And so what? When you're building up a shared universe, that's the way you do it: You grab small throwaway references and build mighty edifices on them. Or, more often, you grab a big piece of no information about the subject at all and make something up completely out of the blue.
Hans,
As you wisely and continually point out: Canon has To make Sense.
(I remember getting roasted for daring to give the Duchy of Regina a senate on the flimsy evidence of the existence of a senator being kept prisoner on the Gaesh.
And your addition solved a problem. Without invalidating anything or creating additional problems, it solved the "problem" of the senator mentioned in
A:1. (And solved it rather neatly too, I should add.)
DGP's artless and ill advised conflation of a hull grid vaguely mentioned in JTAS #24 into glowing, lanthanum-doped lines arranged in differing schemes by different major races neither makes sense or solves problems. Indeed, it creates many problems where originally there were no real problems to solve.
Whatever inspired DGP to detail the jump grid is irrelevant. The real question is if it's a good idea or not.
It's not a good idea. It's a
kewl idea. An overly fiddly, overly twee, looks good until you actually think about it,
kewl idea.
The combat system is an abstraction of how things "really" works.
True. I regularly point that out when the sandcaster discussion arises.
If you go solely by the combat rules, you can also damage the interior systems without damaging the hull at all. Howzat again?!!?
Rather easily actually. The only weapons that roll on the Interior Explosion table are those that either 1) bypass the hull like mesons or B) access the IE table via rolls on the Surface Explosion and/or Radiation Damage tables. So you either skip the hull (as with mesons) or damage the hull in such a way that you "access" internal components.
GDW were wargamers first, last, and always. Thanks to that, they usually wrote tight, logical wargame rules with few (if any) loopholes.
I think that the rationalization that jump drive damage reflect damage to the hull grid is an excellent one. How else are you going to explain damage to the jump drive that only reduces its capability? I'd think that either your jump-5 drive works or it has a hole and doesn't work. Reducing its capacity to jump-4 is just silly if it really represents a hit that damages the drive itself.
Ask yourself that same question about the powerplant or the maneuver drive. How can you "only" damage a maneuver drive or powerplant? Why are their ratings dropped instead of being destroyed (or rendered inoperable) outright? The answer is ancillary equipment.
A powerplant, maneuver drive, or jump drive isn't some stand alone black box. There are controls, power supplies, fuel supplies, instrumentation, and any number of subsytems associated with each. A jump drive's rating could be degraded because the drive's intregal computer controls can no longer safely handle calculations above a certain level. Or the fuel still sitting in a vessel's tanks can no longer be safely pumped to drive in the quantities required. Or certain instruments are no longer safe for use in certain ranges. The list is almost endless.
Sadly, one item that isn't on the list is hull integrity. I can scrub every weapon off the hull without effecting the jump drive one whit. Remember that
HG2 battle example I sent you a while back? While attempting to prevent its escape, the Imperial corvettes and SDB prang that Sword Worlds strike cruiser round after round with near impunity destroying batteries and spilling fuel, but it's only that lucky nuc missile hit at the last moment that triggers an internal explosion and destroys the cruiser's jump drive.
I can answer them: Some riders ride inside, some (those with dispersed structure carriers) ride outside. Inside riders don't need a grid (but they probably have them anyway). Outside riders need a grid.
Why don't you have to buy grids when you build riders then? And, if grids are needed when a rider is carried outside, why can any vessel carry any rider as long as the carrying capacity is there?
In "real" life damage to the grids of outside riders effect the carrier's jump rating, but none of the existing combat systems are detailed enough to take that into account.
Sorry, but no. The combat systems are already detailed enough to allow for the degradation of weapons, computers, sensors, and drives instead of their destruction. The resolution is there already, grids can't fall beneath it.
A system so detailed would easily handle jump grids but
DGP didn't bother to make it so. Jump grids are just another of their
kewl ideas. Just another artless, half-baked, unexamined, don't work out the consequences, gollygee ain't it
kewl construction similar to the Rebellion Without An Ending and the Alien Incursions.
Jump grids are a bad idea.
Have fun,
Bill
mega:
), and the Jump Flare seems to start on the port side of the Starship.
How's that for Drooling Fan? Oh, wait, still not critical...*shrugs* oh, well, statement still stands.
