The Heavy Armory ยท Chapter 3
Crews, Loading, and Firing
The Crew
Crew X is the number of people who work the weapon. One of them, the gun captain, makes the attack check. The others load, lay, haul, and carry.
| The crew is | Effect |
|---|---|
| At full strength | The listed profile |
| Short by any number | Add 1 Bane Die to the attack and 1 to the weapon's Slow-Firing rating for each person short |
| Fewer than half, rounded up | The weapon cannot be fired |
A weapon with no Slow-Firing rating gains one equal to the shortfall.
Crew casualties. A crew is made of people. They are attacked as people, and Blast reaches all of them. An unarmoured gun gives its crew light cover from the front. A gun shield gives heavy cover from the front.
Minion crews. A gun crewed by Minions is one Minion group. Each Minion lost is one person short.
Skill. Gunnery. A Universe with no Gunnery skill uses Ranged, or Heavy Ranged where it has that. Ramming is Operate. Placed charges are Craft.
Player characters as crew. Each crew member who is a player character and spends an action helping adds 1 Boon Die to the gun captain's check, to a maximum of 2. A character may instead spend the action to Reload, which removes one round of Slow-Firing.
Getting into Action
Emplaced. The weapon cannot be moved and fired in the same round.
Prepare X. After it is moved, the weapon needs X maneuvers before it can fire. The crew share them: a crew of five with Prepare 5 is ready in one round. A weapon with Prepare 20 takes a crew of twenty one round, or four people five rounds.
Moving a carriage gun.
| Mount | Moved by | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Light | Its crew, or one draught animal | 1 |
| Standard | Four animals, or a truck | 1; with a truck, the truck's |
| Heavy | Eight animals, or a tractor | 1 on a road, and no movement off one without hours of work |
| Capital | Rail, or a ship | It is moved between fights, not during them |
The Attack
Difficulty is set by range.
| Range | Difficulty |
|---|---|
| Engaged | Easy |
| Short, Medium | Average |
| Long | Hard |
| Extreme | Severe |
Scale. As the core rules say: attacking a target 2 or more Scale smaller adds Bane Dice equal to the difference, and attacking one 2 or more Scale larger removes that many. A weapon on a carriage has the Scale of its mount's smallest hull.
Defense adds Bane Dice as usual.
A structure does not move. Attacks against one are Easy at any range the gunner can see it.
A target in flight. A weapon without Anti-Air adds 2 Bane Dice against an aircraft in flight. A weapon with Indirect cannot attack one at all.
Damage
- Total. Hull damage is the listed number plus 1 for each uncancelled Success.
- Armor. Subtract the target's Armor, less the weapon's Pierce.
- Apply. What is left is Hull Damage.
A vehicle or ship is disabled when its Hull Damage reaches its Hull Points and loses control when its System Damage reaches its System Points, as in the core rules. Chapter 4 covers people. Chapter 5 covers structures.
Critical Hits. Spend net Boons equal to the weapon's Crit, or a Breakthrough, on a hit that dealt at least 1 Hull Damage. Roll on the Critical Hit table in the core rules, adding 10 for each Critical Hit the target already has.
| Result | The gun captain may |
|---|---|
| 2 Boons | Trigger Linked or Auto-Fire for one more hit; trigger Blast or Burn |
| Boons equal to Crit | Inflict a Critical Hit |
| 2 Bane (GM spends) | Add 1 round to the weapon's Slow-Firing this time |
| Calamity (GM spends) | A misfire, a jam, a burst case: the weapon cannot fire until a crew member spends an action and succeeds on an Average Craft check. On an Unreliable weapon the GM may spend 2 Bane for the same effect |
Loading
Slow-Firing X is the number of rounds the crew spends loading after each shot. The weapon is loaded when a fight begins.
A weapon with no Slow-Firing fires every round.
Chapter 2 prices ammunition. The GM tracks a crew's supply only when supply is the point of the scene.
