SBD/RU ratings

Timbal

21-09-2005 11:43:21

Hello, folks!

I'm going to be working on a pretty interesting project soon, and ran into this quandry. For SW ships and gear, shield ratings are expressing in terms of SBD units, and armor rating is expressed in RU units.

Any idea of what that equates to? For example, take your standard E-Web heavy infantry weapon. How much power does each one of it's bolts equal vs. SBD/RU? Is there a standard "damage" unit that can be used for comparison? For example, one bolt from X weapon would cause 1 RU damage to armor (Or 1 SBD damage/power drain on shields)?

I hate technicalities. :P

Halcyon

21-09-2005 12:16:03

I don't actually think there has even been a definite answer for all of this. If you check www.theforce.net they have a section that goes into a ton of detail concerning the technical aspects of this stuff. However, I don't think they come to an actual conclusion either.

Timbal

21-09-2005 14:07:03

Figures. Looks like I'm going to have to do this from scratch, then.

What should be the "standard" point of damage? One bolt from a weapon such as a DH-17 blaster pistol? It'll be easier to scale everything from one common point of reference. I prefer for the reference weapon to be of pistol size and power, as scaling them up to the power of lasers/turbolasers and the like will just require some sort of multiplier. Once we can get the reference weapon/power set, we can then figure out the damage rating on armor/shields.

Thanks for any help!

Xanos

21-09-2005 15:18:21

Seeing as I'm the chump thats working on the shiplist and components list for Rebirth I have had to try and answer similar questions and, unfortunately, I'm afraid to say there isnt an answer.

The best thing you can do is look at the RPG statistics (either by WEG or WOTC but it will differ depending on which you take- WEG tends to be more true to SW whereas WOTC tends to be more practical gaming oriented). These alone will not help you much as the starship and ground combat parts of the RPG are rather different and usually its set up so a basic pistol doesnt do any damage to a starfighter due to its heavy armor plating etc (I assume to avoid a squad of stormtroopers getting lucky and shooting down a TIE Defender just off the probability of 12 dice rolls coming out in their favour- when in reality the TIE Defender would tear an infantry squad apart).

However... there are turbolasers mounted on starfighters and there are turbolasers on certain ground based turrets and stationary cannons. I suppose if we assume these two types are the same weapon due to them both being refered to as turbolasers we could work out relatively how much weaker a regular blaster pistol is and see how much that then scales up in comparison to a starfighter laser cannon. I still doubt you would get a very accurate result though. In practical terms I dont think regular blasters would do anything to most starships because their shields would recharge too quickly for such minimal damage to have any affect. Plus, while this may not be as true on starfighters, with capital ships regular blasters simply wouldn't do anything- star destroyers are meant to have like armor plating thats ten meters thick or something similarly crazy- a tiny little blaster pistol just wouldnt ever dent that.

The next problem you face is both WEG and WOTC use different systems... neither being the SBD/RU rating used in the X-Wing series of games. While the X-Wing series tend to be the most immersive, so the ones people remember better and to which most sources relate to, the WEG statistics are older than the X-Wing series so somewhat different, and WOTC again are more interested in making sure it plays well as a tabletop RPG than sticking that close to the true statistics. There are means to convert between the various systems but they're all very crude and involve a lot of guess work- so again any chance of an accurate reading is gone.

I don't mean to be the prophet of doom... but I had similar trouble mid-summer when approaching the same kind of problems... there just hasn't ever been much attention given to merging the space and ground based aspects. The only real thing I can think of that even remotely attempts to mix the two together is Battlefront- and thats too much of a game to really take the damage ratio literally.

Timbal

23-09-2005 15:40:44

I figured that I'd have to work this out myself. I just hoped against hope. :P

In the end I think it'll boil down to the DH-17 or the DH-44. If the DH-44 can gouge a chunk out of a ferrocrete wall, it should be able to ding the armor of a TIE. I guess it'll work out to about .33 or .25 of one RU. I'll have to fine tune the math. I guess we can scale everything from that.

Fun times ahead! :D

EDIT: Fixed linky.