What I don't understand is why don't they armor small craft up to the TL? It doesn't cost or weigh nearly enough to matter. And 12-15 armor gives you basically immunity to turret weapons unless they turn 30 lasers on you? Allowing armor and not using it makes less sense than not allowing it and then publishing designs that have it anyhow. Is wildly nerfing the armor somehow making up for inconsistency with the rules? (I say inconsistency because while there's two examples of published small craft not following rules, there's not any errata I've seen that actually allow it.)
What works? How are ships and vehicles armed?
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Armour has already been defined as a passive defence - penetration of armour is moved to the damage table.
No effect means no effect - no damage of any kind.
I'm sorry Mike, but this is another nail in the argument.
With this rule, and under your interpretation of the Surface Explosion table, that means that Critical Hits are affected by armor - twice. Armor gets to double dip with Crits.
First by denying them in the first place (via the DM on the SE table), and second by directly affecting the number of Crits.
That doesn't seem very "fair".
The Armor DM does not negate the hit itself, it negates any internal damage caused by the hit. The hit still happens, and dings the door and hammers the gong. It just doesn't break through. Higher armor makes that resistance more likely (just as one may feel armor should). An armored target will take less internal damage than an unarmored one, but armor does not necessarily "reduce" the damage, it simply makes it more unlikely.
While the hammer may not break through the shell, the ship is still rocked by the blast. The Captain, First Officer, and the helm crew are grabbing their consoles as the camera is tilted. "That was close" one of them may exclaim. From these ship rocking moments, crits happen. It can even be argued that the higher armor level represents overall structural integrity of the hull, which is why higher armor mean for less crits. But the crits still weaken the ship. Hit it hard enough, enough times, and even the thickest armor loses its integrity.
In the past week, we've had an pretty good earthquake storm. There's been 18 small quakes near by, and we've felt 15 of them (which is a record for us to be sure, its been a rockin year compared to 1 felt per year before this). Scaring the cats, rattling the house. "None" of them have broken through my well built, wood framed house. They've been bouncing off my plywood sheeting wrapped house, thankfully.
But, one of them rolled a crit.
A small piece of back splash tile popped off wall. (Trust me, if you saw my wife's expression, this was, indeed, a "Crit"). A bit of silicone glued it back in place.
But a critical hit indeed, with no actual penetrating damage.
Crits are the "concussion" protocol of HG combat. No matter how good your helmet, get hit in the head hard enough, enough times, its going to have consequences.
And yet you are apparently okay with a hit doing no surface damage and blowing a ship clean up if a hit rolls a '2', or '3-5' followed by '2-4' and getting the 'ship vaporised' critical result. How is that different? No surface damage, no interior damage, but the ship blows up.
Besides, we know that there has been a lot of damage - the ship blew up!
Sensible players will be rolling any automatic criticals first, because there's not much point carefully tracking loss of computer levels (for example) if a critical from the same hit then blows the computer up.
So, if I shoot an unarmed 20-ton ship's boat with a Meson-T, and the first damage roll is a 'weapon-4' radiation and a 'screens-3' interior explosion result, as no damage was done, I get no extra damage rolls and no criticals? Or, even with a factor-7 pulse laser for 'weapon-3' - no damage was done at all, (the hit is 'ignored', which is at least as much like 'no damage' as 'no effect'). And if I'm in my little ship's boat and I dump all my fuel, so 'fuel' hits are also ignored, the only surface hits that can trigger criticals are the ones that do manoeuvre damage, even though I'm in a tiny utility craft with no armour at all.
Sorry, but the idea that a hit that doesn't get a damaging result from the first hit somehow doesn't get all its other damage rolls is just silly. A big gun isn't doing to those criticals because it damaged some system with a basic damage rolls, it gets them as part of its basic damage.
Because it actually does below TL14 (at least in HG - I don't know about MgT). The sample small craft in HG would lose a lot of their cargo space at TL12, and all of it at TL11-. So armouring things like landers and assault shuttles to a high degree is probably not practical.
Remember, a penetrating hit always gets a damage roll, and 'no effect' requires 22+, which allowing for the +6 for non-spinals/nukes, means it takes armour-4 to push even a 12 'off the table' and armour-14 to push all rolls off the table (armour-16 to do this to pulse lasers). So a lot of armour is very nice, but it takes maxed out TL14+ armour to make a ship immune to small-sized weapons. And then some a-hole brings a meson bay to the party...
Well, as I understand this, a Surface Explosion result that results on a critical (or on an interior explosion taht leads to it), the armor has claraly been penetrated, while a result of 22+, and so no effect, means taht armor has not been penetrated, so not all defenses have...
This case is like the one above.The armor has been penetrated, even if no damage has been done to systems. So, as all defenses have been penetrated, atuomatic criticals would be triggered. IMHO.
