Spacecraft armor rules

[RogerD]

I confess to being very surprised by the spacecraft armor rules. Specifially:

• armor is free in T5.
• There are no tech level requirements for coatings or anti-layers.
• There is no effect from the typical TL stage effects, which means you can use experimental armor at -3 tech levels with no penalties of any kind.

Am I interpreting all of that correctly? Are there existing house rules to help with this?

Why wouldn't every layer of armor adopt some anti-layer and every ship have a coating of some kind with the rules as written?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Why wouldn't every layer of armor adopt some anti-layer and every ship have a coating of some kind with the rules as written?

Yes, they would. And the anti-layers are more important than the base AV.

• armor is free in T5.

It costs space.

• There are no tech level requirements for coatings or anti-layers.

Agreed.

• There is no effect from the typical TL stage effects, which means you can use experimental armor at -3 tech levels with no penalties of any kind.

Influenced by T5.09 I would say that the stage comes at no cost nor any benefit. The default stage mod counteracts the TL difference, for a total of no change.

 

[RogerD]

I did find the TLs for the coatings and anti-layers. They are listed back in the tables (BBB2, pp.286-7). That's the only spot I could find though.

I am tempted to house rule a cost for extra armor and let the stage affect the mass and cost as normal for stage effects, with additional costs for coatings and anti-layers but that is clearly not the rule here.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I did find the TLs for the coatings and anti-layers. They are listed back in the tables (BBB2, pp.286-7). That's the only spot I could find though.

Sure, they are nominally about TL-9ish, but with stage effects they are available at lower TL, so no real limitation.

I am tempted to house rule a cost for extra armor and let the stage affect the mass and cost as normal for stage effects, with additional costs for coatings and anti-layers but that is clearly not the rule here.

I would hold off a while and see the effect before start changing the system, it's complex enough...

I don't think it's much of a problem since heavy armour is mostly for warships, that are tight and expensive enough. With half-sized Mod armour they would be smaller and less expensive for the same capability.

 

[RogerD]

Sure, they are nominally about TL-9ish, but with stage effects they are available at lower TL, so no real limitation.

I would hold off a while and see the effect before start changing the system, it's complex enough...

TL9 for the anti-layers and Ablat, 10 for Reflec, 16 for Slick. Agreed there is no real limitation since slick won‘t get used much.

Also agree on not changing the system, though I’m still tempted.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

I did find the TLs for the coatings and anti-layers. They are listed back in the tables (BBB2, pp.286-7). That's the only spot I could find though.

and it looks like I found another typo:
BBB2 P75 - Reflec defends against Burn and Heat.
(Which makes sense to me... more sense than Reflec doing nothing for Heat.)

 

[kilemall]

and it looks like I found another typo:
BBB2 P75 - Reflec defends against Burn and Heat.
(Which makes sense to me... more sense than Reflec doing nothing for Heat.)

My view is that reflec must be more of a heat shield then literally a reflector, due to the wide variations in laser wavelengths.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

My view is that reflec must be more of a heat shield then literally a reflector, due to the wide variations in laser wavelengths.

Agree.... which is why I'm leaning toward P75 being right, even if it disagrees with some other places.
I mean, TL 13+ lasers are X-ray lasers, right? How does reflective work there?
House rule, I guess (grin)

 

[mike wightman]

Ablat works by burning off when hit by a laser
Reflec can not, despite the name, actually reflect laser beams. So the idea that it instead spreads the heat is a good one.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

Ablat works by burning off when hit by a laser
Reflec can not, despite the name, actually reflect laser beams. So the idea that it instead spreads the heat is a good one.

100% agree with you....
Which is why I think there's an error in the T5.10 rules in two places and they got it right in 1

 

[Ulsyus]

• There is no effect from the typical TL stage effects, which means you can use experimental armor at -3 tech levels with no penalties of any kind.

Am I interpreting all of that correctly? Are there existing house rules to help with this?

On BBB2 p72 table D, plus on p75 table B, the AV of different armour types is listed. Eg: Plate AV = TL, while Shell AV=TL/2.

Note that this is my reading of it, and I'm keen for validation on this or to be corrected by someone.

On p75 below table D (not to be confused with p72 table D!?!) is an list of TL stage effects, which indicates when different tech stages can be used, but this seems to be misleading if taken in isolation from the Tech Level Stage Effects on BBB2 pp225-226.

If you want experimental armour, that's available 3 TLs before it's considered basic. So, if your TL 9 starship shell uses an experimental material, it's effective TL for the purposes of determining the AV is now 12, giving an armour rating of 6. If you follow the way this changes costs and such on p226 that shell will cost 10x the base MCr to fit and take up 3x the tonnage.