Re: New Armor

At 03:04 PM 5/8/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Phillip E. Pournelle writes:
>
>@:) Has Anyone given any thought to my idea to enable ships to buy
>@:) armor by the box?	Basically you buy damage boxes and place them
>@:) in their rows so that no row is greater than the one below it.
>
>  I'm pretty sure something along these lines has been mentioned
>before, but I don't know what the general consensus was.  This is
>pretty much how I've always imagined armor should work.  It would be
>worth doing a cost-benefit analysis on this armor and comparing it the
>the MT armor rules.  Your armor sounds like it might be a bit too
>heavy to be workable, but .5 mass per point is probably too light.

I've seen similar workings of this rule, myself.  In fact, here's what I
have in my house rules--

Armor
Mass 0 Cost 50% hull cost/Level
	Every level of armor adds additional damage points to the ship’s
first row
of damage boxes, equal to 15% of the total number of damage points for
that
ship (rounded down, but never less than 1 box per level).  These extra
damage points should be shaded to distinguish them as armor, as they do
not
count towards determining crew as regular damage points do.
	Cost is 50% of the hull cost per level, with a maximum of 2
levels.  Every
level of armor reduces the maximum thrust of that ship by 1, but does
not
subtract from the ship’s actual thrust rating (e.g. A ship with two
levels
of armor may have a maximum thrust of 6).
	(Note: these rules completely replace the Kra’vak Armor rules on
MT p. 25;
armor no longer gives bonuses to manuvering, nor does it convey any
special
resistance to any particular weapon).

These rules were a modification of an idea stolen from somebody else on
this list, to whom I would gladly give credit if I could remember who
they
were.

Take care,

Tre