Armor in LBB2 ship combat?
- Thread starter skyth
- Start date
Skyth,
The Mayday/HG2 crossover rules will allow you to use the HG2 combat system which takes armor into account.
1: HG2 ranges convert to Mayday hexes; Short is 0-5 hexes and Long is 6-15 hexes.
2: Convert Mayday hexes to LBB:2 millimeters.
That's it. You can now use LBB:2's movement system with the HG2 combat system.
Regards,
Bill
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
None that I'm aware of (or at least that I can recall). It has been discussed before but I can't recall the specifics. Off the top of my head I'd probably just go with a civilian and non-combatant ships (Free-Trader and Scout/Courier for example) vs paramilitary ships (Mercenary Cruiser for example) vs military ships (Patrol Cruiser for example) idea. Civilian ships would have no armor, paramilitary would have a -1 to hit for armor taking up 5% of the hull and military ships would have a -2 to hit for armor taking up 10% of the hull. Something like that. Keep it simple. Otherwise you might as well haul out High Guard and use that 
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Getting a workable armor system into LBB2 combat has been a holy grail of my house rules for years.
I have come up with many versions but have yet to find the one that says 'that's it' to me.
The one I'm happiest with is the one where armour simply cancels out so many hits per turn depending upon armour rating.
I have come up with many versions but have yet to find the one that says 'that's it' to me.
The one I'm happiest with is the one where armour simply cancels out so many hits per turn depending upon armour rating.
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Exactly what I do...
I also look at it economically: trading ships need as much space for cargo and passengers as possible for any chance at a profit, armor takes away from that. Also, you have to look at why civilian ships even need it in the firsts place. This is similar to the argument over arming civilian ships or not - it really all depends on if its needed and balanced out by the economic impact.
So my house rule is that civilians use LBB2, military uses HG, and if the players just really really need to have armor in their Free Trader then they can have added to specific portions of the ship by section (Engineering, Bridge, Fuel Tanks, And Everything Left which=living quarters and cargo) BUT the added tonnage of armor is treated the same as if they had demountable or drop tanks that stay on the ship and cuts performance accordingly. Basically they re welding on applique armor to whatever section they feel is most important to protect.
Otherwise the habit among my players and NPCs has been to look for older military hulks to refit since they already have armored hulls. Old SBD's and small 200-400 ton range light escorts are also favorites. It's sometime more expensive to do it this way, but the performance doesn't suffer.
Although the other way once led to an amusing and tense situation when the players once got into a fight with pirates whom they disabled, but not before the pirates also damaged the player's jump and maneuver drives. So while the pirates were trying to get thier ship running again to go finish off the players, the players were all outside their ship frantically trying to cut away enough applique armor that they could run away or jump. All the while both sides' gunners would occasionally take potshots at the other.
I remember the players asking if they could just unship the damaged turret from thier 250 tonner to knock off some tonnage but I responded by reminding them they in space its not like you can just roll the cannons overboard. In the end, when they got away and added up the cost of the lost armor and the extra damage they did to their ship cutting it away they realized they probably would've done better to let the pirates fix their ship first, try to board the players' ship, and then the players might have had 2 ships instead of one that looked like a giant cheese grater worked it over.
Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
Sig, is that armor ablative?
And, if so, how do you account for the deteriorating armor strength? Decrease it per hit?
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Book 2 also has more resilient drives (well, above 400 tons, anyway) that can be up-rated to take more damage before losing performance. Simply install a higher drive letter that still gives the same performance. That drive now has "armor".
Except that the larger drive might cost more and take up more volume than a couple points of armor to protect the engineering section might. If you build a custom hull, why not allow for adding armor to the engineering section? Or any other section if not the whole ship?
The simpest method I've seen is what I did in HS before I got HG... I had some HG ships (from S7 T&G)
The armor factor is the chance of a hit being taken by the armor, destroying 1 ton of armor per hit; the chance drops when all the tons for a given factor are destroyed. I used MD tonnages to determine factors.
This adds a step:
Damage has been scored on the ship by fire.
Grab 1d per hit scored; on AV or less, score on armor
Reduce armor by 1Td per hit absorbed. Adjust AF if needed.
Roll on the normal damage chart for armor not absorbed.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
You know I really miss my old name on this forum
I've tried lots of ways to make the armour ablative, eg each hit absorbed reduces armour rating by 1, or every x number of hits reduces the armor rating by 1 where x is the tonnage of the ship/100 - the one I like best is that on a rolled hit location hull hit the armor rating is reduced by 1.
Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
You know I really miss my old name on this forum
The only way you're going to get your old tag back is to catch Hunter online. That's how I did it. He was participating in a thread, and I asked him then and there.
Otherwise, it ain't happenin'.
tbeard1999
SOC-14 1K
I think that an armor saving throw approach would work well in CT. Here's my draft of such a system:
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tbeard1999
SOC-14 1K
You're right; my intention is that most ships capable of mounting heavy turrets will do so. However, I probably over-did it. I'll revise later when I get the chance.
I also left out some additional rules:
A medium turret will take 5 "Turret" hits before being completely knocked out. A single turret is knocked out when it takes 5 hits. A double turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 3 hits; a triple turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 2 hits, a second weapon when it takes 4 hits.
A heavy turret will take 10 "Turret" hits before being completely knocked out. A single turret is knocked out when it takes 10 hits. A double turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 5 hits; a triple turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 4 hits, a second weapon when it takes 7 hits.
It may seem oversimplified but I have used a system for decades now that merged HG with LBB2 for the times when straight HG isn't used IMTU. I don't use HG really except for designing straight military or special purpose government ships and unless the players get to see the rare battle between the megaton behemoths they swim in the shadow of, they really just live in a small ship universe.
For economic reasons most civilian ships don't carry armor, most don't have a lot (if any) weapons depending on where they operate, and the exotic stuff like PAWs and meson guns are rare outside military ships (which where the players live tend to be 5000 tons and less, and older models consigned to frontier patrols).
So I use a point system for each weapon, a more detailed set of damage tables, and a point for point armor trade-off.
For example, a beam laser does 1 point, a pulse 2 points...all the weapons in a given mount hit a single location (cuts down on dice-rolling, too), each mount worth of weapons has to overcome armor levels on its own so a triple beam turret won't get through 3 points of armor no matter how many triple laser turrets you have....but missiles are the ship killers....if you were armed and facing a merchant you were tough stiff, but the same armament against a lightly armored customs corvette might just scorch the paint and make it mad...etc.
At one time I set up structural points to reflect that kind of damage to the overall integrity of the ship so a ship could actually fall apart instead of just get turned into a flying collander without eventually having the thing "sink", but in the end preferred to use referee fiat for that.
The result of these changes was that the players evolved towards battles with more boarding actions (small ships just couldn't either carry enough armament to get through the armor, or carried so much they annihilate the target), more roleplaying, and some more interesting designs coming from different regions in my game. Less bookkeeping, too.
I've posted it all elsewhere around here but if anyone's interested I can put it here too.
The key I found for the armor problem wasn't in filling in more boxes for each armor location (assuming that the players were in a rapidly maneuvering ship, not a tank), or otherwise worrying about degrading armor and weapons - just keep it simple, the action flowing and everyone had fun tearing their ships apart. A couple of us (me included) would have preferred all the grognard detail and realism, but we had Seekrieg and Air War for that when everyone else wasn't around.
For economic reasons most civilian ships don't carry armor, most don't have a lot (if any) weapons depending on where they operate, and the exotic stuff like PAWs and meson guns are rare outside military ships (which where the players live tend to be 5000 tons and less, and older models consigned to frontier patrols).
So I use a point system for each weapon, a more detailed set of damage tables, and a point for point armor trade-off.
For example, a beam laser does 1 point, a pulse 2 points...all the weapons in a given mount hit a single location (cuts down on dice-rolling, too), each mount worth of weapons has to overcome armor levels on its own so a triple beam turret won't get through 3 points of armor no matter how many triple laser turrets you have....but missiles are the ship killers....if you were armed and facing a merchant you were tough stiff, but the same armament against a lightly armored customs corvette might just scorch the paint and make it mad...etc.
At one time I set up structural points to reflect that kind of damage to the overall integrity of the ship so a ship could actually fall apart instead of just get turned into a flying collander without eventually having the thing "sink", but in the end preferred to use referee fiat for that.
The result of these changes was that the players evolved towards battles with more boarding actions (small ships just couldn't either carry enough armament to get through the armor, or carried so much they annihilate the target), more roleplaying, and some more interesting designs coming from different regions in my game. Less bookkeeping, too.
I've posted it all elsewhere around here but if anyone's interested I can put it here too.
