Vehicle and Ship Armour and Damage

[marvo]

The T20 handbook is not very clear about how you apply damage to a vehicle or starship. Here is how I see this working. Perhaps someone can fill me in if this is correct or not.

1) Vehicle and Starship armour only add to AC, they do not reduce damage the same way personal armour does.

2) On a regular hit, damage is only applied to the SI of the target. It does not damage any of the targets systems or internal components.

3) Critical hits ignor armour and do damage to the internal components of the ship. But how much damage does it do? Is the item totally destroyed on any hit, or is it's rating reduced (for components that have such)? And, is armour reduced by 1 for each critical hit received?

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Marvo:
The T20 handbook is not very clear about how you apply damage to a vehicle or starship. Here is how I see this working. Perhaps someone can fill me in if this is correct or not.

1) Vehicle and Starship armour only add to AC, they do not reduce damage the same way personal armour does.

Vehicle and Starship AR does reduce damage the same way personal armor does. (Don't forget to scale the damage as well.) However armor rating does not apply, at all, (Either to the AC or to the damage reduction.) to meson weapons. (Though Meson Screen and Configuration do.) Further in the event of a critical hit AR does not reduce damage. Further in a critical hit the AR of the vessel is reduced by one. (Though I would assume that AR is not reduced by a meson crit.)

2) On a regular hit, damage is only applied to the SI of the target. It does not damage any of the targets systems or internal components.

This one works differently for vehicles and starships.

Vehicles: Reduce SI only but on a Crit component damage is done as well as SI damage. Damging multiple components if the shot destroys the first component and still has damage points left, or damaging all the components in that part if it is an area effect weapon.

Starships: Roll on the Internal damage chart once for each hit that does a minimum of one point of damage. (But only once per hit.) Provided that the hit doesn't score twice the SI of the ship outright. (In that case there is no point of rolling internal damage.)

3) Critical hits ignore armour and do damage to the internal components of the ship. But how much damage does it do? Is the item totally destroyed on any hit, or is it's rating reduced (for components that have such)? And, is armour reduced by 1 for each critical hit received?

See above. They do both internal system damage and SI damage. They do the amount of damage, on the vehicle table, equal to the hit. On the Starship table just apply the results. And except for Meson hits yes Armor is reduced by one for each critical hit.

How Radiation damage actually works is an open question. (Does it do SI damage or not? Radiation by its nature wouldn't effect the structure of a ship or vehicle, and the internal damage it does on the tables is generally non-structural, yet you have to roll for damage with those weapons.)

Meson weapons, especially Spinal Mesons reduce your need to roll on the internal damage chart.

Usually a spinal meson crits and vaproizes the target.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Marvo:

1) Vehicle and Starship armour only add to AC, they do not reduce damage the same way personal armour does.

wrong.
On regular hits, of the same scale, apply damage exactly in the same way you would for personal combat, including damage reduction.

Exception: On meson hits, ignore AR, but use Configuration modifier and Meson Screen rating AS ARMOR for both AR and Damage Reduction.

2) On a regular hit, damage is only applied to the SI of the target. It does not damage any of the targets systems or internal components.

THat's how I understood it, both in playtest and now, for vehicles.

Starships take an internal hit any time they mark SI.

3) Critical hits ignor armour and do damage to the internal components of the ship. But how much damage does it do? Is the item totally destroyed on any hit, or is it's rating reduced (for components that have such)? And, is armour reduced by 1 for each critical hit received?

The total damage rolled is done to SI. The system hit recieves one hit. If it can take multiple, it's not out.

For starships, it wouldn't be a bad house rule to KO the system on a crit... but that's not what I read in the rules nor what we did in my playtest group.

 

[aramis]

Radiation: As playtested, yes, it does SI, representing things like EMP induced explosions, shorted circuts, small fluid expansion damage, etc.

Remembrr that radiation damage is affected by dampers as though they were armor.

 

[marvo]

Thanks for the help everyone. That clears up a lot of my question.

This still leaves one thing that bugs me... If ship armour reduces damage as per personal armour then it makes most of the weapons on small ships ineffective. Most of these only have a USP of 1 or 2, so any target with that much armour will take no damage, except on a crit. This being the case, wouldn't it be logical to outfit all ships with a minimum 1 point of armour? This would protect it 100% against any single attack, except a meson gun or nuclear missile.

This also makes the standard SDB very effective. 14 points of armour would require a USP #3 nuclear missile hit to guarantee non-radiation damage.

