How do screens actually work?

[J. L. Brown]

I had the same opinion, based on the damage multiples box on HG22 pg 29 saying subtract armor and other countermeasures, then multiply... but:
When @paltrysum says We, he is speaking in the official voice.
Look at his signature line and compare that with the credits page (pg1) of HG22.
Thus, apparently Screens go last in the calculation.

Yeah, I noticed that & decided to ignore it.

The ships carried over from Classic and other previous editions ended up with 1 Defense Factor = 1 screen unit. Defense Factor 9 was extremely good; which is not represented with the 'official line'. Either they messed up the translation of previous ships, or they have written the rules to not make sense & now every GM who makes any effort is forced to house-rule around obvious screw-ups -- sadly, neither of those is out of character.

I am going with p29.

 

[paltrysum]

When we issue an update, we're going to have to clear that up. This one comes up occasionally. The long and the short of it is screens don't help much unless you load up on them.

 

[Sigtrygg]

If I were trying to write an almost incomprehensible system that changed everything about the simplicity of the original I would have a hard time matching MgT screens.

Screen rating - TL dependent
Screen effect - similar to armour reducing damage but for specific weapon type

meson screen - armor vs meson guns
nuclear damper - armour vs radiation damage, point defence vs nuclear missiles

 

[CordwainerFish]

Nuclear Dampers (which apparently work vs Fusion weapons, but not specifically against Particle Beams -- something of an oversight, I suppose)

As I understand it, the idea is that a damper slows (or increases, depending on which sort of antinode you project on the target) the rate of nuclear phenomena. So if you've got a nuke incoming you can make the plutonium in its primary stage decay to something non-fissile before it gets within ouchie distance. But a bunch of protons incoming on the bounce, you can't do much with.

(Yeah, proton decay. Still conjectural and even then extremely long half life.)

 

[Geir]

As I understand it, the idea is that a damper slows (or increases, depending on which sort of antinode you project on the target) the rate of nuclear phenomena. So if you've got a nuke incoming you can make the plutonium in its primary stage decay to something non-fissile before it gets within ouchie distance. But a bunch of protons incoming on the bounce, you can't do much with.

(Yeah, proton decay. Still conjectural and even then extremely long half life.)

Isn't that rapid decay known as... fission? Or, well, it would be spitting out a lot of particles as part of the decay (alpha, beta, gamma) and unless it was mostly neutrinos, you'd still have a dirty bomb dropping through the sky in your general vicinity. I thought it just stabilized the plutonium so it wouldn't fizz at all. But what do I know; it's a fictional device with a fictional effect. And since a meson isn't a meson, who knows what that shield does.

 

[Arkathan]

Isn't that rapid decay known as... fission? Or, well, it would be spitting out a lot of particles as part of the decay (alpha, beta, gamma) and unless it was mostly neutrinos, you'd still have a dirty bomb dropping through the sky in your general vicinity. I thought it just stabilized the plutonium so it wouldn't fizz at all. But what do I know; it's a fictional device with a fictional effect. And since a meson isn't a meson, who knows what that shield does.

Actually, one idea for a nuclear damper is the rapid alpha, beta and gamma decay all the way to lead, although the other settings are supposed to stabilize the atoms.

 

[Arkathan]

As I understand it, the idea is that a damper slows (or increases, depending on which sort of antinode you project on the target) the rate of nuclear phenomena. So if you've got a nuke incoming you can make the plutonium in its primary stage decay to something non-fissile before it gets within ouchie distance. But a bunch of protons incoming on the bounce, you can't do much with.

(Yeah, proton decay. Still conjectural and even then extremely long half life.)

Unless you have a containment field/beam/whatever, it will be a neutron beam. Especially considering the range of particle beams.
Without containment, the protons quickly repel each other, turning the beam into an aerosol fogger.
Proton beams, at least in either CT of MegaTraveller (been too long can't remember which) are for planetary bombardment when the planet has an atmosphere.

It's the major roadblock to ion cannons being feasible as anything other than handwavium.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Unless you have a containment field/beam/whatever, it will be a neutron beam. Especially considering the range of particle beams.
Without containment, the protons quickly repel each other, turning the beam into an aerosol fogger.
Proton beams, at least in either CT of MegaTraveller (been too long can't remember which) are for planetary bombardment when the planet has an atmosphere.

It's the major roadblock to ion cannons being feasible as anything other than handwavium.

A sufficiently advanced technology could form some of the charged particles up into things analogous to Cooper-Pairs; or build a self-focusing soliton into the structure of the beam. Still hand-wavium, though.