Balancing Robots with Powered Armor

[slade the sniper]

One of the issues with everything being MD is that you can no longer put out the call to "scratch my back" (shoot your ally with your machineguns to get some pesky infantry off your own vehicle) without really taking your life into your own hands. Anyone got an idea of how to handle that in game? I suppose that in situation you just put out the call and pray...

-STS

[ShadowLogan]

Why do they have lower MDC? Surface area. There's a lot of armor, but it's spread over a decent sized robot. Measuring MDC per kilogram is a waste of time because the UAR-1 Enforcer has way more armor than a Crusader suit. Not just 3 1/2-ish times as much armor, but probably 50 times as much armor plating. Is it out of the question for a 20 foot robot to have 1200 lbs of armor strapped to it? It's just protecting a much larger target, so the armor is (relatively) thinner.

That doesn't really work as an explanation though as surface area doesn't seem to be a consideration for Palladium.

1st there is a bit in SB1o's FAQ (pg8, 1st question top left) that amounts to connecting the mass of an item with its MDC to determine if body armor is light/medium/heavy. Nothing about coverage.

2nd surface area for some PA (or even borgs) isn't much different than EBAs (ex T-21), but are much more massive than the EBA suit but don't offer proportional increase based on the mass (granted we have to take into account PA-systems, but those systems by just being present should also contribute to MDC value). Or you could compare the surface area of PA to borgs, etc.

3rd "Giant-size" suits (megaversally) tend to be heavier, but also provide a protection bonus regardless of "how giant" they are with a boost in mass.

4th we know size of a weapon doesn't truly impact its offensive value (case in point about the Triax 100ft bot you mentioned), so why would apparent size matter? (This also applies to mass, not just surface area, but text indicates that mass has some impact on some levels).

5th surface area MDC is given only for certain situations (hull plating or walls).

6th if surface area was a factor, we should see the 6 basic sides covered for MDC of an item (IIRC only a select few force fields get this). We don't in actual practice, so shooting a helmet from the back is the same as the front or side, and the damage from one attack from one angle weakens the target, even for an attack from a different angle.

[kaid]

One of the issues with everything being MD is that you can no longer put out the call to "scratch my back" (shoot your ally with your machineguns to get some pesky infantry off your own vehicle) without really taking your life into your own hands. Anyone got an idea of how to handle that in game? I suppose that in situation you just put out the call and pray...

-STS

Well generally you would not use your main guns to do that kind of action and most tanks/robot vehicles could take secondary weapon fire well enough that it would be worth any damage incurred to remove some supernatural critter/borg that is riding you and ripping you up with its bare hands.

[kaid]

One other oddity just with how the game plays out is robot vehicles often have if you add up all the armor locations tend to come out better in comparrison than just main body MDC to main body MDC with power armor. But just due to how the system works unless you are sharp shooting most people are not going to bother trying to punch an arm off a robot vehicle because it simply is not that much faster to do that than it is to just kill the thing.

So its not so much that robot vehicles don't have a ton of armor it's just that a lot of the armor locations tend to never get hit much.

And on the other note when you are dealing with 15-30 feet tall robot vehicles that can can run 50-100 mph and have the agility of martial artists its hard to say how much mechanism is needed to make that happen and what weight limitations maintaining that kind of mobility entails. It honestly makes more sense that size for sie tanks would have as much or more armor because its a lot easier to armor up basically a box with wheels than it is some 30 foot armored ninja bot.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

One other oddity just with how the game plays out is robot vehicles often have if you add up all the armor locations tend to come out better in comparrison than just main body MDC to main body MDC with power armor. But just due to how the system works unless you are sharp shooting most people are not going to bother trying to punch an arm off a robot vehicle because it simply is not that much faster to do that than it is to just kill the thing.

So its not so much that robot vehicles don't have a ton of armor it's just that a lot of the armor locations tend to never get hit much.

And on the other note when you are dealing with 15-30 feet tall robot vehicles that can can run 50-100 mph and have the agility of martial artists its hard to say how much mechanism is needed to make that happen and what weight limitations maintaining that kind of mobility entails. It honestly makes more sense that size for sie tanks would have as much or more armor because its a lot easier to armor up basically a box with wheels than it is some 30 foot armored ninja bot.

FWIW, this is something ive brought up a lot of times in this discussion (not necessarily this thread, but when this has cropped up in the past).

