How about ap halves arm, rounding up? So arm 1 becomes 0. Arm 3 becomes 1, arm 5 becomes 2. It hits the odd arm values by 1 extra point, which happen a lot.
Half ARM rounding up is literally what we have now. You're describing half ARM and round down. A: because it is worse than the current system.
Meant they lose half their arm round up(so 5 arm would lose 3, making 2), but your way is easier to understand. So let's go with that. I am not sure that the division aspect is really difficult, just there is enough 0/1/2 arm people in the game that the is always the question of "do they have arm 2+" and they are unsure so have to check. I thought the conversation was indicating a problem of effectiveness of ap in general in comparison to other options on submachine/multi based weapons over that of shock against even normal mooks.
The conversation was indicating a 'problem' with 'MOD' that wasn't +/-3 and with the effectiveness of ARM in general.
I think I'd be OK with ARM being in multiples of 3 like BTS (and AP then doing a flat -3 to ARM), but we might have to redo the damage stats of things, particularly the big antiTAG weapons. That's a big consequence.
ARM is pretty useful/terrible depending on who has it. ARM 3 for Nisse Hacker? Oh noes. ARM 3 for Magisters? Hell yes. ARM 4 for Orcs? Meh. ARM2 for Proxy MK2? Great. Overall extra ARM is good for: - more Wounds/NWI/Dogged - protecting expensive combat troops (a Swiss loves his ARM5) - ARM 2 upgrades for midrange troops above cheerleader level (1->2 is only one point, while 2->3 is 2). And bad for - non combattants (pure Specialists - Hackers, Engineers, Docs) - badly optimized troops like Orcs (who'd love a drop to ARM 3) Even values are mostly worse that uneven ones, with three exceptions. ARM2 is cheap and effective for the price as soon as your troop hits the 20s. ARM3 for 1W troops is friggin expensive, you'd always want to stay at ARM2 for what usually is MI in the 20-30s. Grunts amd Nisse pull it off due to very nicely optimized Profiles. ARM10 is vastly better than ARM9 against anything without AP/K1/Mono.
I think a weaker form of AP rounds could be introduced, an AP Minus round. Works like current AP except it has a maximum of -2 or -3 ARM removed when halving, meaning it's less effective against heavy armoured units. Assuming -2 it means versus ARM 6 and up it's less effective than the standard AP round. Alternatively, some units could gain an AP Resistance skill as a form of immunity, forcing AP to only reduce ARM by 2 or 3 (and rendering AP-, if it came into being, into Normal ammo) On the whole I think Immunity could use way more work and rewording to become a more varied and interesting set of traits, but that's another thread, isn't it.
The real travesty with Armour is how obviously armoured Morats are... and how little Armour their profiles provide #SadReactsOnly
It's apparently not taught in schools anymore, since one of the guys in the gaming group sees prices of $25.99 and says "It's only $25!" Adds a complication for little benefit. Might have been worth pursuing in N2, though.
My first response was going to be "American education system." But I decided that was impolitic [emoji14]
Believe it or not, that's (probably) not a failure of that guy's education - it's a common cognitive hack used for prices. When our brains see $25.99, they are much more likely to consider it as either 'basically $25' or 'a little bit more than $25' subconsciously than they are to see it as it is, as essentially $26. Studies have been done on this, and it almost doesn't matter how well educated you are, you can fall prey to this if you're not consciously aware of it and monitoring yourself. It's because our brains are dumb and lazy, and take shortcuts to save thinking time and energy, which was a valid practice back when energy (food) was more scarce and decisions of all sorts had to be made quickly or the protohuman would die, but nowadays when energy is plentiful for many people and a lot of decisions need to be more carefully considered because the consequences are not obvious but are serious, it bites us all in our collective butts. I bet posthumans don't have this problem...
I don't think it's that rounding is difficult, it's that it makes different armor levels worth different amounts.