Batteries and Broadsides
Guns of one kind, on one side of a ship or in one position on land, may fire together as a battery on one officer's command. The officer makes one attack check with the Leadership skill, or with Gunnery.
| Guns in the battery | The attack gains |
|---|---|
| 2 or 3 | Linked 1 |
| 4 to 7 | Linked 2 |
| 8 to 15 | Linked 3 |
| 16 to 31 | Linked 4 |
| 32 or more | Linked 5 |
Each hit is reduced by Armor separately. All the guns then reload together.
A battery that has lost guns or crews drops to the row for the guns still firing.
Massed fire. When two or more vehicles or ships attack the same target of larger Scale in one round, each attacker after the first adds 1 Boon Die to its attack, to a maximum of 3.
A raking shot. A broadside fired along the length of a ship, through its bow or stern, ignores 1 point of Armor and adds 10 to any Critical Hit roll.
Indirect Fire
A weapon with Indirect fires over what is in the way.
The spotter. Someone who can see the target must be able to tell the crew where the shots fall: by voice, flag, runner, wire, or radio. Without a spotter, an Indirect weapon fires only at what its own crew can see.
Finding the range.
| The shot is | Dice |
|---|---|
| The first at a new target | Add 2 Bane Dice |
| The second at the same target | Add 1 Bane Die |
| The third and later, or at a registered target | No change |
A target is registered if the crew fired on that spot earlier, or spent ten minutes before the fight measuring it. A crew may hold three registered targets.
A moving target is never registered: each shot at it is a first shot.
Minimum range. An Indirect weapon cannot attack closer than the first band of its Range.
Cover. Indirect fire ignores cover that is open above.
Ramming
A ship or vehicle rams with an Operate check against the target's pilot, as an opposed check, while Engaged.
On a success the target suffers Hull Damage equal to the rammer's Scale plus its Speed, less the target's Armor. A fitted ram uses its own Hull damage plus the rammer's Speed.
The rammer suffers half the damage it dealt, and one quarter if it has a fitted ram.
Fire
Burn X at vehicle scale: spend 2 Boons, and a wooden ship, a wooden structure, or anything else that burns suffers X Hull Damage at the start of each round. Putting it out takes one crew member's action and an Average Athletics check, or three people's actions with no check.
Iron, steel, stone, and earth do not burn. A vehicle with fuel aboard burns on a Critical Hit that says so.
Sails and Sinking
A sailing ship's System Points are its masts, rigging, and steering; a galley's are its oars and rowers. A ship that loses control is dismasted or rudderless, and drifts until repaired.
A disabled ship is out of the fight: it strikes its colours, founders, or burns, as the GM judges. A sinking ship takes ten rounds per point of Scale to go down.
A magazine. A Critical Hit of 111 or more destroys a ship or vehicle carrying powder or shells. Everyone aboard makes a Hard Reflexes check to be thrown clear.
Countermeasures
| Measure | From | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Smoke | Any period | A cloud of Short radius adds 2 Bane Dice to direct attacks through it. A great gun firing black powder makes its own after two rounds in still air |
| Evasive movement | Any period | The pilot spends an action: add 1 Bane Die to attacks on the vehicle and to its own until its next turn |
| Torpedo nets, bulges | 1880 | A ship at anchor with nets out is immune to torpedoes |
| Chaff and flares | 1943 | A maneuver and one charge break one missile's Lock-On, or add 2 Bane Dice to one missile attack |
| Jamming | 1943 | Add 1 Bane Die to Lock-On checks against the vehicle |
| Reactive armour | 1982 | Armor is 2 higher against weapons with Breach, and against the Shaped charge shell |
Taking a Lock-On is a maneuver by the gunner. It is automatic against a target with no countermeasures, and an Average Gunnery check otherwise. Tracking, Interceptable, Salvo, and Point Defense work as their entries in Chapter 6 say.
