Armor for big ships

[zozotroll]

Probably this has been addressed, but if so my searchfu has failed me.

What value does armor have on big ships? It still takes up a percentage of your valume, but weapons take up a decreased percentage. And they do more damage when they get big. So, other than keeping out fighter hits, what does armor do? As far as fighters, take your armor volume and replace it with fighters of your own.

Or am I missing something vital here?

My current game is heavy into military action, and they are getting into bigger ships. The FFW is about a game year off, and as none of them have played Traveller before, they dont know it is comeing. But the next ship size up is going to have them wondering about why waste space on armor. And I would like to have an answer ready. Any help?

 

[simonh]

What value does armor have on big ships? It still takes up a percentage of your valume, but weapons take up a decreased percentage. And they do more damage when they get big. So, other than keeping out fighter hits, what does armor do? As far as fighters, take your armor volume and replace it with fighters of your own.

The bare design system isn't the only consideration for naval ships intended to operate in a strategic and economic context. For example, armour doesn't require recruitment, training or salaries for it's crew, or engineers to maintain it, or fuel reserves, or resupplies of fittings and armaments, or draw a pension when it's decommissioned. Replacing armour with fighters is going to incur huge operating costs that the design system doesn't begin to represent. Also a fighter might only be 10 tons, but you also need the launch tubes, fuel, munitions storage, pilot and engineer staterooms, the comand crew over them, etc. You might be lucky to replace 25 tons of armour with one ten ton fighter.

Also if your military doctrine is for no or low levels of armour on capital ships, your opponents can take that into account in their warship design to exploit it, by using cheaper weaponry that doesn't have the penetration but causes more damage. So yes the capital ship weaponry can punch through armour, but if it didn't have to do that it could be designed to be even more damaging and you'd be even worse off.

You may have found loopholes in the game mechanics, High Guard had some similar reality-check limitations, but as with any wargame or RPG design system there are factors in the setting that have to be taken into account as well, because the design system is built using those assumptions as a starting point. If it's treated as a standalone system without any context it's not necessarily all going to make sense.

Simon Hibbs