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Is it me or is this thing just way undergunned? I think it should do 2-3 times what it does with the Rotary cannon.

Mike1975 wrote:Is it me or is this thing just way undergunned? I think it should do 2-3 times what it does with the Rotary cannon.

's just you, IMO... the Gnerl's not meant to be a heavy combat unit. It's designed, OSMly, for light skirmish dogfighting and air support. Its gun is basically one of the rotary lasers from the Queadluun-Rau's forearms, and it only carries a couple missiles.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

Mike1975 wrote:Is it me or is this thing just way undergunned? I think it should do 2-3 times what it does with the Rotary cannon.

's just you, IMO... the Gnerl's not meant to be a heavy combat unit. It's designed, OSMly, for light skirmish dogfighting and air support. Its gun is basically one of the rotary lasers from the Queadluun-Rau's forearms, and it only carries a couple missiles.

It has basically no firepower outside the missiles. I remember the old RPG had it doing like 3d4x10 or something like that. The cannon should at least do more than a single Particle Cannon on a Battlepod. Something more like D6x10

Mike1975 wrote:It has basically no firepower outside the missiles.

Yeah, that's not all that inconsistent with the original source material... not coincidentally, the original source material was, in large measure, what Palladium drew on when writing this revised-for-accuracy version of the game.

Mike1975 wrote:I remember the old RPG had it doing like 3d4x10 or something like that.

The old RPG had many accuracy issues WRT matching the series and source material.

Mike1975 wrote:The cannon should at least do more than a single Particle Cannon on a Battlepod. Something more like D6x10

Its current level of firepower isn't that far out of line for compliance with the source material...

Problem is that Zen infantry with a Particle Rifle are more powerful. It may seem right to cannon information but it still does not have the right feel to me.

It's like the Soviet military in WW2: good tanks(and lots of them), but little heavy artillery....because they had great air support in the form of the Sturmovik. The Zentraedi have taken this further; they have a gazillion tanks(Regults and Glaugs), but their air support is starship artillery. The problem is, this leaves a big hole for aerospace interdiction between walls of Battlepods and starship point defense and missile fire. Then again, perhaps the perceived enemies the Tirolians originally envisioned and built their doctrine around fighting didn't have the sort of potent fighter capability that the Terrans would show(as with their VF-carried anti-ship missiles and whatnot). The Tirolians proper got around this by giving their Bioroids Hoverplatforms and making their Bioroid Carriers damn agile gunships to compensate.

taalismn wrote:It's like the Soviet military in WW2: good tanks(and lots of them), but little heavy artillery....because they had great air support in the form of the Sturmovik. The Zentraedi have taken this further; they have a gazillion tanks(Regults and Glaugs), but their air support is starship artillery. The problem is, this leaves a big hole for aerospace interdiction between walls of Battlepods and starship point defense and missile fire. Then again, perhaps the perceived enemies the Tirolians originally envisioned and built their doctrine around fighting didn't have the sort of potent fighter capability that the Terrans would show(as with their VF-carried anti-ship missiles and whatnot). The Tirolians proper got around this by giving their Bioroids Hoverplatforms and making their Bioroid Carriers damn agile gunships to compensate.

Air to air was the domain of the Femaple PA and Male power mostly. they were the VF counter parts. or atleast in theory. truth the Female PA outshines most of the Zent's forces. The Gnerl is more or less missile support and air scout.

Mike1975 wrote:Is it me or is this thing just way undergunned? I think it should do 2-3 times what it does with the Rotary cannon.

Damage assignments have always been an issue with Palladium IMHO, so nothing odd there.

I will say though that while the Gnerl is shown to have a tri-cannon in the nose, the Regult's particle cannons are actually multi-barrel affairs in a sleeve that makes them look like single barrel. It is noticeable when it is shown on occasion on closeup shots of the front. So the damage may be comparable to a single Regult PBC, but then it might simply be seen as a modified un-sleeved Regult PBC explaining why they appear to have identical values.

Mike1975 wrote:Problem is that Zen infantry with a Particle Rifle are more powerful. It may seem right to cannon information but it still does not have the right feel to me.

