armor x 1/2, damage x 1/2
Tungsten Core SLAP: Armor x 1/5, damage x 1/2
"spoon tip" AKA Loeffelspitzung: Damage x 1.5
Segmented Bullets: Damage x 2, armor x 2

-STS

[slade the sniper]

Modern Armor Stopping Power
This is rated in terms of Stopping Power which reduces damage, as opposed to the standard Palladium Books Armor Rating.
These ratings are assumed to work in conjunction with the ammunition types in the previous post.

Body Armor
Extrapolated from NIJ ballistic certification levels
Class I: SP 6-10, will stop .38 Special
Class II-A: SP 7-12, will stop 9mm
Class II: SP 8-14, will stop .357 Mag
Class III-A: SP 10-16. will stop .44 Mag
Class III: SP 20, will stop 7.62mm
Class IV: SP 40, will stop 7.62mm AP
Experimental High Tech (IV+): SP 60, will stop 7.62mm tungsten cored AP
Experimental Very High tech (Cl IV+): SP 70 to 90, will stop 12.7mm AP @ 500m

Vehicular Armor
Extrapolated from: STANAG 4569
Vehicular Class I vs KE: SP 20, will stop 7.62mm
Vehicular Class II vs KE: SP 36-40, will stop 7.62mm x 39 AP
Vehicular Class III vs KE: SP 40-50, will stop 7.62mm x 54 AP
Vehicular Class IV vs KE: SP 72-75, will stop 14.5mm AP
Vehicular Class V vs KE: SP 130-250, will stop 25mm APDS
Vehicular Class I vs Explosives: SP 100, will stop grenades, AP mines
Vehicular Class II vs Explosives: SP 200, will stop 6kg HE @ 10'
Vehicular Class IIb vs Explosives: SP 300, will stop 6kg HE center mass
Vehicular Class IIIa vs Explosives: SP 450, will stop 8kg HE @ 10'
Vehicular Class IIIb vs Explosives: SP 600, will stop 8kg HE center mass
Vehicular Class IVa vs Explosives: SP 900, will stop 10kg HE @ 10'
Vehicular Class IVb vs Exposives: SP 1200, will stop 10kg HE center mass

The definition for "stop" in regards to body armor to basically keep the bullet external to the body and reduce the depth of impact to 4" or less, but there will still be a large volume of energy transfer.

The definition for "stop" in regards to vehicular armor is to achieve a 90% chance of defeating penetration of the mentioned round or explosive charge.

Also, yes, these extrapolations would seem to indicate that megadamage weaponry does exist.

-STS

[Alrik Vas]

Yeah, I'm a fan of "Oh, that's an anti-armor weapon? Yeah, you guys have fun with that. I'll sneak around it..."

Mega-Damage is real, it's not super advanced (well, it often is, it just isn't beyond us technologically).

Slade, gotta say i'm enjoying the read. Unfortunately for me it's been a million years since i've read the Compendium of Modern Weapons or even seen a Recon book so I'm a little lost on the actual game terminology.

[slade the sniper]

Well, stopping power is a form of damage reduction instead of Armor Rating, which basically deflects or absorbs damage. I dislike AR due to the bizarreness of how it tends to break down with large caliber weapons or high level characters.

Thus I went with stopping power which stops a certain amount of damage, taken from real world armor standards and translated into game states, instead of an all or nothing AR, which can lead to real issues when applied to mega damage weapons in conjunction with the GI Joe rule...

I have a whole lot of rules cobbled together from various other games, but due to the no conversion policy, I keep them off the forums, unless they are specifically extrapolations of PB stuff instead of another games IP.

-STS

[Alrik Vas]

I see. It's like the PV and alternate body armor rules in the Compendium of Modern Weapons. I assume you have that book?

[slade the sniper]

I do have that book...I probably should have explained it like that I never really did like the PV values assigned however.

-STS

[Zamion138]

Apon further review with out these armor rules at least the ones in the book sdc dmg ratings dont work well, but when you starting think well most cops have type 2 vests it starts making your ak scary again. It makes the .50 Bmg hard hitting. Penatration value PV is a good system , to bad its only expressed in one book.

[slade the sniper]

Zaimon,

A bit confused about your post. Not really sure what you are saying. I think you are saying the PV system is good?

