Re: [DS] Points system was [DS] Hidden Units and Recon by Fire

Ryan Gill wrote:
> 
> At 4:05 PM +0100 4/3/02, Tony Francis wrote:
> >
> >Not necessarily - there are more ways of uprating survivability than
> >bolting more plate to the side of a tank. Radical sloping of the
armour
> >would increase effective armour thickness, but _would_ actually
reduce
> >the internal space available (ie capacity) rather than increasing
weight
> >(and reducing speed). Both methods are valid.
> 
> As someone who owns two vehicles with sloped armor, that sloped armor
> allows for more spaces to put stuff.

I'm not following your reasoning here. If you slope armor, you
reduce the amount of internal space/volume, which is part of
what the capacity rating of a vehicle is, no?

> Even with my 1960's and my
> 1940's vehicles, there are lots of things you have to stow. For two
> people working and living out of a ferret, there are lots of places
> to put things, but guess what, they are taken up by radio harness
> control boxes, ammo boxes, radio spares, tools, spares for weapons,
> spare vison blocks, personal weapons.
> 
> My point is, even with sloped armor, you just have a reshaping of the
> space inside. Granted, there is likely a slight lessening of the
> internal volume, but using the M113 Zeldas as an example. The
> Israeli's bolted and hung additional armor to the outside of the
> vehicles. Overall weight went up. Same for the Achezarits (sp?), they
> went from being a T-55 tank to an APC with a 3 man crew and 7
> dismounts plus 10 tons. They even fitted a smaller engine.

Okay, how's this for a spontaneous thought (I'm rapidly
approaching my quota for the week :-/ ) - have armor take
up a capacity point for each level you have, up to the
size class of your vehicle (thus a size class 3 vehicle
would use 3 capacity points for level-3 armor). But if you
want to add on *additional* armor (ala your bolt-on armor
above), for each level over your size class reduce movement
by some factor, and possibly also have it cost another capacity
point. Thus you could PSB it away that a certain size-classed
vehicle has a certain standard max rating for armor, but if
you want to add to it, then you start incurring penalties to
the system (engine) in that it was not it was not designed to
carry that much more mass.

This is open for serious tweaking. I'm just thought-dumping
at the moment.