Blowing Up Vehicles

[Atgxtg]

1 minute ago, sladethesniper said:

Ah, but I have the answer for that as well... bullet diameter and expansion. Also, weapon/target hardness (sort of related to armor). And 7.62mm is more deadly than 9mm or .45 ACP, but THAT is a function of bullet placement (aka skill %).

Yes, although most RPGs don't model that very well, since they tie damage mostly to the round.

1 minute ago, sladethesniper said:

"For bullets the equation is energy in foot/pounds multiplied by the diameter of the bullet, then take the square root of that. For a bullet of .50 caliber with 1000 foot pounds of energy, the equation is 22 damage.

I'll play...let me see:

7.62x51mm = sqrt (2500ft/bs* .308") = sqrt (770) = Damage 27.7

9x19mm = . sqrt (483ft/bs* .355") = sqrt (171) = Damage 13.1

.45 ACP =  sqrt (328ft/bs* .452") = sqrt (148) = Damage 12.2

12 gauge bean bag round =  sqrt (162ft/bs* 1.00") = sqrt (162) = Damage 12.72

 

Okay, I'll admit the bean bad was a cheap shot, but I didn't to point out one of the drawbacks to this, namely that damage is also dependent upon penetration, and wider diameter means lower penetration. It why a pin can go through a piece of paper with less enrgy that a finger or fist.But assuming you factor in for penetration elsewhere, it might hold up. Personally I'm not a big fian od higheer diameter more damage, but that's tangential. 

Somwhat ironically your formula is similar to but not quite the same as the one used by BTRC for Timelords. Namely the square root of the energy (in foot pounds) divided by the diameter: DV= sqrt(ft-lbs/cm).

1 minute ago, sladethesniper said:

Injuries that are not of this magnitude do not count as damage in this system. They hurt, but they are not damage unless the effects cannot be mitigated with a day
of rest or less.

Of what magnitude? It's pretty easy to get comparable damage values from common object with some energy.

Baseball @99 mph = sqrt (107ft/bs* 2.86") = sqrt (306) = Damage 17.5

Average Punch =  sqrt (62ft/bs* 3.25") = sqrt (202) = Damage 14.2

But I'm assuming that there is some modifier I might be missing. 

1 minute ago, sladethesniper said:

 

Such short term, but still debilitating effects are better modeled with a round or two of being stunned or knocked down or other short-term effects.
Weapon vs Target Hardness: If the implement doing the damage is harder than the target (bullet vs flesh, hammer vs face) then the target takes all the damage. If the implement doing the damage is the same hardness as the target (fist vs face) then damage to the target is only half.
If the target is harder than the implement (skull vs boxing glove) then the damage done is only ¼."

-STS

And there is is.

BTW, does that half damage factor apply to tank rounds vs. tank armor ? 

[sladethesniper]

120mm cannon 300 damage, max 

120mm APFSDS round = damage x 2 = 600 damage, but armor only counts for 1/2, not doubling the penetration (the increased penetration is counted in the increased damage). The AP and DS are the same, the DS is merely describing the mechanism of the AP.

So a theoretical tank with 1000mm of armor has 2000 SP. This round makes it so that it only has 1000 points of armor, but the 600 damage is still too low to penetrate it.

Also, the damage multipliers are added together so a theoretical 140mm HVAPFSDS-DU would do a base of 360 x 6 (2 for HV+ 2 for APDS+2 for DU) (not x8) or 2160 damage that treats armor as it if 1/3 the actual amount), which means it can "perforate" (not penetrate) 3240mm RHAe. That is obviously a theoretical maximum performance 1:12 DU penetrator at >3,000 m/s. Which roughly double the velocity of current APFSDS-DU rounds.

But yeah, I should have defined Hyper-Velocity (as it differs from the WWII High Velocity by a lot). Also, yeah, I see that HV has a x4 mod, which is wrong... it should be a +2.

-STS

 

[sladethesniper]

15 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

And there is is.

BTW, does that half damage factor apply to tank rounds vs. tank armor ? 

LOL.

Yeah, it can apply to tank rounds and tank armor. If you want to shoot a long rod aluminum penetrator at a tank, go ahead... I'll wait.

[SDLeary]

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

So would tracer rounds, at least after the first burst. 

And would have the added fun of revealing your location! Fun for the PCs! 🙂

SDLeary

[Atgxtg]

11 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

And would have the added fun of revealing your location! Fun for the PCs! 🙂

SDLeary

Well, if they are flying overhead in a gunship the enemy probably already know where they are. 

[Atgxtg]

17 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

LOL.

Yeah, it can apply to tank rounds and tank armor. If you want to shoot a long rod aluminum penetrator at a tank, go ahead... I'll wait.

