Originally posted by Hal:
<snip>
Create a 1,000 dton SDB, a 2,000 dton SDB, on up until you find the FIRST SDB that can have a chance (any chance) of inflicting a kill against a Plankwell class Dreadnaught.
One of the little projects I'm working on is my own revised Design Sequence for HG2, so I'm a little down and out on working up ships in the canon system right at the moment.
Originally posted by Hal:
See what size the SDB has to be in order to handle an Atlantic class Cruiser.
Well, N and T Spinal Mounts start appearing at the 30 kdTon to 50 kdTon range of Battle Rider, depending on what sort of design trade off's you'd like to make.
I have a design for a heavy 50 kdTon battlerider which has a Type T Spinal Mount, and might have had very heavy armor if it hadn't included a non-standard ship's component. I've allowed ship's IMTU to buy "Hardening", a variant of Armor that weighs and costs twices as much as Armor of that same Tech Level, and provides +DMs on the Interior Explosions Table, effectively acting like Armor but vs. Meson hits. It's quite surviveable in Meson fleet combat. I think it had 7 points of Armor and 8 points of Hardening. (MTU's Hardening represents armored deckplates and bulkheads, additional damage control systems, etc.)
I didn't actually roll the results, but with 8 points of Armor vs. Meson Hits, my Battle Rider would likely post-toasty the Plankwell.
In the canon ruleset? I have no idea. I think my battle rider would have had 23 points of Armor (Yes, I know, that's too high for the rules, which is one reason I invented Hardening), if it had no non-canon "Hardening" . . . oh, nevermind, I'll go find the design . . .

Well, it
was written in 1983-4 or so . . . it seems to have been from my early period of ship design, before I figured out that each bay weapon installed takes up 10 turret slots (effectively), so it's a wee bit overweaponed, but it's not like I wouldn't have just increased Armor and Hardening even higher. Or maybe carried some Heavy Fighters for sweep patrols in a no-Hardening Available situation, but it's Armor in that case would have been 15.
In the case of two canon vessels facing off with Armor 15 and Type T, well, the 50 kdTon vessel is a smaller size code, and that hurts, big time. The Plankwell would stand up longer due to its larger size code. The ideal battle rider would be 300 kdTons, so that the Plankwell would score no automatic extra damage rolls or automatic crits. And it's not as if the Mora's of the OTU couldn't afford them (and I mean
lots of them.
---------------EDIT!!!
Whoops! I meant, the spinal mount wouldn't score extra automatic criticals. Extra damage rolls are based only the WF, not the Size Code of the Target.
Originally posted by Hal:
Lets presume for the sake of argument (and I am pulling numbers out of thin air here!) that each 10 SDB factors has a 16% chance of killing a Plankwell. Does the T meson gun have a 16% chance of killing a Plankwell outright? By inference, it gets one Automatic critical hit. That one crit hit has a 1 in 36 chance of "ship vaporized" result. It has a 4 in 36 chance of a powerplant kill. It has a 3 in 36 chance of a crew kill (so to speak) - neccessitating a breakoff of hostilities. If passengers carried on a ship also count in the crew damage, then this would create results that are consistent with FFW where the loss of a single defense factor will also kill 1 battalioin's worth of troops being carried by that squadron (in fact, it is worse, because if your single squadron has a Defense factor of 6, and the SDB inflicts only 1, the squadron must lose not 1 Defense factor, but THREE - as there are no counters to represent a single Defensive factor loss.
In any event - the only reason why an SDB with a T type Spinal mount gets one automatic critical hit against a Plankwell is because the spinal size is one larger than the Plankwell ship size. If the SDB carried a single type S spinal mount? It would roll against the damage table with a plus modifier added due to armor. A Plankwell Dreadnaught has an armor level of 10. This takes the crit hit or the internal hit or Radiation hit if we're talking about particle accellerators (and a shot at a crit hit) out of reach. Meson guns are the exception to the rule of adding armor to the roll on the damage chart. On the other hand the plankwell has a level 9 Meson Screen. In order to penetrate with a meson shot against the Plankwell with a type S spinal is if you roll a 5+ after rolling to secure a hit (admittedly easy against a Plankwell dreadnaught).
The Bare minimum spinal mount that can possibly hit a Plankwell ship and get a mission kill of sorts is a Class C Meson Gun. The to hit roll is a base 5 or more to hit. Because the hull size is S, the C class Meson gun will gain a +2 bonus to hit. This is a roll to hit of a 3 or more now. Now, in order to get past the level 9 Meson Screen on the plankwell - you need to roll a 12 on 2d6. This is only a 1 in 36 chance probability. Lets say you got lucky, and managed to hit the plankwell despite its screen. In order to secure a mission kill, here are the rolls required:
2 -> 2 (results in ship vaporized)
2 -> 9 (results in powerplant disabled)
2 -> 10 (results in crew-1, no more offensive action
3 - results in crew-1 (and possibly BE kill)
5 - same as 3
7 - same as 3
So what are the cumulative odds of either a Kill or Mission Kill? I'm getting a roughly 1% to 2% chance from those figures above.
Well, HG2's odds are a bit screwy, and certainly weren't meant to be subject to this kind of analysis. I think you need a more robust combat system to lock onto that integrates with CT . . . hmmm, I'm discouraged by what I've read about Power Projection: Fleet (et al), so I'm not sure what to recommend.
Oh! I know. I'm sure you wouldn't mind designing a major robust CT-integrated starship combat system, would you, Hal?