Scaled Armor - Book 5 Variant

[jarednoble]

Originally posted by Anthony:
There's no particular reason it should be possible to damage capital ships with turret weapons. I would probably use a log scale for armor. At TL 15, here's one possible scaling:
1% (armor 0) is a base of 0
2% (armor 1) is a base of 2
3% (armor 2) is a base of 3
4% (armor 3) is a base of 4
6% (armor 5) is a base of 5
8% (armor 7) is a base of 6
11%(armor 10) is a base of 7
16%(armor 15) is a base of 8
Then adjust by size:
300-1000 dtons: +1
1k-3k dtons: +2
3k-10k dtons: +3
10k-30k dtons: +4
30k-100k dtons: +5
100k-300k dtons: +6
300k-1M dtons: +7
If you want dreadnaughts to be really impervious, you can put break points at 2/5/10 instead of 3/10, giving a +11 for 500k dtons and putting a Tigress at armor 19.

I think the idea of a log scale for armor is an interesting one - and there are different ways to achieve it. Construction-time scaling, or trying to build scaling into the combat resolution system. In some ways the combat system is already non-linear - I'm thinking the relationship between weapon numbers and battery factor.

I think your system achieves some similar effects to what I propose
1) small ships are limited to lighter armor: your proposal imposes a construction maximum, mine imposes higher system volumes so the ship designer tends to limit themselves.
2) Larger ships will tend towards higher armor values - Your system using size adjustments, mine by reducing the volume of a given armor level.

There are likely benefits and drawbacks to both approaches - I'm curious about your ideas for non-linear armor.

Under what circumstances do you propose awarding the "size bonus/adjustment"? Does any 100k ton ship get the +6 adjustment, or only those that have purchased some particular level of armor?

 

[jarednoble]

Originally posted by Anthony:
There's no particular reason it should be possible to damage capital ships with turret weapons. I would probably use a log scale for armor. At TL 15, here's one possible scaling:
1% (armor 0) is a base of 0
2% (armor 1) is a base of 2
3% (armor 2) is a base of 3
4% (armor 3) is a base of 4
6% (armor 5) is a base of 5
8% (armor 7) is a base of 6
11%(armor 10) is a base of 7
16%(armor 15) is a base of 8
Then adjust by size:
300-1000 dtons: +1
1k-3k dtons: +2
3k-10k dtons: +3
10k-30k dtons: +4
30k-100k dtons: +5
100k-300k dtons: +6
300k-1M dtons: +7
If you want dreadnaughts to be really impervious, you can put break points at 2/5/10 instead of 3/10, giving a +11 for 500k dtons and putting a Tigress at armor 19.

I think the idea of a log scale for armor is an interesting one - and there are different ways to achieve it. Construction-time scaling, or trying to build scaling into the combat resolution system. In some ways the combat system is already non-linear - I'm thinking the relationship between weapon numbers and battery factor.

I think your system achieves some similar effects to what I propose
1) small ships are limited to lighter armor: your proposal imposes a construction maximum, mine imposes higher system volumes so the ship designer tends to limit themselves.
2) Larger ships will tend towards higher armor values - Your system using size adjustments, mine by reducing the volume of a given armor level.

There are likely benefits and drawbacks to both approaches - I'm curious about your ideas for non-linear armor.

Under what circumstances do you propose awarding the "size bonus/adjustment"? Does any 100k ton ship get the +6 adjustment, or only those that have purchased some particular level of armor?

 

[Anthony]

Any ship might as well have it. Even for an unarmored ship, a 100kT ship has lots and lots of raw mass available to suck up damage.

 

[Anthony]

Any ship might as well have it. Even for an unarmored ship, a 100kT ship has lots and lots of raw mass available to suck up damage.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by Anthony:
Any ship might as well have it. Even for an unarmored ship, a 100kT ship has lots and lots of raw mass available to suck up damage.

The bigger the ship, the more "hit points" it should have, but I'm not sure about an "armor rating" for big ships just because they are big.

In theory, you could kill an unarmored 100kt ship with turret weapons; it should just take a long time or require a lot of weapons since each weapon only "kills" a little bit of the ship with each hit.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by Anthony:
Any ship might as well have it. Even for an unarmored ship, a 100kT ship has lots and lots of raw mass available to suck up damage.

The bigger the ship, the more "hit points" it should have, but I'm not sure about an "armor rating" for big ships just because they are big.

In theory, you could kill an unarmored 100kt ship with turret weapons; it should just take a long time or require a lot of weapons since each weapon only "kills" a little bit of the ship with each hit.

