What works? How are ships and vehicles armed?

[Badenov]

During the Age of Dreadnoughts, ship armor was most certainly was a Thing. They didn't build it into their ships just for show. Most projectiles were not fired so as to plunge in from above (like a bomb from dive bomber), rather they were fired "direct fire" and came in at shallow angles. A large round could certainly do damage to the superstructure of the ship, take out a gun bay, etc. But those weren't the vulnerable parts. The main turrets were also heavily armored.

The Hood exploded because her armor was breached and her magazine exploded.

I thought the Hood's mag exploded because incoming Bismark's fire was arced more than expected and was plunging down through the deck rather than striking the armor belt? And then, yes, it plunged down into the magazine with spectacular results. But battleships had belts of armor rather than all around protection like Traveller vessels.

In the modern paradigm, battleships were phased out because modern weapons were made to bypass their defenses. Terminal pop-up missiles certainly count as plunging fire, as do aircraft-launched weapons.

I did look up the LBB5 table, and it looks like 15 armor in LBB5 will make you mostly immune to anything in a turret except a missile launcher throwing nukes. You'll lose turrets and fuel to radiation damage, but nothing too serious. This brings me back to the question: at TL15, why have anything less than 15 armor? It's expensive, but worth it. Also, what prevents you from putting 15 armor on small craft? 16% of 10 tons is a small enough sacrifice and for very small ships, it's not that expensive, and the ability to ignore hits that could kill you, though it looks like LBB5 doesn't allow you to armor small craft?

 

[Spinward Flow]

Also, what prevents you from putting 15 armor on small craft?

Tonnage fraction required.
Aside from that, there's no prohibition.

though it looks like LBB5 doesn't allow you to armor small craft?

Not true.
LBB5.80, p34 specifies that ONLY metal hulls are possible (configurations: 1-7) for small craft with the stipulation elsewhere (LBB5.80, p28-29) that configuration: 7 is not eligible for armor ... but configurations: 1-6 remain eligible to be armored.

 

[Badenov]

Tonnage fraction required.
Aside from that, there's no prohibition.

Well, 16% of 10 tons is 1.6 tons. 1.6 tons is a pretty small fraction of ship to give up for what you get.

Not true.
LBB5.80, p34 specifies that ONLY metal hulls are possible (configurations: 1-7) for small craft with the stipulation elsewhere (LBB5.80, p28-29) that configuration: 7 is not eligible for armor ... but configurations: 1-6 remain eligible to be armored.

I only noticed that armor was not called out in the Small Craft Design Checklist, where it's specifically mentioned in the Starship Design Checklist.

 

[Tobias]

I did look up the LBB5 table, and it looks like 15 armor in LBB5 will make you mostly immune to anything in a turret except a missile launcher throwing nukes. You'll lose turrets and fuel to radiation damage, but nothing too serious. This brings me back to the question: at TL15, why have anything less than 15 armor? It's expensive, but worth it. Also, what prevents you from putting 15 armor on small craft?

There is no reason against it at all. The problems are that...
a.) LBB5 (nonsensically) posits that a given percentage of armor gives the same absolute level of protection to any size of ship.
b.) Even moderate amounts of armor obviate all types of damage other than weapon and fuel nibble damage results.

Literally the only way to "destroy" an LBB5 ship with even a modest amount of armor, other than bringing a meson gun (or possible nukes) to the table, is to slowly run its fuel supply dry. And against a well-armored ship, even that won't happen.

I draw the conclusion that LBB5 should be reworked as a game. Not a popular stance around here, though.

 

[Spinward Flow]

it looks like LBB5 doesn't allow you to armor small craft?

I only noticed that armor was not called out in the Small Craft Design Checklist, where it's specifically mentioned in the Starship Design Checklist.

If that were true, the 50 ton Heavy Fighter (LBB S9, p26) would have Armor-0.
Instead, it has Armor-8.

b.) Even moderate amounts of armor obviate all types of damage other than weapon and fuel nibble damage results.

Weapon and "fuel nibble" results can quickly yield in a "mission kill" against small craft ... particularly those which will lose all (remaining) fuel to a single Fuel-n hit (because minimum loss is 10 tons of fuel). The crew might survive the encounter, but the small craft will be taken out of the fight.

 

[Tobias]

Weapon and "fuel nibble" results can quickly yield in a "mission kill" against small craft ... particularly those which will lose all (remaining) fuel to a single Fuel-n hit (because minimum loss is 10 tons of fuel). The crew might survive the encounter, but the small craft will be taken out of the fight.

