[Spaceships] Targeting exposed systems

[the-red-scare]

So due to the size and diffuse nature of radiators, solar panels, and sails, any damage that is less than 10% of dHP is ignored. Sounds good. And then damage equal to or greater than dHP disables or destroys them if already disabled.

So what about damage that is 11-99% of dHP? It doesn’t disable or destroy, but it isn’t ignored. Does reduce ship dHP with no special effect? Because I assumed the line about no other damage being done to the ship meant damage to exposed systems doesn’t reduce the ship’s dHP at all.

[Rupert]

I would assume it's supposed to be that damage over 10% of the ship's dHP disables or destroys the exposed system, and no other damage is done.

[Varyon]

Hmmm... checking the relevant sections, my best guess is that damage less than 10% dHP is ignored while higher damage results accumulate, disabling the system at 100% dHP and destroying it at 200%. That seems counter to the way GURPS typically does hit locations, however. Another option is to ignore the "less than 10% dHP" bit, and treat any damage result less than 100% dHP as beneath the resolution of the system, and have 100%+ disable an intact system or destroy a disabled one. Alternatively, mixing up the rules for hull damage and exposed systems a bit (and using something of a rules-lawyer interpretation of the former*), you could say damage less than 10% is ignored, damage equal to or greater than 10% treats the system as damaged, and damage equal to or greater than 100% disables a pristine system or outright destroys a previously-damaged one (regardless of if that damage was enough to disable it).

*The rules for hull damage state 10%-50% dHP disables a system, or destroys a damaged one; I think the intent was that it destroyed a previously-disabled one, but one could interpret that to mean any system that has previously taken any damage at all gets destroyed rather than disabled.

[the-red-scare]

My gut instinct is that it’s as Rupert suggests.

It is also possible that the disable threshold is 10%, and the destroy threshold is 100% rather than the usual 50% to account for the size and diffuse construction factor. But saying “10% of” was left out before “the spacecraft’s dHP” is most parsimonious.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by the-red-scare

My gut instinct is that it’s as Rupert suggests.

It is also possible that the disable threshold is 10%, and the destroy threshold is 100% rather than the usual 50% to account for the size and diffuse construction factor. But saying “10% of” was left out before “the spacecraft’s dHP” is most parsimonious.

It seems like diffuse systems should be harder to disable than typical systems, so personally I'd be much more inclined to go with a rule that does that, just using the mess from SS1:66 as a rough guide. The idea of accumulating damage works well for that, although you'll want to do that for other systems in that case (of course, this isn't a bad idea anyway).

Oddly, SS7's Solar Mirror text seems to think exposed systems normally take some sort of divisor to damage, despite nothing of the sort being in the SS1 rules.

[Anders]

Well, if they are diffuse, why not borrow the rules for that? Attacks on the system do 1 point of damage, unless it's an explosion.