The key I found for the armor problem wasn't in filling in more boxes for each armor location (assuming that the players were in a rapidly maneuvering ship, not a tank), or otherwise worrying about degrading armor and weapons - just keep it simple, the action flowing and everyone had fun tearing their ships apart. A couple of us (me included) would have preferred all the grognard detail and realism, but we had Seekrieg and Air War for that when everyone else wasn't around.
tbeard1999
SOC-14 1K
Revised Armor, Large Weapon and Large Turret System
Weapon and Turret Chart:
HP: Hardpoints consumed by turret.
Dmg: Damage multiple.
Cost: Cost multiple for turret, fire control and weapon. Also tonnage multiple for fire control.
Gunner: Number of gunners required.
Save: Modifier to the armor saving throw.
Armor: Cost in tons for medium armor for that turret. Heavy is double. Super heavy is triple.
1. There are 4 classes of armor -- light (CT default, no save); medium (5+ save); heavy (3+ save); super heavy (1+ save). Medium and heavier armor consumes tonnage (see below). Saving throw modifiers are to the die roll, so a -2 modifier will effectively increase a medium armor save to 7+, which is an automatic failure.
2. 3 classes of weaponry -- light (CT default), medium, heavy.
3. Medium weapons must be mounted in medium turrets. Medium weapons can be mounted in single, double or triple turrets. Heavy weapons must be mounted in Heavy turrets.
4. Medium and heavy weapons cost a multiple of their base CT cost per the chart. Fire control costs and weighs the indicated multiple of their base CT cost and weight. Medium and Heavy weapon turrets use the indicated number of hardpoints and require the indicated gunners. Each absent gunner adds a -1 to the to hit roll.
5. A medium turret will take 4 "Turret" hits before being completely knocked out. A single turret is knocked out when it takes 4 hits. A double turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 2 hits; a triple turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 2 hits, a second weapon when it takes 3 hits.
6. Turrets may be armored to a level equal to or less than the ship. Armor tonnage per turret is given on the chart above and costs the same as ship armor (MCr0.2 per ton). If turrets are armored differently for the ship, make armor saves after rolling for hit location.
7. A heavy turret will take 9 "Turret" hits before being completely knocked out. A single turret is knocked out when it takes 9 hits. A double turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 5 hits; a triple turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 3 hits, a second weapon when it takes 6 hits.
8. Armor costs MCr0.2 per ton of armor installed.
9. Armor tonnage is dependent on hull size:
10. Component Armor (Very Optional). Discrete components may be armored on a starship. The armor costs MCr0.2 per ton. To determine the tonnage such armor consumes, consult the chart below. The drives may all be armored as a group -- total the tonnage of all drives to determine the tonnage of the armor. For sizes that do not appear on the chart, use the next largest size. For components >300 tons, use the next nearest hull size on the hull armor chart above. EDIT: You can use this chart to determine how much tonnage armor would consume on small craft. A 30 ton slow boat, for instance, could be armored to medium level by allocating 12 tons of cargo space to armor. A 40 ton slow pinnace could even have heavy armor -- 29 tons. Not entirely sure why you'd want to do this, but you could.
12. Note that this system requires hard choices on the player's part. In general, lighter weapons will do more damage against lightly armored targets than heavy weapons will. Conversely, heavy weapons will do more damage than light weapons against heavily armored targets. At the extremes, (assuming 100% hits scored), this means that 9 light laser triple turrets will do no damage against Super Heavy Armor, while a single heavy laser triple turret will average 12 hits. Yet against an unarmored target, the light laser triple turret will average 30 hits while the single heavy laser triple turret will average 18 hits. As a general rule, light weapons are most effective against light armor, medium weapons against medium armor and heavy weapons against heavy/super heavy armor.
EDIT: Additional rule -- Medium missiles require 4 hits to be destroyed by anti-missile fire. Heavy missiles require 9 hits to be destroyed by anti-missile fire.
Weapon and Turret Chart:
Code:
Turret/
Weapon HP Dmg Cost Gunner Save Armor
Light 1 x1 x1 1 0 1
Medium 4 x3 x5 2 -2 4
Heavy 9 x6 x11 4 -4 6HP: Hardpoints consumed by turret.
Dmg: Damage multiple.
Cost: Cost multiple for turret, fire control and weapon. Also tonnage multiple for fire control.
Gunner: Number of gunners required.
Save: Modifier to the armor saving throw.
Armor: Cost in tons for medium armor for that turret. Heavy is double. Super heavy is triple.
1. There are 4 classes of armor -- light (CT default, no save); medium (5+ save); heavy (3+ save); super heavy (1+ save). Medium and heavier armor consumes tonnage (see below). Saving throw modifiers are to the die roll, so a -2 modifier will effectively increase a medium armor save to 7+, which is an automatic failure.
