Re: Re:Armor

Bell, Brian K wrote:

>'Real Armor':

This is a bit easier to balance, yes:

>Armor masses 1% of ship mass per arc covered 
>  - armor mass = arcs covered * (ship mass * 0.01)
>  - Minimum mass of 1
>  - Must be purchased in 1 mass units (no fractions).

Sounds very low for the effect it has. See below:

>Effect:
>  - Against attacks that have a combined to-hit and damage roll,
>subtract 1 from the to hit roll of each die. A roll of 6 always hits.
>  - Against attacks that have a seperate roll for damage, subtract 1
>point from each damage die.

[rest snipped]

Compare this with level-2 screens:

* Effect vs beams is identical (-1 to the die makes rolls of "5" and
"6" cause 1 pt of damage; natural 6s always re-roll), EXCEPT that the
armour is considerably less likely to be degraded by threshold checks
* Armour seems to stop Needle Beams from taking out systems (they'll
still inflict hull damage on rolls of "6" though)
* Degrades D6-damage weapons more than level-1 screens degrade beams
* Can be combined with screens to give the same effect as the hated FT2
level-*3* screens - but with less vulnerability to thresholds

All in all, this armour is *much* more powerful than level-2 screens,
so needs to cost correspondingly more, or use more Mass. (Except
against K-guns, of course - reducing their "damage rolls" by 1 makes
them *more* likely to inflict double damage, not less.) 

If you retain the Mass values given above, it's worth over 20xMass -
the protection given is massive, and the armour Mass over which you can
distribute this cost is very small. I haven't had time to look at what
it'd be worth if it used more Mass, sorry.

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