Is spaceship armor useless?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The problem with force screens is that they're outside of other armor, so they can be sandpapered off instantly by a bajillion tiny attacks.

The balance between 'sandpapered off', 'no sell' and 'if armour is penetrated, the ship is destroyed in one or two hits' seems like the thing that is hard to pull off when trying to reproduce the set-ups in fiction.

E.g. let's look at Star Wars:

• heavy fighters have shields, and those shields can withstand a few blaster shots (that are hard to dodge); light fighters survive one such hit at best;
• missiles are not ubiquitous: a missileboat carrying 40-80 missiles is considered an eggshell with a sledgehammer, highly specialised and unusual.
• missiles are scary in small numbers: if someone got missile-locked, that's ground for going into All-Out Defence and throwing chaff and flares; point-defence is an option if approached head-on.
• Big ships slug it out, generally with beam weapons, because over the course of a combat, it's easier to dish out more damage with beams than with missiles packed into the same number of weapon batteries.

Or a look at Battlestar Galactica:

• No shields.
• fighters use Guns, mostly.
• Basestars use missiles in numbers that are significant, but still nowhere close to a macross missile massacre that G:SS seems to encourage.
• An arsenal of 8 missiles with nuclear warheads is considered a serious asset, and firing off one or two is a decent threat.
• Big ships can still withstand significant punishment.

The world of EvE:

• Shields and armour are relevant on everything; self-repair systems are relevant on a combat timescale (surely involving cyberswarms and nanites, much of those in TL^ versions).
• There are beams, guns, hybrid projectile weapons, and missiles. They occupy slightly different but quite similar niches.
• ECM is generally way more relevant than Point Defence.

Warhammer 40k as depicted in Rogue Trader RPG:

• There are shields, and armour is relevant too.
• Big ships slug it out, in fact so much that sending boarding parties to plant explosives on the enemy ship, or outright boarding action ship-to-ship, is a viable strategy.

Overall, all those settings seem to involve the following differences as compared to G:SS:

• Greater overall survivability of ships, one way or another.
• If missiles are numerous, then one hit isn't a death sentence; but otherwise, missiles are considered a rare and serious threat that can't be easily handled by merely assigning a PD turret or two to shoot it down.
• Protection tends to be good enough to prevent one-shot-kills between equally-sized ships under normal circumstances, but is almost never good enough to make large numbers of, or persistent shooting by, very small craft a non-threat.

So ablative shields and ablative armour (about ×5 DR, but ablative) seem like the way to go.

[Mirtai]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

So there are two situations here. Fast pass, and a fixed point of interest.

On a fast pass, you fire all your missiles soon enough that they'll arrive before you're in laser range, and if the target survives, you hope they're taking surrenders because you're almost certainly going to wind up in their kill zone.

At a fixed point, one side or the other has to approach the fixed point. If you're approaching it, you can stop short at a safe distance and take your shots. If you're defending it you may not be free to stand off to your desired distance...but you can still fire off as many missiles as you want during your enemy's approach, just like on the fast pass, with the bonus that if you run out of missiles before you run out of enemies, you may be able to withdraw.

The key either way is that the missiles don't have a maximum range. However much time you need to unload, you can just start shooting that much ahead of the time your beam-armed adversary could possibly attack you (plus a safety margin, of course).

This doesn't mean missiles automatically win (though it helps), but I do think it deals with any concern of having beam warships swat them before they can launch.

Lightly protected missile boats do have to take an aggressive attitude about not letting any potential laser-armed threat get close to them without being neutralized.

Your analysis is fine, but you are assuming a total war kind of feeling here. In most Space games, not all situations are going to be automatic firefights. What happens when you do not know if an approaching ship is friend or foe? What if they seem like nice folks, then turn out to be space pirates after they come into weapons range? What if you're in a ship that's docked at a space station, and, suddenly you have to flee the station... you've stolen something, or angered a band of mercenaries, whatever.

You get to your ship, and start to run, but they get to their ships and start to chase before you can get outside of beam weapon's range.

