Re: [ft2.5] armour v hulls

Thomas Anderson wrote:
> 
> right, here's a really stupid question.

I Beg to differ, it's a good one.
 
> why bother building ships with hulls other than fragile? for the same
mass
> as an Average hull, i can get a Fragile and a coat of armour. this
gives
> me the same amount of boxes in total, and i take thresholds later.
> 
> or am i missing something? or, rather, what am i missing?

Re-rolls. These ignore armour. Also half the damage of SMs and Torpedos,
likewise.

Thus if you get hit by 2 torps, doing 3 and 4 pts respectively, that's 2
off the armour + 1 off the hull, then 2 of the armour + 2 off the hull.

Similarly, if you get hit by a beam, and he rolls a 6, then the re-roll
damage goes directly to Hull.

So your 12 armour 4 hull ship, if hit by the 2 torps above, has 8 armour
left, but just took a threshold check with a +2, AND you only have 1
hull and 1 DC Party left. One Torpedo (not rolling a 1) or 1 beam that
rolls a 6, and it's goodnight Irene.

A 4 armour 12 hull ship would have no armour left, but would take only 1
threshold, and still have 9 hits left.

Summary: the proportion of the hits that burn through with beams is low.
Only about 20% under most conditions. But a real killer is the "multiple
thresholds per turn" die addition. Very often a ship which has lots of
armour and little hull will, when 2/3 damaged, suddenly lose 1/2 of its
systems, Life Support, Bridge etc due to multiple thresholds, and at a
time when you've just lost multiple DC Parties. So they're brittle. An
all-hull ship OTO will degrade more gradually. Thresholds come quicker,
but not lots at once, and there's usually time to repair.
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