MT Vehicle Design System

[Ranger]

This is not a ship question, but I thought I would bring it here as this group seems to be the most gear oriented.

I got a bunch of MT stuff from an old friend over Thanksgiving, including 101 Vehicles, and finally got a chance to go through it over the last few days. One thing I was looking at the design system and realized that armor valuses are for all aspects of the vehicle. That seems fine for most civilian vehicles, but combat vehicles are usually front heavy on armor. I was thinking of using a multiple system to get the armor value for the following

Front: 2.5
Side: .75
Rear: .25
Top: .10
Belly: .05

If this basic multiple works, then I'd have to convert it to a log system to get the actual armor values.

Is this worth the effort or would it be better to just wing it if it comes down to it?

All thought apriciated,

Rob

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Ranger:
Is this worth the effort or would it be better to just wing it if it comes down to it?

Depends on how much time your players spend shooting at vehicles. If they only take the occasional pot shot then wing it or ignore it.

If on the other hand they are members of an elite tank killer merc unit the extra effort (really just a few hours with a calculator and some scratch paper) could really pay off.

On the other other hand It is not imediately obvious to me that the kinds of armor differentiation that make sense for ground vehicles that can expect fire to be greatly channeled toward the front facing and especially away from the belly,rear, and top are particularly usefull for a grav vehicle that can expect to receive fire from all arcs.

So go to it, have fun, and report the results here.

 

[Tobias]

I´d rather suggest the following:

For vehicles in which you want different armor in different aspects, multiply the total armor value by twenty, then divide up the new value among the front, sides, rear, top and belly and divide the assigned value by the number given. (The assumed percentage of the vehicle surface for each facing is in parentheses.)

Front 2 (10%)
Sides (both) 6 (15% each)
Rear 2 (10%)
Top 5 (25%)
Belly 5 (25%)

This way, you have more freedom to design military vehicles the way you want. The surface percentages are the same ones as in Fire, Fusion and Steel btw.

If you want to do yourself a favor (IMHO) buy Striker and take a good look at it. You will realize that MT is just a slightly toned down version of the Striker vehicle design system. You could easily design just the hulls with striker and plug the rest of MT into it*. Similarily, you could use the weapon design sequences from Striker to make MT weapons. And if you´re like me, you will realize at this point that Striker was probably better to begin with...

But if you absolutely want to use MT, try out the method described above.

Regards,

Tobias

* A caveat here. MT vehicle hulls only weigh (and cost) about half as much as they should.