Energy Armour

[alex_greene]

So this morning, images of advanced ship's armour kept going through my head. The sort of semi-organic armour that turned up in B5, only given a Traveller twist.

Energy Armour
This highly advanced superdense armour is of a semi-organic design, repairing itself after sustaining damage. The armour is naturally energy-absorbing, deriving sustenance from local sunlight while the ship is travelling in normal space.
When struck by a weapon with Radiation, Meson, Ion and Tachyon traits, the armour absorbs the energetic part of the attack, neutralising the special damage (thus a Radiation weapon would not cause Radiation damage to the ship's crew and components, and meson beams and tachyon beams are stopped at the hull). The damage is stored as Power Points in capacitors within the hull, and surplus energy is directed to the Jump capacitors as for Black Globes and White Globes. Damage sustained is reduced by 75% (round down). Damage points absorbed stored can be used to accelerate self-repair, or to power the ship's weapons or other shields.
The semi-organic capacitors within the hull can store a maximum of (Armour Points x TL multiple) Power Points per 100 tons of armour. If not otherwise discharged, these points are used by the armour for sustenance at a rate of 1 power point per 24 hours per 100 tons of armour.

TL	Tonnage%	%Cost		Max
16	1.00		  20.0	    16
18	0.75		  25.0	    20
20	0.50		  27.5	    24
22	0.25		  40.0	    28
24	0.15		  50.0	    32
26	0.10		  75.0	    36

Options
Solar Panels
The Solar Panels option here is an upgrade to the armour that allows the ship to draw surplus energy from its capacitors to supply towards its Power Point costs. One Power Point can be milked per 100 tons of armour. This option does not increase the weight of the armour, but the cost is +10% of the base armour cost.

Heat Shielding and Radiation Shielding
This armour naturally comes with the Heat Shielding and Radiation Shielding options as standard. The options can be purchased to multiply the effectiveness of these basic options, up to five times at +50% armour costs a go, up to +250% of armour costs.

Self Repair
Hull repair is automatic for ships with this design of armour. The basic design repairs 1 Hull or Armour damage per 100 total tons per 24 hour period. This can be accelerated in battle by channelling extra power to the armour - 2 power points per point of Hull damage to be repaired per space combat round. Surplus energy that has been absorbed by the ship and stored in the skin capacitors counts towards this.

Other options such as Stealth or Reflec can be purchased as normal for ships of this design.

 

[fusor]

This isn't in HG 2e, is it? It sounds rather broken.

If it's naturally solar powered then Solar Panel upgrades are redundant.(also, it'd be ineffective in the outer system).
Armour that magically just stops all radiation and meson damage dead at the hull without any side effects or negative consequences is ludicrously powerful, IMO.
And Reflec sounds daft for an armour that is basically supposed to absorb radiation - why would you reflect it away?

 

[Sigtrygg]

Nope - too much handwavium.

Superdense

Organic

Can block mesons - something only a black globe can do

 

[fusor]

(post deleted by fusor since it was pre-edit).

 

[Sigtrygg]

Lol, I was trying to delete that post because I thought it too snarky. Which is why it now reads differently.

An even less snarky response is that Traveller has always tried to base itself on at least a nod towards real science.

The current trend is to try and turn it into science fantasy where handwavium abounds - I don't know if this is due to a basic lack of scientific grounding or a deliberate paradigm shift towards science fantasy.

 

[alex_greene]

It's ok - my munchkin ray armed fighters can blow holes in it.

More seriously - google project rho and read it.

Read it all - then learn some basic science.

Just throwing handwavium and thinking it can be anything but ridiculous is - ridiculous.

Oh, for goodness' sake, don't even start with that old, tired line.

If we all had to "learn some basic science," we'd not be playing Traveller, watching science fiction, reading fantasy stories or horror stories about zombies or cults summoning demons.

We're already playing in a universe which has working antigrav, FTL travel using 2D starmaps, meson beams, anagathics, psionics, ion cannon and tachyon beams, lasers which are channelled through neutron flows and nuclear dampers which destabilise atomic nuclei.

Sig, your argument has been done to death for nearly forty years, and the only answer is "Dear, we live in a spaceship," which answer destroys all of your arguments - and has done for 39 years.

 

[fusor]

If we all had to "learn some basic science," we'd not be playing Traveller, watching science fiction, reading fantasy stories or horror stories about zombies or cults summoning demons.

