Silly Question - ship armor

[jhulse]

This may be a silly question that has been talked to death in the past, but can a ship be covered in reflect armor to help reduce damage from ships lasers? Imagine an "all chrome" ship.
Some friends raised the question and I didn't really have an answer.
Any thoughts or rules I'm not aware of?

 

[mike wightman]

And here's another, can T20 starships have the vehicle chameleon armour option?

 

[far-trader]

Not silly questions at all gentlemen, if nothing else they get the imagination going

So, and just my opinion of course...

Hull armor (vehicle and ship) is tough enough that it already has it's maximum defense versus anything you can do to it. Adding Reflec quality coating to it won't help, in the same way that Reflec didn't give a better armor bonus to Combat Armor on a personal scale in CT. I've also come to think of Reflec as much more than a shiny tinfoil jumpsuit for several reasons, including the cost and required TL. In CT it also had some small defensive value against some light attacks. So it is probably more like a light ballistic suit with thousands of small diffraction mirrors each backed with a solid state cooling device. So a laser hit is splashed off in a nice prismatic spray of normal light and the heat transfer is diffused across the whole area of the suit by the linked ss cooling cells. This is why Reflec won't work worn inside Combat Armor or BattleDress, the light and heat would be unable to escape quickly enough in the confines of the sealed armor (besides both those armors already have such a system built in IMO and logically). The other lighter armors 'breath' enough to allow Reflec to be worn under them.

Of course an all chrome ship would be in some books very cool, I prefer black myself, so black that when you look straight at it you risk serious retinal damage as your eyes try vainly to focus on infinity

As for the chameleon options I allow it IMTU, and have some notes on how to apply it around here somewhere.

 

[Theophilus]

Originally posted by far-trader:
So it is probably more like a light ballistic suit with thousands of small diffraction mirrors each backed with a solid state cooling device. So a laser hit is splashed off in a nice prismatic spray of normal light and the heat transfer is diffused across the whole area of the suit by the linked ss cooling cells.

Of course, this sounds like your using a laser in the visible light spectrum, IR and X-Ray lasers aren't "light" So would reflec armor affect them.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Theophilus:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by far-trader:
So it is probably more like a light ballistic suit with thousands of small diffraction mirrors each backed with a solid state cooling device. So a laser hit is splashed off in a nice prismatic spray of normal light and the heat transfer is diffused across the whole area of the suit by the linked ss cooling cells.

Of course, this sounds like your using a laser in the visible light spectrum, IR and X-Ray lasers aren't "light" So would reflec armor affect them. </font>[/QUOTE]I think reflec would be about equally effective vs visible and IR. This would be typical of all personal and most vehicle lasers due to size and atmospheric performance issues. X-rays (and UV) are quickly absorbed by atmosphere and such lasers are really for vacuum use and in general require ship size installations (turrets and up). So yeah I wouldn't count reflec as any help vs ship lasers. If you're using them in atmosphere your range is about 1% normal, still plenty but something to keep in mind. At least that's the data for Traveller from FF&S.

 

[far-trader]

Hmm, rereading my "light ballistic suit" statement reminded me of Diplo, a light tailored armor for the well-to-do that don't want to look armored but still have some protection. It is mentioned (just one sentence) in TA1 but no stats.

Off the top of my head I'd T20'fy it as:

Diplo(tm) Tailored Armor

AR 1/1 Max Dex +8 Check 0 Cost cr200 Weight 1kg

TL 10 Speed 9m/6m

Concealable under normal clothes.

Hmm, this is straying, I have a bad habit of wandering slightly off topic

 

[aramis]

Under MT, there is a clear rules answer: Reflec dosent stack with other armor, and the better AV is used vs lasers. Since AV40 is pretty standard for ships, and reflec is 10, it's not much use for starships under MT.

Since MT is my preferred ruleset,