As I think all those posts are adequate for this thread, even if posted on another,I quote them here:
Just one thought more here (after reviewing a friend's Traveller 2300):
Laser and plasma personal weapons in 2300 AD had its impact Mj (megajoules) equivalent described, so we can make a conversion form Mj delivered to DP (as 0.35-0.40 Mj deliver 1 DP and 0.7-0.8 Mj deliver 2 DP, I'd say 2.5 DP/Mj).
A ship's laser with a damage multiplier of 1 uses 1 Mw from your power plant, so 1 Mj per second. Do we assume its a contiunous beam laser or a pulse one?
If it is a continuous beam, the use of 1 MW fro m the power plant means that it delivers 1 Mj/sec, so, if we assume it keeps focused on the target for about 0.5 sec (taken out of my hat, we should discuss this a little more), then the ship¡s laserd deliver 0.5 Mj per impact, not too far form hand laser rifles...
If we assume it's a pulse laser (as I do, as I believe they must be quite more powerful than laser rifles), the PP recharging some kind of capacitors that then convert the energy stored to laser pulse, then the energy of each pulse will depend on how often does it shoot. If we assume only one shot is done per space combat turn, then the energy delivered would be 60 Mj per shoot. That would be my take. keeping with the numbers above, those lasers will deliver about 150 DP.
If you find them too powerful we can assume the energy being distrubuted among 2-3 shoots a minute, only one being reflected due to general difficulty to hit, so that the DP would be "only" 50-75 DP.
Off course, Particle Accelerators use 2 Mw from PP and have a x2 multiplier, so numbers would be doubled...
Now, from here we could try to extrapolate armor.
My understanding of ship-mounted laser weapons was that they salvoed many rapid shots at a multitude of different possible target locations, more or less a barrage. They are never quite specific as to exactly how many individual shots this encompasses but the fact that they occure weighs distructive power of each.
StarCruiser Page 4 "Lasers rely on several high-energy bursts to blanket several possible course endpoints for the target."
"bursts" and "blanket" seem to indicate a good many shots per turn of firing. (I have nothing but my imagination to base this on but I see a dozen or more for a single fire weapon, more for the mounts with designations allowing multiple hits.)
Now that seems reasonable but sure makes the point for thin skinned space craft.
This thread has kind of derailed toward the weaponry thing but since we are there... how do you attribute the way armor works in spacecraft v.s. vehicles?
In vehicles its straight forward.. if damage exceeds protection, it hurts more on a linear basis, but in space combat armor simply gives a chance that the damage is stopped or if it fails, comes through in total. Why the different system?
See, though, that this makes ship's lases less powerful that some personal plasma weapons, whose DP against armor may be up to 24 (tamped explosion 6 DP). or that man-held anti vehicle missiles, whose explosive DP go up to 40.
Pehaps it should be merged with the Small Scale Weapon hits on Spacecraft thread (after all, posts have merged both issues)?
See that if we assume those values (a DP value about 12 for x1 starship weapons), using a man portable plasma gun with DP as tamped explosion 6 (so 24 for a direct hit) will be the equivalent to a x2 starship weapon hit, and an anti vehicle with an explosive DP of 40 would be like a x3 starship weapon hit.
IMHO, the easier use of those small scale against starships would be to just treat them as starship weapons hits with a multiplier of DP/12 (or whatever DP you may think those x1 space weapons deliver) rounded down. For the use of armor, I'd use the space rule (having to roll over the armor value), but applying the optional rule in a sidebar of the battle of
Beowulf in
Invasion Sourcebook that applies a modifier of +(multiplier-1) to overcome armor (and possibly a way to reduce armor by pinpoint fire, as those weapons are used at shorter ranges and precision shoots are possible). And as I understand screens, they won't work in atmosphere.
If the fact is for a boarding (so out of atmosphere), screens would work (and had to be overcome, though I'd allow the same modifier), but I would not have them degraded by stopped hits, as they represent more localized impacts (less area affected), that would probably afffect quite less the screens as they are described in
Star Cruiser. At most I'd reduce them by 1 per such hit if it rolls under its multiplier on 1d10 (though that would increase the dice rolls, so the playing time).
Another thing to discuss is how those anti-personnel weapons can be used outside atmpsphere (will plasma bolts disperse if there's not the laser heated way in atmosphere? will anti-vehicle missiles work, or they need atmosphere oxigen for the propellant to burn), etc...).
I realize that is not fully compatible with vehicles combat, but I think is th easier way to apply such damage to starships when attacked by personal weapons.