I guess I'm just talking TL15 armor, but for fighters, not cargo haulers. No reason to armor them. But interceptors have every reason to want to ignore incoming hits. The sample small craft in HG are absolutely civilian models.
So, presuming a fighter built at TL15 laughs off anything a turret can throw at it?
But getting an 'automatic critical' somehow does not mean the armour has been penetrated?
So ignoring a hit is not the same as it having no effect?
This seems to me to be an attempt to force the mechanics to fit into a pre-conceived model of how they should work, when they just don't work that way.
Yes, which might be why the rules don't list adding armour as one of the steps of small craft design (though that just pushes the problem up to 100-199 DTon ships). Even with no armour small craft combats tend to be slow to completely ineffectual - needing a 8+ to 10+ to hit (allowing for size), with agility adding to that, individual small craft often simply can't hit each other even with TL14+ fusion guns (factor-5 beams).
Here we'll enter on a paradox, as to roll it first it must penetrate all defenses, and armor is one. The problem, IMHO, is the lack of definition of armor penetrated (unlike other defenses)
An armor piercing round can cross an unarmored (or lightly armored) target and just pass through it without damaging it, if it hits nothing inside. That would be your ingored hit, but has penetrated the "armor" (or lack of it)
OTOH, armor may stop the round fully, avoiding damage on the target. That's the "no effect", and it's because armor has not been penetrated.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
And if it is 22+ it has no effect
Far too much Star Trek. If the ship is rocked by the blast then it takes internal explosion hits
Crew 1 means she would be a bit more than astonished...
You are describing Internal explosion rather than critical hit
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I have no idea what you are talking about.
If you mean a surface explosion result then yes that is damage,
If it is 22+ and no effect then there is no damage.
None to the surface, no radiation, no internal explosion ... just crew 1
Sensible players will be rolling on the damage table first, and if there is no effect there is no effect.
Where in the damage resolution flow chart of HG 80 does it say to check for critical hits...
Again I have no idea how you reach that preposterous conclusion. You have just stated damage is done.
If damage is allowed by the damage table you then go on to check for automatic criticals.
I have no idea what your reasoning is.
My reasoning is the damage table is consulted after the weapons vs other defences, armour is the final passive defence.
If the result of the consultation of the damage table is no effect then no damage or criticals are possible, but if damage is caused then you move on to the criticals.
otherwise is is pointless to roll on the damage table, you should consider criticals first, which is not the way the rules are written.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It is not automatic - all defences have to be penetrated, and that includes armour.
If you miss you miss.
If you fail to penetrate a screen or point defence there is no effect
If you fail to penetrate armour - no effect - then there is no effect
The mechanics are sound, it is this sudden re-interpretation that is puzzling
Again:
Note that step 'E', rolling damage occurs after 'penetration'High Guard said:
This rules comes after the rules describe rolling to hit, and to penetrate defences, but before any discussion of the damage rolls (which is where armour comes in).High Guard said:
If you follow the rules step-by-step it is very clear that the number of automatic criticals (and extra hits) are determined independent of damage rolls, which is logical - first you find out how many rolls you need to make, and then you roll them.
Nowhere does it say that. All it says is that the hit had no in-game mechanical effect. That does not mean it didn't blow a hole in the ship, trash someone's stateroom, and mess up the paintwork. All it means is that the hit did not affect anything combat-relevant.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The automatic criticals is not part of the damage sequence you are fixated on.
The rules stare armour is a passive defence
The automatic critical rule is provisional that all defences are penetrated
Armour is a defence.
The rules stare armour is a passive defence
The automatic critical rule is provisional that all defences are penetrated
Armour is a defence.
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You are claiming that a critical that blows the ship up without some other damaged system isn't possible, but you can have exactly that happen off the damage tables.
I can only assume that somehow the concept that an 'automatic critical' also automatically penetrates armour and does its thing eludes you. Armour already defends against these by reducing the number of them, potentially to zero. The number of them that do occur is the number that have penetrated the ship's armour.
But when it comes down to it, your entire argument relies on interpreting 'penetrated' in a way that the rules do not use it when they are describing how hits and damage are resolved. The word 'penetrate' is only used in reference to getting past defensive fire and screens. IT is not used in reference to armour.
Step 'E' of the 'Combat Step' of the game turn says "Batteries which hit and penetrate all defenses must determine the damage they inflict." By your argument, they must determine their damage after they have determined their damage, because they can't know if they 'penetrated' until they have rolled their damage, which they can't do unless they've penetrated (and so on in an infinite loop), which is simply silly.
I says that once, in a descriptive summary of combat. In the rules proper it does not call armour a defense, and it never talks about penetrating armour.
Rolling damage at all is provisional on penetration.
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