Not enough design space within weapons to fiddle & differentiate within

[tetrasodium]

Right now weapons have:

 

• Name: Self Explanatory
• Tech Level: Usually 2-3 with a few exceptions, but mechanically there is very little impact beyond what amounts to "You can pick this weapon" & "You can't get more ammo for this"
• Damage: A simple die size or dice pool like 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 2d6, 3d4, etc. Bigger is almost always better
• Type: What type of damage it does, fire pierce force etc.  We don't have many monsters to compare to, but at least in standard d&d 5e shifted these from once relevant things affected by DR/x Resist/x & vulnerable/x to near irrelevant fluff on par with the color of a weapon.
• Range: In the case of practically every weapon this is currently scaled to "enough in nearly all circumstances" making it a value that does not significantly impact weapon choice.  A longarm that deals +1 or extra damage but is limited by losing half two thirds or even three quarters of its range is objectively better as an example.
• Capacity: This has some value when a weapon has a notable reload time, but when you have 50 shots or even 15 or 5 shots to a 1-2 action reload it's not something t be particularly concerned about when choosing a weapon based largely on the die size. Going back to that longarm, if it has a capacity of 25 or even 1000  vrs 50 with it's still a no brain choice to grab the +1 900m range one
• Reload: most weapons have this as - 1 or 2 aside from super heavy duty stuff like grenade launchers flame throwers etc.  If that +1 rifle had a 2 or even 3 round reload time it's not a significant concern to factor in simply because a player can just reload between fights where the action cost is nullified.

All combined this leaves no room to differentiate a hypothetical larger weapon list that even the current ruleset displays as more than just hypothetical on page 63
"The standard issue longarm of the Phoenix Site is the P90, which is a Longarm with the automatic and reflex sight upgrades." vrs "The standard issue “sniper rifle” of the Phoenix 
Site, the SR9TC is a longarm with a reduced capacity but improved accuracy and stopping power. The SR9TC is a longarm with the high calibre and scope upgrade.".  Yes they have different upgrades attached to them, but there are only so many ways you can combine  them in balanced sensible ways.  Both of those weapons have a short range of "more than enough" making the scope on the second niche at best.  One is automatic 1d10 damage & one is merely semiautomatic 1d12 damage while both have an ammo capacity & range of "enough" & capacity/reload of "this is fine".  It doesn't really matter if a third weapon is belt fed extended capacity or so on.

 

The need for more mechanical values allowing subjective choice based on merits represented within the weapon statblocks themselves is critical because players can only be expected to read through so much homebrew stuff from a gm.  It's one thing to read through a list of weapons made by the gm that have varying values for things that already exist, it's something entirely different to give them that same list with a couple pages of writeup on new values that were added that might conflict elsewhere in the system & need a constant series of one off "lets handle it like this"

 

Even if all or nearly all weapons have the same values, simply having additional designspace within weapons where the gm can adjust things allows for it to e done by the GM with the much lower bar of working within the existing framework rather than creating a whole new one in need of balance & compatibility complications.  Below are some possible areas where those subjective values could exist

• accuracy dropoff/gain: every N meters you suffer or benefit from -/+Y points.  For whatever reason a given gun (such as a pistol) might have a -1 penalty to hit for every 1 meters (-1/1)while something else like the hk sr9tc  on page 63 might only take -1 every 10 or 50 feet for -1/10 or -1/50.  Meanwhile a Serrakin self guided Macguffin gun might work better the greater the distance & gain +1/5 or something
• minimum value on a damage die: Maybe the p95 shoots Naquadah enhanced rounds that are especially damaging that deal 1d8 damage with a minimum of a 4 on that d8
• Knockback: How often did we see someone get hit by a staff weapon or have a staff weapon simply hit the ground near them & send them flying?  Knockback could just be a simple value in meters where a medium sized target is knocked back that far when it's hit by that weapon.  Maybe the value doubles or halves as sizes go down & up away from medium.
• What the weapon gets a critical hit or critical fail on other than 20 & 1.  Maybe the Kull repeater is a 1d6 automatic plasma weapon that deals 1d6  instead of the Ma'Tok 3d6 but is extra scary because it  gets a crit on a 19-20  & deals while an ashen blaster is 1d4 automatic & gets a crit on a 17-20.
• If the weapon affects the user's proficiency die or not & how (ie bump/shrink the die or set a minimum value on the die).   The Ma'tok  staff weapon only shoots once every other round due to the recharge1, but maybe it  bumps the user's proficiency die by one step, allows the user to reroll anything less than 2 on the proficiency die or even sets the floor on the die to 50% the proficiency die so a d6 d8 d10 proficiency die user can't roll less than 3 4 & 5 respectively making the elite among the elites quite scary while still providing a nice benefit of a 2-4 proficiency die for cannon fodder.
• How much or what level of armor or damage reduction/resistance it ignores..  Armor piercing is pretty self explanatory to the point where tv & movies frequently use it as a big thing