2. 3 classes of weaponry -- light (CT default), medium, heavy.
3. Medium weapons must be mounted in medium turrets. Medium weapons can be mounted in single, double or triple turrets. Heavy weapons must be mounted in Heavy turrets.
4. Medium and heavy weapons cost a multiple of their base CT cost per the chart. Fire control costs and weighs the indicated multiple of their base CT cost and weight. Medium and Heavy weapon turrets use the indicated number of hardpoints and require the indicated gunners. Each absent gunner adds a -1 to the to hit roll.
5. A medium turret will take 4 "Turret" hits before being completely knocked out. A single turret is knocked out when it takes 4 hits. A double turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 2 hits; a triple turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 2 hits, a second weapon when it takes 3 hits.
6. Turrets may be armored to a level equal to or less than the ship. Armor tonnage per turret is given on the chart above and costs the same as ship armor (MCr0.2 per ton). If turrets are armored differently for the ship, make armor saves after rolling for hit location.
7. A heavy turret will take 9 "Turret" hits before being completely knocked out. A single turret is knocked out when it takes 9 hits. A double turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 5 hits; a triple turret loses 1 weapon (owning player's choice) when it takes 3 hits, a second weapon when it takes 6 hits.
8. Armor costs MCr0.2 per ton of armor installed.
9. Armor tonnage is dependent on hull size:
Code:
Hull
Size Medium Heavy Sheavy
100 30 60 90
200 45 90 135
300 55 110 165
400 70 140 210
500 80 160 240
600 90 180 270
700 100 200 300
800 110 220 330
900 120 240 360
1000 125 250 375
2000 200 400 600
3000 260 520 780
4000 320 640 960
5000 370 740 111010. Component Armor (Very Optional). Discrete components may be armored on a starship. The armor costs MCr0.2 per ton. To determine the tonnage such armor consumes, consult the chart below. The drives may all be armored as a group -- total the tonnage of all drives to determine the tonnage of the armor. For sizes that do not appear on the chart, use the next largest size. For components >300 tons, use the next nearest hull size on the hull armor chart above. EDIT: You can use this chart to determine how much tonnage armor would consume on small craft. A 30 ton slow boat, for instance, could be armored to medium level by allocating 12 tons of cargo space to armor. A 40 ton slow pinnace could even have heavy armor -- 29 tons. Not entirely sure why you'd want to do this, but you could.
Code:
Component
Size Med Hvy SHvy
1 1 3 4
2 2 4 6
3 3 5 8
4 3 6 10
5 4 7 11
10 6 12 18
15 8 15 23
20 9 19 28
25 11 22 32
30 12 24 36
35 13 27 40
40 15 29 44
45 16 32 48
50 17 34 51
55 18 36 55
60 19 39 58
65 20 41 61
70 21 43 64
75 22 45 67
80 23 47 70
85 24 49 73
90 25 51 76
95 26 52 79
100 27 54 81
105 28 56 84
110 29 58 87
115 30 60 89
120 31 61 92
125 31 63 94
150 36 71 107
200 43 86 129
250 50 100 150
300 56 113 16912. Note that this system requires hard choices on the player's part. In general, lighter weapons will do more damage against lightly armored targets than heavy weapons will. Conversely, heavy weapons will do more damage than light weapons against heavily armored targets. At the extremes, (assuming 100% hits scored), this means that 9 light laser triple turrets will do no damage against Super Heavy Armor, while a single heavy laser triple turret will average 12 hits. Yet against an unarmored target, the light laser triple turret will average 30 hits while the single heavy laser triple turret will average 18 hits. As a general rule, light weapons are most effective against light armor, medium weapons against medium armor and heavy weapons against heavy/super heavy armor.
EDIT: Additional rule -- Medium missiles require 4 hits to be destroyed by anti-missile fire. Heavy missiles require 9 hits to be destroyed by anti-missile fire.
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Not to be picky, but does TL play any role in say, reducing armor volume while maintaining the same degree of protection, or increasing protection at the same volume?
I just use the HG system, but if the players want (or myself) to have armor in the drive and bridge sections they design for it using the regular rules and those compartments' volumes.
Not that your method isn't good. It just seems too "Seekriegy" -like the part about heavy weapons doing less damage to lighter armored ships than to heavy armored ones- I mean, have you ever tried to explain that to a non-wargamer or non-military historian? It gives me hives to imagine.
