Starship Armour

[MILLANDSON 306]

Is the intention to make it so most damage bounces off a ship, or not? Just seems that, with such high armour scores, most ships aren't going to be scratched by anything smaller than a full on broadside.

I'm toying with the idea of ships always taking one point of damage regardless, as it means, if nothing else, they can whittle away at each other.  

[Cifer 211]

You do realize that macrobattery hits are added together before armour comes into play while lance strikes outright ignore it, don't you?

[MILLANDSON 306]

I did know that, yes, but that means you'll always need multiple hits to do any damage at all, when one hit should be able to do damage too.

[Cifer 211]

Considering that there is no macrobattery with less than 3 strength and two DoS are very doable with a little support, I fail to see the problem.

Let's turn the question around: When every macrobattery has the ability to inflict multiple hits, why should one hit be able to deal damage? Wait, make that "why should one hit be able to deal damage to a ship decked out for war?", because it is indeed possible to harm transports (or ships with weakened armour due to past history or Machine Spirit Oddities) with a single hit, assuming they're unshielded and you have a Munitorium.

[MILLANDSON 306]

I suppose. I guess I expected it to be more viseral, rather than having half your hits bouncing off each other, which gets old quick.

[Cifer 211]

Hmm, let's see...

I've got a Tempest class frigate, equipped with two Mars Pattern Macrocannon batteries and a Munitorium battling another ship of the same type. I manage to hit with the first Mars Pattern with 2 DoS and the second with one DoS. Assuming my enemy has a void shield, that's 4D10+12, for an average of 34 damage of which 19 are deducted by the armour.

The ship will be crippled after three rounds of such hits, which are not too difficult to arrange, given a competent character (gunnery voidmaster can reroll all BS tests, good quality MIU gives +10 and Lock On Target and Put Your Backs Into It! grant additional bonuses).

[Santiago 37]

@Cifer,

 

So your not the only one that figured that a Good Quality MIU is the best free aquisition a Void Master can take at character creation...

[Cifer 211]

Not sure about "the best", considering what else can be gotten that is Extremely Rare and common or Very Rare and Good, but it's certainly among the best - not exactly surprising for the vehicle character guy, is it?

[dvang 10]

Or, you could choose Criminal path and spend 300xp (of your 500 initial) to get the good quality MIU, leaving you the free acquisition Test to get that juicy Extremely Rare weapon/armor (good quality plasma pistol, perhaps).   I think the MIU is worth 300xp for the +10% bonuses it provides to so much stuff.

[Aureus2 0]

Or you could just get one with a normal acquisition in the first session...

Its not like it's hard to buy, and you can recover from the surgery on board the ship.  Why you'd spend xp on equipment is beyond me.

With one exception, if you're a cerebral Explorator, I think spending 200 for a good quality Cognition implant (effectively buying Unnatural Intelligence x2 for 200 xp) is worthwhile.  I'm not sure you'd be able to squeeze that out as a Seneschal though, I'd have to go back and check.

[dvang 10]

Aureus said:

Or you could just get one with a normal acquisition in the first session...

Its not like it's hard to buy, and you can recover from the surgery on board the ship.  Why you'd spend xp on equipment is beyond me.

Well, it depends on your GM and your campaign. Typically, we start off on a mission, so I'd expect at least 2-3 sessions to finish a particular adventure ... then, after that mission ends, assuming you can find a port that has the technology, and a doctor to perform the operation, that you succeed in the Acquisition Test, and the doctor succeeds in his Medicae test, and you get the time to recover before the next mission ... yeah, maybe you can do it.

Or spend a few hundred xp and have it right off the bat, without having to bother with it all.

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

Getting cybernetics in play is asking for the GM to play nastyness upon you.