[IMTU] Hulls & Armor

[sideranautae]

I wanted to scale armor for hull sizes. I also have a bit different TL spread than RAW. I will be scaling vehicles to this (armor multiple of 0.25) but haven't decided on the vehicle/small craft break point. 10 or 20 tons. Still up in the air

 

[Anonymous]

And the point of your post is?

Seems to me you're renaming armours and shuffling numbers but what's the end result?

Now I know from previous dealings with your good self that you'll likely just ignore me or call me a troll, but really, what are you trying to achieve?

Or am I just rising to the bait?

 

[sideranautae]

And the point of your post is?

Reread until you understand English.

Long time no troll. Where ya been, troll school?

 

[Nerhesi]

And the point of your post is?

Reread until you understand English.

Long time no troll. Where ya been, troll school?

He had a simple question, and valid point regarding how you treat some people who disagree with you, and your answer is insult him again? Classy.

He has a great point - you only indicate that you want to scale hulls to different sizes... which doesnt mean you need a new TL spread. All you need to do is have a size multiplier? How have you rebalanced weapons vs changing armor values? Have you changed maxed and min values? etc etc...

All great conversation items if you weren't exceptionally rude.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I like the way you have broken down the armour stuff by volume. Seems to be reasonable numbers.

If you are looking for suggestions on the break between Small Craft and Vehicles, I would suggest 20 tons.

Tanks are about 10 tons, a single-aisle airplane (757) is about 200 tons and the A380 (largest passenger plane) is about 600 tons.

 

[sideranautae]

He had a simple question,

No. He's trolling. He scrambles out from underneath his bridge from time to time spitting venom. Or, he sneaks onto to computers at the spin bin from time to time. Not sure which.

 

[sideranautae]

I like the way you have broken down the armour stuff by volume. Seems to be reasonable numbers.

If you are looking for suggestions on the break between Small Craft and Vehicles, I would suggest 20 tons.

Tanks are about 10 tons, a single-aisle airplane (757) is about 200 tons and the A380 (largest passenger plane) is about 600 tons.

Okay. Thanks. I do like the 20 ton split better too. I'm currently "solving" the vehicle to ship damage/armor scale problem. At least in the high TL realm (TL10+) although the 1st ship class energy weapon appears at TL 9. So you'll have TL 9 vehicles that can damage ships (slightly) but have armor that might as well not be there.

 

[Nerhesi]

There is a glaring problem here because of the inflated armor values.

You limit "initial" (your emphasis) armor values to TL. After the modifier you end up with incredibly high values.

With an armor of 22 to 30 (a TL 15 armor ship that is 20000 tons), creates a ludicrous barrage penalty in an equal penal to the armor. -30 to barrage guarantees you will ignore every single attack unless it's meson.

In adventure mode with no-barrage combat, you shouldn't even bother rolling damage unless you're using a large bay.

I'm not sure if your intent was to reduce space combat to meson weapons only when considering larger, advanced craft... but if your intent was to weaken smallcraft (and make space combat a bit more one sided) then there could be other ways.

that - or revamp the weapons as well

 

[sideranautae]

There is a glaring problem here because of the inflated armor values.

Not really. It is logical bwhen one uses a volume based armor schema. Capital ship weapons do more damage in my game so not a problem. Pea shooters can't penetrate. Take ya .22 and attack an M1 MBT. Same situation...

 

[Nerhesi]

There is a glaring problem here because of the inflated armor values.

Not really. It is logical bwhen one uses a volume based armor schema. Capital ship weapons do more damage in my game so not a problem. Pea shooters can't penetrate. Take ya .22 and attack an M1 MBT. Same situation...

What are capital ship weapons and what are peashooters? Because in traveller, a 100-ton craft can carry most "capital ship weapons" with the exception of basically energy bays and spinals. A lot of capital ship firepower is also derived from what you may consider "pea shooters" (example barbettes and particle beams? or 100s of triple laser turrets?) - so you may have just significantly reduced capital vs capital damage (infact, I'm sure this happens).

But hey, it is your IMTU - perhaps, to make it more capital centric and remove small craft as a threat, you should just reduce small-craft armor and weapon-effect, but leave the rest? Something as simple as "no barbettes on small craft" AND your armor mods for them can fix it too

 

[sideranautae]

There is a glaring problem here because of the inflated armor values.

Not really. It is logical when one uses a volume based armor schema. Capital ship weapons do more damage in my game so not a problem. Pea shooters can't penetrate. Take ya .22 and attack an M1 MBT. Same situation...

What are capital ship weapons and what are peashooters?

100 ton bays and spinal mounts are Cap weapons. Pea shooters are turrets. In my game ships can't carry weapons that exceed 10% of their tonnage. So, 100 ton ships can only fit turrets.

 

[phavoc]

There is a glaring problem here because of the inflated armor values.

