[Spaceships] Crash Landing: not-so-minimal velocity, boom

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

Spaceships 1 page 40, in the section on landing, mentions that a failed piloting roll for a glide results in a crash landing, treated as a collision with a planet at minimal (0.1mps) velocity.
OK, Collision Damage = 6d × 3 × lesser dST × V.
6d is about equal to 20, V is 0.1
So it is, on average, 20×3×0.1 == 6.
That's an average of 6 dDamage per each dHP the craft has.

That's not a crash landing, just a crash that has a tiny chance of survival. Was this the intent?

Thanks in advance!

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

6d is about equal to 20

21, actually. If we're dealing with fractions in one step, we probably ought not round to the nearest ten in another step.

But, yeah, the point is valid. From what you write, it looks pretty lethal.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Greetings, all!

Spaceships 1 page 40, in the section on landing, mentions that a failed piloting roll for a glide results in a crash landing, treated as a collision with a planet at minimal (0.1mps) velocity.
OK, Collision Damage = 6d × 3 × lesser dST × V.
6d is about equal to 20, V is 0.1
So it is, on average, 20×3×0.1 == 6.
That's an average of 6 dDamage per each dHP the craft has.

That's not a crash landing, just a crash that has a tiny chance of survival. Was this the intent?

Thanks in advance!

You'd need to calculate in armor, which should reduce the effects slightly, and it says the damage is done to one location in either the front or central hull.

[vierasmarius]

In a realistic game, yeah, planetary collision = *poof*. I'd probably reduce the damage considerably in a cinematic game though. Maybe x1/5, so an unarmored craft would be reduced to -0.2xHP, enough to be "Major" damage without actually destroying it.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by lexington

You'd need to calculate in armor, which should reduce the effects slightly, and it says the damage is done to one location in either the front or central hull.

The armor isn't going to make much difference except for very tough, very high-tech ships. For the rest it slightly reduces the chance of hitting -5xHP autodeath, but the ship is most likely making 4 death checks.

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

In a realistic game, yeah, planetary collision = *poof*.

That depends entirely, in both rules and reality, on how fast you plow in. At .1 mps, yeah, it's entirely reasonable that you're more likely to be asking if there are any survivors than whether the ship will fly again (interestingly, if you use only Spaceships damage rules, there almost certainly are survivors, as most people on board aren't taking worse than ~3d). But is a landing error really going to plant the ship in the ground at 360 MPH?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by lexington

You'd need to calculate in armor, which should reduce the effects slightly, and it says the damage is done to one location in either the front or central hull.

Very, very slightly. E.g. a 15-dHP ship with Streamlined Nanocomposite gets 3 dDR of protection even at TL10 (per system dedicated to armor).

And damage to one location 'bleeds over' to others.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And damage to one location 'bleeds over' to others.

In the rather improbable event that the ship as a whole isn't destroyed, it will suffer one system destroyed, one system disabled, and the effects of non-positive HP. While it's not like it's benefiting from blowthrough, the ship's overall capabilities won't be effected too much if it doesn't fail entirely. (For basically the same reason that GURPS characters never come out of a car accident with a broken arm, a broken leg, and head trauma.)

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

In a realistic game, yeah, planetary collision = *poof*.

Sure, and a rather large crater goes "poof" too. But this scenario isn't exactly running into a planet at interstellar speeds. The ship has already killed its orbital velocity by engine braking or aerobraking, and is gliding in for touchdown. I guess that merely having the ship destroyed is a plausible result from lithobraking from 0.1 mi./sec.. But does 360 miles per hour seem like a plausible minimum stall speed?

[Tyneras]

Seems like this would be a good place for a margin of failure rule.
Failure by 1 = need new landing gear.
Failure by 10 = roll up new characters.
Or something like that, some sort of way to match how badly you failed with how hard you hit the dirt.

[Snoman314]

Hmm, interesting. I never really clicked how much damage that was. Of course it was changed to a 0.1mps collision as an errata, with the original being worded as "a very low-velocity collision".
a high probability of complete destruction doesn't quite seem to go along with the spirit of this, assuming the errata was simply to nail down an actual value. I'd agree that the damage feels like it should be more in the range of 1/5 as given. This would still mean destruction is possible, but the most likely outcome is more losing a couple of systems.