I could go on, but the point is, unless you're fighting in a war against clearly identifiable enemies, and you always know who to shoot before they're within 30,000 miles, armor can save you from getting murdered by beam weapons. Which is why it is not useless, even a single layer of it per hull section can prevent, at minimum, your opponent's point defence lasers from killing you.

Tactics seem to indicate that you have a combination of point defence weapons to defend against balistic attacks, and armor to defend against beam attacks, because you really can't depend on always starting a fight at extreme range. Even a Cargo vessel might have, at minimum, a single point defense turret.

Heavier beam weapons are more likely to be found on actual warships... they've got only one purpose, really. Same thing for missiles and railguns, etc... but everyone who's concerned with defence with have some point defense weapons. Probably, anyway. They're good for shooting incoming asteriods too.

[Mirtai]

Also, missiles are pretty terrible for disabling a ship without destroying it. If you ARE a space pirate yourself, a load out of heavy beams for pinpointing and disabling key systems (like your prey's engines and weapons) combined with decent armor and point defense lasers might be all you carry, aside from engines that make you faster than most of your possible enemies.

You wouldn't really even bother with space for missiles, because burning bits of space debris aren't worth much when you're trying to capture ships for fun and profit.

So long as you have the speed to close into laser range, and enough point defense to weather the missile barrage of patrol boats, you're doing good, but without armor, your pirate ship will get ripped up against other ships with similar load outs, and there's always hidden weapons batferies to worry about on the occasional Q-ship!

In conclusion... armor is far from useless in GURPS Spaceships. It's very useful for many types of ships. Sure, some specialized designs would do better if they don't bother with it... say, for example, fighter craft that are going up against larger ships. Such a ship might be better off using speed, it's small size, and ECM to avoid hits rather than trying to carry enough armor to survive attack... but such craft, I would think, are an exception. Any ship that's going to have more than a single purpose is likely to find armor handy, even if it's just making micrometeor hits less of a worry.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

, armor can save you from getting murdered by beam weapons. Which is why it is not useless, even a single layer of it per hull section can prevent, at minimum, your opponent's point defence lasers from killing you.
.

Being attacked only by point defense energy weapons is not a comm0n scenario in my experience. Ships that have only point defense seldom bother to shoot those at other ships.

Every ship that isn't going to just float in the void never touching another solid object should probably have a layer of some kind of armor because if it doesn't it's going to have a skin only half as thick as the sheet metal of your TL8 automobile.

My actual experience is that even 1 layer of the best armor available at your TL isn't going to provide useful amounts of DR v. even Secondary Batteries. Hardening does help some but you might want the option where one level of Hardened is standard and buy another level is an option.

Still, there's a fundamental reason that Spaceships armor doesn't seem to work even as well as 20th century naval warship armor worked (or as well as that was supposed to have worked in theory). This reason is that Spaceships actually armors the whole ship which is something real world navies never did.

A TL6 Capital ship might devote half it's mass to armor but it's armoring les than half its' surface area. No armor below the waterline, no armored decks, no armor for the superstructure.

Land vehicles are no better either. This is why a more reasonable (if not entirely useful) comparison would be to airplane skins or even automobile sheet metal.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

Also, missiles are pretty terrible for disabling a ship without destroying it.

That depends on how you use them. Firing a barrage of missiles and demanding surrender can work - if your target powers down their weapons and power plants, you redirect the missiles elsewhere (or blow them up prematurely, if that's an option), then board and take the ship (either taking the crew for ransom or letting them go on lifeboats). If they don't, you sell the ship's remains for scrap (10,000 tons of scrap is worth $1,000,000 according to SS2, and any cargo hold that wasn't hit directly should still contain around 50% of its cargo intact). If you get lucky and they manage to take out most - but not all - of your missiles with PD, you may find the ship merely disabled rather than destroyed, in which case you'll be able to tow it back to base and repair it.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

Your analysis is fine, but you are assuming a total war kind of feeling here.

