Question about radiation shielding on Capital ships

[billclo]

I note that in High Guard, page 42, in the section concerning Radiation Shielding, that it reduces radiation damage by 1000 rads, hardens the bridge, and provides 6 extra armor points versus radiation damage from nuclear weapons, particle beams, and fusion guns.

Page 79 High Guard mentions radiation shielding and says that ships with it suffer no damage from nuclear weapons or fusion guns. Direct contradiction versus page 42.

I'm confused. If you use the standard combat rules, it appears that you reduce rads taken by the crew by 1000 and get 6 bonus armor points versus certain weapons. If you use the capital ship/barrage rules radiation shielding is useless versus particle beams.

WTF does Mongoose mean?

 

[BFalcon]

To be honest, I'm finding a lot of things that aren't immediately obvious until you find some obscure paragraph...

I'm starting to wonder if a rewrite of High Guard may not be such a bad idea... and this time it might be wise to split it and put the ship design rules elsewhere in their own book... but either way they should copy the entirety of the main rulebook sections that refer to ship design and combat so we don't have to keep swapping back and forth - I think it just confuses everyone.

In reply to your question, don't Meson's also generate radiation?

If it helps, I'm trying to work out how to work spinal weapons vs smaller ships - whether I need to use the armour reduction and then treat normally or what?

 

[DFW]

In reply to your question, don't Meson's also generate radiation?

Only at the point of decay, inside the ship. Too late for rad shielding to be of any use.

 

[rust]

The entire treatment of radiation damage in Traveller is unconvincing, be-
ginning with something as basic as the unit used to measure the damage:
Most of the world ceased to use "rad" as a unit in 1977, and it never mea-
sured radiation damage in humans (that would have been the "rem", cal-
culated from "rad" and a quality factor depending on the type of the radi-
ation). Traveller also gets rather confused when it comes to distinguish be-
tween the various types of radiation, for example x-rays (electromagnetic
radiation) and particles (not to mention the bizarre concept of mesons).
Well, and with such unclear basics everything built upon them is likely to
continue the original confusion and lead to ever more absurd results.

 

[rust]

To add an example how simplistic Traveller's approach to radiation dama-
ge is ...

The quality factor to convert rad of radiation into rem of biological damage
is 1 for x-rays and 20 for neutrons. When a character suffers the same
amount of rad from x-ray radiation and from a neutron source, the dama-
ge caused by the neutrons is 20 times as high as the damage from the
x-rays.

Treating them the same, because the radiation in rad is the same, is like
a combat system where a pistol bullet and an artillery shell do the same
damage.

 

[locarno24]

I'm confused. If you use the standard combat rules, it appears that you reduce rads taken by the crew by 1000 and get 6 bonus armor points versus certain weapons. If you use the capital ship/barrage rules radiation shielding is useless versus particle beams.

WTF does Mongoose mean?

Right......

The 'reduce by 1000' for armoured ships is for general background radiation sources (deciding if a solar flare is intense enough to trouble you, for example). Radiation from weapons fire is worked out seperately.

However! It is not entirely clear what the meaning is.

Option the first:

If you look at the 'crew hit' table in the ship combat section, you'll see two columns - one for physical damage (exploding console syndrome) and one for radiation. Whenever you take a 'crew hit' - from a particle beam, nuclear warhead, or similar, you roll on this chart.

If you read the surrounding text, you will see (eventually) a reference that when rolling for radiation damage, you apply the ship's armour as a negative DM on the roll - meaning that, for example, any ship with armour of 12+ is immune to radiation damage (other than meson fire, which ignores the armour).

A ship with radiation shielding counts its armour as 6 higher for this purpose, meaning that ships of only armour 6 are immune to radiation, and heavily armoured warships remain immune even after several armour hits.

Option the second:

It specifies radiation damage, not 'crew hits' - my preferred version is that it simply boosts your ship's base armour value by 6 against particle and fusion guns and nukes.

I prefer this one as (a) it's simpler, (b) it matches the other equivalent rule - reflec - for the mechanic, (c) I like the idea of there being some upgrade, somewhere, which can limit the effectiveness of the go-go-gadget particle bay, which becomes the default ship-to-ship weapon at TL 8 and if you have any common sense never stops, and (d) at 0.25 MCr per dTon it's one of the most expensive upgrades available for any starship so it should bloody well do something useful: radiation shielding a warship can cost about a third of the ship's price.

 

[billclo]

I find that I prefer the second option, Locarno. You're right there ought to be some counter to the Particle Beam of Doom; basically every other weapon in the game has a counter.

 

[rust]

I prefer this one as (a) it's simpler, (b) it matches the other equivalent rule - reflec - for the mechanic, (c) I like the idea of there being some upgrade, somewhere, which can limit the effectiveness of the go-go-gadget particle bay ...

I is also quite logical. Particles have mass and kinetic energy, so they will
interact with and be slowed down or stopped by any dense material along
their path, and radiation shielding probably consists of some expensive
and very dense material - something like a layer of depleted uranium.

 

[zero]

Nice ruling!

My games very rarely deal with radiation, but seeing these points has led me to some nice realisations, especially with the spanking new TL 15 ship my Darrian Special Arm chars will have.

Btw - char gen is done (went quite well! ) and we just have to decide which weapons will fit with each char.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Just to repeat an oft mentioned point that bugs me.

Why count fusion/plasma weapons against radiation shielding. The radiation comes from the firing weapon not the packet of rapidly cooling and spreading plasma. Plasma and fusion weapons should deal radiation hits to the firing ship not the target.

 

[rust]

Why count fusion/plasma weapons against radiation shielding. The radiation comes from the firing weapon not the packet of rapidly cooling and spreading plasma. Plasma and fusion weapons should deal radiation hits to the firing ship not the target.

Another one of Traveller's mysteries. The fusion and plasma artillery wea-
pons in the Central Supply Catalogue do no radiation damage to the tar-
get, but once you mount them onto a starship they suddenly do radiation
damage, too. Must have something to do with those invisible space grem-
lins, I think.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Which is why every ship should have the anti gremlin fluffy dice hanging above the pilots worksation view screen :lol:

 

[locarno24]

Another one of Traveller's mysteries. The fusion and plasma artillery wea-
pons in the Central Supply Catalogue do no radiation damage to the tar-
get, but once you mount them onto a starship they suddenly do radiation
damage, too. Must have something to do with those invisible space grem-
lins, I think.

In fairness, it was probably felt that tracking the level of radiation sickness in an person or light vehicle hit by an emplaced PGMP was probably somewhat redundant....

 

[Kitasi]

Actually, my interpretation is that radiation shielding prevents all automatic crew hits from radiation based weapons like particle beams and nuclear missiles, in addition to adding 6 to your armour value against these weapons. It prevents the radiation portion of the damage both to the crew and to the ship's components.