I was attempting to include the PV of weapons when I codified the damage ratings, especially when combined with the rather stopping power of the armor. The major disagreement I have with PV is that it adds another, albeit small, step in the already fairly long palladium combat sequence (multiple attacks/melee, different modifiers for attacks, different scaling of damage [sdc/mdc], dodges, parries, rolling with the impact, etc.) Additionally, the PV table stops at .50 caliber, when I feel that if you have a system then it should cover the entire range of weapons from sticks to tank cannons and beyond. Just my OCD, I know, but I dislike partial systems...they feel incomplete to me

The PV debate has occurred before on the HU section on these forums: http://www.palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=114693

-STS

[Alrik Vas]

I do like how they address superpower damage/penetration in that post. Kinda neat.

[Peacebringer]

Very Maximum Metal like.

Maybe if you penetrate the SP and you cause damage to the MDC of that location, there's a chance that despite the MDC being depleted, the location is no longer functional?

OP: if Palladium made a modern version of Recon, Iraq and Afghanistan probably would be fictitious countries.

What do the players want to play? Big Red is gone; is Islamic Fundamentalism the new, "Big Red"?

Recon's a very flexible war-game: I can play any thing from the Wehrmacht fighting against the Soviets in '41 or I can play a Red-Dawn(the first movie not the horrible second) style game. I could even reenact the Civil War or fight on the Moon in space-suits; I just have to come up with stats.

[slade the sniper]

Peacebringer,
yes, it is very Maximum Metal-ish...but is sufficiently different and palladium flavor that I don't think it violates anything. As for penetration of armor leading to inoperability, that is sort of how I prefer my systems to run, but I think that the "whittling down hit points" mechanic is too ingrained to simply discard it...

As for Recon being highly adaptable, I agree. That is why I like using it as the baseline for most RPG combat when I GM. The difficulty is being able to translate it to the setting, hence why I was thinking that making it encompass the rest of PB titles would help, so we can get vehicles and armor instead of just 1960-1980 era weaponry.

Regarding the new Big Red, you can still use them, but in more of a background role... the new players would be PMCs and terrorist groups vs Stateside big army and specops.

Thanks for the feedback.

-STS

[Peacebringer]

I thought today that if I ran a '41 Eastern Front game, "Stateside", would be a home-front in Germany.

I was also thinking that I think Recon should be kept in the 20th-Century. Why play it in the future, when other games, like Cyberpunk 2020, have more resources dealing with the future?

Also, I think that you should keep the PCs American-based: I have a few friends that would love to play Germans or Japanese in WW2, I only know one person that may like to play the Communists, but they don't RPG.

[slade the sniper]

As a quick question towards those of you that do PMC stuff...

What are the skill programs/training packages that IRL PMCs get? From what I can glean from reports, websites and other forums, they sort of run the gamut of most military related skills, but are there primarily to update or hone existing skills, not a complete training package since most of the training that I see is generally 2 days to (at most) 2 weeks...unlike most full training packages (like military AIT, B Schools, or law enforcement academies). I suppose that these would basically add like a +5% or +10% to an existing skill?

-STS

[DB 2.0]

In keeping Recon, Recon, new MOS's like Rifleman, Airborne, Mechanized Infantry, Mountain Warfare, Engineers. New Advancement Options like NCO School and OCS that allow characters to take normally MOS restricted skills and the option to attend additional MOS schools upon enlistment or transfer to Elite units. also new skill options


New MOS example

Rifleman: Small Arms 2, Heavy Weapons 1, HtH 2, Other Skills 5
MOS Abilities: +1 Grade to Primary Weapon, +1 Grade to Basic Infantry Training.

Why Opt for Rifleman MOS: Well I'm among the best M-16 shots in the platoon because of the extra range time wile everyone else was at Radio School or training to be a Medic, also I got to work on my fieldcraft, plus their are a lot of School and short course options I could have taken, one guy I came up with went to Mountain Warfare School and is now seeing out his term in Europe, an other guy ended up doing Demo work, me I went to Ranger School and learned a bit about fixing Jeeps and Trucks on the side.



Acquiring additional MOS's: Cost 1000xp, Most possess all requite Non MOS restricted skills (at minimum required levels), must acquire any requite MOS Restricted Skills at additional cost before returning to play. Gains MOS Ability and may acquire MOS restricted skills of new MOS normally from this point on.