Fear is the Mind Killer
Tag:
John Locke
//
The Monster
Alright, so I'm going to try to lay out a comprehensive case for the ability to add armour penetration, and to a lesser extent the ability to add additional values to weapons as you can armour on the site. Some of which we have talked about before, but for austerities' sake I'll try to repeat it here. But I'll try to be concise. The base idea is that armour penetration and damage/ stopping power are fundamentally different. A frag grenade, or shotgun or scatter-gun or shuriken launcher (i dunno, space weapons) may have very high damage or lethality while not being very effective against armour. While precision weapons, tools made to drop shields, Depleted Uranium rounds etc are used specifically to break armours.
- Differences: Damage as it stands is a catch all value which compiles potential damage that the weapon will do to a person, the environment, also encapsulating things like stopping power / knock-back and the damage it can deal to armour, to multiple targets and the like. Simply put, it is an overburdened value. Penetration would seek to alleviate that value by splitting it. Taking over its ability to penetrate through armour, multiple targets, shields etc.
- Implementation: When it comes to balance, Penetration 'could' and probably should trade off with armour class, is it light, medium, heavy or vehicle armour? What does the spectrum mean? Well, it could be something like this!
- None: The weapon has an effect on impact or is not intended to deal damage.
- Very low: This weapon is almost incapable of penetrating even the lightest of armours
- Low: This weapon has a difficult time penetrating armour especially those of high quality
- Average: This weapon is capable of penetrating light armour and damaging medium armour but has difficulty with high quality armours or heavier armours
- High: This weapon is proficient at penetrating through medium armour and/ or multiple targets / structures unless they are heavy or made of high quality materials which it will still damage
- Very high: This weapon is Very proficient at tearing through armour. Its able to penetrate heavy armour as well as that of light armoured vehicles etc Only the highest qualities of armours should stand against it, and should incur damage.
- Extreme: Your armour better be technically designated as an AT-AT, or this gun is going to ignore it. Don't approach this weapon in single file. (lol)
- Balance: This stands to reason because it enforces the requirement to trade-off for penetration, have lower ammo, a heavier weapon etc. The alternative to the ability to add this area to either use the strengths or weaknesses fields, which allows the trait to be generally free as long as two weaknesses, of any kind are taken. And the issues with the Damage area being overburdened remain. Additionally, as its defenders who call damage on the site, and as strengths and weaknesses, and even current Weapons and armour fields are interpreted on a case by case basis as descriptors which effectively say "I'm really good at, or really bad at X and Y" Adding the field accomplishes functionally the same thing as adding it as a strength or weakness, while unburdening the damage field and allowing it to be balanced, not to mention that something with a strength rating of high or higher must be explained as a strength in some form anyways. Not to mention almost everyone who fights on this site uses armour, armour pen as a negative should be able to trade off with something like rate of fire as an added plus. Because, as i see it, the weakness section does not allow you to gain additional points in fields.
- Consistency: And this is something that matters to me more than most, which is that in other aspects of the site, adding additional fields is fine if not expected. In the armour field, you're able to add any number of additional fields for more refined defenses against incoming damage. Be it sonic, ion, disruptor, explosive etc. you can have it. Yet its restricted for weapons which serves the same narrative purpose. Rules should be consistent, we should be able to add fields or not add fields. And seeing as it is a narrative site, there's no ability to deal damage against a person's will and that the factory is optional i don't really see a reason why a person could not add custom fields.
- Enforcement: This does create the ability to potentially create bogus fields to empower a weapon further in areas you would like, which is already true with the armour field. But such abuse of the system would surely be able to be monitored by staff, who would be able to confer if an area is too niche in order to qualify as something that would be considered a field.
- Implementation: As average is a neutral zone that affords no points good or bad, any app without it would be considered average in this field if it didn't have it written, or they could re-app it to add it at their leisure.
In summary: All a field is, is a declaration of purpose, without attributive values on weapons or armour, Ie, an armour saying 'High' protection against ion can take 2-3 shots against an ion weapon with high damage. So These values are all nebulous and interpretive anyway. They're simply there to state what you intend a weapon to be good or bad at. I think it would be a good idea to break down damage into damage / penetration, or sans that allow people to make that distinction on that weapon if they would like to. The field means nothing against an enemy not using armour, and it serves as a broad enough distinction on its own against people who do.
Additionally, it would bring it in line with the consistency of how armour is managed in its section of the factory, as well as differentiate a lot of different kinds of weapons from one another.
As always, just a suggestion and thanks for listening. If anyone has anything to add for or against, I'd be happy to hear
<3 love you all
Last edited: