Armor design ideas

[Aroooo]

I need some help with this. I've been muddling with this for several days, and after going through forum threads and the rules, have not found a satisfactory way to do this. So, here goes:

I'm working on the B5 ships, and I think I've settled on the armor 'scale' for lack of a better descriptive. Now, all the ship's armor is Ablative (-1). This works good for similarly sized ships fighting each other. But where it breaks down is Fighters against large ships: currently the fighters can't effect the larger ships because their armor is greater than the max damage of the fighter's weapons (so no ablative degradation). For most sci-fi genres that would seem fine, but in B5 fighters always seemed to have some ability to do some damage to even large ships (at least along similar tech levels). Not all the time, or I'd just add Penetrating to every ship weapon. (This will also come into affect when I build the B5 station too.)

I've thought about adding either some Activation Roll to the large ship's armors vs. certain types of attacks, or giving the large ships some form of Side Effect to their armor (i.e. Activation Roll 8- vs. damage that does not ablate armor) or ruling that if a Fighter makes a called shot (vs. a weapon mount or sensor array for example) then treat that attack as Penetrating.

What does the collective think?

Aroooo

[Monolith]

You could lower the DEF value and give the ships Damage Reduction; possibly even Ablative Damage Reduction. So what you have are ships which can be damage by virtually any fighter level or greater attack, but is able to withstand a great many assaults before it is finally destroyed.

You can also use the Optional Starship Hit Location Table from TUV to give damage results which can exceed the normal damage rolled. Something like that might do what you are needing as well.

[Aroooo]

Hit locations... See, that never even occured to me (although we are planning on using them).

Do the Body multiples on hit location tables adjust the 'max damage' for ablative calulations? If so, then that probably solves the issue right there.

I'll have to look Damage Reduction over again. Was not thinking of using it for ships, but it might give me the results I'm after...

Thanks!
Aroooo

[SirViss]

Another idea would be to give fighters Find Weakness (only vs Ships), since that is sorta how fighters do damage to large ships, with precision instead of brute force.

[Space Cadet]

Heh-heh-heh... just wait until you get around to trying to figure
out how to do the adaptive armor of the White Stars. That's
what is gonna be real fun for you when you get around to it.

Space Cadet :cool:

[5 Sided D6]

Maybe go with a Activation roll to the Fighters weapons, so if they make the activation roll their attack is Penetrating. Smaller ships might only have a Penetrating activation roll of 8-, bigger ones might be 11-, 12 or 14- for Capital ships.

[Arthur]

Change the way Ablative works. Define it such that the armor is damaged even if, say, only half damage is done. This could simulate "composite" armor - a layer of metal over a layer of plastic (if you've ever played Car Wars, you'll know what I mean). If you have to change the value of Lim for this (it would be quite a bit higher), then do it.

Don't ever be afraid to use the published modifiers as guidelines and work from there for similar effects.

Another way is to go with the "Star Trek" style Ablative defenses, which I have called "Reduced by Damage". In this scheme, the defenses get reduced rather than getting Activation rolls. This is good for simulating a FF that gets weaker rather than getting holes punched into it. Or use a combination.

[Agent Escafarc]

I don't remember if it was true in B5 but in Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica a lot of the damage done by the fighters was things like Turrets and other Accessilbe Focus's not protected by the Ships DEF.

[Old Man]

Buy ship armor as Entangles.
Ship shields should be Force Fields or Force Walls.

The shipyard/base has the Power and uses it on the ships it produces. Each section can be protected by it's own Entangle so hit location can matter.

[TaxiMan]

Why can't legions of fighters coordinate their attacks? Doesn't that increase their chance to hit and damage? Seems appropriate too.

[Old Man]

That would be a pretty good idea too. Make the entire squad of fighters be the entity rather than fighters as individual units. Depends on how abstract Aroooo wants to be. But that would ease up the figures for balancing fighters with ships as a group of 4-8 fighters has about as much fire power as a small ship.

[Aroooo]

Originally posted by TaxiMan
Why can't legions of fighters coordinate their attacks? Doesn't that increase their chance to hit and damage? Seems appropriate too.

Thats a really good idea, except Coordinated Attacks normally only add Stun damage that gets through defenses. How would you work it so it applied vs. the Body before defenses?

I'm also still thinking about the Find Weakness idea...

Keep those ideas coming.

Aroooo