Ship's armor

[Carlobrand]

Okay, as near as I can tell, the maneuver drive doesn't care how massive a ship is. It only cares about volume. Agility cares about mass, but it's absurdly hard to get any decent agility out of a ship. And, armor doesn't affect volume. It seems to grow outward from the basic hull - which should have some impact on the maneuver drive since it cares about volume but doesn't.

So, what exactly keeps a person from slapping as much armor as he can on anything, other than cost? Or am I reading this wrong?

 

[GypsyComet]

Okay, as near as I can tell, the maneuver drive doesn't care how massive a ship is. It only cares about volume. Agility cares about mass, but it's absurdly hard to get any decent agility out of a ship. And, armor doesn't affect volume. It seems to grow outward from the basic hull - which should have some impact on the maneuver drive since it cares about volume but doesn't.

So, what exactly keeps a person from slapping as much armor as he can on anything, other than cost? Or am I reading this wrong?

The incredibly thirsty powerplants of MT require a particular design approach just to be able to approach emulation of CT designs. HG2 warships can easily be built to have significant Agility 24/7, while MT designs have to decide how many hours of Agility they can afford.

 

[McPerth]

So, what exactly keeps a person from slapping as much armor as he can on anything, other than cost? Or am I reading this wrong?

MT:RM, page 58:

Armor Factor: (...) The added value of armor for a ship may not exceed the ship's technological level times five

The problem here resides in the word "added", as it does not specify added to what.

Added to the basic one? to the 40 basic armor needed for a ship (but if so, what about crafts don't needing it)?

 

[infojunky]

The problem here resides in the word "added", as it does not specify added to what.

Added to the basic one? to the 40 basic armor needed for a ship (but if so, what about crafts don't needing it)?

In a roundabout way I just encountered the answer to this through the Striker rules for High Guard.

The answer from that route it is total added armor.

Which leads me to the question of What is the maximum amount of armor a vehicle could have...

 

[mike wightman]

I would imagine the same limit as for ship hull applies across the board.

Vehicles with starship levels of armour protection are going to be big and slow due to power plant scale efficiency.

 

[Carlobrand]

"Armor Factor: (...) The added value of armor for a ship may not exceed the ship's technological level times five"

Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant within that range. If everyone's gonna be a turtle, then it seems to me the only thing stopping them from having massive turtle shells is the cost. At that point, the only counter is mesons.

 

[infojunky]

"Armor Factor: (...) The added value of armor for a ship may not exceed the ship's technological level times five"

Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant within that range. If everyone's gonna be a turtle, then it seems to me the only thing stopping them from having massive turtle shells is the cost. At that point, the only counter is mesons.

Actually this conversation has expose a few assumptions that I had made over the years in relation to armor levels.

Consider this if the mandatory ship hull is rated at 40, the maximum of 45 armor at TL9 seems low, as well as the maximum at TL15 being 75 being low as well....

 

[McPerth]

Actually this conversation has expose a few assumptions that I had made over the years in relation to armor levels.

Consider this if the mandatory ship hull is rated at 40, the maximum of 45 armor at TL9 seems low, as well as the maximum at TL15 being 75 being low as well....

I agree that with maximum armor 75 at TL 15 (so a -11 DM on damage tables) the paradigm changes a lot from CY:HG, and there are no ships immune to lasers or missiles (even non nuclear ones).

OTOH, if the added armor is over the basic 40, you could reach armor 115 at TL15, and with a -25 DM due to armor on the damage tables, then Carlo is right that only mesons can harm them...

 

[mike wightman]

At the risk of being laughed at FSotSI has designs with armour values above 100.

There may be clarification of armour factor in the Digest/MTJournal Q&A and ship design examples.

I'm pretty sure the rule is maximum is 40 + 5xTL (note that some FSotSI designs break even this).

 

[aramis]

At the risk of being laughed at FSotSI has designs with armour values above 100.

Last I heard, there was nothing in FS that was mechanically correct...

 

[mike wightman]

I'll dig through my Digests and MT Journals - I'm sure there is an answer in there somewhere. There were some rules clarifications in Challenge too IIRC.

 

[infojunky]

I'll dig through my Digests and MT Journals - I'm sure there is an answer in there somewhere. There were some rules clarifications in Challenge too IIRC.

A quick thumb-through of 101 vehicles everything conformed to those limits or less.

 

[infojunky]

Last I heard, there was nothing in FS that was mechanically correct...

That was my understanding as well...

 

[McPerth]

At the risk of being laughed at FSotSI has designs with armour values above 100.

Yes, there are, but this is the most flawled supplement in the whole Traveller series that I''ve ever read, with nearly no salvageable design, so I would not use its designs as a show of anything.

When I saw some 30 kdton BRs carry 300 kdton of fuel to refuel other ships my patience with the book broke.

I'll dig through my Digests and MT Journals - I'm sure there is an answer in there somewhere. There were some rules clarifications in Challenge too IIRC.

I found nothing about this in Don's Consolidated errata, and he used to look at all those sources for it...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I'm pretty sure the rule is maximum is 40 + 5xTL (note that some FSotSI designs break even this).