Damage assessments for various weapons have, as ShadowLogan stated above, always been something of a problem area for Palladium in the Robotech/Macross II area... but in this case, it's probably not all that far outside what it should be (relative to other entries in the book). If everything were properly scaled using the OSM and data given by HG, it would be a much worse problem, with the Macross Saga mecha's lightest weapons doing ten or more times the damage that the heaviest New Generation weapons do.

Rimmerdal wrote:Air to air was the domain of the Femaple PA and Male power mostly. they were the VF counter parts. or atleast in theory. truth the Female PA outshines most of the Zent's forces. The Gnerl is more or less missile support and air scout.

Eh... just the Queadluun-Rau, actually. The Nousjadeul-Ger used by the Zentradi males is more along the lines of a ground combat unit with higher mobility, better survivability, and greater diversity of armament than the Regult or Glaug, per OSM. The Queadluun-Rau was the high-performance fighter equivalent of the Zentradi... so much so that a special breed of new pilot had to be created to handle its obscenely high performance without suffering GLOC (the females). The Macross sequels did give the male Zentradi a lower spec flight battle suit of their own, but within Robotech this particular air support role appears to belong exclusively to the Queadluun-Rau.

Mike1975 wrote:Is it me or is this thing just way undergunned? I think it should do 2-3 times what it does with the Rotary cannon.

Yep, feel free to increase the damage.

For my tactics conversions I increased the damage to the equivalent of 2D4X10 and the range to 6,000. More suited to the role of a fighter, albeit not a heavy fighter just the same.

It's not so much the gun is low powered.....it is but just remember you likely have 4 or more firing at you at any given time....death by 1000 paper cuts is still death no matter how you cut it

jedi078 wrote:

Mike1975 wrote:Is it me or is this thing just way undergunned? I think it should do 2-3 times what it does with the Rotary cannon.

Yep, feel free to increase the damage.

Could also take a page from the Masters SB and give unlimited payload energy weapons a payload and recharge rates so that one could use burst-fire rules (using payload/recharge as a balance mechanism, maybe even old style multiple attack/action consumption for large bursts) to up the damage for "burst" style weapons as seen in the show that are regarded as "blasts" by the RPG.

jaymz wrote:It's not so much the gun is low powered.....it is but just remember you likely have 4 or more firing at you at any given time....death by 1000 paper cuts is still death no matter how you cut it

exactly. Air-to air is all about pack fighting..Dog fighting is a dieing art these days according to some folks.

Rimmerdal wrote:

jaymz wrote:It's not so much the gun is low powered.....it is but just remember you likely have 4 or more firing at you at any given time....death by 1000 paper cuts is still death no matter how you cut it

exactly. Air-to air is all about pack fighting..Dog fighting is a dieing art these days according to some folks.

In this specific case, it's not just air-to-air... the core of all Zentradi tactics relies on the use of overwhelming numbers. I'll grant you, one Gnerl doesn't seem like much of a threat on its own. The catch is, like battle pods, they never go anywhere without at least a football team's worth of troops. (The average unit of Gnerls is a flight battalion totaling 28+ units.)

taalismn wrote:It's like the Soviet military in WW2: good tanks(and lots of them), but little heavy artillery....because they had great air support in the form of the Sturmovik. The Zentraedi have taken this further; they have a gazillion tanks(Regults and Glaugs), but their air support is starship artillery. The problem is, this leaves a big hole for aerospace interdiction between walls of Battlepods and starship point defense and missile fire. Then again, perhaps the perceived enemies the Tirolians originally envisioned and built their doctrine around fighting didn't have the sort of potent fighter capability that the Terrans would show(as with their VF-carried anti-ship missiles and whatnot). The Tirolians proper got around this by giving their Bioroids Hoverplatforms and making their Bioroid Carriers damn agile gunships to compensate.

Don't forget the Katyushas, and that their early tanks suffered greatly because of no dedicated commanders. Not to mention weather and the muddy Spring season grounding the aircraft. But that's beside the point really. You got the right idea about the Zentraedi, they're defense is about having the best offense. Hit first, hit hard, destroy the enemy and you don't have worry about him hitting you.