Re: [GZG] Overloading screens

John Atkinson wrote:

>Not entirely true in the case of Langston Fields (Alderson drive,
>Langston fields).  Depending on whether or not you are talking about
>pre-Motie fields or the post-Motie expanding fields, there are
>different nuances.

D'oh! Yes, Langston field. Thanks.

I was careful to say "better represented" rather than "perfectly."
There's always the tradeoff that the more you tailor FT rules to
fit one setting, the less they fit any other. I prefer the more
generic approach myself.

>Standard Langston fields can dissipate energy, although unless you
>essentially break contact, you won't be able to dissipate it quickly.
>They were also susceptible to "burn-through" which could damage a ship
>in specific places where a nuclear warhead temporarily punched through
>the field. That's slowly regenerating armor with a chance of a
>'critical' which could force a threshold check which could only damage
>a single system (start rolling, end when either one system is damaged
>or when all systems survive).	In relation to the weapons used, the
>hulls are fairly weak and once the shield goes completely, the ship
>goes too.

I didn't see anything in the first book or the short story "Face of
the Enemy" that suggested only a single system could be damaged at
a time. If you hit the Langston field hard enough, either with beams
or missiles, there's a brief burn through. That hits the ship, but
there's no more control over the effect than with normal weapon fire.
It might blow out an empty compartment, might hit the bridge. And
while it helps to concentrate your fire on a particular point, there
doesn't seem to be any reason why different ships firing at different
points on the Langston field can't both burn through.

To me, the existing FT layered armour would work well enough. A big
ship that concentrates lots of beam fire on the layered armour will
be more likely to get through and inflict actual hull damage than
a lot of little ships. Give the ships weak hulls and lots of armour,
and they'll stand up well until the "field" runs out, then die.

>Expanding Langston fields dissipate energy much more quickly and are
>not susceptible to burn through (function of the superconducting hull
>layers which were introduced at the same time).  On the other hand,
>when the field was overloaded, the energy storage banks would explode,
>utterly destroying the ship.  That's one long row of regenerating
>armor boxes, with only a single box of 'hull'.  And a very different
>game than standard Full Thrust.

No argument from me, FT doesn't work for this without modification.

	cheers,
	Hugh
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