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Agent_0042
2012-11-04, 03:31 PM
I'm kitbashing a BES/FATE system for a campaign I'm running in a month or two. Without going into unnecessary detail, the game's regularly going to feature combat between opponents of greatly differing sizes, and I'm working on a combat engine that can handle these disparities. Unfortunately, I've hit a bit of a stumbling block.

The rough idea is that everything has a Scale, indicating the general order of magnitude for how big it is. People are Scale 1, a car would be Scale 2, a building would be Scale 3, and so on. Weapons also have a Scale. Most of the time, you're using a weapon that has the same Scale as you. When you hit a target, and the Scale of your weapon is (at least) the same as the Scale of the target, you deal D&D-style hit point damage, probably with wound penalties. When your weapon has a smaller Scale than the target, instead of dealing damage to the target as a whole, you're hitting appropriately-sized hit locations, each with its own HP pool.

Examples:
A human with a machine gun, a Scale 1 weapon, attacks another human, also Scale 1. When he's hit, the human takes damage from his general HP pool.
The same human with the machine gun is now going after a tank (Scale 2). Since his weapon is a smaller Scale than the target, he's dealing damage individually to human-sized hit locations - left tread, right tread, turret, etc. - each with its own set of HP.
The human pulls out a rocket launcher Scale 2, and takes aim at the tank. Since the Scales match, the rocket deals damage to the tank's overall HP.


If I can get it working, the system has a number of benefits. For one, it's recursive - a Scale 1 fighting a Scale 2 is not much different from a Scale 2 fighting a Scale 3. It handles AoE-attacks nicely - they just have a larger Scale than normal. Conversely, it can also called shots in a similar manner.

The problem I'm having is when someone with a machine gun attacks that tank alongside a friend with a rocket launcher. I can't quite figure out how to reconcile locational HP with overall HP. Any suggestions, Playground?

Quellian-dyrae
2012-11-04, 03:39 PM
Easiest solution would probably be that overall damage detracts from the HP of all areas. So if the tank has 100 HP, each location has 100 HP. Machine gun hits right tread for 20, rocket hits tank for 50, now tank is at 50 HP in all locations, save right tread, which is at 30.

That assumes all locations have same HP. If they vary...probably just apply proportionate damage. So tank has 100 HP, each tread has 40, turret has 50, engine has 75 (or whatever). Gunner hits right tread for 20. Rocket hits tank for 50 (50% of total). Treads take 20 each (50% of 40, which disables the already damaged right tread), turret takes 25, engine takes 37. That's...substantially more complicated to work with in play, though.