[kirk]

Wait I'm confused I thought it was damage plus net hits. How does that other stuff apply? Like negative from wide bursts and what not? I thought that doesn't apply. Only AP.

The wide burst affects the roll to determine number of hits; it subtracts from the target's defense dice and affects net hits before armor comes into play.

[LostProxy]

But ItNW is only effected by AP. It specifically says in hardened that it is only changed by AP so the only way to lower it is AP or attacks that divide armor in half like the Gauss rifle and white phosphorus grenades.

[Captain Karzak]

Wait I'm confused I thought it was damage plus net hits. How does that other stuff apply? Like negative from wide bursts and what not? I thought that doesn't apply. Only AP.

Kirk's numbers look right up until the end when he get's the spirit's armor wrong. Your confusion is because he's sometimes just saying the wrong words when he explains where those numbers came from. To clarify:

Assume a dicepool of 24 after all modifications have been taken into account. On average 24 dice will generate 8 hits.

A force 12 SPIRIT (not sprite) will have a defense of at least 12 dice (realistically we would use 14 or 15), which will be reduced by 9 dice because we are doing a full burst, wide as complex action to attack it.

This means the spirit has 3 dice (unless it chooses to go full defense). On 3 dice, the spirit will generate on average one hit. This reduces our attack's net hits from 8 to 7.

Kirk then mentions "adding 6 from the ammo". Presumably what he meant was the weapon we are using has a base DV of 6 (a typical assault rifle). We add the 7 net hits to the 6 base DV to get our modified DV of 13.

We then compare this modified DV against the spirits modified (hardened) armor of 24 minus 1 for armor penetration (the typical AP value for an assault rifle). 13 is less than 24 so the spirit is only tickled by our attack and proceeds to go about it's business unimpeded.

So that went poorly.

We get a better result with Stick and Shock ammo because it has much more massive armor penetration than regular ammo or tracer ammo. We would be comparing our 13 DV against a hardened armor of 24/2 = 12. So we'd actually hurt the spirit in this case. It then roll body (we'll just go with 12 for simplicity) + 12 (modified armor) for a average of 8 hits against our 13 DV for 5 damage.

We'd almost certainly be better off doing two long bursts, wide instead of single full burst, wide per turn.

Furthermore we probably should be making a called shot against the spirit. We'd drop our attack dice pool from 24 to 20, but our base damage goes from 6S(e) to 10S(e). With S&S's massive AP, we only need two net hits to get past the ItNW on a force 12 spirit.

[LostProxy]

My GM banned  SnS so the gauss rifle and the grenade launcher are my only option.

[Captain Karzak]

My GM banned  SnS so the gauss rifle and the grenade launcher are my only option.

Well, if you can get your hands on a gauss rifle (24F availability), you'll absolutely shred any spirit that comes after you. A grenade launcher is neat, but fighting spirits is not really what it's designed for, especially since you can't stage up grenade damage with your net hits.

Looking back at your original post, I'm unclear how you are getting a figure of ~ 20 damage on burst fire with a grenade launcher. Where does that number come from?

[LostProxy]

War on direct fire grenades.

Occasionally, a gamemaster will have more than one grenade
or other explosive simultaneously a ecting a single target. In these
cases, treat the damage as a single blast with a Damage Values equal
to the sum of the highest Damage Value of one explosion plus half
the DV of the other explosions.

Plus this

When using a grenade launcher with contact-triggered
minigrenades, you can  re directly at a target. You must declare
that your character is doing so before the attack. Make a Heavy
Weapons + Agility Opposed Test against the target, using the
normal rules for ranged combat (p. 150, SR4A), using net hits to
add to the base Damage Value of the grenade for only the target
that was attacked.  e grenade also damages those within its blast
radius normally, using its base Damage Value and ignoring the net
hits from the attack. If the attack misses, roll for scatter (with a
reduction for net hits) to determine where the grenade detonates,
resolving the blast as normal.

So 3 HE grenades = 20 + net hits. 10 + 5 + 5

[kirk]

Wait I'm confused I thought it was damage plus net hits. How does that other stuff apply? Like negative from wide bursts and what not? I thought that doesn't apply. Only AP.

Kirk's numbers look right up until the end when he get's the spirit's armor wrong. Your confusion is because he's sometimes just saying the wrong words when he explains where those numbers came from. To clarify:

Assume a dicepool of 24 after all modifications have been taken into account. On average 24 dice will generate 8 hits.

A force 12 SPIRIT (not sprite) will have a defense of at least 12 dice (realistically we would use 14 or 15), which will be reduced by 9 dice because we are doing a full burst, wide as complex action to attack it.

This means the spirit has 3 dice (unless it chooses to go full defense). On 3 dice, the spirit will generate on average one hit. This reduces our attack's net hits from 8 to 7.

Kirk then mentions "adding 6 from the ammo". Presumably what he meant was the weapon we are using has a base DV of 6 (a typical assault rifle). We add the 7 net hits to the 6 base DV to get our modified DV of 13.

We then compare this modified DV against the spirits modified (hardened) armor of 24 minus 1 for armor penetration (the typical AP value for an assault rifle). 13 is less than 24 so the spirit is only tickled by our attack and proceeds to go about it's business unimpeded.

So that went poorly.

We get a better result with Stick and Shock ammo because it has much more massive armor penetration than regular ammo or tracer ammo. We would be comparing our 13 DV against a hardened armor of 24/2 = 12. So we'd actually hurt the spirit in this case. It then roll body (we'll just go with 12 for simplicity) + 12 (modified armor) for a average of 8 hits against our 13 DV for 5 damage.

We'd almost certainly be better off doing two long bursts, wide instead of single full burst, wide per turn.

Furthermore we probably should be making a called shot against the spirit.

Thank you, but two corrections and clarifications. First, I was assuming stick and shock for the +6. Thus it's 7 net hits plus 6 from the ammo, hence, using the halved armor (12) of the spirit (not sprite, again thanks). Which you demonstrate with your later paragraph.

Second, I keep thinking like the technomancer I tend to play. Remote control fire through a drone is a complex action, hence using the full burst instead of long. Of course, I also tend to focus fire from three separate weapons against hard targets. (Oh - and long burst is only +/-5. Against an F12 spirit it might not be enough.)

[Captain Karzak]

Thank you, but two corrections and clarifications. First, I was assuming stick and shock for the +6. Thus it's 7 net hits plus 6 from the ammo, hence, using the halved armor (12) of the spirit (not sprite, again thanks). Which you demonstrate with your later paragraph.

We'll that was a bit unclear. You referenced Tracer ammo, and you took into account the weapon's AP -1 without referencing S&S's AP-half.

Does S&S's AP stack with the weapon's AP? I haven't been doing that....

[kirk]

Agreed I was unclear, hence thank you for the clarification.

And the way I took it, yes the AP reduction from weapons applies -- but it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

[Mäx]

And the way I took it, yes the AP reduction from weapons applies -- but it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

No it doesn't, just like the guns normal damage code doesn't matter.
S&S has it's own damage code and AP value.

My GM banned  SnS so the gauss rifle and the grenade launcher are my only option.

Well you could also go for a called shot(+4 to damage option) with Deviance ex Shocker, that does minimum of 13S(e) witch beats the ItNW of a force 12 spirit.
And hey, that baby is completely legal with out anykind of permits.

[LostProxy]

He seems to love Guardian spirits. Melee range of guardian is a plan F for F it I'm going to die anyway

[Thermo]

one thought for trying to up the damage of the grenade launcher is to use MRSI software - that way the damage codes add together and the spirit would get a single roll to soak it, right?