MGT Only: 200 T J2 Trader - Cheaper better than a Far Trader
- Thread starter HG_B
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pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
At the cost of absolutely no armor. None at all. A guy with an anti vehicle weapon can hull you.
Not an anti ship weapon. An anti vehicle weapon.
Not an anti ship weapon. An anti vehicle weapon.
The entire 3I will come tumbling down!
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Not in MgT. A tank can't even penetrate 0 armor ship.
Ok, but even one laser hit and you are done. This is clearly not for a Frontier region. The existing A2 had 10 points of armor, which is where you stole the extra cargo and discount.
:rofl::rofl::rofl:
No it doesn't. It has 4 points. (which is a REALLY stupid waste of MCr & tonnage BTW) Against anything that a Pirate is likely to have (PL 2D6 being the minimum) is nothing because it is such a small hull.
You should probably study the MgT CRB before diving into analysis.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
That's 10 TONS of armor. And it is definitely where you are getting the extra cargo and fuel volume, along with not having Low Berths.
Are you using High Guard TL adjustments? Your engineering costs are not CRB compliant, and you don't appear to be paying for Streamlining.
Are you using High Guard TL adjustments? Your engineering costs are not CRB compliant, and you don't appear to be paying for Streamlining.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
And you probably shouldn't laugh at people trying to help.
Clearly you are missing the point. Stripping off armor for a measely 10 tons of cargo isn't that big a difference.
And if you are such an expert, where in either HG or the CRB does it say that vehicle scale weapons will not penetrate level zero ship scale armor?
It's 16 percent of the cargo capacity or about 20% more earning potential. That's huge for a small merchant.
I don't know about MgT, but CT ship design and combat systems did give a ship with no armor a pretty strong hull. MT made the equivalent amount of amor (i.e. zero CT armor) 40 points of MT armor.
Hans
In MgT Merc Book: "Because starship-scale weaponry is so lethal to
ground force targets
it is not often that a vehicle or heavy infantry would ever want to
make a stand against a starship. Most ground force weaponry
simply cannot muster enough damage potential to do anything
but scratch the paint of a starship. Starships are shielded from the
void of space and layered in armour designed to withstand raw star
radiation and absolute zero temperatures"
So that carries over what you noted from CT and MT. So the armor you give in MgT is to protect against ship scale weaponry. As in past editions, the example ships are not always well (read wisely) designed.
Gypsy, good catch. My spread sheet had a glitch. Add MCr.0.8 for streamlining. Total is MCr.43,287,300
instead of MCr.42,467,300 In the grand scheme no significant change.
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pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
So, by your own quote, Starships are not completely immune to ground fire like your original assertion. MOST is not ALL. MOST weapons won't penetrate a tank. Some will. Like the Missile I originally proposed.
A zero armor value gives you nothing to use to degrade the performance of an inbound anti armor missile, or an inbound anti aircraft missile. Or a PGMP-15 hit. OR...
It will withstand small arms fire. But kinetic energy kill weapons like a sabot round? Specifically designed to penetrate several inches of armor, when your ship has NONE?
All your armor-0 means is that the hull is thick enough to stay pressurized and has anti radiation properties. Does not protect against EVERY ground weapon. Therefore I am maintaining that the design is not a good one for a frontier shipping craft. After all, anti armor missiles are available to purchase readily for settlements to protect themselves from rogue Merc units.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
I haven't tried to make an A2 make it by carrying only freight in some time, but IIRC, it doesn't work very well. From my recollections, it is really a spec trade vessel. Very rarely was I able to completely fill the hold with spec trade alone and 8 tons of freight isn't worth the additional hassles, IMHO.
If you like it with 8 more tons, great. I would rather scrape the money together to have a stretched 300 ton A2 type ship with some armor between me and the natives.
What the quote says is that few ground fire weapons will do more than scratch the paint of a starship. By implication some weapons will do more than scratch the paint. But how much more? Scratch the actual hull, perhaps? Put a dent in it? There's a long way from scratching paint to actually penetrating.
Be that as it may, 0 armor is what commercial starships usually have.
Hans
Dude, if you could hear yourself...
Design note for MgT: Streamlining costs 10% of base hull cost. Adding fuel scoops to a Standard hull costs MCr.1 Therefore, make ships <300 tons Streamlined by default if you want scoops.
I wasn't aware of that. Ships have a default 40 armor pts. An FGMP-16 has 34 Pen then, 16 Dmg. I can't remember exactly how that works out in the end vs. a given armor rating though.
There are three explicit thresholds in MT.
| Level | Threshold | Vs Characters | Vs Vehicles |
| NoEffect | Pen < 0.1 * AV | ||
| NoPen: | Pen ≥ 0.1 * AV | Special | damage to structure |
| LowPen: | Pen ≥ AV | x1 damage | x1 damage to system |
| HighPen: | Pen ≥ 2AV | x2 damage | x2 damage to system |
The wording on no-pen results is awkward. the 1/10 damage appears on a casual read to apply to any nopen, but on careful reread, and considering the punctuation, it seems to be only for characters in incomplete armor or non-rigid armor.
So, AV40, your gauss rifle Pen 4 does structure damage. Note that the ratings in the Ref's Manual were errata'd in 1987 to 10x the book's calculations.
Wow! Don't fly a armor 40 ship (all civilian ships) in MT between planets (or even out to 100D limit). One micro meteor and you are toast. Which makes getting a loan for a ship impossible as the insurance would be the same cost as the ship. etc., etc. NOT well thought out at all. :rofl:
Beltstrike makes it clear that the drives generate a screening force of some kind, preventing that.
Note that I use the x0.1 damage to structure... which makes it take a LOT of fire to harm the ship in a significant way. In an average trip to the jump point, you should have a couple hits... and that means needing to do some partchwork, but it's well within mechanical 1 capabilities to repair.
After errata, the inop level on structure is kiloliters /1.5, and destroyed an additional kiloliters/0.6.
In terms of Td, that's Td*9 and Td*2.25.
So, a 100Td ship has 900/225 hits. A direct penetration KE hit has a base damage of 3... so it takes 300 such hits to render the ship disabled.
Sounds about right, actually. NASA puts stuff up that has an effective AV of about 15... and the apollo landers would be AV 1.
