Armor in LBB2 ship combat?

[sabredog]

Very nice, exactly!

For new players when they ask what the ship shooting at them looks like I point to my model of the USS Texas and say, "Something like that, except it flies. And your ship is about the size of the #1 turret. So do you heave to or what?"

That's why I have my armor v. weapons set up so that in the small ship world the little ships can't do much against the big ones unless they get reeeally lucky or do something reeeeallly brave (crazy, desperate, and wildly daring gets lots of leeway in my game - while whining, crying, and begging for mercy just gets you killed so I won't get a headache).

But mainly I wanted to have it so the balance of power seemed more realistic without it getting too abstract and taking away from the role-playing potential. The players once filled the nose of their cutter with reinforced concrete and kamikazied into the side of a 2kt destroyer with 3 points of armor, shot thier way to the bridge while some of them did the same to engineering and took the ship. Purely on 1 part daring-do and many parts momentum driven by fear. Not exactly realistic to have happen again maybe, but neither was Nelson's "Patented Bridge for boarding Warships".

 

[atpollard]

Weapon and Turret Chart:

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	6

Why 1-4-9 as breakpoints?

A Classic Traveller Turret is 1 dTon and takes 1 hardpoint.

A Classic Traveller Barbette is 5 dTons and takes up 1 hardpoint (but an argument could be made that it should be a 5 turret equivalent and displace 5 hardpoints while mounting 15 lasers or missile launchers).

A Classic Traveller Bay Weapon is 50 or 100 dTons and takes up 10 hardpoints.

Wouldn't 1-5-10 make more CT logical breakpoints?
[Unless of course you kept bay weapons as a still larger weapon alternative.]

PS. sorry if this was covered earlier in the thread, time is too short to read from the beginning.

 

[tbeard1999]

Why 1-4-9 as breakpoints?

A Classic Traveller Turret is 1 dTon and takes 1 hardpoint.

A Classic Traveller Barbette is 5 dTons and takes up 1 hardpoint (but an argument could be made that it should be a 5 turret equivalent and displace 5 hardpoints while mounting 15 lasers or missile launchers).

A Classic Traveller Bay Weapon is 50 or 100 dTons and takes up 10 hardpoints.

Wouldn't 1-5-10 make more CT logical breakpoints?
[Unless of course you kept bay weapons as a still larger weapon alternative.]

PS. sorry if this was covered earlier in the thread, time is too short to read from the beginning.

In general, I wanted heavy weapons -- battleship class armament -- to effectively be limited to very large starships. So ~8-10 hardpoints seemed about right, with medium weapons roughly half that.

The exact breakpoints were then mathematically determined. I wanted light weapons to be more efficient against light armor than heavy weapons; heavy weapons more efficient against heavy armor than light or medium weapons; medium weapons better in the middle, etc.

On an "average damage per space" basis, the damage and breakpoints fell out as they did. I couldn't quite get the results I wanted with a 1-5-10 progression.

In my Commonwealth campaign, "light battleships" are 3000 tons (the largest hull that you can get Jump and Maneuver-4 in). So they can mount 2 triple heavy turrets and 12 light turrets, which seems about right.

This system has no weapons bays. I'm toying with spinal mounts, though. I'll post them when they're ready.

 

[skyth]

Wouldn't 1-5-10 make more CT logical breakpoints?

You would never see medium turrets with that breakpoint setup.