Armor Factor: Represents the thickness of the hull. The added value of armor for a ship may not exceed the ship's technological level times five. In the case of planetoid hulls, an automatic hull armor factor is already present-the Tech Level armor restriction only applies to armor added to the hull of a planetoid.

Armor Values: Planetoid is armor value 50. Buffered planetoid is armor value 56. Additional armor may be added to a planetoid, subtract the planetoid's current armor value modifler (from the Armor Table) from the desired new armor value mass factor

This only makes sense if Mike is right.

Unfortunately this makes it trivial to carry enough armour to be immune against anything but mesons.


With a bit lenient interpretation of the rules you can have two power plants, a small for endurance and a large plant for combat with a few hours fuel, or let fuel consumption be proportional to power output (hence much lower outside combat). Riders can have fairly heavy armour and high agility.

 

[Carlobrand]

...

With a bit lenient interpretation of the rules you can have two power plants, a small for endurance and a large plant for combat with a few hours fuel, or let fuel consumption be proportional to power output (hence much lower outside combat). Riders can have fairly heavy armour and high agility.

I don't see any leniency needed. For warships I run with three plants: a main plant for 24/7 operations, a maneuver plant that powers the maneuver drive and is shut down when in jump space to conserve fuel, and a battle plant that is kept warm but only lit up when battle is imminent. Takes a little over 5 minutes on average to light up the plant, at most 10 minutes unless someone really screws up, and a combat round is 20 minutes. As long as they keep escorts out to watch for trouble, there's no real problem with getting to full operation before the shooting starts.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I don't see any leniency needed.

We have to reason around this:

SPARE SYSTEMS
Spare systems may be installed in a craft to take over in the event that the main unit is disabled.
These are backup devices and may not be in operation at the same time as the main device. The higher-output device is the mainstay; the backup device does not consume fuel or power while it IS not in use. When the main device takes damage that reduces it below the level of the backup, the backup takes over. If the backup is then damaged, the main unit returns to action. Whichever unit has the highest current factor is the one In operation; when damage is received, it is applied to the unit in operation. Under no circumstances may a backup and main device be operating at the same time.

 

[infojunky]

It really looks like another of those chained set of of decisions that lead to MT.

In that, looking at High Guard we see the Armor limit of Tech Level of the hull.

Then in Striker armor is give a different value base and a baseline is established for Starships, 40 in this case, And a chart replaces the Tech level limit, which maxes out at TL15 at 65

Which becomes the formula of TLx5 in MT.

 

[McPerth]

I'm pretty sure the rule is maximum is 40 + 5xTL (note that some FSotSI designs break even this).

Armor Factor: Represents the thickness of the hull. The added value of armor for a ship may not exceed the ship's technological level times five. In the case of planetoid hulls, an automatic hull armor factor is already present-the Tech Level armor restriction only applies to armor added to the hull of a planetoid.

Armor Values: Planetoid is armor value 50. Buffered planetoid is armor value 56. Additional armor may be added to a planetoid, subtract the planetoid's current armor value modifler (from the Armor Table) from the desired new armor value mass factor

This only makes sense if Mike is right.

Unfortunately this makes it trivial to carry enough armour to be immune against anything but mesons.

Problem with this is, as I said, the world "added" on the maximum armor factor value.

Starships have a minimum AV of 40. If we accept (as Mike says) that added value is above those 40, then ships can be immune to anything but mesons, as you say.

But we face another probelm. Vehicles have no minimum armor, so, adding armor will be from a value of 0 (so with the maximum being TL x 5)?

If so, at TL 10, any spaceship can have armor 90, while a TL 10 grav tank may only have up to armor 50. But if I state that my grav tank will also have space combat capacity, then the same tank can have armor up to 90...

With a bit lenient interpretation of the rules you can have two power plants, a small for endurance and a large plant for combat with a few hours fuel, or let fuel consumption be proportional to power output (hence much lower outside combat). Riders can have fairly heavy armour and high agility.

No leniency is needed. Many official designs have it endurance based on non combat needs, counting each day of combat as some days of endurance (see the Ships of the Black War appearing in Challenge #60 for examples).

 

[aramis]

This only makes sense if Mike is right.

Unfortunately this makes it trivial to carry enough armour to be immune against anything but mesons.


With a bit lenient interpretation of the rules you can have two power plants, a small for endurance and a large plant for combat with a few hours fuel, or let fuel consumption be proportional to power output (hence much lower outside combat). Riders can have fairly heavy armour and high agility.

Maximum AV is 5xTL, +amount for Planetoids.

Armor Factor: Represents the thickness of the hull. The
added value of armor for a ship may not exceed the ship’s
technological level times five. In the case of planetoid hulls,
an automatic hull armor factor is already present-the Tech
Level armor restriction only applies to armor added to the hull
of a planetoid.

Note that second sentence: "in the case of planetoid hulls..." This gives us the only specific case of exceeding the 5xTL limit.

Don was pretty adamant that it was clear enough. Don was wrong. (obviously, given this thread.)

I don't know who the errata master is now.