[HT] Explosive Reactive Armor: Part II

[General Lee]

Originally Posted by Tzeentch

-- In GURPS? ERA is a bit complicated both in actual use and in game rules -- the older rules are really only applicable to Gen1 ERA like Blazer. (Note: Don't have the books in front of me). But the ERA DR is the performance degradation (it's a reasonable abstraction). MS-HEAT should have a follow-on attack that ignores the ERA DR. I believe this is spelled out in High-Tech?

Indeed, High-Tech spelled it out. I see the light! MS-HEAT works as described in HT against "Gen1" ERA, exactly as you said. But, against more modern types of armor like "Advanced ERA" (NERA, NxRA, Heavy ERA [Kontakt-5]) or Passive Armor (laminated or Modular Ceramics [MEXAS, AMAP]), it works as a big single warhead against all armor.

Additionally, the "special" effect of the MS-HEAT, i.e, the second warhead ignoring the ERA DR, is achieved only if the first warhead defeated the ERA layer. For example, an ERA armor that gives 250mm RHAe (DR 700) is supposedly defeated by a warhead that does 6dx4(10).

As the more modern ERA armor gives high levels of protection (DR 1,200+), the first warhead of a MS-HEAT round have to practically do damage of a full warhead 8dx5(10) to defeat the outer layer.

The real issue is to gauge how effective is a given type of ERA armor, actually any type of armor.