 

[mike wightman]

An AR of 1 only provides a damage die modifier of -1 to a single pulse laser, i.e. the pulse laser would roll d10-1 for damage. It would take an AV of 10 to guarantee preventing a single pulse laser from causing any damage.
Remember that the AR can remove all but the last die of damage (the highest rolled number at that), after which it becomes a DM for rolled damage.

 

[marvo]

Oops. You right, I forgot about the last dice of damage part. Makes a lot more sense now.
Even so, that 14 armour makes an SDB invulnerable against anyone in a small ship only mounting single weapons in their turrets. But as I interpret the rules, more than one turret can be linked together and fired centrally from the bridge or fire control to increase the USP of the weapon.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Marvo:
Oops. You right, I forgot about the last dice of damage part. Makes a lot more sense now.
Even so, that 14 armour makes an SDB invulnerable against anyone in a small ship only mounting single weapons in their turrets. But as I interpret the rules, more than one turret can be linked together and fired centrally from the bridge or fire control to increase the USP of the weapon.

Yes, weapons can be grouped into Batteries. However remember that a small craft can only have one hardpoint so only one triple turret. (And also remember it has to power those weapons.) Basically any ship with 14-15 points of armor is virtually immune to small craft. (Individually, Grouping those small craft into squadrons is an option.)
Small Craft with Nukes or Laser Heads is another option.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Radiation: As playtested, yes, it does SI, representing things like EMP induced explosions, shorted circuts, small fluid expansion damage, etc.

Remembrr that radiation damage is affected by dampers as though they were armor.

The rules don't state that Radiation damage is SI damage. It may have been intended and playtested that way but it is not part of the rules.

Radiation and EMP are two seperate effects. You will get EMP from a Nuke explosion but not from a Particle Accellerator. If your only source of Radiation damage was from Nuclear warheads then I could see that but since that isn't the case...

 

[aramis]

Bhoins, look at page 270. Is says that the special dice are "... the type of damage dice to roll."

Combat says damage, after armor is to SI. (more wordy, but top of 150, col 2.)

The section on special damage specifies if damage is negated for various things, for example, swinging a sword for subdual does no lifeblood, and does not use the OGLSRD subdual rules.

Since the section on Radiation damage (158 LC, mid page/Top of Col) does not say it doesn't go to SI, and the rules on SI say that damage is against SI for vehicles, AND the damages table (Small Craft and Starship Weapon Data, pg 270 says they are damage dice, they do damage to SI, since SI is where damage is taken, and the section on radiation damage does not specify otherwise.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Bhoins, look at page 270. Is says that the special dice are "... the type of damage dice to roll."

Combat says damage, after armor is to SI. (more wordy, but top of 150, col 2.)

The section on special damage specifies if damage is negated for various things, for example, swinging a sword for subdual does no lifeblood, and does not use the OGLSRD subdual rules.

Since the section on Radiation damage (158 LC, mid page/Top of Col) does not say it doesn't go to SI, and the rules on SI say that damage is against SI for vehicles, AND the damages table (Small Craft and Starship Weapon Data, pg 270 says they are damage dice, they do damage to SI, since SI is where damage is taken, and the section on radiation damage does not specify otherwise.

So basically what you are saying is that it is implied, or should be obvious eventhough it is never stated as such.

I can live with that. Though I still don't see how radiation can actually do structural damage. So, IMHO, something is poorly defined. Either SI being Sturctural Integrity, or Special Damage being Radiation, is imprecise.

I can see radiation causing havoc with printed circuits, I can see radiation killing or injuring people but structural damage? It isn't the nature of Radiation.

 

[aramis]

Damage is Damage. Special Damage of the type radiation changes what stops it, not where it goes. It's a D20ism; unless something is specifically changed by an attribute (like Radiation _), it follows all prior rules. (Rules argument)

Radiation damage effectively represents EMP. EMP can and does induce electron flow. Electron flow can and will do damage to metal and biological structures. There being no other convenient score to score it against, and since damage to SI is what triggers system damage rolls, radiation Damage (a series of cascade failures) is scored on SI.

As for large scale physical damage: EMP to an O2 tank can overpressure the tank, resulting in explosion. EMP can melt or make welds. EMP can cause capacitor explosions. EMP can easily fry circuits.

It IS in the nature of radiation to heat things up and to induce currents. Heating them up is a bad thing; it can destroy tempering, alter lengths, etc.

Remember, we aren't talking about being out in the LD10 range; many of these will have the LD100 range (which in atmosphere also gets massive concussion, and we've not got good separation data between radiation and concussion) or closer.

Meson radiation doesn't even represent that; it represents secondary decay within the structure, caused by energetic collisions with meson decay remnants. (In fact, I argued that meson weapons are far wimpier that in prior canon; they don't leave piles of fine dust with multiple-meter diameters.)

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Damage is Damage. Special Damage of the type radiation changes what stops it, not where it goes. It's a D20ism; unless something is specifically changed by an attribute (like Radiation _), it follows all prior rules. (Rules argument)

Radiation damage effectively represents EMP. EMP can and does induce electron flow. Electron flow can and will do damage to metal and biological structures. There being no other convenient score to score it against, and since damage to SI is what triggers system damage rolls, radiation Damage (a series of cascade failures) is scored on SI.

As for large scale physical damage: EMP to an O2 tank can overpressure the tank, resulting in explosion. EMP can melt or make welds. EMP can cause capacitor explosions. EMP can easily fry circuits.

It IS in the nature of radiation to heat things up and to induce currents. Heating them up is a bad thing; it can destroy tempering, alter lengths, etc.

Remember, we aren't talking about being out in the LD10 range; many of these will have the LD100 range (which in atmosphere also gets massive concussion, and we've not got good separation data between radiation and concussion) or closer.

Meson radiation doesn't even represent that; it represents secondary decay within the structure, caused by energetic collisions with meson decay remnants. (In fact, I argued that meson weapons are far wimpier that in prior canon; they don't leave piles of fine dust with multiple-meter diameters.)

Are we talking about the same kind of radiation? I mean Radiant Heat can cause things to burn. an ElectroMagnetic Pules is a full spectrum light emission, radiation. (As in Radiant Light.) But neither of those things has anything to do with Nuclear Radiation, except they are, all three caused simultaenously by a Nuclear blast.

Nuclear Radiation has nothing to do with EMP, in and of itself. Nuclear Radiation doesn't heat things. By throwing off Ions it can cause particles to break down or recombine into different things, but not heat.

Nuclear Radiation is part of the results of a typical particle accellerator, but a Particle Accellerator does not create an EM Pulse. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island produced plenty of Radioactive particles and Nuclear Radiation. But there was not an associated EM Pulse with either disaster.

Scientists have, for years, been trying to develope a practical weapon that produces a EM Pulse without the mess of a Nuclear Detonation. To the best of my knowledge that has been unsuccessful, so far. But it is theoretically possible. IN the mean time if a PArticle Accellerator produced an EM Pulse it would frag the accellerator and none of them would ever work, especially for a relatively long time.

 

[aramis]

EMP is magnetic force, which can and does induce current, whcih can and does induce heat.

Certain isotopic and ionization-interactions do release heat. Hence thermonuclear power. (Fision is triggered by proton or neutron radiation, either can cause it, fissionable dependant.)

Radiant heat is nothing but infared radiation. Chernobyl and 3Mile Island are NOT uncontroled thermonuclear Reactions. They are inadequately controlled ones; a HUGE difference.

All working reactors generate some EMR and magnetic force; the question is is it sufficient to be of note. To date, only uncontrolled reactions (bombs) have generated significant magnetic effects, and ALL generate some EMS, albeit often outside the visible spectrum (can we say Gamma Radiation? X-Ray Radiation?)

Likewise, EM Radiation generates current in certain materials, which by wavelength. This effect is called RADIO. We amplify minute amounts of current from antennae, and pick up signal.

Several papers have been published on "Sub-critical radiative events", nicknamed by the Nuke Arty guys I've known as "Dirty Fizzles", since the destructive radius is measured in single digit meters. It's essentially an intentional meltdown. The net effect is a combination of hard (particulate = Alpha, Beta) radiations and soft (EMSpectrum, including XRay, Gamma, IR, some Visible, and radio)

As for effective EMP weapons: the problem is the definition of effective for military means generally calls for multi-shot or remote delivered. Current EMP weapons are either:
a) Self-destructive directional radio-burst antennae (Multi-ton one-shots) which do not generate large magnetic pulse, but do generate current in target, and many of the secondary effects
b) sub-critical nuclear events, which are usually rendering the mounting platform unfit. Supposedly, the soviets test detonated a fizzle in the 1980's. Of course, neither the US nor Russia will acknowledge any tests, as they violate the test ban treaties signed by both.

Now, having seen what happens when you fly an RC plane into the beam path of a 10m satellite dish, I assure you, it's a practical weapon. (It was rendered inoperable, requiring electronics repairs.)

