Topic: Any reports from playtests?

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Reporting from my new HARP SF campaign, I deliberately handed out some significant cash to the characters (now level 3.5) as a financial reward for their sterling service in playtest adventures and to see where it would be spent. Lots of cyberware was bought - obviously the cool thing among my players - and this has prompted a revision of cyberware prices (to bring them into line with equipment multipliers).

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi,

Yesterday we had session 3, which was great fun (a pilot fumbling the driving maneuver on a grav tank for which he has no skill, and a character manning the cannon for which he has no skill either but pressing the "fire" button every round while at the same time turning the turret in random directions....).

My feedback:

a) Vehicle Weapons in Atmosphere: to me the particle cannon is de facto a blaster cannon in all but name. A Mk 1 particle beam cannon has a RI of 2km. A heavy support blaster has a RI of 40m. My players and I were quite astonished when comparing this.
So if looking at today weapons, I would guess that a heavy support weapon goes in my opinion up to 2cm, a Mk 1 cannon starts at 2cm and goes up to 4cm (assuming that a main battle tank has about Mk 3 and a battleship Mk 5). So a factor of 50:1 in range between the largest heavy support weapon and the smallest cannon seems too much to me. I do not know about the other weapons (Lasers,...), but I can imagine that there is a similar situation. In addition I saw that range is independent of Mk. #.
Suggestion: Close this gap between and heavy support and cannons and make at least in atmosphere the RI dependent on Mk #, as also for normal weapons RI increases with Critical Size or size of the weapon.

b) Vehicle Sensors: the tank had sensors. Looking at the ranges given in the manuscripit, which are in AUs, I wondered whether they are applicable for vehicles.
Suggestion: either include a table for sensor ranges of vehicles which are lower than for spacecraft or rule that vehicles are too small for sensors and use scanners.

c) The Engineer started making heavy modifications to the gear (e.g. he put energy from the cannon to the grav drive, which resulted in a "hopper" (he rolled a 66  ) -> he used tin from the roof of a stable to build wings to get some sailing abilities on top; he wanted to make a welding torch out of his blaster but his result was so low that he got a cigar lighter instead;....).
I would have appreciated some more detailed guidelines on the difficulty of the associated maneuvers, especially what happens when one of the many required engineering skills only partly fails and so on.

And for those who are interested: the result of the fumbled driving maneuver was that the grav tank found itself inside an office building on the first floor, with a desktop computer hindering the drivers vision (and everyone got an A impact criticial) - and since the building was made of wood, the character on the cannon set it on fire, which resulted in danger of everyone getting roasted as the driver was still staring at the desktop computer...).

BR
Juergen

[Mungo]

And what I forgot:

If I have a burst capable weapon that makes huge criticals -> in burst modus, do they get another +20 size modifier, as the critical size can not be increased?

If yes, I would state so.

BR
Juergen

[Lord Damian]

Personally, i would halve all ranges in atmosphere/gravity wells.  Line-of-sight weapons like lasers and energy beams suffer diffusion from atmosphere, Projectile weapons suffer from the effects of gravity and friction, and usually an atmosphere adds interfearance for sensors, as do ground features such as mountains, cities, etc.  I might even quarter them.

Also remember that even though a weapon may be able to fire out 100k, if it's Line-Of-sight, it's not gonna drop over the horizon, it's going to continue more or less straight out into space.  IMHO, anything over about 5k should be balistic and Indirect on anything but the largest of planets (size of planet determining distance to horizon, etc.) or ground-to-air/space weapons.

Lord Damian

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

a) Vehicle Weapons in Atmosphere: to me the particle cannon is de facto a blaster cannon in all but name. A Mk 1 particle beam cannon has a RI of 2km. A heavy support blaster has a RI of 40m. My players and I were quite astonished when comparing this.
So if looking at today weapons, I would guess that a heavy support weapon goes in my opinion up to 2cm, a Mk 1 cannon starts at 2cm and goes up to 4cm (assuming that a main battle tank has about Mk 3 and a battleship Mk 5). So a factor of 50:1 in range between the largest heavy support weapon and the smallest cannon seems too much to me. I do not know about the other weapons (Lasers,...), but I can imagine that there is a similar situation. In addition I saw that range is independent of Mk. #.
Suggestion: Close this gap between and heavy support and cannons and make at least in atmosphere the RI dependent on Mk #, as also for normal weapons RI increases with Critical Size or size of the weapon.

When you say "I would guess that a heavy support weapon goes in my opinion up to 2cm" (where I suspect you meant 2km)

do you mean that the Range Increment 7 (-200 penalty) ends at 2 km?