Funny, I know a lot of basic (and advanced) science and I can enjoy all of the above without any problem at all.

We're already playing in a universe which has working antigrav, FTL travel using 2D starmaps, meson beams, anagathics, psionics, ion cannon and tachyon beams, lasers which are channelled through neutron flows and nuclear dampers which destabilise atomic nuclei.

Sig, your argument has been done to death for nearly forty years, and the only answer is "Dear, we live in a spaceship," which answer destroys all of your arguments - and has done for 39 years.

Ah, so you just want to post ridiculous ideas (that are even broken in game mechanical terms) and avoid any criticism by saying "anything goes, so shut up"? That's the line that's "tired" - it just shows intellectual laziness and an unwillingness to think things through.

OK, well, here's my Hyper Dark Matter Munchkin beam that destroys your magic armour. Oh, you have a problem with that? "We live on a spaceship, so deal with it".

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Sig, your argument has been done to death for nearly forty years, and the only answer is "Dear, we live in a spaceship," which answer destroys all of your arguments - and has done for 39 years.

Some of us want to play fantasy with sciency words, some of us don't.

 

[alex_greene]

And what is Traveller but a fantasy with sciencey words?

Face it, when High Guard offers Time Drives, you have to stop trying to shoehorn everybody else's game into the same 2001: A Space Odyssey box because you know that you can never do that. You can now run Traveller games which owe more to Star Wars than Hammer's Slammers, and Babylon 5 has had self-repairing ships with semi=organic hulls which are game breakers in the show.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Oh, for goodness' sake, don't even start with that old, tired line.

That science fiction should at least nod towards real science?

If we all had to "learn some basic science," we'd not be playing Traveller, watching science fiction,

Why not - a lot of the best science fiction is written by real scientists. The best of the rest is written by authors who take the time to learn the basics and build in consistency.

reading fantasy stories or horror stories about zombies or cults summoning demons.

An awful lot of people in the real world prefer these types of fairy stories to science fiction because they don't understand basic science or find space boring.

We're already playing in a universe which has working antigrav, FTL travel using 2D starmaps, meson beams, anagathics, psionics, ion cannon and tachyon beams, lasers which are channelled through neutron flows and nuclear dampers which destabilise atomic nuclei.

No 'we' are not. HG 2e offers lots of option and more should have been done to highlight that they are options.
Ion cannon, tachyon cannon and neutron lasers are the product of science fantasy and I refuse to use them in my OTU - I will use them in some other campaign but not my 3I game. Nuclear dampers are at least explained scientifically - they manipulate the strong force - how I have no idea, that's why they are science fiction, but of the earlier three
ion cannon is actually an electro magnetic pulse weapon, it has does not use ions in its operation (particle accelerators on the other hand do)
Tachyons are debunked pseudo-particles that can only exit travelling faster than light. Use that concept and think about it - you fire a stream of particle s fasrter than light - so they hit the target before you knew where the target was - it should be called a paradox cannon or temporal cannon.
And as for neutron lasers all I have to say is 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow' - pure technobabble.

Sig, your argument has been done to death for nearly forty years, and the only answer is "Dear, we live in a spaceship," which answer destroys all of your arguments - and has done for 39 years.

The reason this game is still around is that sometimes we old timers have to remind newbies that science fiction is based on science - not Hollywood.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Solar Panels
The Solar Panels option here is an upgrade to the armour. It does not increase the weight of the armour, but the cost is the same as for the Solar Panels option: +10% of the cost of the power plant. This option provides full power to the ship, and limitless basic life support. Otherwise, the armour draws enough power to sustain itself daily and bleeds off any surplus.

I'd change this to 1 power point/100 tons of ship installed on in this fashion, with a higher TL upgrade that does more. This way it reduces the power required while not eliminating the need for a power plant.

 

[fusor]

The armour is naturally energy-absorbing, deriving sustenance from local sunlight and acting in all ways as natural solar panelling.

Therefore solar panel upgrades are unnecessary and useless. Though that's the least of its problems.
(and at the TLs involved would one even NEED any alternative sources of power?)

 

[Sigtrygg]

And what is Traveller but a fantasy with sciencey words?

