Re: [FT] various subsystems (arc specific armor)

Blel, Biarn K wrote:

>Before FB1, I (among others) came up with ablative armor ideas (see
>http://members.nbci.com/rlyehable/ft/techlibrary/armor.html). 
> 
>Armor could be applied to each arc. I had the amount of protection
>based on ship mass (as a given ton of armor on a smaller vessel >would
provide more protection than the same ton of armor spread over >a
larger vessel [i.e. thicker armor]).
> 
>When presented to the list, it was deemed to provide too much
>protection, which is probably the case. 
> 
>I was disappointed in FB1 that a ton of armor gave no more protection
>when applied to a corvette than to a superdreadnought.
[snip]
>But I seen no way to correct this without invalidating the existing
SSDs. >[heavy sigh]

You're trying to translate a rather abstract concept ("hull integrity")
to a very real physical property (armour thickness). If you want
accurate formulae for how volume and surface area affect armour mass,
you should play Brilliant Lances rather than Full Thrust.

If the armour mechanism is *non*-ablative, like eg. real-world armour,
FT screens and MT Kra'Vak armour, its Mass should be related to the
Mass of the ship... just like the FT screens are. This type of mechanic
"simulates" the behavior of the armour in each individual point instead
of the overall breakdown of the hull integrity the FT damage system
uses.

Tying the Mass of *ablative* armour to the ship's volume forces makes
the armour worth comparatively less on the large ship than on the small
ship (since 1 point worth of armour gives more protection to the small
ship). The result in the game is that small ships get heavily armoured,
while large capitals don't get armoured at all - it's simply not
cost-effective. If this is this what you intended then that's fine;
personally I find it rather bass-ackwards though.
 
>Perhaps Orejan has statistics from play-testing to provide the value
of
>overall protection to specific arc protection.

Who's "Orejan"? No such person on the list AFAIK.

'Twas over two years since I played with arc-limited armour, but when I
did I used 3 single-arc boxes per Mass. With the "roll ship" rule it
was quite easy to keep your best-armoured side facing the enemy even
with quite slow ships in Cinematic; it would be even easier in Vector.
Together with multi-arc weapons, this increased the amount of damage
needed to kill ships quite impressively.

>Out on a Limb:
>Or you could adapt the current protection scheme:
>Armor provides 6 points of protection. 1 per arc per armor mass. A
>ship also gains a bonus of +0.3 per arc of reduced protection (ARP). 
>APRs must be ship-wide to gain bonus. 

What do you mean with "ship-wide" here? Obviously not "all around the
ship"... or is "APR" something else than "ARP", and if so what?

...and why do you get the bonus mass at all?

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry