Galatea said:
Well I don't think you can knock out the entire Carrier capacity of a Poseidon or an Avenger with one hit. You need to bomb the entire ship into a burning hulk to take all hangar doors out of order.
For ships like a Command Omega I can see this happen, but not on a ship built like the Poseidon.
Well, I could see making a roll then to see how many points of Carrier trait one loses. How do the doors open, electronically, magnetically, hydraulically? A power feedback, reactor explosion/implosion or a catastrophic explosion could shut any of these down. Launching and recovering fighters requires opening the ship to space on some level, what if the damage is such that one cannot close this to space? Where does all the atmosphere inside the ship go?
For Adaptive Armour - I think loosing this trait causes really big problems with ships like the Victory or the entire Vorlon Fleet. After all these ship pay for their hitpoints (especially the Vorlons which are already few in number) - and can loose half of them due to one dumb lucky hit.
And as said - you can't take out reactive armour on tank by a lucky hit on his engine. It just feels really strange.
Dumb luck can often turn the tide of battle. At the Battle of Midway in WWII, the USN caught the IJN carriers with explosives on deck. That was just dumb luck, and it cost the IJN three carriers. At Villers Bocage in France, Michael Wittmann took on most of a British Armored brigade with a single Tiger tank. That he rendered the Brigade almost completely combat ineffective before his tank was disabled was dumb luck. Particularly since he walked away!
The comparison between adaptive armor and reactive armor breaks down under close scrutiny. A Reactive armor cell is a shaped charge that detonates and explodes away from the tank when struck by sufficient force. Once the cell explodes, it is gone. There is no system that controls it, changing it to resist kinetic or chemical energy Another hit to the same point will penetrate. Adaptive armor changes to meet the type of threat presented. As yet, I've not heard a good explanation of how it does this. To say "it's part of the ship" is bogus...every system affected by criticals is "part of the ship" with the exception of Crew and Troops.
There are only four instances in which a ship loses a trait, three of them are about power (not movement) and one is labeled "Catastrophic" for a reason.
Another added to the list is the said Engineering Crit. I think denying damage control for one turn is allright but take it entirely out feels just - funless.
I think changing it to denying the ship to use "all hands to deck!" special order works better.
I'll have to bring in some experts on this one, but I believe that damage control is coordinated centrally. An officer finds out what is wrong and sends subordinate officers and noncoms to guide teams and effect repairs. An engineering hit takes this out and renders damage control ineffective.
As for being "funless" we could make that argument for nearly every damage result. What about a Vree player who loses one random arc on the Vital Systems table? All of their weapons systems are turreted! I had a Hyperion down to its last two DP, but because I had a skeleton crew, I couldn't ram my opponent. That wasn't much fun...especially since I couldn't miss!
There is a reason that these are referred to as Critical Hits. The result goes above and beyond simple damage.