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by tetrasodium

[Mal]

Yeah, I fed back something similar through the feedback form based on conversations with my players.

Your characterisation of insufficient design space is bang on. In the interests of simplicity we've collapsed the complexity of the system to the point that in play it raises more questions than it answers. 

My suggestions were to (1) separate the upgrades into 'functions' and 'addons'. Functions are inherent to the weapon being stated (automatic, belt fed, etc), while add-ons can be added to any of the compatible types - that's your scopes, lasers etc. (2) limit the number of functions, add-ons as well as damage rating based on Bulk. More damage more bulk.

I fed back more to the Devs but that's the main points

 

 

 

[Deriachai]

in my game we replaced the weapons with a similar system but more specificity.
So a few more classes, and then guidelines to upgrades.

 

Importantly, partly due to the extreme ranges, but also to deal with remote play, we replaced the entire range system to one more like FATE.

[tetrasodium]

4 hours ago, Deriachai said:

in my game we replaced the weapons with a similar system but more specificity.
So a few more classes, and then guidelines to upgrades.

 

Importantly, partly due to the extreme ranges, but also to deal with remote play, we replaced the entire range system to one more like FATE.

what do you mean by more specificity? 

[Deriachai]

[1001100x02]

You're in the military, you're not a merc or other form of freelance murder hobo like in D&D or Star Wars.

By and large, as a soldier you don't get to choose what you're issued with. Even special forces operators have a limited choice of firearms

Edited June 25, 2020 by 1001100x02

[tetrasodium]

1 hour ago, 1001100x02 said:

You're in the military, you're not a merc or other form of freelance murder hobo like in D&D or Star Wars.

By and large, as a soldier you don't get to choose what you're issued with. Even special forces operators have a limited choice of firearms

Don't be ridiculous, this is a game & There are multiple stargate tv series where a main character uses an alien/nontauri weapon despite joinnig the secret military agency.  Not to mention...

To take things one step further, even if we assume your words as the one true & only way to "play" the game, the design space is lacking for a GM to create new equipment that represents small & lateral improvements other than +1/+2/+3/etc, "more of a value that's already nearly always enough to nearly always be irrelevant", and "less of a value that's already low enough to nearly always be irrelevant" thereby getting hamstrung by the same problem you seem to be trying to dismiss as not relevant to the way it should be played.

[Mal]

I'm working on a ruleset to build any ranged weapon in under two pages - should work for Tau'ri and offworld weapons. Will post it here when it's done. Maybe a couple of days 

[Deriachai]

11 hours ago, 1001100x02 said:

You're in the military, you're not a merc or other form of freelance murder hobo like in D&D or Star Wars.

By and large, as a soldier you don't get to choose what you're issued with. Even special forces operators have a limited choice of firearms

Our purpose wasn't to become a murderhobo party, but mostly to clarify the existing rules. If anything this restricts the players more.
As it is, this actually binds the players more to what is available on base, and what they are actually able to requisition.

Players are welcome to rearm themselves after the briefing, and this way I can be more free to have interesting restrictions or stories which force the players to think about their equipment.

[chitinid]

If you're going to do "slots", it might make sense to base those on what rail you're mounting the mod to.

[Deriachai]

32 minutes ago, chitinid said:

If you're going to do "slots", it might make sense to base those on what rail you're mounting the mod to.

That is kind of the idea. just didn't go that strict.

