The Oz
SOC-14 1K
Armor is nice for preventing automatic critical hits from spinal PAWs; at TL13 the biggest PAW is factor-R so any 100kton+ ship is safe as it is, and even most cruisers will only need 4 to 6 factors of armor for protection (which is also all the armor they'll need for protection against nuke missile hits, too).
Really heavy armor is only needed for "doorstops" as I call them, Bill called them "turtles." These are ships intended to hold off the enemy for one HG combat turn while the rest of the fleet runs away. In classic HG ship design they are called "rocks."
If it's desired to make big ships viable in a universe with spinal meson guns I would suggest looking at the house rules for having meson screens act as "armor" against meson guns. These rules reduce the "one-shot-zot" effect of spinal meson guns while still letting them have serious killing power (since meson guns are the only weapon that always gets to roll on the Internal Explosions table). At TL13 the biggest meson gun is the factor-P which gets 15 damage rolls; a factor-3 meson screen (the best TL13 screen) would reduce the number of rolls to 12 and give a +3DM on the damage tables, just enough to prevent rolled critical hits. This way meson guns would still do lots of internal explosions (making redundant systems really important) but not blow up the ship.
Really heavy armor is only needed for "doorstops" as I call them, Bill called them "turtles." These are ships intended to hold off the enemy for one HG combat turn while the rest of the fleet runs away. In classic HG ship design they are called "rocks."
If it's desired to make big ships viable in a universe with spinal meson guns I would suggest looking at the house rules for having meson screens act as "armor" against meson guns. These rules reduce the "one-shot-zot" effect of spinal meson guns while still letting them have serious killing power (since meson guns are the only weapon that always gets to roll on the Internal Explosions table). At TL13 the biggest meson gun is the factor-P which gets 15 damage rolls; a factor-3 meson screen (the best TL13 screen) would reduce the number of rolls to 12 and give a +3DM on the damage tables, just enough to prevent rolled critical hits. This way meson guns would still do lots of internal explosions (making redundant systems really important) but not blow up the ship.