 

[mike wightman]

Perhaps the Armour factor for the USP could be derived like the weapon factors?
The following are derived from averaging the weapon factors/number of weapons required in the turret table:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">armour hull %
USP required
0 0
1 1
2 2
3 5
4 8
5 12
6 17
7 19
8 25
.
bonus to armour factor based on TL of armour:
.
TL bonus
10-11 +1
12-13 +2
14-15 +3
.
bonus to armour factor based on size of ship:
.
hull armour
size bonus
1-A +1
B-K +2
L-P +3
Q+ +4
.
note - armour bonuses can only be added to an armoured hull</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[mike wightman]

Perhaps the Armour factor for the USP could be derived like the weapon factors?
The following are derived from averaging the weapon factors/number of weapons required in the turret table:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">armour hull %
USP required
0 0
1 1
2 2
3 5
4 8
5 12
6 17
7 19
8 25
.
bonus to armour factor based on TL of armour:
.
TL bonus
10-11 +1
12-13 +2
14-15 +3
.
bonus to armour factor based on size of ship:
.
hull armour
size bonus
1-A +1
B-K +2
L-P +3
Q+ +4
.
note - armour bonuses can only be added to an armoured hull</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[Ptah]

Imix,
Excellent stuff. I agree 100% with your first post and have had house rules on this for some time. However, your simplified formula is far superior to what I've been doing, consider it borrowed if you don't mind.

 

[Ptah]

Imix,
Excellent stuff. I agree 100% with your first post and have had house rules on this for some time. However, your simplified formula is far superior to what I've been doing, consider it borrowed if you don't mind.

 

[Ptah]

{ahhhh, it's triple posting, I think it's the touch pad on my wife's computer, sorry folks)

So to make use of this space....
Imix, I'm surprised the factor did not scale as dTons to the two-thirds. Do you have any insights on this?

 

[Ptah]

{ahhhh, it's triple posting, I think it's the touch pad on my wife's computer, sorry folks)

So to make use of this space....
Imix, I'm surprised the factor did not scale as dTons to the two-thirds. Do you have any insights on this?

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by The Oz:
The bigger the ship, the more "hit points" it should have, but I'm not sure about an "armor rating" for big ships just because they are big.

I was kind of talking High Guard scaling, which is a criticals-based system, not a hit point system. Big ships aren't appreciably tougher in High Guard.

Also, to some degree structure does result in armor. You're not going to get internals on a really big ship with a small weapon, no matter how many times you shoot.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by The Oz:
The bigger the ship, the more "hit points" it should have, but I'm not sure about an "armor rating" for big ships just because they are big.

I was kind of talking High Guard scaling, which is a criticals-based system, not a hit point system. Big ships aren't appreciably tougher in High Guard.

Also, to some degree structure does result in armor. You're not going to get internals on a really big ship with a small weapon, no matter how many times you shoot.

 

[jarednoble]

Originally posted by Ptah:
Imix, I'm surprised the factor did not scale as dTons to the two-thirds. Do you have any insights on this?

Well, if I understand my own math, the ASF is simply a ratio between a 'standard' volume and the ships volume. It doesn't directly correlate to surface area, this is abstracted out, since HG never cares about it. The standard volume of 1000 tons (the source of the 10) was chosen because the thickness of 1 factor of HG TL 14 armor gave a nice, reasonable number.

The formula I ended up with for the 'complex' ASF is
=100*(ShipVol-(4pi/3)*( (0.75*ShipVol/pi)^1/3-ArmorFactor*.05)^3)/ShipVol

(I hope that's right - I pulled the excel formula and tried to restore the right variable names in place of cell references.)

This represents the total ship volume (as a sphere) minus the volume of a smaller the sphere (radius reduced by the thickness of the given armor, expressed as a percentage of the total volume. The ShipVol is in cubic meters, and the .05 is the thickness of one factor of armor.

Did that make any sense? or am I rambling?

 

[jarednoble]

Originally posted by Ptah:
Imix, I'm surprised the factor did not scale as dTons to the two-thirds. Do you have any insights on this?

Well, if I understand my own math, the ASF is simply a ratio between a 'standard' volume and the ships volume. It doesn't directly correlate to surface area, this is abstracted out, since HG never cares about it. The standard volume of 1000 tons (the source of the 10) was chosen because the thickness of 1 factor of HG TL 14 armor gave a nice, reasonable number.

The formula I ended up with for the 'complex' ASF is
=100*(ShipVol-(4pi/3)*( (0.75*ShipVol/pi)^1/3-ArmorFactor*.05)^3)/ShipVol

(I hope that's right - I pulled the excel formula and tried to restore the right variable names in place of cell references.)

This represents the total ship volume (as a sphere) minus the volume of a smaller the sphere (radius reduced by the thickness of the given armor, expressed as a percentage of the total volume. The ShipVol is in cubic meters, and the .05 is the thickness of one factor of armor.

