Starship Combat Damage

[christopher.boote]

Hi al
I haven't seen this question posted anywhere else, so here goes

According to the ref's manual (p94)

Reduce the UCP power plant factor of the
target vessel by 10 percent (minimum of 1) for each -n level
hit. For example, the Mercenary Cruiser in the lmperral Encyc1opedia
(800-ton displacement) has a power plant UCP factor
of 20/40. A power plant-1 hit reduces this by 2 (10 percent
of 20) to 18\40. Once the UCP factor is reduced to one-half
(10/40), spinal mount weapons (if any) no longer work, and the
manuever drive rating drops by one-half An additional five hits
on the Mercenary Cruiser would render the ship’s power plant
inoperative

Now that implies to me, that a PP-1 hit does 2 points of damage to a MercCruiser, but the same hit on a Type S (PP 3/6) would do only 0.3 points of damage, rounded up to 1
OK, I have no issue with that - any hit that could knock out 10% of a MercCruisers PP SHOULD wipe out 1/3 of a Scout's
But if the same hit was on a 75,000 ton Regal battlecruiser, (PP 9,457/12,610) it would wipe out ~950 damage points
As both of these hits could theoretically come from a single laser turret ... wtf?
Does anyone actually play this percentage based damage system?

 

[Zparkz]

It's been a while since I did MT. I never understood the MT or CT starship combat.
If my memory doesn't fail me it is meant that 10% of the power output is reduced. But the result will be more or less the same if we are talking about same type of hit towards two different sized powerplants. They would suffer 10% drop in power output even when the larger is twice as large as the smaller.

 

[Antony]

One of the reasons I moved from MT to TNE was this. Large vessels in the MT and for that matter the earlier HG systems are fragile.

 

[christopher.boote]

It's been a while since I did MT. I never understood the MT or CT starship combat.
If my memory doesn't fail me it is meant that 10% of the power output is reduced. But the result will be more or less the same if we are talking about same type of hit towards two different sized powerplants. They would suffer 10% drop in power output even when the larger is twice as large as the smaller.

That's the problem, it doesn't mean that for smaller plants (skewed due to rounding errors) but it does for larger ones

In theory, one beam laser, which can scrape 10% of a R-class liner's PP, can also scrape 10% off of a 1,000,000 ton Dreadnought

 

[mike wightman]

Reading the rules no weapon that isn't a spinal mount or a nuclear missile is going to cause a power plant hit anyway

 

[christopher.boote]

Reading the rules no weapon that isn't a spinal mount or a nuclear missile is going to cause a power plant hit anyway

ha <split> ir

OK.
In theory, one nuclear missile, which can take 10% off of the PP of a Merc Cruiser, can also take 10% off of the PP of a Dreadnought
This jars for me

 

[aramis]

ha <split> ir

OK.
In theory, one nuclear missile, which can take 10% off of the PP of a Merc Cruiser, can also take 10% off of the PP of a Dreadnought
This jars for me

Which is why some of us use the vehicle combat rules and the weapon stats from PM p. 80... and as often as not, the movement system from mayday.

 

[DonM]

The official system is even more vicious with the Pinpoint Location rules.