If you do mean something like this, then RI 7 for a Support Blaster is 320m which is one-sixth of 2km. Which is not 50 to 1.

And I could possibly see the atmospheric ranges for the lower vehicle weapons being reduced.

b) Vehicle Sensors: the tank had sensors. Looking at the ranges given in the manuscripit, which are in AUs, I wondered whether they are applicable for vehicles.
Suggestion: either include a table for sensor ranges of vehicles which are lower than for spacecraft or rule that vehicles are too small for sensors and use scanners.

Those ranges are most definitely for spacecraft. I can imagine some vehicles that could have sensors with shorter ranges, and likewise even smaller vehicles that would have to make do with scanners or nothing.

c) The Engineer started making heavy modifications to the gear (e.g. he put energy from the cannon to the grav drive, which resulted in a "hopper" (he rolled a 66  ) -> he used tin from the roof of a stable to build wings to get some sailing abilities on top; he wanted to make a welding torch out of his blaster but his result was so low that he got a cigar lighter instead;....).
I would have appreciated some more detailed guidelines on the difficulty of the associated maneuvers, especially what happens when one of the many required engineering skills only partly fails and so on.

That goes beyond the scope of the core rulebook and into SysOp's Guide territory.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

And what I forgot:

If I have a burst capable weapon that makes huge criticals -> in burst modus, do they get another +20 size modifier, as the critical size can not be increased?

If yes, I would state so.

BR
Juergen

No. It does not increase the size any further and in particular it does not give a size bonus for the extrahuge crits that don't exist. You just get the burst bonus.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

When you say "I would guess that a heavy support weapon goes in my opinion up to 2cm" (where I suspect you meant 2km)

do you mean that the Range Increment 7 (-200 penalty) ends at 2 km?

If you do mean something like this, then RI 7 for a Support Blaster is 320m which is one-sixth of 2km. Which is not 50 to 1.

And I could possibly see the atmospheric ranges for the lower vehicle weapons being reduced.

Hi,

Sorry for not being more precise. I was talking calibers...

I am basically trying to translate the rules into the real world and then back into rules. My line of argumentation is the following:

1) In HARP SF, a heavy support weapon like e.g. a heavy MG is the heaviest weapon that can be carried by a team. A Mk 1 cannon is the smallest weapon that can not be carried and counts as a weapon system, i.e. more damage and range than the heavy support weapon (and an OB bonus due to the targeting system).

2) Trying to translate this into real world modern weapons: the heaviest caliber to be carried by a team is 2 cm, but more likle 1.27 cm (0.50 caliber). The smallest weapon systems/cannons are typically on an APC and range from 2-4cm caliber (most often 3cm as far as I see it, ant they are burst fire capable).

3) So from that I assume that Huge critical is up to 2cm, Mk 1 is 2-4 cm.

4) There is a significant difference in range and damage between those two, as a cannon has normally also higher speed in addition to heavier ammunition. The resulting damage difference is difficult to tell, as both are normally more than enough to kill a person, but effective range difference is perhaps a factor 3-5 (not based on hard data but gut feeling).

5) Going back to HARP SF, the RI relation between a Mk 5 Blaster and a Mk 1 Particle Beam Cannon is 40:2000 or 1:50. This is more than 10 times than I would expect looking at point 4.

6) Looking at the real world, range increases with caliber. In HARP SF the RIs of the cannon do not change depending on Mk. #.

7) I assume that these comparisons are on a general level also true for any other kind of direct fire weapons, i.e. Blasters, Lasers,....

I therefore suggest to make the transition from personnel to vehicle weapons smoother in terms of RI and to make RIs of vehicle weapons dependent on Mk. #, at least within an atmosphere.

BR
Juergen

[Mungo]

Hi,

We had yesterday again a session (our 5th, but there was nothing to report on the 4th) and the following topics arose:

- BMR: the characters wanted to "Dash" back into their spaceship during combat. In the rules this requires a "Sheer Folly" maneuver. The question is: on what skill? And what kind of resolution - most likely "Percentage", or? I was confused and allowed any kind of skill that might help them.

- BMR: to me BMR seems to be in HARP SF much more important than in HARP - simply because getting out of blast radii, hiding behind cover and so on becomes much more important. BMR is tied mainly to height -> the character can simply choose the BMR he wants (neglecting the Qu bonus for the moment) -> I wonder whether this is the right way...