[Darq]

On 6/24/2020 at 7:30 PM, 1001100x02 said:

You're in the military, you're not a merc or other form of freelance murder hobo like in D&D or Star Wars.

By and large, as a soldier you don't get to choose what you're issued with. Even special forces operators have a limited choice of firearms

and the bad guys we run into?

[1001100x02]

GMs can give whatever stats they want to NPC gear. 

All you really need in a core rule book is a guidelone for GMs to rate the CR of damage output when designing encounters for their players. The minutae of PCs customising weapons that people here are talking about belongs in an expansion book

[tetrasodium]

On 10/13/2020 at 6:05 AM, 1001100x02 said:

GMs can give whatever stats they want to NPC gear. 

All you really need in a core rule book is a guidelone for GMs to rate the CR of damage output when designing encounters for their players. The minutae of PCs customising weapons that people here are talking about belongs in an expansion book

in other words your solution is little more than "why doesn't the gm just build the rest of the system so it doesn't need to be part of core"?  It's not at all controversial  to say that most people buying a system expect it to reach a level of completeness that requires a bit more than "fix it yourself" or "design the rest on your own."  Even if one were to accept your suggestion as acceptable it adds "redesign the character sheet to include room for anything new you add to the weapon/armor designspace", which is  a significant leap of efforteven for people who own one or more programs capable of making a (fillable) pdf & says nothing for needing to build digital sheets in various VTTS that require understanding & use of various languages like CSS.  

As to "The minutae of PCs customising weapons that people here are talking about belongs in an expansion book", there is no room baked in the system's designspace to support such a book.    The number of gamers who are itching to buy a book with ten or so weapons $weaponName, Range:plenty, Ammo:Plenty 1d6/1d8/1d10/etc is going to be vanishingly small because they already have exactly that.  Needing a 1.5 release to support something as mundane as an expanded weapons book is absurd.

Edited October 15, 2020 by tetrasodium

[Darq]

On 10/14/2020 at 5:36 PM, tetrasodium said:

in other words your solution is little more than "why doesn't the gm just build the rest of the system so it doesn't need to be part of core"?  It's not at all controversial  to say that most people buying a system expect it to reach a level of completeness that requires a bit more than "fix it yourself" or "design the rest on your own."  Even if one were to accept your suggestion as acceptable it adds "redesign the character sheet to include room for anything new you add to the weapon/armor designspace", which is  a significant leap of efforteven for people who own one or more programs capable of making a (fillable) pdf & says nothing for needing to build digital sheets in various VTTS that require understanding & use of various languages like CSS.  

As to "The minutae of PCs customising weapons that people here are talking about belongs in an expansion book", there is no room baked in the system's designspace to support such a book.    The number of gamers who are itching to buy a book with ten or so weapons $weaponName, Range:plenty, Ammo:Plenty 1d6/1d8/1d10/etc is going to be vanishingly small because they already have exactly that.  Needing a 1.5 release to support something as mundane as an expanded weapons book is absurd.

/Agree

Not to be a jerk, but I am paying them to do this stuff. Anything that our players are likely to run into gear / bad guy wise, should be included.

[akaramis]

weapon creation as a part of the rules tends, in my experience, to result in a lot of non-play use and almost as much GM saying, "Not in my game." 

I like a lower level of detail; for example I'm glad the beta doesn't show ‹Pistol, 9mmN›, ‹Pistol 9mmT›, ‹Pistol, .38s› etc... 

I wouldn't mind a few more levels... say, Light/Medium/Heavy in each of Pistols, SMGs, and Rifles. 

I will note one thing: Even if Gen Loyer allows free choice, Supply's going to only resupply the "usual rounds"... "Sure, you can carry your 9mm Winchester. But you'll have to buy the ammo yourself when on leave on Earth..." That said, it's a great excuse for restricting access to overpowered weapons. Especially since, if you learn to use one, the Ma'tok isn't a bad weapon at all. Nor the Zat'. Remember: AFMC (USAF Materials Command) is a 4-star slot. We only see 2 stars in SGC... 

Bottom line? The game's not about the weapons, but about the exploration and its risks and benefits.