Not 'total', just war. Missiles are weapons for warfare, probably by far the best weapons for warfare. They're less suitable for non-war circumstances for a bunch of reasons.

I would, however, argue that the non-war scenarios are much less likely and interesting than you suggest.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

In most Space games, not all situations are going to be automatic firefights. What happens when you do not know if an approaching ship is friend or foe? What if they seem like nice folks, then turn out to be space pirates after they come into weapons range? What if you're in a ship that's docked at a space station, and, suddenly you have to flee the station... you've stolen something, or angered a band of mercenaries, whatever.

You get to your ship, and start to run, but they get to their ships and start to chase before you can get outside of beam weapon's range.

I could go on, but the point is, unless you're fighting in a war against clearly identifiable enemies, and you always know who to shoot before they're within 30,000 miles, armor can save you from getting murdered by beam weapons. Which is why it is not useless, even a single layer of it per hull section can prevent, at minimum, your opponent's point defence lasers from killing you.

In those situations, you are either a dead idiot, or somehow operating a covert pocket battleship and the people who started something with you are dead idiots.

Regardless of how nice they seem, there's no reason to let an even remotely suspect ship within weapons range unless you're basically right at a spaceport. Space is big enough to maintain exclusion zones with very little inconvenience.

As for running like you stole something, unless you have wildly unrealistic drives you're going to take more than long enough even running out of range of a stationary weapon for it to turn you into a colander if it can damage you at all. (If you're being chased by paramilitary forces you probably won't be outrunning them in the first place.) If it can't damage you at all, then you're not so much running away as casually strolling away from people who really can't afford to start anything with you.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

Tactics seem to indicate that you have a combination of point defence weapons to defend against balistic attacks, and armor to defend against beam attacks, because you really can't depend on always starting a fight at extreme range. Even a Cargo vessel might have, at minimum, a single point defense turret.

A cargo vessel would definitely have zero weapons as a minimum. Weapons aren't cheap, take up cargo space, and require high-energy power systems that a cargo vessel doesn't necessarily have any other use for. Note that other than the power requirement, armor has all of these problems as well.

A point defense turret (or any RF or VRF beam really) does give you a chance if you need to fend off some schmuck who thinks one or two missiles is an adequate basis for extortion. The usefulness of that is inversely proportional to how many people have such turrets, since if they're common nobody will expect that to work in the first place.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

Heavier beam weapons are more likely to be found on actual warships... they've got only one purpose, really. Same thing for missiles and railguns, etc... but everyone who's concerned with defence with have some point defense weapons. Probably, anyway. They're good for shooting incoming asteriods too.

Railguns Spaceships style are pretty much good for a laugh, not any sort of actual fight.

A rapid-firing beam is the minimum requirement of any combat suite but the most specialized, I'd agree, but I don't think most ships have any real reason to have one at all. Anything you could stand off with such a minimal combat suite is very unlikely to attack you in the first place.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

So long as you have the speed to close into laser range, and enough point defense to weather the missile barrage of patrol boats, you're doing good, but without armor, your pirate ship will get ripped up against other ships with similar load outs, and there's always hidden weapons batferies to worry about on the occasional Q-ship!

If a Q-ship hits you with hidden weapon batteries, they're probably going to blow your guts out immediately. They would, by design, have weapons powerful enough to deal with whatever armor pirates tend to carry.

If anti-pirate patrols are packing missile volleys, frankly, it's very unlikely any pirate ship is going to survive them. If PD isn't ubiquitous, one or two missile tubes might be useful as a pointed reminder that an order to heave to should be take seriously. But if your missiles are intended for killing rather than communicating, you're not going to be running just one or two tubes.