Not really. It is logical bwhen one uses a volume based armor schema. Capital ship weapons do more damage in my game so not a problem. Pea shooters can't penetrate. Take ya .22 and attack an M1 MBT. Same situation...

It would be more realistic to compare the .50 cal to a destroyer. In WW2 the .50cal did a lot of damage to things (sank destroyers, destroyed trains, penetrated hulls on APC's, etc). While they could not defeat the armor of a ship they did do damage to the external things on the tanks. And if you got lucky you could get a round through the drivers port (highly unlikely, but still possible).

So using your .22 cal analogy, given the time and bullets I could do things like knock out the radio aerials, destroy the external stores (if they were Russian tanks, I could hole and drain their external fuel stores).

 

[sideranautae]

There is a glaring problem here because of the inflated armor values.

Not really. It is logical bwhen one uses a volume based armor schema. Capital ship weapons do more damage in my game so not a problem. Pea shooters can't penetrate. Take ya .22 and attack an M1 MBT. Same situation...

It would be more realistic to compare the .50 cal to a destroyer.

Why? Destroyers didn't have armour over their entire external surface. Spaceships do.

 

[phavoc]

Why? Destroyers didn't have armour over their entire external surface. Spaceships do.

Armor does not equal hull damage resistance. Spaceships only have armor if they budget for it. Otherwise the basic hull isn't considered armor (though it, like a destroyer's hull) provide protection from light weaponry.

 

[sideranautae]

Why? Destroyers didn't have armour over their entire external surface. Spaceships do.

Armor does not equal hull damage resistance. Spaceships only have armor if they budget for it. Otherwise the basic hull isn't considered armor (though it, like a destroyer's hull) provide protection from light weaponry.

Um, the scaling based on tonnage is for ARMOR points. So, again, what are talking about with .50 cal and destroyers vis-a-vis the ARMOR scaling subject in THIS post?

 

[sideranautae]

Ok. As recommended by Rikki it is 20 tons as the break point. Anything below 20 tons is a "vehicle" and has its armor points multiplied by 0.25.

However, if a vehicle sports a 1 ton ship turret weapon and, has a ship (or small craft) sized PP, it does ship scale damage!

 

[phavoc]

Why? Destroyers didn't have armour over their entire external surface. Spaceships do.

Armor does not equal hull damage resistance. Spaceships only have armor if they budget for it. Otherwise the basic hull isn't considered armor (though it, like a destroyer's hull) provide protection from light weaponry.

Um, the scaling based on tonnage is for ARMOR points. So, again, what are talking about with .50 cal and destroyers vis-a-vis the ARMOR scaling subject in THIS post?

I guess you are missing the point. In most of your posts you talk about trying to "correct" Traveller rules into being more realistic based on your point of view.

A merchant ship should not have any armor built into it, period - with the exception of ships intended for combat. Why? Because it's not economical to do so. Merchant ships throughout history have focused on profitability. There have always been exceptions, but the rule is that fighting or building a ship that can fight cuts into profits.

The quote about .50 cal was in reference to your .22 vs. a tank analogy. I said a .50 cal was a more apt analogy. I mentioned that .50 cal were used to do lots of damage, and damaging/sinking destroyers was an example. Destroyers could kill tanks (we'll stick with 5' guns and leave other armaments out), if you put them up against one another. I will assume you can follow the analogy from there.

Using today's materials, w/o any sort of molecular armor, we can send a spacecraft up and return it to the surface safely. The shuttle, built with 1970's technology is one example. The new Dragon X launcher is also designed to return to earth. Both are built without any armor. If we had anti-grav tech today the space shuttle could be built without the need for a heat shield because you simply match orbital velocity and drop towards the ground at a few 100kph.

So a Traveller merchant vessel would operate on the same principles. The material strengths could be added, but are not structurally necessary.

So I punt this issue back to you to justify why any non-military craft would ever have factor 1 armor when there is no reasonable need for it? Saying "pirates" doesn't cut mustard. We have pirates today. We had pirates from the sailing days. Merchants who used sails weren't built with thicker hulls like warships. In the days of steam some merchants got weaponry, but they got no armor. Modern ships today don't get armor. Hell, modern warships don't get armor these days, except for internal armor around magazines, CIC and other critical areas. Hulls can stop small arms fire, but .50 cal and above can penetrate the hull of a Tico-class cruiser.

 

[Nerhesi]

I guess you are missing the point. In most of your posts you talk about trying to "correct" Traveller rules into being more realistic based on your point of view.

I'm pretty sure hes talking about house-rules to modify the game to tune it to his groups' or his preferences, and it has nothing to do with making it more realistic. At least I hope not, or else he's missed the mark by quite a bit (see tiny weapons on small craft thinking massive ships and the last 50 years or modernization or so).

 

[sideranautae]

Now I need to decide whether or not vehicles can use double or triple turrets too.

That's my next decision.