CT Only: The Appearance of Ablat

[J Griggs]

Dear fellow travellers,

I have recently returned to Traveller after a break of many long years and I am enjoying the game more than ever (running adventures chiefly using Books 1 - 3). I was hoping to gain some insight into what ablat armour looks like. My apologies if this has been covered elsewhere on Citizens of the Imperium.

Thanking you in advance for any insights you may share.

J Griggs.

 

[jawillroy]

When I'm feeling silly, I imagine what ringmail might be like if it were made of charcoal briquettes.

 

[Dr_Skull]

Since no one has ever purchased or worn ablat armor, it must look like an unopened cardboard box.

 

[Genegeorge]

Ablat...or nothing.

I like the idea of Ablat being a closed-cell type foam that ablates under laser fire. It's either quilted/zipped/ velcroed into normal shell garments or in purpose built suits with replaceable panels. Essentially Nerf armor.

I've also thought about Ablat being an active foam like gel shaving cream that puffs up under energy weapons fire. Like popping popcorn!

Have an Ablat suit with a reflec exterior shell custom tailored for the full Jiffy Pop effect.

 

[Patron Zero]

Unless my interpretation is incorrect, I always took ablat to be more a coating or finish that could be 'layered' upon ballistic-kinetic protection armor.

Somewhat silly to be protected against laser weapons and have a more 'primitive' bullet be one's cause of demise.

 

[Reban]

Possibly all of the above and more.

Ablat is a class of system that all do the same thing in similar ways.

 

[J Griggs]

Thank you all for your prompt replies. I like your idea on the quilted expandable foam material, Genegeorge.

Two of the less-combative characters in my campaign recently purchased ablat as they imagined it had a more civilian appearance than heavy ballistic cloth.

Best wishes to all for a great weekend ahead.

Griggs.

 

[aramis]

Since no one has ever purchased or worn ablat armor, it must look like an unopened cardboard box.

I've had several PC's wear the stuff. Like, about 3 in (does some math) 32 years.

If it were to disappear, MTU wouldn't notice its absence. On the other hand, it's definitely more plausible than reflec....

The one player who always had his PC wear reflec was broken of that, when I had him suffer from being high signature (one task step easier to find on sensors) for it.

 

[Dr_Skull]

I've had several PC's wear the stuff. Like, about 3 in (does some math) 32 years.

If it were to disappear, MTU wouldn't notice its absence. On the other hand, it's definitely more plausible than reflec....

The one player who always had his PC wear reflec was broken of that, when I had him suffer from being high signature (one task step easier to find on sensors) for it.

For my next campaign (I use a house-ruled version of Striker for combat), I made Ablat act as a Flak Jacket against bullets, just so someone might be inclined to actually wear it. I also make people in Reflec more detectable by scanners of all sorts.

 

[rancke]

The one player who always had his PC wear reflec was broken of that, when I had him suffer from being high signature (one task step easier to find on sensors) for it.

I much prefer the Paranoia version of Reflec. Well... the game effect, anyway. Realism, not so much.


Hans

 

[J Griggs]

Thank you Aramis and Dr. Skull for your thoughts on reflec and sensor/scanner detection. I will certainly keep that in mind. I remember three decades ago everyone in our group ran around in cloth/reflec unless we could get our grubby little hands on combat armour or (better yet) battledress. They were wild and crazy times...

Griggs.

 

[nobby-w]

...
I was hoping to gain some insight into what ablat armour looks like.
...

In another sci-fi game (and ultimately in Traveller), I had ablative armour being a sort of foam panel soaked in an ablative gel. It was like a flak vest but with thicker panels of this stuff, maybe 3-4cm thick, in pockets in the vest (in fact, you could add ablative panels to other flak vests in my 'verse). The foam/gel matrix also had nano-particles that caused diffraction effects on the laser, spreading the beam.

The panels were backed by lining of heat-resistant cloth, something like asbestos - or a synthetic, non-carcinogenic equivalent.

The effect when hit was that quite a bit of the gunge held in the foam matrix would vapourise instantly, producing a substantial cloud of foul smelling smoke and leaving a coffee-cup sized hole in the foam.

