[GURPS Starships] Armor tweaks

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I didn't say you were failing to keep track of the ship's mass. But the ship is no longer divided into 20 systems, each 1/20th of its mass. It is divided into 20 systems, each 1/20th of some particular mass, and then some variable number of additional armor systems of the same mass.

Oh, I see what you mean now. And, yeah, it is a not-insignificant modification, but it can get rid of some of the headaches that can result when you're trying to get a heavily-armored vessel and run out of spaces.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

(Minor note you probably already realize: for calculating delta-V you have to reduce effective fuel tanks before bonuses for high fuel fraction, not just calculate delta-V and modify that. Your example ship had little enough fuel that this had no effect.)

That was an extremely quick mock-up, and I actually failed to consider the effect of having a large quantity of the ship's mass in fuel. Yeah, when using my modification, you'll have to recalculate how many "systems" of fuel you have from the vessel's end mass to see how much (if any) extra delta-v you get out of that fuel.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Alternate Spaceships in Pyramid 3-34 offers another way of adjusting for the density of armor, and similar ideas on that subject had been worked with on the forums.

Indeed. You can actually combine the methods if you'd like - you can still put some armor systems on your base vessel (and get the surface area reduction) and add in additional systems later. Reviewing that Pyramid, I see ice isn't the only armor that my rule shouldn't apply to - the various wooden hulls (organic, wood, etherwood) would also need to be incorporated using the default system. You still end up with the oddity of hitting the armor system; I'd personally just reroll any "armor" result.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

... "Whipple shield" ...

I'd design that under my system as being Ablative and Optimized against Crushing. At TL 8 and SM+8, that's something like dDR 20/system against crushing, dDR 7/system against everything else (I have the Ablative nature of Optimized armor only apply toward the same damage type as the armor was Optimized against; otherwise it's dDR 10/system against everything else). This probably understates Whipple shielding's effect against hypervelocity impacts and overstates its effect against burning damage and the like. A Whipple Shield system would probably be counted as an Exposed System.