Combat Gotchas

To have a hope of damaging someone with 100 defense slightly less than half the time you manage to land a hit (i.e., they fail their DCV check), you'd need an attack rated at 160 points of damage (doing 50% damage or less happens about 55% of thet time), preferrably 200. Think about that one -- i think it's an important part of what may have "gone wrong" here. Another reality check of a sort: a defense of 20-30 casually shrugs off bullets on anything short of a critical hit.

Teaming up is also important against opponents so as to eat up their Defenses (the base one and any Extras), so those -4 penalties per extra defense really start adding up. One of the better, and "cheaper" (in terms of effort) suggestions I've heard is to take away the free Defense roll that everyone gets -- i.e., without an Extra Defense, you're start off in a round defending at -4.

I think part of the key to keeping combat exciting in SAS is to describe the misses with as much verve as the successes. Think of it as a fencing duel:

A lunges for B!

(A rolls against ACV, scores a hit)

The strike is towards B's heart, a deathblow, and --

(B rolls against DCV, manages to make the defense)

B interposes his blade at the last moment, turning the strike aside. He laughs. "You'll have to do better than that."

Keep in mind that an 11 ACV is a 55% chance to get a chance to hit. Pair it against a 11 DCV, and you're looking at actually making your hit (i.e., you make your attack roll and they miss their defense) about 25% of the time.

ACV's and DCV's have success chances as follows:

   CV      Success             Fail
    2           1%              99%
    3           3%              97%
    4           6%              94%
    5          10%              90%
    6          15%              85%
    7          21%              79%
    8          28%              72%
    9          36%              64%
   10          45%              55%
   11          55%              45%
   12          64%              36%
   13          72%              28%
   14          79%              21%
   15          85%              15%
   16          90%              10%
   17          94%               6%
   18          97%               3%
   19+         99%               1%

So, if you look at your ACV's success percentage, and multiply by the target's DCV's fail percentage, you'll get the percentage chance you have of actually landing your hit. So, trick shot stuff set aside, a 19 ACV Sniperman will hit his 10 DCV Targetman opponent only about half the time. This is why trick shots are such a big deal -- moving your opponent's DCV below 10 can realy pay off. (I'd do a matrix of combinative ACV/DCV percentages, but anyone with Excel should be able to manage that.)

So, considering that, more than a few levels of defenses (Armour/Forcefields/etc in excess of 20 or 30 points) are going to result in opponents who are pretty darn hard to take down.

In general, one level of Special Attack (20 damage) is adequately checked-and-balanced by one level of Armour (10 protection). Forcefields get to be more effective per level by dint of being ablative if you manage to overwhelm them.

If your folks are slinging around 60 damage special attacks on average, I'd suggest setting them up against opponents with no more than 20-30 points of protection PLUS low DCV's, or little to no protection and a HIGH DCV. Putting both heavy armor and big DCV values on someone makes them a little too effective at shrugging off your good guys.

Which isn't a problem, mind, if they're the One Big Villain Against The Team, since that's thematically appropriate, but if they're one member of an opposing team, you're in some serious doo.