When you build a ninja-leaping, 30ft tall robot with large batteries of built in heavy weapons... you have to account for all the mass required to make the robot do that. Then, you can only add whatever armor is left in your mass budget. Which may not be a lot. (And, as you pointed out, unlike PA or body armor, where you can fairly easily blow a leg or arm off, or hand, and cripple the pilot, the arm on a robot might have hundreds of MDC, making it a LOT harder to cripple).

Its both a game balance issue (Robots need to be counterable by PCs without also using Robots), and there are PLENTY of realistic ways to hand-wave why the MDC difference isn't as great as you'd think.

Also, i think tanks meet your criteria, by and large (the crappy NG Hover Tank notwithstanding). Most of the tanks are SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than Robots of equivalent MDC, and some of the heavier tanks are only out-armored by the very biggest Robots and are still quite a bit smaller than most robots.

[G]

wow...people are are still struggling with the same issues we quickly solved ...long ago (can you believe the system is still alive when released in 1990!? Its roughly 27 years old). We decided to do was spend more time playing and try to fix everything as easily as possible. From my old webpage:

1MDC=10SDC (so you kill a single tree not the whole forest)
Double range, md, & mdc of vehicles and 20' robots, larger than a Glitterboy (more realistic), triple for tanks, upto 5x for REALLY big assets

[eliakon]

wow...people are are still struggling with the same issues we quickly solved ...long ago (can you believe the system is still alive when released in 1990!? Its roughly 27 years old). We decided to do was spend more time playing and try to fix everything as easily as possible. From my old webpage:

1MDC=10SDC (so you kill a single tree not the whole forest)
Double range, md, & mdc of vehicles and 20' robots, larger than a Glitterboy (more realistic), triple for tanks, upto 5x for REALLY big assets

Sure, rewriting the entire rule set to make a personal set of house rules work to make robots the One True Weapon over everything else will make robots tons more powerful sure.
That doesn't help anyone that is looking to come up with a solution that is both reasonable, equitable, and leaves robots as something that can still be fought with out having to use a robot.
By your rule a robot with a 2d6x10 weapon (70 average) at 2000' is now doing something like 2d6x50 (350 average) at 2 miles which means that it goes from "that hurts" to OHK on any power armor short of the most absurdly powerful.
Add in the VAST numbers of actions they get and you have that one single robot wiping out a platoon of Power Armor. Every round. From outside of the range of any weapon on anything short of another robot or good missile... which it can probably shoot down with its own counter battery fire. Assuming it didn't blow up all your missile units on the first round.

I don't know about you... but to me that is not a 'solution' that is an utter disaster of epic proportions.

The SDC to MDC ratio is a lot more flexable, though I tend to personally simply tend to simply add a new DDC (Deca Damage Capacity) class and move down many of the weapons that in my opinion shouldn't be MDC anyway to DDC. Machine guns, explosive bullets, old law rockets, plastic explosives, that sort of thing. So that you cant blow up a tank with a pocket full of NG-6, you need a full on satchel charge... though the highly unstable Killarite from the Naruni is still MD... have fun

[G]

wow...people are are still struggling with the same issues we quickly solved ...long ago (can you believe the system is still alive when released in 1990!? Its roughly 27 years old). We decided to do was spend more time playing and try to fix everything as easily as possible. From my old webpage:

1MDC=10SDC (so you kill a single tree not the whole forest)
Double range, md, & mdc of vehicles and 20' robots, larger than a Glitterboy (more realistic), triple for tanks, upto 5x for REALLY big assets

Sure, rewriting the entire rule set to make a personal set of house rules work to make robots the One True Weapon over everything else will make robots tons more powerful sure.
That doesn't help anyone that is looking to come up with a solution that is both reasonable, equitable, and leaves robots as something that can still be fought with out having to use a robot.
By your rule a robot with a 2d6x10 weapon (70 average) at 2000' is now doing something like 2d6x50 (350 average) at 2 miles

Your misreading. a robot is x2, so 140 @4000'.
Really big things are battleships. For example, Lookup the wiki for the USS Iowa if you haven't seen it from the 1940's. Hopefully common sense will tell you not to expect someone to survive the blast from a canon that weighs 229tons, which is 66' long, shoots shells that are 2500 pounds 24miles? These big toys aren't going to be used on individuals. Its all a matter of scale, and making quick rules to keep you playing the game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16"/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun

[eliakon]

wow...people are are still struggling with the same issues we quickly solved ...long ago (can you believe the system is still alive when released in 1990!? Its roughly 27 years old). We decided to do was spend more time playing and try to fix everything as easily as possible. From my old webpage:

1MDC=10SDC (so you kill a single tree not the whole forest)
Double range, md, & mdc of vehicles and 20' robots, larger than a Glitterboy (more realistic), triple for tanks, upto 5x for REALLY big assets

Sure, rewriting the entire rule set to make a personal set of house rules work to make robots the One True Weapon over everything else will make robots tons more powerful sure.
That doesn't help anyone that is looking to come up with a solution that is both reasonable, equitable, and leaves robots as something that can still be fought with out having to use a robot.
By your rule a robot with a 2d6x10 weapon (70 average) at 2000' is now doing something like 2d6x50 (350 average) at 2 miles

Your misreading. a robot is x2, so 140 @4000'.
Really big things are battleships. For example, Lookup the wiki for the USS Iowa if you haven't seen it from the 1940's. Hopefully common sense will tell you not to expect someone to survive the blast from a canon that weighs 229tons, which is 66' long, shoots shells that are 2500 pounds 24miles? These big toys aren't going to be used on individuals. Its all a matter of scale, and making quick rules to keep you playing the game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16"/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun

140 at twice the range of anyone else is still going to be murder.
Considering that will kill most power armor in one or two hits.
Tanks get even worse as their canons will still OHK power armor at ranges far beyond what anyone else can engage them in making them virtually impossible to engage.
*grabs NG books*
Okay lets see, just using the same manufacturer with the same publication dates and everything so we can compare apples to apples
Power armor:
Armor- tends to run about 170-230 for most suits with a few rare suits that have more, all of which are described as being "heavily armored"
Damage-Weapons seem to max out around 1d6x10 with most weapon with most weapons doing less with 6d6, 2d6, and 4d4 and the like being common.
Ranges- seems to be maxing at about 3000 for energy and 5000 for railguns

Robot Vehicles:
Amor- The light units run from 390-500 MDC (doubled that is 780-1000), heavy units run from 500-750 MDC (so 1000-1500)
Weapons- start at around 1d4x10 with a number of 1d6x10, 2d6x10 and AoE weapons that do significant damage
Range- is at least as good as PA suits, and often slightly better.
And this is assuming that we are not increasing the power of their missiles! (because that is just icky)

So now, we are looking at needing to inflict 700+ MDC, at a minimum to kill a light unit. Which now have weapons that will easily one shot any but the heaviest of power armors. Often starting at ranges of 3000' or more before the power armor can return fire (and if you are an energy weapon suit fighting someone with a rail gun then it really sucks to be you as it is now 3,000' vs 10,000' instead of the old 3,000' vs 5,000).
Basically you have reduced anyone that is not in a power armor them selves (so the majority of PCs) to simply being bystanders and Power Armor is now in the same situation as real world infantry fighting tanks... with out the luxury of Anti Tank weapons!

When only Robots can fight Robots, and when only Tanks can fight Tanks... then it becomes a question of why bother playing anything dismounted? The game is either going to never have robots and tanks and the other cool stuff like that in it... or if they do show up we will either just have to run away... or be rolling up new characters while the GM talks to himself about the resulting curb stomp battle.
Neither of which sounds like "fun" to me.
THAT is the reason that not everyone has decided that the "obvious" solution is to simply scale up the power of things (I have seen proposals to up power armor, robots, tanks, space ships and what have you with various formulas). While they do make the tech toys that much nastier it simply causes one of two outcomes
Either you make everything else irrelevant. Or you get into a vicious cycle of needing to boost other things to bring the rest of the material into line If you boost robots MDC do you boost the MDC of Dragons? Alien Inteligences? Gods? What about the damage of spells? Do you create spells that can stand up to mecha scale attacks and deal mecha scale damage or do you simply decide that you don't want magic to be a viable option in that game? How about psionics? If you change the SDC/MDC ratio do you go back and change the damage out put of SDC weapons? After all many of the heavier SDC weapons just became light MD weapons. Do large SD weapons scale up as well? What if a large being picks up a large weapon and uses it as a hand weapon what damage code do they use? There are lots of ripple on effects and nuances which is why a solution is neither simple nor obvious.

[eliakon]

One of the issues with everything being MD is that you can no longer put out the call to "scratch my back" (shoot your ally with your machineguns to get some pesky infantry off your own vehicle) without really taking your life into your own hands. Anyone got an idea of how to handle that in game? I suppose that in situation you just put out the call and pray...

