why are Ion cannons not used to defeat planetary shields?

[cynanbloodbane]

According to RAW:

[CRMcNeill]

That inconsistency is part of why I changed up the rules in my SWU such that ion cannon don't ignore shields.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[cynanbloodbane]

[cheshire]

Because the same gasses that protect our planet from the most harmful rays of the sun also <insert jargon-babble here> and affect their potency through that distance of atmospheric gasses. If they were at a closer range, then it would not have the <insert jargon-babble here> effect.

The planetary-based ion cannon was far more powerful, and only suffered minimal effects of range and <insert jargon-babble here> effect, and thus still had enough potency to disable a Star Destroyer.

There. Now all I have to do is find some pseudoscience, and I'll call this explanation good.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[CRMcNeill]

My explanation was that the KDY v-150 was powerful enough that the shields weren't enough to stop it.

Short version; I treat shield dice as Full Cover against ion attacks. The ion cannon rolls for damage against the shield dice alone, with any damage counting as a Shields Blown result (rolling off at -1D per round), with any overage being applied using the rules for damaged cover.

By that rule, the Hoth ion cannon rolled 12D against the 3D shields of an ISD, blowing the shields out completely and hitting the ship for full damage.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[cheshire]

+sigh+

CRM, what have I told you about making sense when I'm trying to techno-babble/bluff my way through something?
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[cynanbloodbane]

Ok, both good answers. so how much cover will a planetary shield provide?
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"Yes because killing the guy you always planned on usurping and killing anyways in order to save your own kid, totally atones for murdering a roomful of innocent trusting children." The Brain

[Jedi Skyler]

It could also possibly be because, from orbit, it seems to be very difficult, if not impossible, to detect the actual generators. On Hoth, it was the ground forces that detected and eventually destroyed the shield generator.

Also, the shield generator used by the Empire on Endor was "strong enough to deflect ANY bombardment," so the Rebels had to get the Imps to drop the shield, allow them through, then land so they could assault the generator directly. That, in my opinion, lends credence to the notion that ground-based shields are MUCH more powerful than ship-based. Perhaps they also have the capacity for more modulations to their frequencies, which might account for the ground-based shields' ability to repel any bombardment from orbit.

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[cynanbloodbane]

I can't wrap my head around the idea that a planetary shield could ever be more powerful than the shields on the Death Star, so that caps them out at 14D converted to capital scale. now the two most powerful Ion cannons I can find in the game are the 12D gun on Hoth (point target), and the clone wars conversion of the Subjugator class at 11D (10 space unit area effect). The first was in the hands of the Rebels, so most likely not cutting edge tech, the second is over 20 year old tech. I find it hard to believe the Empire and its weapon suppliers just abandoned Ion cannon R&D.

Now we are most assuredly talking about a super-weapon, but when has that ever stopped the Empire.

A SSD has 100 Ion cannons at 4D in the front arc, if you combine fire by daisy chaining command rolls through the chain of command that's a max of 37D+1, or two combined fire shots at 20D+2. What shield could possibly take that.

Either the Imps forgot about all those Ion cannons when they made the "Any bombardment" statement or there is some other reason the Ion cannons cant take out a planetary shield. (In which case the imps got boned by their contractor on the Death Star shields.)
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"Yes because killing the guy you always planned on usurping and killing anyways in order to save your own kid, totally atones for murdering a roomful of innocent trusting children." The Brain

[CRMcNeill]

As a side note on how poorly conceived WEG's ion cannon rules are, consider their rules for particle shields. If energy shields only block energy and particle shields only block particles, why do particle shields attribute 2D to the Hull rating of starships? If they were only effective against particles, wouldn't a ship's Hull suffer a -2D penalty when attacked with an energy weapon?
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

Also, the coordination bonus generation system tends to fall apart as the numbers increase. It works fine for smaller numbers, but an arithmetic increase reaches ridiculous levels rather quickly. I ran the numbers once with the 2R&E rules and found that they would allow the Death Star to be destroyed by the combined fire of a few hundred blaster rifles.

Personally, I prefer the Doubling method (basically, +1D every time you double the number of beings/weapons being coordinated). Using that technique, you end up with a much more reasonable 6D+2 (or thereabouts) when combining the fire of 100 ion cannon.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index