- Sensors & Scanners: the lack of distances on a planet was again a big issue. The characters landed their ship on an installation of the local underworld (I designed it as a Vietcong like jungle fortress I have seen in movies, i.e. underground, many tunnels, ...). I had a hard time determining how deep the sensors penetrated, from how far away things could be located, .. There was also the question whether you can scan for many things at once (i.e. structural design and lifeforms within). I ruled "Yes", using the modifiers cumulative. Was this ok?

- Blaster Grenade: How long does it take to make a grenade out of a blaster? One character modified it within a few rounds and I let it pass for story reasons, but I wondered...

- Escape Blast: we used this Combat Maneuver for the first time and it lead to much fun (one fumbled, diving straight into the next tree - ouch!). So I would say it works very well!

Otherwise it is going better and better and we had a lot of fun. As a new player has joined, I will also with him make the exercise of raising and changing his character - my idea is that his body was so damaged in the past that it was replaced by a robotic body. So I will have the chance to test those rules. Question: for this to happen, the character need both the virtuality and the downloadable form talents, or?

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Hi,

We had yesterday again a session (our 5th, but there was nothing to report on the 4th) and the following topics arose:

- BMR: the characters wanted to "Dash" back into their spaceship during combat. In the rules this requires a "Sheer Folly" maneuver. The question is: on what skill? And what kind of resolution - most likely "Percentage", or? I was confused and allowed any kind of skill that might help them.

Percentage. There isn't any designated skill and that was intentional in HARP Fantasy. For SF, you could legitimately look for any Sports skill or anything else that was vaguely Athletic.

- BMR: to me BMR seems to be in HARP SF much more important than in HARP - simply because getting out of blast radii, hiding behind cover and so on becomes much more important. BMR is tied mainly to height -> the character can simply choose the BMR he wants (neglecting the Qu bonus for the moment) -> I wonder whether this is the right way...

That I'd have to bounce upwards to Tim. I see your point.

- Sensors & Scanners: the lack of distances on a planet was again a big issue. The characters landed their ship on an installation of the local underworld (I designed it as a Vietcong like jungle fortress I have seen in movies, i.e. underground, many tunnels, ...). I had a hard time determining how deep the sensors penetrated, from how far away things could be located, .. There was also the question whether you can scan for many things at once (i.e. structural design and lifeforms within). I ruled "Yes", using the modifiers cumulative. Was this ok?

I'll put up the 4e version (which has the new planetary sensor values etc.) this weekend. Have TGC matters to deal with so won't make any progress on the vehicle construction arena. Good call on the multiple factors sensing mods.

- Blaster Grenade: How long does it take to make a grenade out of a blaster? One character modified it within a few rounds and I let it pass for story reasons, but I wondered...

It's probably rounds rather than minutes.

- Escape Blast: we used this Combat Maneuver for the first time and it lead to much fun (one fumbled, diving straight into the next tree - ouch!). So I would say it works very well!

Otherwise it is going better and better and we had a lot of fun. As a new player has joined, I will also with him make the exercise of raising and changing his character - my idea is that his body was so damaged in the past that it was replaced by a robotic body. So I will have the chance to test those rules. Question: for this to happen, the character need both the virtuality and the downloadable form talents, or?

BR
Juergen

He needs to buy both - one to go electronic, one to use a robot body.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi,

After having designed the robot:

- Instead of the translators, a character could also learn the language or? This would have the drawback of higher cost but the benefit of knowing the language independently of the robotic body. Am I correct?

-  Do I understand correctly that the DP cost for e.g. Agile Body is independent of the actual AG bonus given?

- What happens to the human Skill Flexibility when the character becomes a Robot?

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Hi,

After having designed the robot:

- Instead of the translators, a character could also learn the language or? This would have the drawback of higher cost but the benefit of knowing the language independently of the robotic body. Am I correct?

Correct, and the character would avoid the -25 penalty for no real ranks.

-  Do I understand correctly that the DP cost for e.g. Agile Body is independent of the actual AG bonus given?

Correct. The DP cost is the same. The cost goes up in proportion.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi

- What happens to the human Skill Flexibility when the character becomes a Robot?

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Hi

- What happens to the human Skill Flexibility when the character becomes a Robot?

BR
Juergen

The character keeps it. If it was used for something that no longer makes sense for a Robot, i.e. a psi skill, then that's tough.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi,

2 more:

-  The robot should from the outside and in its behaviour be indistinguishable from a human being (even the character does not realize at the beginning that he is a robot, as he has forgotten the last 7 years...). What I am missing in the rules is: an option that the robot can eat, drink (and p... and s...) and perhaps even sweat (or is this part of biological surface) incl. DP cost. Perhaps with an option that the robot can even recharge his batteries this way?

- How long do the batteries last before the robot has to recharge, i.e. how many eus does it need per hour or day of normal operation?

And:

- Batteries can be swapped with a Routine Machine Operation maneuver - which? Most lilely "Tools", or?

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Hi,

2 more:

-  The robot should from the outside and in its behaviour be indistinguishable from a human being (even the character does not realize at the beginning that he is a robot, as he has forgotten the last 7 years...). What I am missing in the rules is: an option that the robot can eat, drink (and p... and s...) and perhaps even sweat (or is this part of biological surface) incl. DP cost. Perhaps with an option that the robot can even recharge his batteries this way?

Call it half a million credits, cost it at 5 DPs (but I'd suggest the character get it for free).

- How long do the batteries last before the robot has to recharge, i.e. how many eus does it need per hour or day of normal operation?

The batteries are Utility Power Cells (two) plus a mini as a backup, so that will give you the number of days before replacement is required.

- Batteries can be swapped with a Routine Machine Operation maneuver - which? Most lilely "Tools", or?

Tools.

best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

- How long do the batteries last before the robot has to recharge, i.e. how many eus does it need per hour or day of normal operation?

The batteries are Utility Power Cells (two) plus a mini as a backup, so that will give you the number of days before replacement is required.

Hi,

Yes, but I how do I translate this into hours or days? This only tells me that a robot has 400eus for main power and 20eus as backup.

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

- How long do the batteries last before the robot has to recharge, i.e. how many eus does it need per hour or day of normal operation?

The batteries are Utility Power Cells (two) plus a mini as a backup, so that will give you the number of days before replacement is required.

Hi,

Yes, but I how do I translate this into hours or days? This only tells me that a robot has 400eus for main power and 20eus as backup.

BR
Juergen

That's 420 days.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi,

Had another session last week, but unfortunately we didn't use the Psionics rules. Hopefully this week.

The problems I faced was still with scanners. The characters were approaching an enemy base that was in reality a dug in spaceship (looked like a missile, the propulsion part was the one nearest to the surface). The pilot soon started using his sensors, stating that he was looking for (life forms, energy, ...).

First problem: he rolled high, but if I assumed that he really tried to look at all things at once, the negative modifier was unbelievable high -> I ruled it like a CRR, but had a hard time to decide what he found and what not.

Second it was difficult to decide on the right modifiers. Especially things like: penalty from being submerged in earth? Penalties from ship armor? Can they detect lifeforms at a depth of 40m below surface? What happens if there is something obvious which the character should detect but the player failed to mention? Also I had the impression that not all things that could be found are included in the sensor table (of course), so I had to do some extrapolations.

And beside all this I wondered what kind of sensor technology they use.... (it must have been a micture of ultrasonic, radar, long wave radar, infrared sensing and so on).

Looking back at the previous sessions, where sensors have also been a big issue, for me the question arises whether the topic of sensors shouldn't be handled differently to address these problems. I think it is important to get this topic right, as at least my players tend to rely heavily on sensors.

One idea I have is to use a CRR like system. I.e. the character must decide which one of the 4 categories (biological, construct, planetary, stellar) he wants to scan. Actually I would include a 5th: power. Then there is for each a CRR like table, only inverted (i.e. the higher you beat the target number, the more information you get). The target number is simply derived from a combination of distance and shielding.

For each of the categories there would be a different kind of sensors. And for some categories, e.g. "Construct", I would rule that only active sensing gives results, the same applies when the shielding becomes too high.

What do you think about this?

Example:
Target Number is 100 + 1 per cm of shielding * material modifier (p. 161) - Range Modifier (p. 170/171)

Power:
Target Number: find power plants
TN +10: identify power plants
TN +20: find microfusion reactors
TN +40: find vehicle power cells
TN +60: find power cells
TN +80. find minicells

And perhaps there should be a bonus if the sensors concentrate in one direction?

BR
Juergen

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

I'll have to have a think on this. It might be that the Knowledge Table paradigm rather than a CRR is the route to go here.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[markc]

Last weekend using the e rules for psionics we did game[HARP Fantasy] but i did not get a chance to use my powers much as the big battle that happened during a corination I left my weapons behind to show respect. So I spendt a good portion of time just staying away from the big bad deamon that appeared. In 2 weeks I should have better info. And the e rules for Psi drasticly changed how I built my character.
MDC