[tetrasodium]

6 hours ago, akaramis said:

weapon creation as a part of the rules tends, in my experience, to result in a lot of non-play use and almost as much GM saying, "Not in my game." 

I like a lower level of detail; for example I'm glad the beta doesn't show ‹Pistol, 9mmN›, ‹Pistol 9mmT›, ‹Pistol, .38s› etc... 

I wouldn't mind a few more levels... say, Light/Medium/Heavy in each of Pistols, SMGs, and Rifles. 

I will note one thing: Even if Gen Loyer allows free choice, Supply's going to only resupply the "usual rounds"... "Sure, you can carry your 9mm Winchester. But you'll have to buy the ammo yourself when on leave on Earth..." That said, it's a great excuse for restricting access to overpowered weapons. Especially since, if you learn to use one, the Ma'tok isn't a bad weapon at all. Nor the Zat'. Remember: AFMC (USAF Materials Command) is a 4-star slot. We only see 2 stars in SGC... 

Bottom line? The game's not about the weapons, but about the exploration and its risks and benefits.

You seem to have misunderstood the problem. Look at it from the perspective of a companion book of weapons, open up a spreadsheet & start filling in values to make a simple collection of 5-10 pistols shotguns longarms & so on.  The base ones in core  have range ammo & so on of "enough to not matter", "absurdly more than needed", & so on.  Imagine a game of d&d as an ongoing campaign where all of this does not exist because there is nothing to hang it on & the gear the party started with is as good as it will ever get.

 

As to your odd choice to jump to a completely different topic by bringing up "weapon creation as a part of the rules"... That is in core, just not in a way that does much other than the not in my game thing you note.

[akaramis]

You're misreading me. I'm saying the lack of design space isn't a bad thing, because it draws the focus away from the D&D magic item cycle. There's room for a few more, but books of gun-porn are NOT a good thing.

I fundamentally think the original post's position is a "really bad idea." I think there is need for more weapons, but definitely not to the weapons supplement level.

The number of players wasting time optimizing guns in Traveller: The New Era, Hero System (when not used as Champions), or Mekton Zeta was fundamentally an impediment to actually playing the games.

[tetrasodium]

1 hour ago, akaramis said:

You're misreading me. I'm saying the lack of design space isn't a bad thing, because it draws the focus away from the D&D magic item cycle. There's room for a few more, but books of gun-porn are NOT a good thing.

I fundamentally think the original post's position is a "really bad idea." I think there is need for more weapons, but definitely not to the weapons supplement level.

The number of players wasting time optimizing guns in Traveller: The New Era, Hero System (when not used as Champions), or Mekton Zeta was fundamentally an impediment to actually playing the games.

a book of guns is an example because it was frequently raised as a probable extra book in discord to shut down arguments about the asburd ranges & overly simplistic weapons with stats that are largely irrelevant in many cases.  You are oversimplifying things to make your point free from half the problem.  All of those systems you list are significantly higher on crunch in so many other ways that allow depth elsewhere in the system also.  It might be reasonable to make a case for why the magic item cycle is a bad thing, but you aren't even attempting to do that either.

 

Edited October 21, 2020 by tetrasodium

[akaramis]

Whether the magic item cycle is bad in D&D is a strawman, but it's clear from the feats that it's not intended as part of the rules, by feats making the attacks power up.
It was a strawman I didn't care to address; since you bring it up, it's part of the mythic structure many D&D campaigns, wherein it feels if not good, at least reasonable. But in Stargate, the weapons as a whole tend to be fairly stable across the series for each series. SG1, there is the move from P90's to Zats; even then, many missions are P90's. Universe, they never have access to new weapons (excluding the ship's weaponry). 

So, since you need it spelled out, I do think the magic item cycle is a bad thing to import.