Did that make any sense? or am I rambling?

 

[jarednoble]

Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by The Oz:
The bigger the ship, the more "hit points" it should have, but I'm not sure about an "armor rating" for big ships just because they are big.

I was kind of talking High Guard scaling, which is a criticals-based system, not a hit point system. Big ships aren't appreciably tougher in High Guard.

Also, to some degree structure does result in armor. You're not going to get internals on a really big ship with a small weapon, no matter how many times you shoot. </font>[/QUOTE]Then how do you explain what happened to the Death Star?

Seriously though, one can argue that all the internal systems might have some form of external access, where they could be damaged - Damage to the jump grid might degrade jump performance, Exhaust or heat radiators limiting powerplant output, etc. I'm not saying it makes _perfect_ sense, but neither does the High Guard damage system that reduces the rating of a system independent of system size.

 

[jarednoble]

Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by The Oz:
The bigger the ship, the more "hit points" it should have, but I'm not sure about an "armor rating" for big ships just because they are big.

I was kind of talking High Guard scaling, which is a criticals-based system, not a hit point system. Big ships aren't appreciably tougher in High Guard.

Also, to some degree structure does result in armor. You're not going to get internals on a really big ship with a small weapon, no matter how many times you shoot. </font>[/QUOTE]Then how do you explain what happened to the Death Star?

Seriously though, one can argue that all the internal systems might have some form of external access, where they could be damaged - Damage to the jump grid might degrade jump performance, Exhaust or heat radiators limiting powerplant output, etc. I'm not saying it makes _perfect_ sense, but neither does the High Guard damage system that reduces the rating of a system independent of system size.

 

[Ptah]

Originally posted by Imix:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Ptah:
Imix, I'm surprised the factor did not scale as dTons to the two-thirds. Do you have any insights on this?

Well, if I understand my own math, the ASF is simply a ratio between a 'standard' volume and the ships volume. It doesn't directly correlate to surface area, this is abstracted out, since HG never cares about it. The standard volume of 1000 tons (the source of the 10) was chosen because the thickness of 1 factor of HG TL 14 armor gave a nice, reasonable number.

The formula I ended up with for the 'complex' ASF is
=100*(ShipVol-(4pi/3)*( (0.75*ShipVol/pi)^1/3-ArmorFactor*.05)^3)/ShipVol

(I hope that's right - I pulled the excel formula and tried to restore the right variable names in place of cell references.)

This represents the total ship volume (as a sphere) minus the volume of a smaller the sphere (radius reduced by the thickness of the given armor, expressed as a percentage of the total volume. The ShipVol is in cubic meters, and the .05 is the thickness of one factor of armor.

Did that make any sense? or am I rambling? </font>[/QUOTE]Makes perfect sense. Actually it was the same approach I took. You must be a physicists...assume the horse is a sphere.

I thought about it somemore today and it makes sense as the 1/3 power, as it is just relative thickness, so only affecting one dimension.

I'm thinking the same approach might be taken with different configurations. The main variable being surface area to volume ratio, the greater surface area the more volume armor will take.

To go outside CT, it may be interesting to allow more hard points if you have a high surface area, then you'd trade off weapon mounts for less efficient armoring.

 

[Ptah]

Originally posted by Imix:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Ptah:
Imix, I'm surprised the factor did not scale as dTons to the two-thirds. Do you have any insights on this?

Well, if I understand my own math, the ASF is simply a ratio between a 'standard' volume and the ships volume. It doesn't directly correlate to surface area, this is abstracted out, since HG never cares about it. The standard volume of 1000 tons (the source of the 10) was chosen because the thickness of 1 factor of HG TL 14 armor gave a nice, reasonable number.

The formula I ended up with for the 'complex' ASF is
=100*(ShipVol-(4pi/3)*( (0.75*ShipVol/pi)^1/3-ArmorFactor*.05)^3)/ShipVol

(I hope that's right - I pulled the excel formula and tried to restore the right variable names in place of cell references.)

This represents the total ship volume (as a sphere) minus the volume of a smaller the sphere (radius reduced by the thickness of the given armor, expressed as a percentage of the total volume. The ShipVol is in cubic meters, and the .05 is the thickness of one factor of armor.

Did that make any sense? or am I rambling? </font>[/QUOTE]Makes perfect sense. Actually it was the same approach I took. You must be a physicists...assume the horse is a sphere.

I thought about it somemore today and it makes sense as the 1/3 power, as it is just relative thickness, so only affecting one dimension.

I'm thinking the same approach might be taken with different configurations. The main variable being surface area to volume ratio, the greater surface area the more volume armor will take.

To go outside CT, it may be interesting to allow more hard points if you have a high surface area, then you'd trade off weapon mounts for less efficient armoring.