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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oerjan Ohlson [SMTP:oerjan.ohlson@telia.com]
> Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 1:22 PM
> To:	gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> Subject:	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. 
> 
[Bri] This is exactly what I am saying. The armor in full thrust has
no relationship to the ship on which it is placed. One mass of armor
provides the same protection on a courier as on the Dread Pirate
Roberts. Unless the armor is moble and moves to intercept the 
weapon attacking the ship, it must be spread out to cover the whole 
ships (or at least the vulnerable parts if you take the view that only 
the vulnerable parts are modled by the damage boxes), thus 
reducing the thickness of the armor as it is applied over a larger 
surface area. This being the case, unless it has some PSB that 
spreads the damage equally throughout the armor, a thin 
layer of armor cannot provide the same protection as a thick layer 
of the same armor.

> 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.
> 
[Bri] True it does not model wet navies. Partly because a ship has to
worry about displacing the mass of the armor. If you took the armor off
of
a WW2 battleship and put it on a coast guard cutter, the cutter would
probably sink. Add to this the relative fragileness of the cutter, and
it
makes it more cost effective to put it on the Battleship. However, the
protection provided the cutter (if it did not sink) would greater than
when it was spread over the Battleship. In the same way, if you took 
the armor off of a frigate and used it to armor a battleship, the
battleship

would have very poor armor.
Now you could argue that armor is less effective on smaller ship 
because the hull of the smaller ship does not stand up to the 
punishment even through the armor. But this is already modled by
the number and layout of the hull boxes as well as the way that
Pulse Torpedos work (1/2 armor 1/2 hull boxes).

>  
> >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.
> 
[Bri] Sorry, I transposed letters. [bow and scrape].

> '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.
> 
[Bri] You did not indicate what you thought a valid rate for 
arc specific armor would be. With the roll maneuver, 2 may be 
enough, would I would think that it would fall toward 3.
An even exchange rate is obviously a loss to use arc specific.
At 2, you have 120 degree coverage, and only gain if they hit
BOTH arcs.
At 3, you have 180 degree coverage, but only gain on the exchange
if they hit 2 or more arcs.

> >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?
> 
[Bri] It may not be necessary at all. I was trying to figure an
incentive
to use arc specific armor. However, as you pointed out, with the
roll maneuver, and depending on the exchange rate, it may have
enough incentive built in.

> 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
----End Original Message-----

My response marked by [Bri]

---
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net
---