Author Topic: EM Pulsing vehicles in Harp SF  (Read 1290 times)

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Offline pyrotech

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EM Pulsing vehicles in Harp SF
« on: January 17, 2017, 12:22:28 PM »
Hey all,

Who doesn't like watching a star destroyer get it's lights knocked out and go careening out of formation?  I'll tell you who - Darth Vader, that's who.  But I know both my players and myself really kind of enjoy that scene.

So how do we recreate that kind of thing in Harp SF?  Has anyone made any custom EM weapons for HARP SF?

I have some small scale ones for my bughunters game, but have been thinking of working on some larger scale ideas (Pulse missiles and Ion cannon knock offs). 

The Pulse missiles could go a couple different ways, one is to just use the same CRR as grenades and increase the blast radius, the other is to continue the CRR progression for larger (vehicle scale) warheads.  Ship shields should probably really degrade the CRR which would make the first option less powerful, but the second option would cause ridiculously high CRRs on unshielded targets.  What are your guy's opinions on this?

My first idea for ion cannon knock offs (need to find a cool name for these), is to start with blaster (or maybe even plasma cannon) statistics but change the damage results table to the malfunction table instead.

And then you get to the idea of what systems are affected by the attack.  For missiles  that have an AoE multiple systems might be affected, but for a directed/focused EMP like the cannon perhaps only one system would be ( I was thinking of using the 1s digit of the roll to determine the system hit (controls, crew, motive, weapons, power) and an additional d10 to determine the specific subsystem from the vehicle malfunction location table.  Is this too complicated?  Should I just have it affect the whole system - or would that be too powerful?

Hmmm while writing this down I am also thinking that perhaps a AoE missile would need a check for each major system.  But then should it knock down the entire system, or roll on the malfunction location table to determine a sub-system.  I'm leaning towards whole systems - but maybe that is too powerful.  What is your opinion?

Regards,
-Pyrotech

Offline GMLovlie

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Re: EM Pulsing vehicles in Harp SF
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2017, 04:35:21 AM »
Before I can give a proper answer to this, I need to double-check some of this stuff first.

Initial impression: it may be a bit cumbersome some of the mechanics here, but I may feel that way because I'm not super familiar with all the stuff you're referencing.
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Offline pyrotech

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Re: EM Pulsing vehicles in Harp SF
« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2017, 08:51:38 AM »
One of the biggest problems with just using the pulse grenade rules for EM missiles is the fact that the grenades seem to assume the target has resistance - electronic.  For a ship without an AI that isn't a good assumption.

I would like to avoid needing to make a new vehicle critical table - but that may be what I need to do ultimately.  Directly consulting the malfunction table for an attack works, but for AoE attacks I'm not sure that solution makes good sense.  Especially since it wouldn't be consistent with the EMP grenade rules, or the EMP vs robots or cyberwear rules.

Regards,
-Pyrotech

Offline GMLovlie

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Re: EM Pulsing vehicles in Harp SF
« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2017, 12:09:03 PM »
Well, couldn't you use the Malfunction table, and reduce the critical by distance from blast point?

Or you could use the shield and/or EW values of the ship as the resistance roll against the EMP rules?

Or, just add a value as Resistance - electronics to all vehicles.

Disclaimer: I've yet to read properly up on this, so my ideas may have no or little relevance  :o
"What about the future...? We can only hope, we cannot however account for the minutiae of the quanta, as all accidents in an infinite space are inevitable."

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