Are large vehicles too easy to kill with criticals?
Picture this scenario: a farmer is standing on a headland when he sees an Achilles class Frigate go steaming by at full speed. Out of sheer devilment, he pulls out his trusty old rifle, aims for 2 rounds (6 minor actions), and then fires at the Frigate. The farmer has skill level 2 with his rifle (he's shot a few foxes in the past). The ship is well north of 50 tons, so he gets +6 to attack due to size. Aiming nets him another +6, and his skill earns him +2. The ship is moving at speed "Slow", so he gets -3 for that. Overall, he gets +11 to his attack. A roll of 7 gives him a total of 18, or effect 10. Rolling damage, he scores a 10 on 3D, adds his effect of 10 for 20 points of damage. The ship has armour 10, and, since his rifle does less than 4D damage, it gets its TL (9) added on. 1 point of damage gets through, so the farmer gets to inflict a critical. He rolls the dice, and gets 7: hull. Since he had an effect of 10, he does a level 5 critical, and the ship will sink in 1D minutes. Rolling a 3, the ship will sink in 3 minutes. The farmer lights his pipe to watch the show.
Note that I've had this happen in medium range. If it was long range (-2) the farmer would need a roll of 9 to sink the ship with similar alacrity. At extreme range (-4), he'd need an 11.
We could quibble with this by saying that the vehicle rules don't mention effect being added to damage (unlike the "regular" combat rules or the spaceship combat rules). However, if we give the farmer a gauss rifle (4D damage), he would cut through the ship's armour of 10 like a hot knife through butter. Or, alternatively, if the target was an unarmoured civilian ship (minimal armour 3), a rifle might do damage with a roll of 13 or more, and a similar critical kill could easily result. As an aside, this interpretation may be needed to avoid the example from the Traveller companion of someone kicking a dune buggy apart (once effect is added, a kick could easily damage a small vehicle; the dune buggy has armour 2 + TL 6 = 8).
I'm not an expert on naval matters, but I gather that modern warships are very lightly armoured, and could be penetrated by small arms fire, so the ability to damage a frigate with a rifle seems reasonable. However, I'm a bit dubious that the damage a bullet could do once it was inside the ship would be so catastrophic that a ship would sink as in the example above.
I wonder if a rule is needed regarding what it takes to cause a critical on a large vehicle (like the starship combat rules have). Maybe, once a vehicle is over XXX tonnes, only destructive damage weapons can cause criticals? Or maybe a weapon has to penetrate with more than YYY damage in order to cause a critical on a large vehicle?
Picture this scenario: a farmer is standing on a headland when he sees an Achilles class Frigate go steaming by at full speed. Out of sheer devilment, he pulls out his trusty old rifle, aims for 2 rounds (6 minor actions), and then fires at the Frigate. The farmer has skill level 2 with his rifle (he's shot a few foxes in the past). The ship is well north of 50 tons, so he gets +6 to attack due to size. Aiming nets him another +6, and his skill earns him +2. The ship is moving at speed "Slow", so he gets -3 for that. Overall, he gets +11 to his attack. A roll of 7 gives him a total of 18, or effect 10. Rolling damage, he scores a 10 on 3D, adds his effect of 10 for 20 points of damage. The ship has armour 10, and, since his rifle does less than 4D damage, it gets its TL (9) added on. 1 point of damage gets through, so the farmer gets to inflict a critical. He rolls the dice, and gets 7: hull. Since he had an effect of 10, he does a level 5 critical, and the ship will sink in 1D minutes. Rolling a 3, the ship will sink in 3 minutes. The farmer lights his pipe to watch the show.
Note that I've had this happen in medium range. If it was long range (-2) the farmer would need a roll of 9 to sink the ship with similar alacrity. At extreme range (-4), he'd need an 11.
We could quibble with this by saying that the vehicle rules don't mention effect being added to damage (unlike the "regular" combat rules or the spaceship combat rules). However, if we give the farmer a gauss rifle (4D damage), he would cut through the ship's armour of 10 like a hot knife through butter. Or, alternatively, if the target was an unarmoured civilian ship (minimal armour 3), a rifle might do damage with a roll of 13 or more, and a similar critical kill could easily result. As an aside, this interpretation may be needed to avoid the example from the Traveller companion of someone kicking a dune buggy apart (once effect is added, a kick could easily damage a small vehicle; the dune buggy has armour 2 + TL 6 = 8).
I'm not an expert on naval matters, but I gather that modern warships are very lightly armoured, and could be penetrated by small arms fire, so the ability to damage a frigate with a rifle seems reasonable. However, I'm a bit dubious that the damage a bullet could do once it was inside the ship would be so catastrophic that a ship would sink as in the example above.
I wonder if a rule is needed regarding what it takes to cause a critical on a large vehicle (like the starship combat rules have). Maybe, once a vehicle is over XXX tonnes, only destructive damage weapons can cause criticals? Or maybe a weapon has to penetrate with more than YYY damage in order to cause a critical on a large vehicle?