Works on the FV 101 Scopion, the FV 107 Scimitar, but then I ran out. All I had left were the silver rods, and I'm saving them for the weretanks.

 

Sorry, I just had to do it:

4 bore magnum stopping rifle = . sqrt (30671 ft-lbs* 1.07") = sqrt (32818) = Damage 181 !

Hmm at 2mm per point it could penetrate 362mm of (lead) armor! Bring on the trolls!

At 1/4 value for soft weapon (lead) vs. hard target (steel) and I still get around 90mm of Penetration. Which is enough to go shooting big game such as Panthers, Tigers  Elefants, and Tigger II's, provided their not looking at me.  I wonder if they make a steel core round for this. 😊

Now I know why the call that other tank rifle "Boys", the 4-bore must be the "Mens Anti-tank Rifle"

 

I seriously doubt it would work, but I cannot deny the sheer coolness factor of someone taking out a tank with their hunting rifle.

[sladethesniper]

This?

Well, using your info, yeah 181 damage, but since it is a lead round nose, that would be 181mm of lead (base), but "If the implement doing the damage is the same hardness as the target (fist vs face) then damage to the target is only half." that would 90mm of penetration in lead.

-STS

 

 

Edited January 4 by sladethesniper

[sladethesniper]

Going to dig through this data and see how my calcs hold up.

-STS

[Atgxtg]

7 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

This?

Well, using your info, yeah 181 damage, but since it is a lead round nose, that would be 181mm of lead (base), but "If the implement doing the damage is the same hardness as the target (fist vs face) then damage to the target is only half." that would 90mm of penetration in lead.

 

Yup, that's it. I though 1 damage = 2mm so I had 181x2=362 base penetration (in lead) reduced to 25% (90mm) into steel (harder material)

Sorry, entirely my bad. My first impulse when I see an new system is to push the envelope and see where it breaks. The 4 bore was the most ridiculous thing I could think of, with twice the energy of a .50 cal. M2, and a one inch diameter. I do it to my own stuff too - I find it a good way to spot problems quickly. I like to notice them before my players bring them to my attention. Come to think of it, I grabbed the stats for the 4 bore to test out some firearm stuff I was doing. 

I doubt a 4 bore could penetrate 9mm into a tank, it is an old black powder weapon,  but they crew would probably think they got clipped by a 20mm. Still, If someone could get above a tank (or APC) and shoot down at a hatch, they might just ruin somebody's day. 

44 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

 

 

Going to dig through this data and see how my calcs hold up.

-STS

There another where he  shoots through a bank vault door. The H&H .375 Magnum out penetrated (most) of the rest, probably because higher energy per area  tends to mean better penetration, although it might have just missed a piece of reinforcement. The bigger bore slugs tended not to get through, but they deformed the door, while the .375 punched a clean hole.

But again, my bad, I was looking for a trouble child as a test case.

[sladethesniper]

The bank vault was kinda iffy since I wanted him to disassemble the door, or give a manufacturer or something beyond "1500 pound bank vault door."

And, while I completely agree about test cases, and I use them as well, sometimes GM fiat has to play a role. I mean if you used relativistic lead projectiles, that might make it.

I'm not pleased with my calcs which is why I keep working on them after 20 years, but as I get more real world info, I tweak things.

-STS

[soltakss]

5 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

he bank vault was kinda iffy since I wanted him to disassemble the door, or give a manufacturer or something beyond "1500 pound bank vault door."

You're only supposed to blow the bloody door off!

 

[Atgxtg]

13 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

The bank vault was kinda iffy since I wanted him to disassemble the door, or give a manufacturer or something beyond "1500 pound bank vault door."

Yeah, even as he points out, he's not sure half the time if the bullet went through because it punched through the armor plate or if it missed the armor plate. 

But then most people watching this are there to see what it loks like, not crunching numbers for an RPG.

13 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

And, while I completely agree about test cases, and I use them as well, sometimes GM fiat has to play a role. I mean if you used relativistic lead projectiles, that might make it.

Yeah, but then if a GM can make the right calls in such cases they don't need formulas and rules. That is the GM has to have some idea that something is wrong or right to make the right call. GMs can only simulate well things that they have some understanding of. 

Case in point we once had a GM who had a river flowing from the ocean to the mountains. Said GM figured it was a coin toss which was the river flowed, and most of the players didn't see a problem. A couple of us were wondering why water was flowing uphill. But someone would have to be aware that water flows downhill to get the call right.

Likewise, someone has to have a rough idea how guns and armor work to get that call right sometimes.

13 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

I'm not pleased with my calcs which is why I keep working on them after 20 years, but as I get more real world info, I tweak things.

Don't be too  hard on yourself. It's hard enough to get penetration right when it's not doing double duty as damage. Even the experts had multiple armor penetration formulas, and they aren't all to the same criteria either. I've got multiple official tables for the same guns that give very different values, as everyone isn't counting things the same way.  

Plus, you are trying to get something that is workable for an RPG, playable in a timely fashion, and are handicapped by having to work with estimated values rather than real world data.

 

EEk! Speaking of not being pleased with your calcs, my spreadhseet program crashed taking with it, all my work on this project,  stats for radars and a couple thousand vehicles for BRP,  and another game! Fortunately the documents were recovered, not sure if I recovered through. 

 

 

[Atgxtg]

30 minutes ago, soltakss said:

You're only supposed to blow the bloody door off!

 

That's how Jimmy got crushed!

[sladethesniper]

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

a couple thousand vehicles for BRP

Whoa... that is impressive.

I don't think I have near that amount... maybe a couple hundred tops. Query, have you played Twilight 2000? There was a lot of good data in there.

-STS

[Atgxtg]

37 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

Whoa... that is impressive.

I don't think I have near that amount... maybe a couple hundred tops.

Well I started collecting data a long time back, and worked out some formula's for converting data to game stats. It's not perfect, but it's a great way to get a lot of stats fast. I just enter the data into a spreadsheet and it does the heavy lifting. 

Another perk of starting from real data is that I can port over stuff from one game to another, as the real vehicle hasn't changed. So I can take a bit list of vehicles with data from one spreadhseet and port it over into another, with formulas for a different RPG and voila. 

 

Or at least it was voila, apparently one particular spreadsheet wants to crash when I cut & paste a certain cell from it. Suddenly five sheets crash at once (radar, the aircraft data I posted previously, a database of vehicles that I spent a hour adding in a bunch of watercraft, and a couple of sheets for vehicles relating to the project that got to start this thread). Then the recovery crashed mid recovery, and things got...tense.

 

37 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

Query, have you played Twilight 2000?

Yes, although to be honest I've never care much for the system, especially the small arms data (oh first edition where every gun they didn't like did 1D6). And yes, I known there been about five versions of that. IMO if a game needs a NPC quick kill table to make the firefights work, something is off. At least in BRP head shots can be fatal. 

37 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

There was a lot of good data in there.

I take it you mean for vehicles and heavy weapons, right? 

I've got some stuff for it, but I not sure what the method they used to get the penetration values, or I might reverse engineer it for some of stuff I can't get data for. 😊.

 

[sladethesniper]

56 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I take it you mean for vehicles and heavy weapons, right? 

I've got some stuff for it, but I not sure what the method they used to get the penetration values, or I might reverse engineer it for some of stuff I can't get data for. 😊.

 

The heavy weapons (anti-armor) specifically. The small arms were pretty bad back in the day, but the 3E stuff was OK.

-STS

[Atgxtg]

47 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

The heavy weapons (anti-armor) specifically.

It looks good but I can't figure out the penetration formula. They have an Apilas (720mm) at 60C, and Armbrust (300mm) at 55C, but a LAW 80 (600mm) at 100C.

So either they are using difffernt penetration data or they got some wonky formula.

47 minutes ago, sladethesniper said:

The small arms were pretty bad back in the day, but the 3E stuff was OK.

That would be Twilight 2013? Yeah, probably the best small arms system of 2K. 

 

[Gundamentalist]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, although to be honest I've never care much for the system, especially the small arms data (oh first edition where every gun they didn't like did 1D6). And yes, I known there been about five versions of that. IMO if a game needs a NPC quick kill table to make the firefights work, something is off. At least in BRP head shots can be fatal.

We suffered the same amount of PC deaths caused by falls as death by gunshot wounds in my Twilight:2000 2e campaign. It became a bit of a running joke.

[Atgxtg]

36 minutes ago, Gundamentalist said:

We suffered the same amount of PC deaths caused by falls as death by gunshot wounds in my Twilight:2000 2e campaign. It became a bit of a running joke.

LOL! I believe it. Pistols are deadlier in D&D. It's one of the reasons why I preferred The Morrow Project.

 

Edited January 6 by Atgxtg

[sladethesniper]

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It looks good but I can't figure out the penetration formula. They have an Apilas (720mm) at 60C, and Armbrust (300mm) at 55C, but a LAW 80 (600mm) at 100C.

So either they are using difffernt penetration data or they got some wonky formula.

That would be Twilight 2013? Yeah, probably the best small arms system of 2K. 

 

My guess is different data. 

Yes on the TW2013.

-STS

Edited January 6 by sladethesniper

[Atgxtg]

16 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

My guess is different data. 

