With the Vast amount of AP, and the Artillery issues at hand.

It really bugged me that so many units paid for Armor SE, but its usless because of all the AP units out there.

So, I had an idea.

Make Armor Piercing like Pulse. Ok sort of like pulse. (no i am not proposing you get to shoot twice) rather you take the penalty of pulse.

If you Use the AP Special Equipment, you add +2 to the defense of your target.

There are a lot of units out there with AP capibility or more damage capibility. Pulse adds heat, and +2 to defence, DFA adds +2 to defence and you take damage. Ram you take damage, charge you take lots of damage. (depending) Rapid strike adds heat and is mech only.

Every other method of piercing armor to do more damage has a disadvantage, except armor piercing. Armor Piercing is a cheap ability.

And, if a unit doesn't have armor, you turn AP off and you get a standard shot with no penalty.

For Artillery ( I know I am off the artillery mod threads) but add +2 to the difficulity to hit. (or -2 from the base attack value).

Admittatly, this takes a little steam out of the SS arrow 4, making it need a 7 instead of a 5 to hit without LoS.

Ok thats my suggestion for nerfing AP special equipment and making Armor special equipment better.

Go head and flame me.

*Gets gasoline and pours over head*

Mercy

I think i'd be happier with a +1 personally. +2 is a bit ridiculous compared to what you usually will be firing at (23's)

Edit: why would we flame you? It's a strong idea.

Edit 2: run some trials with your new rule, and see if any holes open up.

I disagree AP doesnt need to be modified.

Your reasons for putting a modifier on AP have their reasons for modifiers ie:

Pulse - because your shooting more bang for your buck, but in CBT it was actually more accurate to use but did less damage at more heat. The more heat, and technically more electronic interference, distorts the targeting system.

Death from aboves (aka Highlander Burials) - Your jumping above & at a target that in actuality is still moving and to land precisely on top of that intended target reguires alot of skill kind of like bombing a target back in World War 1 & 2.

And of course charges and rams are going to hurt you its the law of physics. Mass + Velocity = Force (Damage)

But take a look at armor piercing. Its just a round of ammunition which no skill is needed. Its components (usually denser material like depleted uranium which is used in real life in the military) use slim to no change in its trajectory when fired and doesn't explode on contact, but rather punches through hoping to strike the soft and fragile critical systems contained behind the armor.

I think he's looking at gameplay balance, and not fluff.

or make the armor better ....say that reactive armor and hardened still reduces AP by 1. Armor cost way too much trust me look at the highlanders.

Just because more units have Armor piercing doesnt make it unbalanced it just means you have more options to work with in each faction. Does having more units with Anti Personnel make that unbalanced, nope. More units with Pulse, nope. Its simple facts and not some dreamed up story telling fluff.

Every faction having access to extreme amounts of AnP would have in fact, killed off any notions of infantry prior to Fire for effect. This was not the case.

Your original reason behind disagreeing with the AP defense modifier, as far as I can tell, is from a purely realistic standpoint.

But if we were looking at it from a purely realistic standpoint, then AP should ALL be single-use only, since this is special ammo that has to eventually run out.

Unless WK applies the AP SE to specific weapon loadouts (highly doubtful) - then it would be interesting to know which ones these are...

ok having done some testing (admittatly only one game), It REALLY made a difference in the use of AP special equipment with vehicles, infantry and mechs against units with hardened armor.

Artillery however, Not much of a difference, unless you used the bombardment rules.

As far as fluff and realism, I cannot deny that there is no reason AP ammo is less accurate then really ammo. However, A units defence isn't really how hard it is to hit.

Lets face it. A 100 ton 30+ foot tall mass of metal moving at 10 MPH isn't that hard to hit. anyone with a rifle should be able to hit it. But that doesn't mean that just because you hit it, you damage it. In my opinion A units defence value is more or less, how good the units armor is at shaking off and deflecting the damage or just absorbing the impact or energy without damaging critical systems.

Infantry asside, most units have around a 20 defence. likewise, most units need a 10 - 11 to hit.

AP does nothing if the unit doesn't have armor. If the unit has armor, then rather then looking at AP as bypassing that armor, look at it as AP doing 1 or 2 extra clicks of damage.

So if you want to talk fluff, lets go with the origional statement.

[quote]
Its just a round of ammunition which no skill is needed. Its components (usually denser material like depleted uranium which is used in real life in the military) use slim to no change in its trajectory when fired and doesn't explode on contact, but rather punches through hoping to strike the soft and fragile critical systems contained behind the armor.
[endquote]

Agreed, no argument from me there.

Standard High explosive rounds, detonate on impact. If the round does not penetrate the armor, chances are, the explosion from the impact will compound the surface damage.

Now, On to AP

An Armor Piercing round is (for tanks) a solid Tungsten dart. Lets take an AP tank round from an M1A1.

http://www.atk.com/defense/descripti...-tank-ammo.htm

As you can see, its a solid dart. nothing else. no explosives, no fragmentation, just a metal rod, of high density, traveling at supersonic speeds.

