Is spaceship armor useless?

[Lamech]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That one doesn't make sense. A Tertiary battery on SM+10 does 2d dDamage. Even an SM+4 craft has a mere 3 dDR per layer of Nanocomposite. Anything remotely 'heavy missile'-sized will be toast, and anything fighter-sized is worthy of a micromissile hit. And it can't have PD, because then it has less armour, and with less armour it will be shredded by PD.

Good point defense (against non-armored standard missiles) will use "smaller systems" and have SM+7 tertiary missile batteries. Its only like 1d-2 damage at that point. Two layers of nanocomposite is enough. Also it only needs to be on the front side, unless you stick point defense drones out in front of the main ship.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I suppose. Doesn't work in formations, but does work 1v1. Requires tonnes of armour, but I actually like the idea of non-flimsy missiles.

It works against dense formations stacked up in one hex for optimal mutual support, and on a more diffuse formation it works if you fire on ships at the near edge of the formation. It does mean that a spread out fleet can screen the ships in the center, but I'd call that a good thing!

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I just wish they stopped looking like drones - they're starting to step onto the toes of fighter/bomber craft already. :p

Clarification: For a classic Space Opera, fighters should be piloted.

Fighters are dead meat in this regime anyway. The same super-gunners that make the PD effective against regular missiles mean that slightly larger beams can shred any nearby small craft. (This does not apply if you use the rules switch rather than Lamech's brilliant gunnery AIs.)

Originally Posted by Lamech

Good point defense (against non-armored standard missiles) will use "smaller systems" and have SM+7 tertiary missile batteries. Its only like 1d-2 damage at that point. Two layers of nanocomposite is enough. Also it only needs to be on the front side, unless you stick point defense drones out in front of the main ship.

Only works for ships of SM+8, RAW. Systems less than 1/3 size are non-canonical, so you can only get one step below tertiary.

...And killing an SM+4 attack craft with a 16cm missile isn't a bad deal...

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I remember hearing that such attacks are defeated by something called 'whipple shield principle'.

)

Nope Whipple (it's man's name) plating is designed to protect against space dust at only a few km per second. A very thin layer of strong material several cm from the real hull explodes when impacted by a piece of space dust. That few cm is enough to allow the explosion to dissipate before it hits the real hull.

The less your incoming projectile looks like space dust the less well it works. Whipple plating is designed to oppose micrograms of mass with milligrams of shielding. Missiles that weighed a hundred killos woudn't be affected much by Whipple shielding. You'd need a much more massive layer of exterior plating a much greater distance from the hull

It's also ablative and even against schemes that work like shotgun shells of space dust would only be stopped the first time.

[Mirtai]

In my experience, Spaceship armor does have a use. Without armor, anyone with Beam weapons will chew you up.

Beam weapons are very accurate, and they cross the distance between ships at (literally) the speed of light.

For example, I was in a playtest where a fighter with 6 missile launchers fought a larger ship with only point defense lasers. The fighter fired from about 2000 miles out... and the ship with the laser turrets destroyed the fighter in the first 20 seconds of return fire from it's lasers...

Meanwhile, the missiles were still accelerating, and wouldn't arrive for several minutes. While the missiles were smaller targets, the laser turrets had tons of time to blow them all away before they arrived. None of the missiles made it even half way.

Now, if the fighter had been well armored, the point defence lasers couldn't have harmed it, and it could have fired all it's missiles to overwhelm the laser turret's point defence, or closed the distance to give the target less time to defend.

At TL 9, it's actually pretty easy to have enough armor to soak most beam weapon fire... and, as it has been pointed out elsewhere, you can shoot down balistic and missile attacks with your beams. But since you cannot shoot other people's laser beams out of the sky, the only defence vs them is armor... so get some if you want to survive past the first 20 seconds of a fight.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Spaceship armor is a bit screwed up due to the assumptions used in Spaceships. I believe there's rules in one of the later books for modifying DR for ships with lots of armor (as they have lower volume and thus surface area than the default rules assume).

Before that PDF came out, I suggested that a spaceship consisting of a large proportion of Armour modules should be 1 SM smaller, and that perhaps one consisting of an even larger proportion of Armour modules should be 1 SM smaller again. The later would be something like 14/20 or 16/20 armour or something, I imagine.

But I'm not actually sure that being 2 SM smaller makes much difference in the grand scheme of things. Does that do anything other than make you slightly harder to hit and slightly harder to detect?

[Xplo]

Oh, hi there zombie thread. I remember you.

Mirtai makes a good point about armor being sufficient to deflect small beam weapons.

With armor and stealth being as ineffective as they are against missile attacks, it would appear that both sides in a hypothetical conflict would conclude that the best defense is a good offense - meaning both sides will arm up with missiles and engagement ranges will be determined by how far away you can get from someone before you can't get a kill shot through their point defense. In some cases this will be the effective range of the missiles themselves.

Also, anything without missiles to ensure MAD-like results is a sitting duck, as is anything that can't mount a substantial point defense. Smaller or less well-armed ships will cluster near large weapons platforms for protection and even a small hostile presence in an area of space turns ordinary shipping/travel into a suicide run; if civilian ships exist at all in such spaces, they must almost by definition be heavily armed, or travel in a convoy with a large weapons platform.

So it seems like as long as this is a good description of your intended setting's space battles and general strategy, the rules in Spaceships will probably work. If you had something else in mind then radical revisions may be necessary to get the desired outcome to emerge from the mechanics without massive handwaving.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

In my experience, Spaceship armor does have a use. Without armor, anyone with Beam weapons will chew you up.