However, it's fairly reasonable for a patrol ship to have armor and beam weapons, to avoid the kind of thing that happened to your inept missile fighters in that playtest. And pirates crazy enough to plan on fighting them rather than staying well away from them would probably use similar loadouts, rather than dumping a very expensive pile of missiles on them. However, a pirate ship with substantial armoring is likely to have trouble passing for anything other than a paramilitary vessel.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

In conclusion... armor is far from useless in GURPS Spaceships. It's very useful for many types of ships. Sure, some specialized designs would do better if they don't bother with it... say, for example, fighter craft that are going up against larger ships. Such a ship might be better off using speed, it's small size, and ECM to avoid hits rather than trying to carry enough armor to survive attack... but such craft, I would think, are an exception. Any ship that's going to have more than a single purpose is likely to find armor handy, even if it's just making micrometeor hits less of a worry.

I think the usefulness of moderate armor is limited to ships that have to fly close to potentially hostile weapons to do their job, and that is only an element of a small and specialized set of roles.

Large ships with heavy armor can potentially stop light missile strikes with it, which is significant.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Protection tends to be good enough to prevent one-shot-kills between equally-sized ships under normal circumstances, but is almost never good enough to make large numbers of, or persistent shooting by, very small craft a non-threat.

I think it's not too rare for small craft guns to not be much if any threat to heavy units, but small craft with bombs/torpedoes/missiles to be a serious danger.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The balance between 'sandpapered off', 'no sell' and 'if armour is penetrated, the ship is destroyed in one or two hits' seems like the thing that is hard to pull off when trying to reproduce the set-ups in fiction.

Fiction typically (though not always) functions as targets having mostly hit points, not DR, but the variation in hit points is much larger than it would be in GURPS. For example, in EvE, a titan is ~2,000 times the mass of a frigate, and ~120 times the hit points (with resists, effective is probably higher). In GURPS, that same mass ratio would result in only 12x the hit points.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I think it's not too rare for small craft guns to not be much if any threat to heavy units, but small craft with bombs/torpedoes/missiles to be a serious danger.

Well, maybe. But the manner in which those missiles/torpedoes/bombs are a threat also differs. In GURPS, it's mostly 'oh ****, they deployed 256 fighters who ran at us at 20mps, launched 1024 missiles each, and turned back! Can we shoot them all down in time?', while much of the fictional sources seem to focus on 'oh ****, their dozen aces launched in a wing of fighters and bombers! We need to launch our own fighters and take them down to make sure they do not set us up the bomb!'.
G:SS seems fitting for settings like Transhuman Space, where space combats are largely won and lost long before they begin, but take some while to actually perform. For anything else - not so much.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Fiction typically (though not always) functions as targets having mostly hit points, not DR, but the variation in hit points is much larger than it would be in GURPS. For example, in EvE, a titan is ~2,000 times the mass of a frigate, and ~120 times the hit points (with resists, effective is probably higher). In GURPS, that same mass ratio would result in only 12x the hit points.

Hit points or ablative DR; the line is probably fuzzier in narration.
But the point about non-ablative armour in G:SS is that it tends to be an all-or-nothing effect: either it's so puny that when the salvo of a given enemy hits, it's crippling or lethal, or it's so tough as to make a given battery completely irrelevant. This actually mirrors similar discussions about character defences; but ships differ in size more than characters in a typical party.

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The balance between 'sandpapered off', 'no sell' and 'if armour is penetrated, the ship is destroyed in one or two hits' seems like the thing that is hard to pull off when trying to reproduce the set-ups in fiction.

*snip*

Overall, all those settings seem to involve the following differences as compared to G:SS:

• Greater overall survivability of ships, one way or another.
• If missiles are numerous, then one hit isn't a death sentence; but otherwise, missiles are considered a rare and serious threat that can't be easily handled by merely assigning a PD turret or two to shoot it down.
• Protection tends to be good enough to prevent one-shot-kills between equally-sized ships under normal circumstances, but is almost never good enough to make large numbers of, or persistent shooting by, very small craft a non-threat.

So ablative shields and ablative armour (about ×5 DR, but ablative) seem like the way to go.

This is much excellent analysis and I find your conclusion to also be compelling! I will certainly make ablative armor a thing in any space combat system I design.