And no, the stats for T2K are not very crunchy... range, damage, penetration, recoil by number of rounds in the burst. (Many of the bursts appear to have been worked with fractions retained for the per-round-in-burst calculations for bursts, then rounded, providing a very very slim benefit to autofire... Pen is just how many dice of damage are lost per point of armor...  The highest I've seen is 4, but if the worked pen exceeds the damage, it's dropped to the damage, because there was no way to increase the damage dice; crits doubled rolled damage after penetration. Rating real world weapons was doable with a copy of Infantry Weapons of the World... a book filled with very samey pistols in basically 5 categories - body pistols like the PPK and CZ50. light revolvers, police revolvers, heavy revolvers, wrist-breakers. Most rifles were dam 3 pen 1-Nil or 1-1-nil, with anemic ones being 1-2-nil, or even 2-nil., ranges varying between 50 and 70 for short. medium is double that, long quadruple base. Light sport rifles typically 2 damage, pen 2-nil or even just nil.

The lack of differentiation is what made it so much a waste of time. (MegaTraveller and Striker small arms had more variation)

 

[1001100x02]

Numfar, do the dance of joy! Someone else gets the point.

[tetrasodium]

8 hours ago, akaramis said:

Whether the magic item cycle is bad in D&D is a strawman, but it's clear from the feats that it's not intended as part of the rules, by feats making the attacks power up.
It was a strawman I didn't care to address; since you bring it up, it's part of the mythic structure many D&D campaigns, wherein it feels if not good, at least reasonable. But in Stargate, the weapons as a whole tend to be fairly stable across the series for each series. SG1, there is the move from P90's to Zats; even then, many missions are P90's. Universe, they never have access to new weapons (excluding the ship's weaponry). 

So, since you need it spelled out, I do think the magic item cycle is a bad thing to import.

And no, the stats for T2K are not very crunchy... range, damage, penetration, recoil by number of rounds in the burst. (Many of the bursts appear to have been worked with fractions retained for the per-round-in-burst calculations for bursts, then rounded, providing a very very slim benefit to autofire... Pen is just how many dice of damage are lost per point of armor...  The highest I've seen is 4, but if the worked pen exceeds the damage, it's dropped to the damage, because there was no way to increase the damage dice; crits doubled rolled damage after penetration. Rating real world weapons was doable with a copy of Infantry Weapons of the World... a book filled with very samey pistols in basically 5 categories - body pistols like the PPK and CZ50. light revolvers, police revolvers, heavy revolvers, wrist-breakers. Most rifles were dam 3 pen 1-Nil or 1-1-nil, with anemic ones being 1-2-nil, or even 2-nil., ranges varying between 50 and 70 for short. medium is double that, long quadruple base. Light sport rifles typically 2 damage, pen 2-nil or even just nil.

The lack of differentiation is what made it so much a waste of time. (MegaTraveller and Striker small arms had more variation)

 

It's your strawman.   You brought up the idea that it was bad, own it rather than claiming your bad argument is a strawman. Yes the sg team uses those things on tv where the format is focused on something other than the mechanics like a ttrpg, you might as well point at the novels and use the lack of sfx & costume design teams as an excuse for why those should also not be involved when shifting format to  movie or tv show.    Continuing with the tv show however, on that tv show a p90 does not get used with pinpoint accuracy from nearly two kilometers away as if shooter & target  were standing in a small bathroom or closet rather than both running around at a good speed at a distance that is well into the realm of incredible skill for a stationary sniper calculating wind distance with a spotter & so on.    

As to your confusion over the words "elsewhere in the system", the fact that traveler has simple equipment is ok because the system has depth elsewhere, I linked that up to avoid continuation of the confusion you are demonstrating by expanding in the equipment in traveler.  Yes sgp has a lot of feats and such, but the vast majority of those apply to combat & in some cases social interaction.   D&D is generally a terrible system for social interactions compared to systems with a greater focus there &  sgp has some added structure to help there making the social feats fit some other topic.  As to combat, sgp manages to take the already weaksauce tactical combat component of 5e & crank the problems to eleven by making it so a lot of fights the players won't even need to move. Traveler however has an very very different focus such as the lethality & combat rules that include things like parabolic fire, blind fire, panic fire, shotgun spread, suppression fire, & much more.  Traveler doesn't need the added design space in the weapons themselves because that design space to make combat more than "I shoot my gun again" over & over again while sgp is lacking in both.  

@1001100x02 as to you?... still waiting for you to expand onyour comments in the thread you ran away from when asked for details & you aren't exactly adding anything here.