And after the mid-80's roleplayers with wargaming backgrounds thinned out enough that I haven't had a lot of players who cared about much more than "Did I hit it? Great, how much damage?" ...and they don't want to roll a lot of dice or look up a lot of charts to do it. Or they try to get me to run one of those monster D20 games with 5000 pages of rules, in which case I light their hair on fire and roll them out the door.
Also, since I've read the threads on your Commonwealth small ship universe is this how you run it? And how well is it received?
I just use the HG system, but if the players want (or myself) to have armor in the drive and bridge sections they design for it using the regular rules and those compartments' volumes.
Not that your method isn't good. It just seems too "Seekriegy" -like the part about heavy weapons doing less damage to lighter armored ships than to heavy armored ones- I mean, have you ever tried to explain that to a non-wargamer or non-military historian? It gives me hives to imagine.
And after the mid-80's roleplayers with wargaming backgrounds thinned out enough that I haven't had a lot of players who cared about much more than "Did I hit it? Great, how much damage?" ...and they don't want to roll a lot of dice or look up a lot of charts to do it. Or they try to get me to run one of those monster D20 games with 5000 pages of rules, in which case I light their hair on fire and roll them out the door.
Also, since I've read the threads on your Commonwealth small ship universe is this how you run it? And how well is it received?
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tbeard1999
SOC-14 1K
It probably should, but I thought it would be more in the spirit of CT if it didn't.
An easy way to add that would be to halve the tonnage required at TL14+ and increase it by 50% at TL9-.
My opinion is that armor -- that acts like armor in the real world at any rate -- will almost always trigger an arms race in armor piercing weapons. And it has generally been the case that armor piercing weapons traded damage for penetration to some degree. I thought that would be an interesting dynamic to model in CT, so I added it.
It also allows for starships that look something like WWI and WWII dreadnoughts -- a small number of very heavy weapons, along with a large number of smaller weapons. (Consider a 5000 ton ship -- it could mount 3 triple heavy turrets and 23 triple light turrets, much like the archetypal WWII US battleships...)
And note that heavy weapons are merely less effective (on a per-hardpoint basis) than light weapons against light armor. A heavy weapon will still do a great deal more damage than a light weapon.
Not yet. This is actually my long-threatened "Big Danged Turrets" variant and it needs playtesting.
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Absolutely, but thats why I get itchy imaging trying to explain that to the majority of players I've had for the last 10-15 years...most of them seem to think Traveller is Star Trek or Babylon 5 and have no idea why a heavy armor piercing round might actually do less damage than one that doesn't have to punch through heavy armor.
But that leads me to wondering why this dynamic would apply to energy weapons? Railguns and missiles I'd get, but energy weapons rely on less kinetic energy for penetration. Or are you figuring its to reflect heat diffusion?
Sounds like it. My ships (at least the LBB2 ones) have tended to look like pre-dreadnought ships ever since HG came out. I dropped the whole bay weapons are in open configurable bays, and decided they were just "Big Dang Turrets". I confess a large part of this is my love for the ships of the era (I have a nice collection of models of that era in stock and on display), and also the influence of Robotech and Spacecruiser Yamato. Big honking turrets, rows of barbettes, and lots of little turrets for intercepting missiles and torpedo/bomber fighters.
That and I love saying to the players, "Well, ok, you are still 4 turns to jump and you see the two forward PAW battery turrets turn to bear on your ship...the comms speaker announces - This is the HMS Hastings, we have you locked and are prepared to fire, heave to and prepare to be boarded please."
The players ask, "Oh, just turrets, well heck those aren't that big."
I laugh and say, "Noooo, those are 100-ton PAW bay turrets. They look a lot like the triple 16" batteries on a battleship. Only bigger."
tbeard1999
SOC-14 1K
Sadly, I made no such analysis. I just wanted there to be a qualitative difference between big weapons and small ones (other than the amount of damage done). And of course, I wanted Big Darned Turrets.
However, armor piercing weapons must generally focus more energy on a smaller area compared with general purpose weapons. This is true whether we're talking about kinetic energy rounds, high explosive armor piercing rounds or lasers. I think it's reasonable to argue that this reduces the actual damage that gets through. More penetration, less damage.
Yeah, me too.
And these rules will give you a reason to have BDTs -- they are most effective against heavily armored ships. These rules also allow a warship to directly devote tonnage to combat power, in the form of armor--something sadly missing from CT.
As for your players, just show them some of these ships:
