This is a condensed version of Star Army Damage Rating, Version 3 article.

This is meant to be consulted by anyone already aware of how SADRv3 functions and just wants to have a quick overview of the guidelines.

Using a weapon in the same tier as its target means this weapon is capable of putting it out of combat in a single well-placed attack. It is potentially lethal. A weapon can cause damage up to four steps above its tier. Each step above reduces the damage it can cause since the target is bigger, heavier, or in general better protected. We also rate overkill in four steps. It can be visualized as follows:

What you need to take from this is that you cause less damage to harder targets than your weapon was intended to take down, and more damage to targets softer than that. If the gap becomes too wide in disfavor of the weapon, it won't do much of anything; but too wide in favor of the weapon means lots of overkill.

An armor's or barrier's resilience and stopping power is defined by the tier its unit is part of.

Here's a table that shows, on the rightmost column, how much incoming damage could deplete barriers:

Barrier technology comes in a few shapes of forms on how they are deployed and managed. Here's an overview of some of the common ones:

Barrier Bubble:
has only one universal facing and near-misses can deplete the bubble even though they might not have actually hit the target directly.

Conformal Barrier:
this barrier lends “skin-tight” protection, so near-misses are much less likely to needlessly deplete the barrier.

Fore/Aft Barrier:
Offers a forward and aft facings having their own 100% energy reserve.

Six-sided Barrier:
Fore, aft, port, starboard, dorsal and ventral quadrants, each having a 100% reserve pool.

Managing multiple barrier facings:
Barrier facings can be transfered to resplenish depleted ones. Transfering power over capacity can be safely done up to 200%; going beyond that risks damaging the barrier system from prolongued overloads.

When not being fired on, barrier regeneration can be safely recovered at a rate of 50% every 10 to 15 seconds (3% to 5% per second, depending on rate of activity) or by actions from roleplayers. Depleting a barrier by excess causes an overload which renders that barrier facing inoperable for 15 seconds while the barrier emitter is reset (transfering reserve power, like power armor capacitors, can jump-start a barrier)

Shields are made of heavier plating than what the unit using it, its resilience can be treated as going up to one step above the tier of the unit. For example, the M6 Daisy's zesuaium shield could cope with attacks as a heavy power armor would. Damage to the shield is treated individually from the power armor: having a shield does not upgrade a power armor/mecha's defense tier, it is treated as a different location to damage that is tougher than the rest.

Here's a list of commonly seen armor materials in SARP, along with a short blurb of how they stand out.

Units that are not actually armored take damage one step worse than usual for their tier.

Below are outcomes for different targets given as inspiration of how this might be applied.

Example of damage on a M2 Mindy IV power armor:

Example of damage on a Plumeria medium gunship: