Sword Worlds vehicle protection systems

[ResslynHalvik]

Sword Worlds book, pp164-165
Active Vehicle Protection System
Passive Vehicle Protection System
Standoff Decoy System
I'm trying to think about the value of fitting these to spacecraft, in two situations

(1) On a small craft whose role is to get away from attacking spacecraft
So, a gig/boat carrying important personnel from ship to planet or vice versa. Its role is not to engage with attackers, but just to get to its destination as quickly and safely as possible.
Can these vehicle systems be used to shield the small craft from attacking spacecraft?
I am guessing that maybe a 20-30dT craft might need 2 installations?

(2) Assault landing ship becoming an FOB
A spacecraft of around 300-500dT that lands on a planet being assaulted carrying a company or couple of platoons and becomes their forward operating base. Can these vehicle systems be used to shield the landing/landed ship from ground-based weapons?
I am guessing that a landed spacecraft might need, say, 1 installation per 20dT?

 

[J. L. Brown]

Unfortunately, this is something individual referees are forced to kludge together for themselves. There is no consistent (or even reasonable) 'scaling' between Starship-scale and Vehicles-scale. This will NOT be addressed, much less fixed, in the upcoming Vehicle Handbook Update. How much Starship-scale 'Power' is required to fire a Vehicle-scale plasma cannon? There is no answer. How long will the life support in your disabled APC last if you hook up the power cells from your Battle Dress to run it? There is no answer. 'Slots' vs 'Spaces' vs 'dTons' is a mess, and will not be fixed. Armor and damage scaling is weird, and will not be fixed.

This seems like exactly the sort of question that sensible people in certain situations would want an answer to, but this is not a case of 'the rules have a mistake'; nor a case of 'the rules do not exist'; it is a case of 'the rules were deliberately written as an incomplete and self-contradictory patchwork -- which were then ignored in all canon material'. It is the uncharted wilds, and you are on your own. Good luck.

 

[Endie]

Unfortunately, this is something individual referees are forced to kludge together for themselves. There is no consistent (or even reasonable) 'scaling' between Starship-scale and Vehicles-scale. This will NOT be addressed, much less fixed, in the upcoming Vehicle Handbook Update. How much Starship-scale 'Power' is required to fire a Vehicle-scale plasma cannon? There is no answer. How long will the life support in your disabled APC last if you hook up the power cells from your Battle Dress to run it? There is no answer. 'Slots' vs 'Spaces' vs 'dTons' is a mess, and will not be fixed. Armor and damage scaling is weird, and will not be fixed.

This seems like exactly the sort of question that sensible people in certain situations would want an answer to, but this is not a case of 'the rules have a mistake'; nor a case of 'the rules do not exist'; it is a case of 'the rules were deliberately written as an incomplete and self-contradictory patchwork -- which were then ignored in all canon material'. It is the uncharted wilds, and you are on your own. Good luck.

I never liked rolemaster all that much so I don't want the 4,000 page rulebook that would simulate the universe in this level of detail. I'm honestly quite relaxed about making off-the-cuff rulings on these one-offs, and the players never seem to get worked-up about it.

Edit: I'm quite keen to get a glance at your advanced copy of the Vehicle Handbook, though...

 

[J. L. Brown]

I never liked rolemaster all that much so I don't want the 4,000 page rulebook that would simulate the universe in this level of detail. I'm honestly quite relaxed about making off-the-cuff rulings on these one-offs, and the players never seem to get worked-up about it.

Edit: I'm quite keen to get a glance at your advanced copy of the Vehicle Handbook, though...

Construction rules are not intended to be for the 'I just make stuff up' crowd; they do not need them and do not use them. But having construction rules that are consistent (and that the authors follow) makes sure that the basic universe that everyone is playing in is the same starting point. It also allows reasonable answers to stuff like I posited above, and for those answers to be consistent as well.

"Hey, we have to abandon our Advanced Base, and our Grav Carrier doesn't have enough energy -- how long will suit power hold out? How much longer if we drain the dregs of the G-carrier battery into our suits? There is still energy left in the G-Carrier battery even after our suits are fully charged; how much? Can we carry the Plasma Cannon magazine with us and recharge from that? How much longer does that give us? What if we also empty our Laser Pistol magazines?"