 

[J Griggs]

Thank you Nobby-W,

That's along similar lines to what I have in mind. I've been sketching a few ideas in my campaign journal...

Best wishes.

Griggs.

 

[kilemall]

I always had it imaged as a bulky set of linked panels about the size and depth of packs of cigarettes, with the look (but not function) of reactive panels, draped over any armor, or for cheap large militias attachable larger panels to standard armor or vacc suits for quick replacement.

Composition would be something like high tech lava rocks, porous and light and bulky with air ducts oriented to venting to the exterior.

Ablat is another of those armor result things that bother me about CT, it's total either/or, when there should be bruising or low levels of hydrostatic shock or in the case of ablat/reflec an awful lot of heating that should cause burns.

 

[nobby-w]

...
Ablat is another of those armor result things that bother me about CT, it's total either/or, when there should be bruising or low levels of hydrostatic shock or in the case of ablat/reflec an awful lot of heating that should cause burns.

Striker did a much better job of handling damage than CT Book 1. In Striker you have separate rolls to hit and to penetrate. The weapon's penetration adds a + DM to the penetration roll and the armour subtracts a - DM. The result is a light (3D), serious (6D) or death (9D if you want) roll. Certain weapons (typically HE rounds, or energy weapons) had 'exploding' rounds where a wound was treated as one level more serious.

Autofire, skill, cover, evasion and other modifiers affected the to-hit roll, based at 8+, 10+ or 12+ depending on the distance to the target and the weapon's range. You could score an additional hit for every 2 rolled above the base roll; it was assumed that you fired multiple rounds during a combat turn.

Megatraveller did something along the same lines, using penetration and armour, but the MT combat system was a little closer to the base CT system.

 

[Nick H]

For no particular reason that springs to mind, in my games Ablat was made from a fibrous material, like fibre glass mixed with asbestos. The fibres would take the shot and disperse it among the fibres but at the cost of cohesion of the material. The fibrous material would be covered by a nomex, heat retardant material and fashioned into a flak jacket.

 

[Travellerspud]

...hundreds of tiny little sandbag-like scales filled with that magic sand in sand caster rounds?

 

[ian54]

...hundreds of tiny little sandbag-like scales filled with that magic sand in sand caster rounds?

Book 2 does say of Sandcasters "The specific particles used are similar to ablat personal armor".

 

[J Griggs]

Thank you, Travellerspud.

Well spotted, Ian54! I think that settles it then.

Best wishes to all for a great weekend ahead.
Happy imaginings!

Griggs.

 

[epicenter00]

I've always imagined that ablat is specifically black and matte to the naked eye. Raw ablat is a powder that looks like very black coal dust or soot. It is, however, very light weight for a given volume. This raw powder form is the most effective against lasers. The grains absorb a tremendous amount of energy (for their size) and can do it very quickly as they want to vaporize. This is what makes ablat effective.

In this powder form, it's messy, not very useful as armor, and an inhalation hazard (including your lungs - it can cause a variety of 'brown lung' diseases if inhaled over time like most fine particles). Typically, it is mixed with some sort of bonding agent. The nature of the bonding agent determines how easy it is to work with, how durable it is to wear-and-tear (without turning back into a powder), as well as determining any qualities that give it some effectiveness against other kinds of attack. For instance, to make it useful against bullets, it is typically worked into some ballistic cloth or is foamed with a resin binder.

The most effective (and available earliest) types of ablat tend to be in hard shapes, like tiny plates, scales, and so on. These scales are then fashioned into armor that looks like scale mail. The material is easy to work with and reasonably easy to repair. It does have issues with flexibility and armoring joints, however. As technology increases, it becomes possible to coat threads with the ablat material, which can then be woven into a kind of cloth; it's less effective than plates of ablat, but it's much easier to wear, especially on joints.

Ablat can also be field-applied to vehicles in a kind of air-curing paste that is simply slathered onto vehicles from a tub of the material and worked with a putty knife then allowed to dry. Typically this is done for light vehicles that might come under light laser fire. Larger pre-formed bricks of the material (more effective against larger, more powerful lasers) can also be fitted onto vehicles; the paste can be used to repair such vehicle installations as well as ablat "scale" armor.