[FT] nasty idea for spinal mounts

Jim Bell is always quick to come up with a radical idea.  He proposed
that
spinal mounts might do damage down columns (vertical rather than
horizontal).

Here are some strange consequences.

You can do tremendous damage, and through a fluke of design hit 0 or
almost
all damage control parties on a ship.  Also, that tremendous damage
might
cause no threshold checks, but when threshold checks occur, they'll come
fast and furious (a weapon that should make you think twice about
hanging
around).

In a few cases, you may find that the spinal mount hit has eliminated
the
last box on the 3rd row, though boxes remain on the first or first and
second row.  Do you take a threshold check on 4+ or not ?  Are the
"orphaned" boxes lost, leading to a triple threshold check ?

In a few really rare cases, you'll lose the last box of the last row,
and
still have boxes in the first or first and second row.	Assuming you
don't
consider the other boxes orphaned (and the ship destroyed), is there a
3+
threshold check then ?	What if all crew factors are lost and the ship
is
not destroyed ?

This concept of applying damage vertically has some unusual
consequences.
Similarly strange consequences would apply to a beam where rerolls
against
the hull penetrate lower levels of the hull instead of going vertically
across once each level of armour is penetrated.  Suppose a special beam
type
called the penetrator tends to go very deep into the ship when it
rerolls
damage due to 6's.  Against a ship with one (long) row of armour, any
6's
can be rerolled with damage penetrating to the hull.  Rerolls after that
penetrate to the next lowest layer of hull, and rerolls against the last
layer of hull either: 
a)	pass harmlessly out the side (full penetration), 
b)	slip back up to the top layer of armour (beam tracks to new spot
on
hull), or
c)	start upward from the bottom row (tunneled to the middle of the
ship, now tunneling out the other side).  
Such a weapon could create all the same contradictions mentioned above.