Now, as for P-Beams: the kinetic energy of the particles, when imparted to the target, is absorbed by elevating electrons; as the electrons decay back, they release EM radiation. That EM radiation can be in a variety of bands. Now, assuming N-Paws; if you get enough neutrons into an iron atom, it will fission, and such fission will ALSO release energy. Many materials require fewer neutrons to reach a fissionable isotope. Fision will generate proton, neutron, and or beta particles, and will also release EM. Not in any large numbers. But the kinetic energy becomes EM radiation on target. The PA weapons in Traveller have energy outputs comparable to the best terran modern ones, but able to fire sustained beams, not single shot of small packets... Oh, and there is a low power particle beam in nearly every home these days, but it's not.

Meson guns, per traveller (which uses a meson completely unrelated to the modern physics meson except in name) decays into an EM burst on target point; said point is (if the gunnery was good) inside the target object. this energetic decay is huge.

A good EM weapon experiment you can do safely at home: put a cheap digital watch in the microwave. see how long it functions.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I agree that radiation can damage electronic circuits but it isn't on the same level as the effects of EMP. Further Magnetic fields can cause similar damage to electronic devices. A powerline generates a magnetic field which given a high power, power line can damage electronic devices, interfere with radio and cause, allegedly, cause long term health problems, but again that isn't EMP. EMP is by definition an Electro Magnetic Pulse. It is a single pulse that destroyes electronic devices very quickly and effectively. (Though if you turn off your radio in your armored vehicle before the blast it will function after the EMP passes, provided the armored vehicle and an occupant survives the other components of the Nuclear blast, to turn it back on.) EMP is not general background radiation, it is not a long term effect, it is a quick flash that travels at the speed of light out from ground zero. It is different from the long term decay of electronic devices caused by bombardment of radioactive particles.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Ignoring for the moment our difference of opinion on what EMP is and whether it is caused by radioactivity or not, I have yet to see how Radiation does structural damage.

 

[Piper]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
EMP is not general background radiation, it is not a long term effect, it is a quick flash that travels at the speed of light out from ground zero. It is different from the long term decay of electronic devices caused by bombardment of radioactive particles.

Not in gross effect. I've tested electronics under both high dose-rate and large total-dose radiation. Sufficient levels of either kind will fry almost any device. While the actual mechanism may differ, the results are usually the same.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Piper:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
EMP is not general background radiation, it is not a long term effect, it is a quick flash that travels at the speed of light out from ground zero. It is different from the long term decay of electronic devices caused by bombardment of radioactive particles.

Not in gross effect. I've tested electronics under both high dose-rate and large total-dose radiation. Sufficient levels of either kind will fry almost any device. While the actual mechanism may differ, the results are usually the same. </font>[/QUOTE]But the time frame is substantially different. (From nearly instantaneous to effect over time.) And the slow death of some electronic device is not going to cause secondary explosions or structural damage. Further most starships have skin thick enough to shrug off micrometeorites, and internal compartmentalization that would do the same. Since Metals and Alloys are good insulators against radiation, some will get through but generally very low doses and that will substantially decrease over time (even a short period of time), so how does this effect against electronic devices cause Structural damage?

 

[Piper]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
But the time frame is substantially different. (From nearly instantaneous to effect over time.)

The time frame is purely dependant on the dose rate. The effect on electronics is measured in Rads in silicon per hour. The total dose needed to cause damage can occur in a *very* short span of time.

And the slow death of some electronic device is not going to cause secondary explosions or structural damage.

Structural damage? No, but the secondary effects depend on what systems fail. And the damage from total dose is not of necessity, slow.

Further most starships have skin thick enough to shrug off micrometeorites, and internal compartmentalization that would do the same. Since Metals and Alloys are good insulators against radiation, some will get through but generally very low doses and that will substantially decrease over time (even a short period of time)

Good, but far from perfect. Enhanced radiation weapons (neutron bombs) were theorized as a way to knock out massed Soviet armour. A close proximity burst releases a lot of rads. Extremely thick bulkheads of lead would work to a degree, but material of lesser density won't.

so how does this effect against electronic devices cause Structural damage?

It doesn't, certainly not over the short term. But my comment was specific to the EMP issue.

 

[Anthony]

Well, large radiation doses causes damage to crystal patterns in structural materials, making them weaker (and, at the likely energy levels of PA weapons, also making them radioactive). However, the doses required for a significant effect will kill everything else on board a hundred times over -- it's mostly a problem which comes up in designing the structure of nuclear reactors.