Do you really want to start he debate about what is science fiction and what is science fantasy?
I have always stated that the third Imperium setting is a very soft science setting - it uses lots of advanced science that we can not explain. But what makes it science fiction and not science fantasy is the attempt to ground it in real world science where possible and to be internally consistent. What I take issue with in latest HG offering is the misuse of science and the use of hollywood science

Face it, when High Guard offers Time Drives, you have to stop trying to shoehorn everybody else's game into the same 2001: A Space Odyssey box because you know that you can never do that. You can now run Traveller games which owe more to Star Wars than Hammer's Slammers, and Babylon 5 has had self-repairing ships with semi=organic hulls which are game breakers in the show.

As options fine, but don't try and scientifically rationalise with handwavium. If you want mary- sue armour in your game go ahead, but don't expect the ridiculousness and unscientific nature of it to not be pointed out.

You always could use Traveller to run Star Wars (I did back in the day) and Hammer's Slammers (I preferred a game based on the Dorsai myself) and Babylon5 ( did this too) - and I can add Stainless Steel Rat, Lensmen, Blake's 7, BattleStar Galactica, Know Space, Co Dominium, Dune - yup I ripped off a lot of other people's ides for my Traveller campaigns over the years.

And I really did try and delete my first snarky post, I thought it inappropriate - but then again so is referring to someone as 'dear'.

 

[wbnc]

Dont forget tachyons, molecular bonded composites, and psionics...
as for mesons.. lets just say that creating a particle that magically passes through all matter, then at a preset time decays into an unstable highly destructive particle inside an enemy vessel is hardly hard science.

science fiction has always projected technology outside the box, coming up with ideas that almost completely go against known science...say a tiny box the size of a wristwatch that can allow ou to talk to people on the other side of the planet, or a gun that can fire at an effective rate of a million rounds a minute...

organic armor is not that extreme. coding an organism to create a latticework of boron carbide, and secrete a hydrogen rich gel would snot be out of the question. Boron and hydrogen are two of the best neutron inhibitors around, alpha and beta particles, and mcrowaves are stopped dead by tin foil.and gamma particles are nearly impossible to produce outside of a lab.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/70258/20150721/lightweight-metal-foams-can-effectively-block-x-ray-neutron-radiation-and-gamma-rays.htm

https://www.chemistryworld.com/research/engineered-bacteria-synthesise-palladium-biosorbent/8316.article

already able to create bacteria that absorb heavy metals.. engineer a microorganism to secrete a shell of boron carbide and fuse with one another and you have a boron carbide foam. radiation resistant, impact resistant, and potentially lighter than steel...if you don't look at science as linear, and allow for nonlinear progression....say like we've seen over the past 50 years a lot of seemingly silly ideas arent so silly

 

[fusor]

My issue with it wasn't so much the realism (which is far-fetched enough) as the fact that it's poorly thought out and breaks the game. It can absorb radiation and mesons, magically heals itself, and provides power all at the same time, with no negative consequences! It's just Munchkin Central.

 

[alex_greene]

Yeah, tech at TL 16+ does that. Remember how MWM included a munchkin spaceship in Secret of The Ancients?

 

[alex_greene]

And I really did try and delete my first snarky post, I thought it inappropriate - but then again so is referring to someone as 'dear'.

Ah. I can deduce that you never watched any episodes of the TV series Firefly, because the "Dear" line came straight out of that show.

 

[alex_greene]

Solar PanelsThe Solar Panels option here is an upgrade to the armour. It does not increase the weight of the armour, but the cost is the same as for the Solar Panels option: +10% of the cost of the power plant. This option provides full power to the ship, and limitless basic life support. Otherwise, the armour draws enough power to sustain itself daily and bleeds off any surplus.

I'd change this to 1 power point/100 tons of ship installed on in this fashion, with a higher TL upgrade that does more. This way it reduces the power required while not eliminating the need for a power plant.

That's a good idea. Thank you.

 

[wbnc]

And I really did try and delete my first snarky post, I thought it inappropriate - but then again so is referring to someone as 'dear'.

Ah. I can deduce that you never watched any episodes of the TV series Firefly, because the "Dear" line came straight out of that show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gazACJ0R1Hc

 

[fusor]

Yeah, tech at TL 16+ does that. Remember how MWM included a munchkin spaceship in Secret of The Ancients?

So what's the counter? Leaving aside the bad design elements, at TL16+ there should be a way to bypass this armour and counter it. Probably by either firing lots of kinetic weapons at it, or just overwhelming it with damage until the capacitors explode (plus it's not as if it can stop absorbing energy so an explosion is inevitable pretty quickly).