Imagine a survival scenario presented to your players, and the author just handwaved 'The G-Garrier has 10 units of energy, enough for only 1 km of travel at the most economical speed' and the players discover that their survival suits each hold several billion units of energy -- Oops, problem solved; scenario over. This would not have been a problem, but you already handwaved in one direction, and the author handwaved in the opposite direction. Sure, you can just re-jigger the numbers where the players cannot see them -- but then you are doing extra work to fix a problem that could have been avoided. You are also taking away player agency, because a level where a workable solution might have been found is arbitrarily made unavailable to the characters.

The rules do not simulate the universe; the assumption is just that the universe works correctly, except where particular bits are specified as working differently. There is no need to write rules to accurately simulate the latent heat of water, or acceleration due to gravity, or the speed of light in a vacuum -- the real universe already has rules for that; just use those. Where space-magic happens, the only need is for it to be self-consistent -- inconsistency means needing to use more space on clarifications and special cases, so just avoid all that by being consistent in the first place.

The problem with Mongoose Traveller vehicles is that they are NOT consistent -- and the problems are obvious.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Construction rules are not intended to be for the 'I just make stuff up' crowd; they do not need them and do not use them. But having construction rules that are consistent (and that the authors follow) makes sure that the basic universe that everyone is playing in is the same starting point. It also allows reasonable answers to stuff like I posited above, and for those answers to be consistent as well.

"Hey, we have to abandon our Advanced Base, and our Grav Carrier doesn't have enough energy -- how long will suit power hold out? How much longer if we drain the dregs of the G-carrier battery into our suits? There is still energy left in the G-Carrier battery even after our suits are fully charged; how much? Can we carry the Plasma Cannon magazine with us and recharge from that? How much longer does that give us? What if we also empty our Laser Pistol magazines?"

Imagine a survival scenario presented to your players, and the author just handwaved 'The G-Garrier has 10 units of energy, enough for only 1 km of travel at the most economical speed' and the players discover that their survival suits each hold several billion units of energy -- Oops, problem solved; scenario over. This would not have been a problem, but you already handwaved in one direction, and the author handwaved in the opposite direction. Sure, you can just re-jigger the numbers where the players cannot see them -- but then you are doing extra work to fix a problem that could have been avoided. You are also taking away player agency, because a level where a workable solution might have been found is arbitrarily made unavailable to the characters.

The rules do not simulate the universe; the assumption is just that the universe works correctly, except where particular bits are specified as working differently. There is no need to write rules to accurately simulate the latent heat of water, or acceleration due to gravity, or the speed of light in a vacuum -- the real universe already has rules for that; just use those. Where space-magic happens, the only need is for it to be self-consistent -- inconsistency means needing to use more space on clarifications and special cases, so just avoid all that by being consistent in the first place.

The problem with Mongoose Traveller vehicles is that they are NOT consistent -- and the problems are obvious.

If I were winging it, I would say a power point in vehicles might be 10 in suits. 1/10 in a starship. I'd likely be wrong, but that would be my snap call.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

Soooo ... anyone got any views on whether this system works in those scenarios.
I think I'm comfortable with the second scenario - it's defending against ground weapons, on or near the ground, so we can just treat the ship as a big vehicle, I think, and install a few instances of the protection system(s) to cover all faces.

I'm less sure on the first scenario, using the protection in space to protect against space-scale weapons carried by small craft.

 

[Arkathan]

HG'22 pg 40, sidebar covers mounting vehicular weapons on a ship or craft.
A small turret holds up to 1 ton of weapons (4 spaces)
That means the standoff decoy system is a fixed mount only, and you would need one (or more) for each side.
If the ship has a deck plan, you can easily determine whether one or more devices are needed per side.

Some of those systems have a cloud height. For a tall ship, the cloud will either help the people on the ground or the bits poking out will give the enemy a solid target for bouncing ordnance off of to get shrapnel where people are likely to be... That HE round will just mess up the ship's paint but the blast radius may spray some troopers.

 

[ResslynHalvik]

Useful thoughts, thanks. Yes, "smaller weapons" section of HG.

I think my biggest residual question is what effect these protection systems have on space-scale weapons.