Re: Armour + Screens Combined

  > Do any of you out there use ships that have both screens and
  > an armoured hull, if so how do you handle them for the varying
  > damage effects that occur from different weapons.
  > Interested in any comments or Home grown rules you use.

Here are the armor rules that my group has adopted:

Armor:
(Spelled the US way; it is NOT the same as Kra'vak.   I don't like the
"Armour is the same as Screens" concept.  Screens may deflect or absorb
beam weapons and make a ship harder to hit.  But Armor wouldn't effect
the chances to hit.  I wanted something that is fundamentally
different.)

Any ship may be designed with an armored hull.	The armor consists of
both plating on the hull as well as reinforced internal cross-members.
As such, armor is part of the structure of the ship and is not subject
to threshold checks.  It cannot be lost.  Armor is available in TWO
levels.  Each level of armor will deduct 1 point of damage from each
volley	of attacks.  However, the minimum damage for a successful volley
is 1 point of damage.  The operations of Needle and EMP weapons are not
affected by armor (the systems, which the needles attack, are outside
the armor.)  All other attacks are reduced by armor.

Note:  A Volley consists of all of the attacks (of the same type) from a
single ship in a single round.	Thus all of the A, B, and C battery fire
from a battleship would be the first volley.  Needle beams could make up
the second.  Each missile counts as an individual volley, regardless of
the missiles origin.

Armor Costs:
Apply the following modifiers to the hull costs for armored ships:

Level-1 Armored hulls cost an additional 25% of the normal hull points,
i.e. 2.5 X Mass of ship.
Level-2 Armored hulls cost an additional 50% of the normal hull points,
i.e. 3 X Mass of ship.

In addition, level-1 armor takes one point of MASS and level-2 armor
takes four points of MASS.  That is Armor level squared in mass
requirements.	As you can see, armor is prohibitive at higher levels
(9 Mass at level 3 if it were available.)

No class of ship has any level of armor for free. (Kra'vak designs have
a policy that cruisers have level-1 and capital ships have level-2
armor.	 But they still have to pay for it.)