Re: Honor Harrington: Ideas for conversion?

On Tue, 20 Aug 1996 RMMDC@jazz.ucc.uno.edu wrote:

[good suggestions snipped]

> Problem:  are impeller wedges truly impervious? 

Yes... or at least the chance of anything managing to cause damage 
through them is so astronomical we'd need horrendous amounts of D6 to 
resolve it. You cannot target anything through the wedges (well, the
ship 
protected by the wedges have some very limited scanner abilities, but
not 
other ships), material objects are torn apart if they hit the wedge, and

beams are twisted aside.

> It has been a
> little while since I read these.  If they are, with a 2D system
> like FT, interposing the wedges would seem to allow for "suicide
> missions" like some destroyer running up on a superdreadnought
> and being safe from damage at long range.  This may not be a 
> problem because I seem to recall that damage is possible through
> the wedges, it's just not easy.

No. Re-read 'The Honor of the Queen'; RMNS Warlock (a heavy cruiser) 
closed to energy range with the battlecruiser PNS Saladin by interposing
its 
wedge - only missiles could harm it.

With missiles, you can always fire 'above' or 'below' the wedge - 
detonating the missile so it hits the sidewall instead. In FT terms, it 
could be something like 'if the missile ends it's move within
(reasonable 
distance - 3 m.u.?) of its _intended_target_ (remember, HHU missiles are

assigned a single target on launch, and rarely change target in 
mid-flight - it does happen, though, as RMNS Circe didn't have time to 
notice before it blew up), it hits the sidewall instead', or something 
like that.
 
> Question on the sidewalls:  these are like the shields that we are
> familiar with, but would they be like the ones in FT or are they
> more like the ablative ones that have popped up here occasionally?

They aren't exactly ablative; either the sidewall is there, or it isn't,

but it comes in sections. A ship can lose part of its sidewall, meaning 
that some stretch of one side of the ship is unprotected.

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson

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