Author Topic: A few questions  (Read 2607 times)

Taurevanime

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A few questions
« on: 17 October 2011, 10:32:04 »
Hello everyone. I am going to be running a game of A Time of War for a few friends some time in the future. Mainly going to be focused on infantry combat and the like. And I had a pair of questions.

My main one is that the book says that the combat on the personal scale is quite lethal and they have two options for making it less lethal. So my question was if any of you had any experience with these and which you felt was better. Or do you have your own home rule?

Secondly I was wondering if any of you guys could suggest a decent map making tool. I have been looking for something to make contour maps. But they seem to either all be 3D tools or Digital Elevation Maps.

Thank you all in advance.

guardiandashi

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Re: A few questions
« Reply #1 on: 17 October 2011, 11:28:41 »
you could try hm map but it is more designed to make battle tech maps I believe

bytedruid

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Re: A few questions
« Reply #2 on: 18 October 2011, 11:12:56 »
My main one is that the book says that the combat on the personal scale is quite lethal and they have two options for making it less lethal. So my question was if any of you had any experience with these and which you felt was better. Or do you have your own home rule?

We use three rules that work in concert to keep the game risky, but not always so deadly.

1. We use the alternate hit location rules (head,torso etc.)

2. Fatigue damage is not shaken off so easily.

3. We use a variation on the "Increased Armor Effectiveness" rule on page 192 as follows:

The way we play it the purpose of armor is to convert real damage into fatigue damage, how well it does this depends on the shot's AP rating verses the the armor's BAR rating, using the following:

1. If the BAR >= AP the damage of the shot is reduced by the difference and all remaining damage is converted to fatigue damage up to the BAR.

2. If the AP > BAR the shot's damage is not reduced and only the difference between the two is converted to fatigue.  This way you still get some protection from wearing armor even against high AP weapons.

I don't have my book's with me at the moment, but here's of how this works out for a 5 point torso hit of various penetration ratings on a character wearing a flak jacket (which I think is AP 4B).

Shot AP   Fatigue Dmg.   Body Dmg.
   1               2                   0
   2               3                   0
   3               4                   0
   4               4                   1
   5               3                   2
   6               2                   3

This isn't perfect, but it lets weak armor still help in common situations and prevents all my characters from going to the pub in ballistic plate.
Hat tips to Slightlylyons who fixed aerotech in one post and to Daryk for organized cool stuff.

Frep

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Re: A few questions
« Reply #3 on: 12 November 2011, 11:22:17 »
I just started running my time of war campaign, and we're going to try adapting the critical hits charts from Dark Heresy. I'm not sure just how much less fatal the sytem will be, but players should be able to survive  extra hit or two before bursting into flame or exploding as their ammunition cooks off.

Runeslinger

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Re: A few questions
« Reply #4 on: 14 November 2011, 01:13:46 »
The blog Ten Years on Terra has a large number of relatively short posts (like this one with a flow chart for resolving burst damage) whichI found useful in getting the meat to meat combat system settled in my head before I had to use it in the game. With that perspective it could make the choices you are asking about, and the subsequent recommendations, clearer.
Runeslinger

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