In some cases, lets assume for the sake of technolical advances, it is followed by a delayed blast charge so that it detonates at a specific interval after impact. It still has to penetrate that armor.

Now, with the advances in Armor, and the fact that a mech is not like hitting a brick wall, it has curved surfaces, and one would think that a mech's skin would have been designed to deflect and absorb incomming fire.

So now you have an highly optomized, angled surface, designed to deflect and absorb incomming fire. ( I know that the sculpts of the units dont usually reflect that, but if you look at modern tanks it does.)

Match that with a non (or delayed) explosive dart, hitting an angled surface. you now have a battle of physics. Since there is not a resulting explosion from the impact, the chances of the round being deflected away without damage internal or critical components increases. However, if it does not get deflected away, it will penetrate any additional underlying armor and do damage.

I still think rule has merit. It does not effect units that do not have AP SE, and it does effect units with AP that are firing at units without Armor SE. (just turn it off). It does add value to units with Armor SE.

Note that the a/m is said by a SS player...somemore its the Davion guards...lol

AP on its own is ok. BUT....AP with Artillery is insane. I agree with the defense +1 thing. But more importantly, something needs to be done abt the Artillery problem.

My suggestion: All Artillery attempting to make an arty attack using any of their Damage SE must take a click of pushing damage after the attack. This damage is on top of any normal pushing damage that the unit will have to take.

For example, taking the SS Arrow IV tank,

Turn 1: move (one counter)
Turn 2: shoot using AP Arty attack. (another counter + one click of pushing damage)

Therefore, it takes 2 clicks in all.

I'm also a Highlander player as it says under my sig as well. I switch my avatar when ever there is a campaign containing SSw or HL and since the Marquee is SSw and I am more Davion than Sandavol of course I'm choosing the Davion Guards because of their rich history in CBT. But this has nothing to do with wether I'm SSw or HL.

And if using AP in Arty is your problem Crimson Hawk then we can just up the damage for the calibur of the units bore. Realisticly the Long Tom would do more damage than the Sniper and Thumper, because its barrel is larger than the other two. Meaning a bigger shell with more charge in it. Then there's the Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) which the Arrow IV took its design from who packs more punch than a single heavy artillery piece because it launches dozens of large rockets in the time it takes to fire a few shots from the artillery piece.

Personally I'd rather take Mercy's idea than yours because your doing your idea based on a single piece and your "limited ammo" idea would affect all ballistic carrying units, because units with AP carry the same amount of AP ammo as a unit with regular ballistics.

And yes I think wizkids is somewhat doing AP based on weapon types. You'll notice that units with AP are usually weapon systems wich in CBT carried special ammo types.

Sorry, I dont catch what u mean in this phrase. u r referring to 'up-ing' the damage of what?

Or maybe u didnt get my porblem. The issue is that Artullery with Armour Piercing is too powerful. The most significant impact is that fatties such as Paladin and the other Atlas who have slow movement become totally unplayable.

Calibur of the bore: The size of the barrel measured by the diameter of the opening at the end of the barrel. As you go from a 100mm Arty piece to a 200 mm Arty Piece the shell is bigger and carries more charge to cause more damage. While the length of the barrel is related to how far the projectile can go.

So from current DA arty that would mean the Sniper and Long Tom would be the biggest depending if the towed arty is say a 150mm howitzer. So instead of making their shell do more damage (3-4) to all units they gave them AP to be able to blast through armor SE. As well as there are many types of sub-munitions an artillery piece can lob like gas shells, cluster bomb like shells, HE shells, etc, etc.

Also take a look at how many units are affected to your rule changes compared to armored units.
151 units have Armor Piercing
71 have Armor that can be helped by Mercy's rules (Reactive & Hardened)

So out of the 71 you're trying to help your making more than twice that amount less useful even in the slightest.

AP is too cheap on too many units. AP negates too many SEs (more than any other SE, I believe). I would think a simple fix would be to simply allow some armor SE(s) to work against AP.

As far as regular ballistic ranged attacks, the logical SE would be Decoy. If you have some special equipment that makes it harder to be targeted or hit in the first place, what difference does it make what kind of projectile is used?

With artillery, the logical SE to ignore AP would be Hardened Armor. Since artillery has a 3D blast radius, it is not employing some special kind of heavy armor piercing projectile (like DU). It is exploding in all directions at once, throwing shrapnel. Hardly AP-like.

Actually giving AP to artillery, as it is in this game, was stupid. Armaments with a large blast radius are not designed for AP. They are mutually exclusive ammo types.

NeoGojira> Lol...obviously u didnt read my post clearly. All along I was ONLY referring to Artillery making Arty attacks that have to suffer the penalty. Normal mechs, vehicles and etc will NOT suffer such a penalty. The logic reasoning is simple...Artillery have longer reload time as compared to other units...naturally they will have to take more pushing damage.

I do believe that Swordsworn has most or maybe ALL of the AP Artillery.

I am only affecting a handful of units (less than 10) and helping 71 (as quoted by u). i do believe that its a bargain. :) If u count by faction, i am negatively affecting one faction and helping all the rest.