Beam weapons are very accurate, and they cross the distance between ships at (literally) the speed of light.

For example, I was in a playtest where a fighter with 6 missile launchers fought a larger ship with only point defense lasers. The fighter fired from about 2000 miles out... and the ship with the laser turrets destroyed the fighter in the first 20 seconds of return fire from it's lasers...

Meanwhile, the missiles were still accelerating, and wouldn't arrive for several minutes. While the missiles were smaller targets, the laser turrets had tons of time to blow them all away before they arrived. None of the missiles made it even half way.

Now, if the fighter had been well armored, the point defence lasers couldn't have harmed it, and it could have fired all it's missiles to overwhelm the laser turret's point defence, or closed the distance to give the target less time to defend.

At TL 9, it's actually pretty easy to have enough armor to soak most beam weapon fire... and, as it has been pointed out elsewhere, you can shoot down balistic and missile attacks with your beams. But since you cannot shoot other people's laser beams out of the sky, the only defence vs them is armor... so get some if you want to survive past the first 20 seconds of a fight.

Did you re-run the playtest without the assumption that the missile boat would for some reason start the engagement inside of laser range?

[Mirtai]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Did you re-run the playtest without the assumption that the missile boat would for some reason start the engagement inside of laser range?

The encounter actually started with TWO SM+5 fighters with Missile Launchers at 50,000 miles, stopping a SM+9 Cargo vessel from entering the atmosphere of the planet they were based at.

They fired a single missile at the Cargo ship and told it to surrender, and they'd detonate the missile prematurely.

The Captain of the Cargo vessel "surrendered" and let the two fighters close in. One fighter docked with the Cargo ship while the other stayed well away at 2000 miles, watching for tricks.

The captain shot the first fighter pilot in the airlock, then ran to his bridge and started shooting his point defence lasers at the second fighter.

Natrually, the smart play would have been for the fighters to simply fire a large number of missiles from long range to try and overwhelm the point defense lasers while outside of their range... but they underestimated the Cargo ship and it's crew.

However, that doesn't mean that you can ignore armor if you stay at long range! Beams can have pretty long ranges as well, and they hit a target 50,000 miles away in 1/3rd of a second after you fire them... (assuming you can hit something that far off, anyway). And if you're in an engagement with beams VS ballistics, you'll be dead long before your missiles reach their target if you ignore armor. Unless you always have better range then all your opponents, and never start a fight inside of their range.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

The encounter actually started with TWO SM+5 fighters with Missile Launchers at 50,000 miles, stopping a SM+9 Cargo vessel from entering the atmosphere of the planet they were based at.

They fired a single missile at the Cargo ship and told it to surrender, and they'd detonate the missile prematurely.

The Captain of the Cargo vessel "surrendered" and let the two fighters close in. One fighter docked with the Cargo ship while the other stayed well away at 2000 miles, watching for tricks.

The captain shot the first fighter pilot in the airlock, then ran to his bridge and started shooting his point defence lasers at the second fighter.

Natrually, the smart play would have been for the fighters to simply fire a large number of missiles from long range to try and overwhelm the point defense lasers while outside of their range... but they underestimated the Cargo ship and it's crew.

Missiles and no armor do make a very poor choice for police work. (Also, one-man craft, because a lone pilot is not a sensible boarding force.)

I would say the fighters chose about the worst tactics possible, though. Standing off to watch for trouble from inside your enemy's kill zone...well, it really earns that Darwin award.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

However, that doesn't mean that you can ignore armor if you stay at long range! Beams can have pretty long ranges as well, and they hit a target 50,000 miles away in 1/3rd of a second after you fire them... (assuming you can hit something that far off, anyway). And if you're in an engagement with beams VS ballistics, you'll be dead long before your missiles reach their target if you ignore armor. Unless you always have better range then all your opponents, and never start a fight inside of their range.

It kind of does, because with missiles you do have better range than all your beam-armed opponents, and in space it's hard to have any reason to not start the fight from outside their range.

[Mirtai]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Missiles and no armor do make a very poor choice for police work. (Also, one-man craft, because a lone pilot is not a sensible boarding force.)

I would say the fighters chose about the worst tactics possible, though. Standing off to watch for trouble from inside your enemy's kill zone...well, it really earns that Darwin award.

You're not wrong about the poor tactics there, I'll admit.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

It kind of does, because with missiles you do have better range than all your beam-armed opponents, and in space it's hard to have any reason to not start the fight from outside their range.

If you're always having your space battles out in deep space, sure, you can theoretically make all fights long range ones where whomever has the best range and highest speed wins.

But at TL 9, you're not really going to get into many fights in deep space. Space is BIG. You're usually only going to meet up with other ships at the places that aren't the middle of deep space, like in orbit around planets, or near asteriod belts where folks are mining, or near starbases. Ie, around stuff that will cause combat range to vary quite a bit.

If you DO meet someone in deep space, it's because you're passing each other going in the opposite direction at high speed, in which case range won't stay the same... as you'll either generally be closing range very quickly, or heading away very quickly. As during interplanetary travel at TL 9, slowing down can take days or even weeks!

So saying "I'll always just stay out of the range of beam weapons and shoot Missles from outside everyone else's range" is nice in theory, but in practice it's still wise to be ready for someone possibly getting a LITTLE closer than you'd prefer and melting your armor-less ship into slag 20 seconds after coming into weapons range.