Armoured Starships

[phavoc]

One can argue that the TL15 fusion gun of a grav tank is equivalent to a single turret ship-mounted laser. By their nature, grav vehicles are also capable of entering space, and their weapons and armor would be equivalent to any commercial ship out there, or even more so. The main difference is that the grav tank is optimized for in-atmosphere work, and its fusion power plant is sized for its mass and drivetrain.

The rules don't break down the output in megajoules for the power of the individual weapons, so a lot of our arguments are purely speculative. Now if all vehicles and weapons were designed with say the Striker rules, then we could actually compare the weapons based upon their damage capabilities. I think then we'd find ground weaponry doing significant damage to starships.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

On RAW concerning starship weapons vs vehicles:
Supplement 5-6 Has AFV's allowed to have 15x their Base Armor, so
TL 6-8 Max Armor 45
TL 9-11 Max Armor 60
TL 12–14 Max Armor 75
TL 15–17 Max Armor 90
TL 18+ Max Armor 105
Sandcasters explicitly do 8d6 personal damage, so most armor would survive getting sanded down...
On other weapons though, the RAW in Mercenary did not give an example in reverse.
If it is that you multiply the dice to personal scale a 1d6 weapon becomes 50d6 then roll damage, yea, then your vehicles are toast as your chance of rolling less than 105 points of damage is not too likely.
If it was roll the dice then mulply damage by 50, hey, 1 in 6 chance of surviving!

 

[Old timer]

Actually, your numbers are a bit wrong. In supplement 5-6 a AFV has its base armour double first, then multiplied by 15, so would look more like this.
TL 6-8, base 3, double for a AFV, 6, max 90
TL 9-11, base 4, doubled, 8, max 120
TL 12-14, base 5, doubled 10, max 150
TL 15-17, base 6, doubled 12, max 180
TL 18+ base 7, double 14, max 210.

So using the 1d6 starship equals 50 d6 personal, your higher tech vehicles have a small chance of surviving a hit, as the average of 50d6 is around 175, so a tech level 15 vehicle could survive a hit, more so if you roll 1d6x50, about 50% chance of survival. So beam laser may be survivable, pulse laser not.
Still, just proves it does not scale well

 

[JP42]

So something needs to come along, like when the tank came along and broke the trench warfare stalemate of WWI.

Laser weapons are supplanted by plasma and fusion, then by particle beams, and maybe even gravity control beams - a logical extension of the anti-grav technology assumed by the system (there are many sub-steps, like to X-ray lasers and the like). As the armor gets too thick for even them, meson weapons become the weapon of choice, for their ability to ignore armor and simply detonate inside the target. This then leads to the development of ray shielding/meson screens/force fields.

On the physical ordinance side, large caliber guns give way to fast missiles. In space, these should be even more effective as kinetic kill weapons. Even the most heavily armored vehicles would fear them. Nukes provide an after-contact kill potential, and as the technology increases, antimatter warheads become viable, again making missiles into one-shot-kill weapons for all intents and purposes. Nukes lead to nuclear dampers (if you buy into that theory) and perhaps some of the shielding options provide protection against antimatter weapons through some manner of subatomic manipulation. Superscience will provide, if it's allowed to.

As for the conflation of these ships with naval vessels historically and modern navies, there are a number or problems with one-to-one correlations. It's a convenient shorthand, but it definitely requires a good deal of abstraction. It is better to include modern air power in the mix, as the three-dimensionality of the threats in space are better represented there, but with weapons that allow the level of stand-off, there's really no "need" for fighters any longer.

So, my tl;dr is this: If what you want is consistency, you may be able to manufacture a system that is less likely to hurt your head. If, however, what you want is plausible verisimilitude, you're going to be looking at rewriting the whole combat system from the ground up, from individual and squad level up through vehicles into space vessels.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Ah. So instead, the cost should be increasing exponentially...

Only in the Bizzaro universe

But while the surface area of armor compared to the size of the vessel is relatively smaller, the total volume of armor used on a larger ship should be exponentially larger than that on the smaller ship, therefore the cost of the armor for the larger ship should be exponentially larger than the cost of the same thickness of armor on a smaller ship (in the case of a straight percentage of the ship's volume, this should be even more so).

In specific terms, a 1 cm^3 cube has 6 cm^2 of armor, whereas a 3 cm^3 cube has 54 cm^2 of armor which is an exponential increase in the amount of armor required to cover the larger cube.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Ah. So instead, the cost should be increasing exponentially...

Only in the Bizzaro universe

But while the surface area of armour compared to the size of the vessel is relatively smaller, the total volume of armour used on a larger ship should be exponentially larger than that on the smaller ship, therefore the cost of the armour for the larger ship should be exponentially larger than the cost of the same thickness of armour on a smaller ship (in the case of a straight percentage of the ship's volume, this should be even more so).

In specific terms, a 1 cm^3 cube has 6 cm^2 of armour, whereas a 3 cm^3 cube has 54 cm^2 of armor which is an exponential increase in the amount of armour required to cover the larger cube.

Erm.....

The armour provided is the same in the case of a single layer of superdense 5cm thick on a fighter and 1m thick on a battlechip.

If you are charging by the thickness not the effect then it would cost more on the battleship for thicker armour that has the same effect. Hence Bizzaro world.

The bigger ships should get stronger armour for the same 5% of volume to reflect the fact that it is thicker.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

The bigger ships should get stronger armour for the same 5% of volume to reflect the fact that it is thicker.

Right. That part I got. It was the amount of armour needed to cover a larger ship compared to that needed to cover a smaller ship where I was doing the math wrong. I think I've got it now.

Well, and the fact that I seem to have been doing basic math wrong was hitting me where it hurt as far as my University education...

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

While I think that the difference in general armor ratings between vehicles and spacecraft is one issue that might need to be addressed, I'm also beginning to think that for combat on a "personal" scale combat in general may need some additional modifications to account for the fact that "armor" may not cover everything on a ship.

As an example, for a situation kind of similar to say the original Star Wars movie where the storm troopers open fire on the main characters, or perhaps in a situation similar to the image on the cover of Mongoose's Spinward Marches campaign book - where a ship is shown coming in for a landing with its gear down & various hatches & thruster ports open, it seems like "personal-scale" weaponry may have some chance to cause damage to such a ship & especially the parts that may not seem to be fully protected by armor in such a situation.

As such, maybe it might be possible to amend the combat rules to address stuff like this too.

 

[FreeTrav]

Actually it is the exact opposite. A 1 cubic inch box has 4 square inches of surface area. (4:1) surface area:volume

An 8 cubic inch box has 24 square inches of surface area. (3:1)

Since MGT figures armour by volume of hull, there is thicker armour on larger ships...

Can we hear a little bit of "oops" here?

A cube one unit on an edge has a surface area of six square units - top, bottom, left, right, front, back at one (1x1) square unit each - and a volume of one cubic unit (1x1x1). (You missed on this)

A cube two units on an edge has a surface area of twenty-four square units - top, bottom, left, right, front, back at four (2x2) square units each - and a volume of eight cubic units (2x2x2). (You got this one right)

A cube three units on an edge has a surface area of fifty-four square units - top, bottom, left, right, front, back at nine (3x3) square units - and a volume of twenty-seven cubic units (3x3x3)

In tabular form:

Edge Length           1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9    10               (y=x)
Total Surface Area    1    24    54    96   150   216   294   384   486   600               (y=6x^2)
Total Volume          1     8    27    64   125   216   343   512   729  1000               (y=x^3)

 

[F33D]

Can we hear a little bit of "oops" here?

Yes, a typo.