-STS

one way I would solve this is not to buff up the stats on the vehicles per say.
I would instead introduce a new mechanic. A sort of "Slide" or "Damage Resistance" that some things have.
So (and this is just pulling numbers out of a hat here so this is NOT balanced or fair) for example:
A suit of armor has a slide of 2
A suit of heavy armor has a slide of 3
A suit of PA has a slide of 5
A vehicle has a slide of 10
A robot vehicle has a slide of 15
A tank has a slide of 20

What that means is that an attack must inflict that much damage or more to harm the object
An attack that does 1 point of damage will not harm body armor, but an attack that does 2 points will do 2 points of damage
If you fire a machine gun that does 3d6 MD at your buddies tank... then it will probably hurt the gargoyles on it with their slide of 7 but only scratch the paint on his slide 20 tank.

It also stops the "I kill your tank with my dagger" thing.
The down side is that it can make spells fairly useless...
...which can help explain TW neatly. If you need to buff up magic to be able to harm your foes robots and tanks then issuing out TW weapons starts to make more sense...

[slade the sniper]

One of the issues with everything being MD is that you can no longer put out the call to "scratch my back" (shoot your ally with your machineguns to get some pesky infantry off your own vehicle) without really taking your life into your own hands. Anyone got an idea of how to handle that in game? I suppose that in situation you just put out the call and pray...

-STS

one way I would solve this is not to buff up the stats on the vehicles per say.
I would instead introduce a new mechanic. A sort of "Slide" or "Damage Resistance" that some things have.
So (and this is just pulling numbers out of a hat here so this is NOT balanced or fair) for example:
A suit of armor has a slide of 2
A suit of heavy armor has a slide of 3
A suit of PA has a slide of 5
A vehicle has a slide of 10
A robot vehicle has a slide of 15
A tank has a slide of 20

What that means is that an attack must inflict that much damage or more to harm the object
An attack that does 1 point of damage will not harm body armor, but an attack that does 2 points will do 2 points of damage
If you fire a machine gun that does 3d6 MD at your buddies tank... then it will probably hurt the gargoyles on it with their slide of 7 but only scratch the paint on his slide 20 tank.

It also stops the "I kill your tank with my dagger" thing.
The down side is that it can make spells fairly useless...
...which can help explain TW neatly. If you need to buff up magic to be able to harm your foes robots and tanks then issuing out TW weapons starts to make more sense...

And, consider this stolen!

Simple, elegant...and can be applied to classes of things. I like it.

Helps fit other games as well...

-STS

[taalismn]

[
It also stops the "I kill your tank with my dagger" thing..

WW2 Japanese tanks...supposedly you could cripple them with a knife jammed in just the right place(such as the turret gap with the main hull).
Even when you factor out the armor, there's still design flaws.

[eliakon]

One of the issues with everything being MD is that you can no longer put out the call to "scratch my back" (shoot your ally with your machineguns to get some pesky infantry off your own vehicle) without really taking your life into your own hands. Anyone got an idea of how to handle that in game? I suppose that in situation you just put out the call and pray...

-STS

one way I would solve this is not to buff up the stats on the vehicles per say.
I would instead introduce a new mechanic. A sort of "Slide" or "Damage Resistance" that some things have.
So (and this is just pulling numbers out of a hat here so this is NOT balanced or fair) for example:
A suit of armor has a slide of 2
A suit of heavy armor has a slide of 3
A suit of PA has a slide of 5
A vehicle has a slide of 10
A robot vehicle has a slide of 15
A tank has a slide of 20

What that means is that an attack must inflict that much damage or more to harm the object
An attack that does 1 point of damage will not harm body armor, but an attack that does 2 points will do 2 points of damage
If you fire a machine gun that does 3d6 MD at your buddies tank... then it will probably hurt the gargoyles on it with their slide of 7 but only scratch the paint on his slide 20 tank.

It also stops the "I kill your tank with my dagger" thing.
The down side is that it can make spells fairly useless...
...which can help explain TW neatly. If you need to buff up magic to be able to harm your foes robots and tanks then issuing out TW weapons starts to make more sense...

And, consider this stolen!

Simple, elegant...and can be applied to classes of things. I like it.

Helps fit other games as well...

-STS

I also have used a MDC version of vehicular/natural AR before. If your tank has a mdc AR of 14 then you need a 15+ to not bounce off. Weapons ignore AR of any DC class below their 'weight' (SDC/MDC in canon, with anything else such as DDC or what have you in home brew)

oh and
You cant steal any of this. Because I'm handing it out free. Muahahahah
There goes all your evil plans!

errr I mean. Yeah, have fun. And its really easy to tweak up and down as needed (chipwell suits can have their slide dropped a point or two, naruni and 'heavy' suits bumped up... that sort of thing)

[guardiandashi]

really your "slide" amounts to a DR (Damage Resistance) although as described its more of a DR threshold rather than a straight DR

ie hits under the threshold "bounce" off doing minimal damage hits over the threshold do full damage.
under a lot of games (such as d20 system) dr is the first x damage is ignored, anything over the DR is applied.
so if you have a DR of 10 damage of 10 or less does nothing, 11+ does damage - DR

[eliakon]

really your "slide" amounts to a DR (Damage Resistance) although as described its more of a DR threshold rather than a straight DR

ie hits under the threshold "bounce" off doing minimal damage hits over the threshold do full damage.
under a lot of games (such as d20 system) dr is the first x damage is ignored, anything over the DR is applied.
so if you have a DR of 10 damage of 10 or less does nothing, 11+ does damage - DR

Yes I know
The issue with full DR in Palladium is it quickly runs into the issue of how damage works in the system.
While the amount of damage can quickly cap the amount you want to 'slide' can't scale as fast to represent a realistic threshold with out running back into the whole "infantry are pointless" problem again.
After all if you make vehicles have a full DR that is going to ignore most infantry weapons then you are back to the same problem as scaling up the numbers (only worse) PCs find themselves unable to do anything about threats with out engaging in massive combat escalation.
For example if something ignores the first 15 points of damage, then to replicate the current norm of a 4d6 weapon (15) you would need to do 30 points. That will need a 1d6x10 weapon! To replicate what you used to do to a PA suit with a pistol you know need to use a heavy railgun or particle beam, likely tripod or vehicle mounted to do!
In games where the amount of damage things do continues to escalate or the DR amounts are pretty low that doesn't matter... But it also tends to be a core mechanic put in at the start so the entire damage system is build around the assumption that you will have DR and then can work around that. Adding it after the fact will result in a LOT of unsatisfactory results in many cases unless applied very carefully.

[Kelorin]

A long time ago I noticed robots are very expensive compared to PA when you take into account their weapons and armor. So in some of my games I implemented a special rule: Military grade robots can automate their secondary weapons systems. This adds a crapload of extra attacks but with a minimal bonus to strike.

In my most recent game (liberating the slaves of Atlantis) the players thought that was overpowering and decided to not use it.
But we did give PC's two extra attacks per round.

I'm considering similar enhancements. Slaving the shoulder laser turrets on a UAR-1 to a Skelebot AI. Maybe the turrets don't take a lot of offensive actions but will fire on incoming missile strikes as a mini point defense weapons (getting automatic simultaneous attacks vs. missiles without using parries or dodges for the main pilot and gunner).

Most of the larger robots have at least one similar anti-infantry laser turret that could function the same way, and both the CS and NGR should have no trouble packing basic AI into their bots to the job.

[Kelorin]

Certain things about robots bother me (like the Triax robot that is 100 feet tall, and carries a laser rifle the size of a tree -- and does D6x10 MD). But generally I've learned to live with it. I just figure that robots are fairly disposable and aren't expected to survive combat. They're mobile heavy weapons platforms, not invulnerable titans that shrug off massive damage.

Why do they have lower MDC? Surface area. There's a lot of armor, but it's spread over a decent sized robot. Measuring MDC per kilogram is a waste of time because the UAR-1 Enforcer has way more armor than a Crusader suit. Not just 3 1/2-ish times as much armor, but probably 50 times as much armor plating. Is it out of the question for a 20 foot robot to have 1200 lbs of armor strapped to it? It's just protecting a much larger target, so the armor is (relatively) thinner.

Think about this. What does an Enforcer that has taken 349 points of MD look like? Is it stripped perfectly clean of armor, all the way around? I don't think so. I think it looks like a functional Enforcer robot, scuffed and banged up a bit, but probably with at least one big gaping hole in the armor plate. There's probably some internal damage as well, but nothing that has actually stopped it from functioning. But the very next shot is going to go right into that hole and hit something really important, and then the robot doesn't move anymore.

The number of MDC points a target has is just a game abstraction. In-universe, they'd describe it as having a certain thickness of armor plate, and as being resistant to temperatures of a certain amount. In game we just give it an MDC rating for ease of use and playability.

The 1D6x10 MDC is per shot (which only makes the gun about 2x to 3x more powerful than most infantry rifles). What happens when you mod that weapons to fire a triple pulse? Oh and ditto for the lasers and ion cannons on the Dragonwing.