Space Combat Hit Location.
- Thread starter Rerednaw
- Start date
Old School
Mongoose
I’d roll again
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Quite:
Core said:
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Rerednaw said:
Hits hull instead.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Automatic Hull criticals are very bad news for small craft. They often have so few Hull points that every damage point is a critical, and they generally lack several categories of equipment. So the risk of crit ripple increases significantly.
Small craft that disintegrate almost automatically when shot at is not desirable IMHO.
Small craft that disintegrate almost automatically when shot at is not desirable IMHO.
Nearly all ships set aside hard points for future turrets. So a hull hit seems reasonable in place of a system hit. Or you roll again and ignore systems that were never installed in the first place. It's too easy to give the target ship a miss if the system didn't exist. The exception would be if the hit in question was to a system that was damaged or destroyed by enemy fire. In the case of a damaged system you could have it hit again, slagging it to nothingness. In the short term it's a 'free' hit. In the long term it would have to be fully replaced. A system that was already destroyed this way, hit again, could be called a 'free' hit. But that means the ship in question would have suffered a lot of damage already, plus the cost if they surivive.
That's the drawback of taking a tiny craft into combat (much like it's the drawback of taking a 500Dton ship up against a 10k Dton cruiser. Which is why small craft have advantages when it comes to hitting them to start - but the ability to absorb damage should never be one of them.
AnotherDilbert said:
That's the drawback of taking a tiny craft into combat (much like it's the drawback of taking a 500Dton ship up against a 10k Dton cruiser. Which is why small craft have advantages when it comes to hitting them to start - but the ability to absorb damage should never be one of them.
Old School
Mongoose
I agree with the RAW that the scenario presented should be a re-roll rather than a hull critical hit, but I also see nothing wrong with small craft being quite fragile in combat. Size should be an extreme advantage. If anything small craft are overpowered, not underpowered, in Mongoose rules.
Unarmored small craft that find themselves in combat should be destroyed very easily. Armored craft have a chance, but when its penetrated, it should be very bad news.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Unarmoured small craft are extremely fragile and will generally be destroyed by a single hit from a space scale weapon, with or without the proposed house-rule.
But with the house-rule a single shot from a handgun, e.g. a revolver, has a high likelihood of not just incapacitating the craft, but destroying it beyond hope of repair.
Personally I find spacecraft that regularly explodes or simply disintegrates from a single 9 mm bullet a bit too ludicrous.
But with the house-rule a single shot from a handgun, e.g. a revolver, has a high likelihood of not just incapacitating the craft, but destroying it beyond hope of repair.
Personally I find spacecraft that regularly explodes or simply disintegrates from a single 9 mm bullet a bit too ludicrous.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
I dislike blanket bans.
I only dislike the "automatically destroyed" part, not the "can take damage" part. It's only entirely unarmoured craft that are vulnerable, even a point or two of armour helps a lot against small arms.
I see it as a great feature that the systems are connected, from the personal scale to the spacecraft scale.
I only dislike the "automatically destroyed" part, not the "can take damage" part. It's only entirely unarmoured craft that are vulnerable, even a point or two of armour helps a lot against small arms.
I see it as a great feature that the systems are connected, from the personal scale to the spacecraft scale.
Yes, I play that, theoretically, a good shot (high dmg roll) from a small arm can do 1 dmg to an unarmored craft (as RAW). To my memory Effect is lost in scaling the damage. I might be wrong.
10 dton ship has 4 Hull points. This means it suffers 2 criticals from 1 dmg. Hull hit will most likely be fatal, and chances of rolling 7 are pretty high.
I see it as more fragile than a small truck since a truck won't decompress rapidly from one bullet hole in the wrong place.
Keep in mind I allow this check in two conditions - the attacker is aiming at the ship; or the attacker is in the ship discharging a weapon (and missing). Then I roll chance if he hits something important (1/6) and if, then dmg roll to see if it actually does dmg.
10 dton ship has 4 Hull points. This means it suffers 2 criticals from 1 dmg. Hull hit will most likely be fatal, and chances of rolling 7 are pretty high.
I see it as more fragile than a small truck since a truck won't decompress rapidly from one bullet hole in the wrong place.
Keep in mind I allow this check in two conditions - the attacker is aiming at the ship; or the attacker is in the ship discharging a weapon (and missing). Then I roll chance if he hits something important (1/6) and if, then dmg roll to see if it actually does dmg.
arcador said:
I think that goes to just what a structure point represents. I had in mind that it represents something more substantial than a simple air leak - some element of the design that carries the load.
I like your system for determining if small-arms fire damages something important. A 1 of 6 chance intuitively feels about right. Maybe modify it up or down depending on the nature of the vessel and where it’s hit (assuming the shot was aimed at a specific area or within a given compartment.
A
Anonymous
Guest
Regarding "explosive" decompression, I don't understand why they don't decompress before combat and put on vaccsuits. No explosive decompression, no fires, and explosions lose their pressure wave.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
CT noted this,Moppy said:
LBB2 said:
Mongoose has better hulls?
High Guard said:
Moppy said:
Military ships should, by default, decompress in the expectation of hull and interior damage. You would still have some compartments that would retain their atmospheres, like the medical section if the ship is large enough to have one because an atmospheric environment will be required for medical treatment. They may set up temporary airlocks, if they aren't already in place, to keep the atmosphere. And the section may have it's own emergency systems as well to protect casualties. Smaller ships might use the messhall or some other larger area to do the same. Really small ships though wouldn't be able to do much more than keep a stateroom or other compartment under pressure if needed.
As far as vacsuits, yeah, all crew should be in them on a warship once it goes to general quarters in anticipation of combat. A suit will give them a better chance (and also there is no danger of being sucked out. Even in a suit your chances are going to be small of surviving) of making it through. Though this assumes a suit that is of very reasonable size, without a large bulky backpack or chestpack with life support. They still have to do their jobs, so the suits need to reflect this. While the rule book says that uniforms can be space suits, the writer didn't quite know what they were talking about. A space suit has to be airtight, thus your uniform would not breathe. A person would overheat and sweat a lot. And it would be very uncomfortable and not very practical. Sure, using 52nd tech maybe your uniform carries built-in cooling and heating elements that regulates your temperature. But that's just more hand wavium to, in my opinion, fill in a logical hole. It would be much more believable and practical to call a uniform clothing and leave space suits to being space suits. It would be easier to have air stored in vacuoles within the suit itself, to have carbon nanotubes provide structure and power, and minimize your life support apparatus - all of which is more believable than just saying your uniform is a spacesuit.
Self-sealing hulls are quite possible. That technology was used in WW2 for aircraft fuel tanks. But keep in mind there certainly is a limit to how much damage they can deal with. Tanks work (self-sealing tanks today that is) by surrounding the tank itself with materials that swell when exposed to fuel. It also acts as insulation too. So while it might protect you from a .50cal round, hits in the same area, or a hole from say a 20mm, that was the upper limit of what it could be expected to handle. Hits in the same location will overwhelm the capabilities of the self-sealing. You might be able to take a laser hit or three, or say a missile hit. But if you got hit every turn in the same area, or you had a torpedo hit, then no, I'd say your self-sealing would fail and you'd suffer all the negative hits that would normally come.
I'm aware Traveller rules don't take anything like that into account, but it's helpful to know these sorts of things to incorporate into your playing session. It gives the ref a lot more tools with which to work with, and it gives the players more opportunities to roll play their characters in a dangerous environment. But if your players just wanna roll dice and live or die by them, then the ref can play that way too. But to me that's not RPGing.