Ah, you wouldn't know what their mm to Penetration method is, would you? I seems like somewhere between 5-6 mm per point.

16 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

Yes on the TW2013.

Ah, yes, I agree. IMO,  TW2013 had the best small arms rules of any version of TW. I quite liked the "Sweet 16" add on, too. 

[g33k]

On 1/3/2024 at 11:43 AM, Atgxtg said:

... Yeah, but obviously the tech has to do something for the gunner, or else it wouldn't be there. Militaries don't try to spend millions of equipment that doesn't do anything.  It just sorta happens, at times, anyway, but it wasn't supposed to work out that way. 

Heard an interview, the other day.  Guy's an expert in "failure."

One of his biggest "products" is to run seminars for large organizations, before they finalize a project.  Gather all the managers and engineers into a room.  The pitch is this:
"It's now 22 months into the future... your project was released a few months ago.
It failed... horribly so.
Career-ending levels of failure, for sure... possibly even going-out-of-business levels of failure.
Your job, here, today, is to figure out:  why did it fail?  What went wrong, where?"

Many places won't even talk to the guy.  "Too negative, bad for morale, etc."

Also, it's hard to run these seminars right.  Even if the organization brings them in, just one senior person with the "this is overly-negative bullshit" attitude can shut down all the effective work... it takes some serious social-skills to get these to be productive.

He told about being in a room with a bunch of top military brass & high-end contractors who were working some sort of tactical battlefield computer-assist system.  Lots of 2-star & 3-star, lowest-rank in the room was Captain.  It was like pulling teeth from a hen, nobody could see any flaws in the project (or was unwilling to voice it).

Finally, he started calling on people individually, and Captain Low-Rank offered:  "Well, sir, I was wondering... we're developing this thing on top-end supercomputers... but we're deploying it onto commercial-grade tablet CPUs.  I don't think it will perform well."  Dead silence, as everyone realized he was right.

[Atgxtg]

10 hours ago, g33k said:

Many places won't even talk to the guy.  "Too negative, bad for morale, etc."

LOL! I believe it. It's modern corporate thinking. Don't say anything negative. It why companies can fail so spectacularly with no one involved ever even having a clue that it could possibly fail despite the fact that it was so obviously stupid that anyone not associated with the project could notice it would fail immediately.

10 hours ago, g33k said:

 

He told about being in a room with a bunch of top military brass & high-end contractors who were working some sort of tactical battlefield computer-assist system.  Lots of 2-star & 3-star, lowest-rank in the room was Captain.  It was like pulling teeth from a hen, nobody could see any flaws in the project (or was unwilling to voice it).

Finally, he started calling on people individually, and Captain Low-Rank offered:  "Well, sir, I was wondering... we're developing this thing on top-end supercomputers... but we're deploying it onto commercial-grade tablet CPUs.  I don't think it will perform well."  Dead silence, as everyone realized he was right.

Sounds something like Operation Market Garden. One of the junior officers involved in the planning had expressed doubts about the plan, and was sort of told to get on the team, before being sent off considered overworked, and sent off for some R&R. The guy was right, but nobody wanted to hear it. As a result nobody wants to speak up and tell the higher ups that they are wrong. 

[g33k]

57 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

LOL! I believe it. It's modern corporate thinking. Don't say anything negative... 

There's quite a bit of "startup" / "entrepreneurial" / "hustle" attitude of "no time for that negative shit."
 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

 ... As a result nobody wants to speak up and tell the higher ups that they are wrong. 

Yes; the military is, if anything, even more prone to this mode of error.  Business has long realized the strength of group decisions -- hence a BOD sitting above the C-suite.  Because decisiveness in wartime is critical, the military almost-always works in that entirely-hierarchical top-down mode.

Plus, in all cases, people are people.  The ones with the ambition and the drive to get stars on their shoulders -- or corner offices on the top floor -- tend to be the ones with strong opinions, strongly expressed, and impatience with disagreement.

[Atgxtg]

11 minutes ago, g33k said:

There's quite a bit of "startup" / "entrepreneurial" / "hustle" attitude of "no time for that negative shit."

It's why I like working for engineers. They generally have to deal with reality.

11 minutes ago, g33k said:

Yes; the military is, if anything, even more prone to this mode of error. 

Yeah, because while a boss might fire an employee for talking out of turn, the military can court martial and shoot them for it. 

11 minutes ago, g33k said:

Plus, in all cases, people are people.  The ones with the ambition and the drive to get stars on their shoulders -- or corner offices on the top floor -- tend to be the ones with strong opinions, strongly expressed, and impatience with disagreement.

Yeah, those who most want the job tend to get it, regardless of their ability to actually do the job.