They cannot. They can yield such results very, very, very slowly - and only if the ships are not armored to maximum.
Small ships with similar capabilities are rarely (if at all) going to hit each other in the first place. And then, scoring a fuel result against, say, an armor 9 vessel only happens in 1/12th of all cases.

P.S:: If we are talking about a larger ship against a small craft, the best way to take them out is to size-crit them to death with factor 8 or 9 batteries. But that doesn't help against smaller ships in the 400-1000 ton range.

 

[Tobias]

TL;DR: LBB5 combat is basically unplayable at the smaller ship scale, and armor only makes it more so. Weapons barely ever hit, and if they do, they usually don't do any serious damage.

 

[Spinward Flow]

They cannot.

If you've got multiple batteries ... or a single battery with code: 2+ ... you can take multiple Weapon-1 hits before being disarmed.
If you've got 11+ tons of fuel ... you'll need to take multiple Fuel-1 hits before losing all fuel.

Loss of all weapons and/or loss of all fuel yields a "mission kill" result for any combatant small craft.
At best, they can return to base (the reserve) in a subsequent combat round, get refueled and return to the battle.

Mind you, in order to get those damage results you need either pulse lasers (2+4+15=21) or nuclear missiles (2+0+15=17), but either way, the threat of "single point of failure" for small craft is still VERY REAL if the combatants are not "built correctly" to sustain hits and keep fighting.

 

[Tobias]

Pit a squadron of heavy fighters against another, and tell us how that goes, will ya? Or use SDBs or any similar kind of small-scale armored combatants.

I'll be honest here: I'm tired of having this discussion for the ninth time or so. If you think that LBB5 combat is actually a fine system and not a broken, unbalanced, un-tactial, unimmersive mess playable only at very specific break points, then go ahead. I've already wasted more time than I should have on this.

 

[mike wightman]

If that were true, the 50 ton Heavy Fighter (LBB S9, p26) would have Armor-0.
Instead, it has Armor-8.

Weapon and "fuel nibble" results can quickly yield in a "mission kill" against small craft ... particularly those which will lose all (remaining) fuel to a single Fuel-n hit (because minimum loss is 10 tons of fuel). The crew might survive the encounter, but the small craft will be taken out of the fight.

It was changed.
If you look at HG80 closely you will see there is no allocate armour step in the text or the design sequence summary.
Then go and look at the small craft design form such as used in TCS - no row for allocate armour.

Fast forward to Forms and Charts and the small craft design checklist has changed to include an allocate armour stem, and the form has an allocate armour entry.

It still makes no sense that a 10t small craft can have the same armour rating as a 1,000,000dt BB

 

[coliver988]

It was changed.
If you look at HG80 closely you will see there is no allocate armour step in the text or the design sequence summary.
Then go and look at the small craft design form such as used in TCS - no row for allocate armour.

Fast forward to Forms and Charts and the small craft design checklist has changed to include an allocate armour stem, and the form has an allocate armour entry.

It still makes no sense that a 10t small craft can have the same armour rating as a 1,000,000dt BB

it is that last line that, after reading (for the 9th time? ) through all these conversations, that I finally got through my head (I only used LBB5 for char gen and fantasy big ship designs that would never work but were fun). think the way to handle the armor value as a percentage would be to also scale up the percentage based on ship size somehow. Perhaps by letter code, but that way a small ship could not get the same armor as a 1,000,000dt BB because it would take 200% of its size (e.g., the smaller the ship the greater the percentage for the same factor)

just throwing that out there as I am enjoying the conversation. and don't think that has been mentioned recently but may very well have in the past as this discussion across various threads goes back decades I think

 

[Spinward Flow]

It still makes no sense that a 10t small craft can have the same armour rating as a 1,000,000dt BB

It makes no sense TO YOU (obviously) ... while the rest of us understand the concept just fine.

 

[mike wightman]

It makes no sense TO YOU (obviously) ... while the rest of us understand the concept just fine.

Please explain your reasoning, I have never found anyone who thinks it makes any sort of sense.

 

[kilemall]

Bad luck and insufficient protection.

They knew about it wargaming the battle ahead of time and assigned something like an extra 10% she blew up.

Bad roll in RL.

 

[kilemall]

Tonnage fraction required.
Aside from that, there's no prohibition.

My fix is -1 to hit hull sizes double armor space required, -2 which is small craft requires triple space.

I do have a missile design sequence, they are -3 and this requires 4x the space.

 

[Condottiere]

Ideally, the Royal Navy should have skipped the Admiral class, and build a new design Twenty Nineteen onwards.

Then, refurbish the Hood just before hostilities begin.

And finally, intercept the Bismarck as planned, crossing the tee.

 

[bookwyrm]

I am reading the conversation about fighters and capitol ships having the same armor. I remember thinking about this when I was reading the combat section of T20 a few times. After awhile, I just decided not to worry about it. But now, just for the sake of feeding my curiosity, I feel the need to 'game it out' enough to see if it's a problem for real or just on paper (don't know when I'll get to this).

Has anyone done any actual tests instead of just calculating the numbers? I know that different Rule sets do combat differently, so the results may also differ.

 

[mike wightman]

10 dt fighter - 1.5 dt of armour - calculate how thick it is.
100,000 dt armoured cruiser - 15,000 dt - calculate how thick it is.

Use a sphere:

the skin of the fighter is 17cm thick
the skin of the CA is 360cm thick

yet they both offer the same armour protection.

 

[bookwyrm]

10 dt fighter - 1.5 dt of armour - calculate how thick it is.
100,000 dt armoured cruiser - 15,000 dt - calculate how thick it is.

Use a sphere:

the skin of the fighter is 17cm thick
the skin of the CA is 3600cm thick

yet they both offer the same armour protection.

This is why I decided not to worry about it.

T20 has ways during combat to 'penetrate' the armor, and I've seen that in other rule sets it's also possible. I'm not saying it's easy or will happen often, but that one lucky hit that 'penetrates' the armor will mean more to the fighter than the cruiser, depending on the weapon used.

How much Structural Integrity (Hull Points, HP, Durability) does that 10 dt fighter have compared to the 100,000 dt cruiser?

 

[Rupert]

I thought the Hood's mag exploded because incoming Bismark's fire was arced more than expected and was plunging down through the deck rather than striking the armor belt? And then, yes, it plunged down into the magazine with spectacular results. But battleships had belts of armor rather than all around protection like Traveller vessels.

Definitely not. The range was too short for Bismarck's fairly high velocity shells to be 'plunging'. The fatal hit might have penetrated the upper belt at just the right angle to be deflected in just the right way to go through the sloped 'deck' behind and then on into a 4" magazine. Or it may have landed a little short and gone in under the main belt through a wave trough, and thece into the 4" magazine. Either way, the 4" magazine wasn't heavily armoured and was a refit installation that backed right onto a 15" gun magazine and the heat and shock of the 4" powder burning off presumably set that off.

Had Hood had a full upgrade, as was planned had the War not got in the way (or had it been done earlier as it would have been had the UK government not been so stingy on defence spending in the 20s and early-mid 30s), the 4" magazine would either have not been there or would've been properly separated from the main gun magazines.

Note that Hood's protection was actually roughly as good as Bismark's. The Royal Navy had every reason to expect that Hood and Prince of Wales would be able to defeat Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, even though their intercept wasn't perfect (cue armchair admirals accusing the man on the spot of incompetence).

In the modern paradigm, battleships were phased out because modern weapons were made to bypass their defenses. Terminal pop-up missiles certainly count as plunging fire, as do aircraft-launched weapons.

The main reason they were supplanted by aircraft carriers post-WWII was that a carrier air arm can reach much further than a battleship's guns. Carriers were not as good at sinking ships as a battleship, assuming the latter got within range. But hundreds of miles of reach vs 10-15, maybe 20 if you're very optimistic is a huge advantage. Then there are the glide bombs of late WWII, followed by guided missiles. The former let an air strike hit a ship from outside AA gun range, and the latter are like a torpedo with all its drawbacks (range, slow speed) removed.

I did look up the LBB5 table, and it looks like 15 armor in LBB5 will make you mostly immune to anything in a turret except a missile launcher throwing nukes. You'll lose turrets and fuel to radiation damage, but nothing too serious. This brings me back to the question: at TL15, why have anything less than 15 armor? It's expensive, but worth it. Also, what prevents you from putting 15 armor on small craft? 16% of 10 tons is a small enough sacrifice and for very small ships, it's not that expensive, and the ability to ignore hits that could kill you, though it looks like LBB5 doesn't allow you to armor small craft?

At TL15 the reason you might not have armour is that you've gone for a 'meson-resistant' hull form that can't be armoured. Also note that planetoids can have more than 15 armour. Hence the 'planetoids with particle beams kill missile boats'. And the missile boats kill meson gun armed ships, and those ships kill the planetoids. So the theory goes, anyway.