Shields

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Hellboy

Not sure how to price this concept though.

It's called Semi-Ablative, and is a -20% Limitation on the DR Advantage. See B47. There's been some talk in the past about trying to make a progression between Ablative (every point blocked removes 1 DR) and Semi-Ablative (every 10 points blocked removes 1 DR), but I don't think there was ever anything official. It would probably be fair to follow a scheme of +10% per +1 SSR, however - -80% for 1:1, -70% for 1.5:1 (every 1.5 points blocked removes 1 DR), -60% for 2:1, -50% for 3:1, -40% for 5:1, -30% for 7:1, -20% for 10:1, and -10% for 15:1. I'd probably allow for -5% for 20:1, but anything beyond that doesn't count as a Limitation.

In terms of gear, Vehicles (for 3e) suggests ablative armor (which is semi-ablative) being something like 3xDR of Laminate (otherwise the best armor) at a tiny fraction (something like 5% per pound) of the cost. For my Vehicles<->Spaceships conversion houserules, I felt a simple +1 SSR to DR (70 becomes 100) and 1/10th the price was more fair*. The armor design articles from Pyramid also have some options for ablative armor that could be exported to Spaceships fairly readily (although those are basically a small price decrease for no improvement in DR).

*3xDR means you're protected from a lot more, but have the risk of things that couldn't hurt you before now being able to. Assuming base DR 100 and a worse-case scenario of an attack that always does exactly 100 damage, the semi-ablative DR 300 has to be hit 22 times with that attack for you to get wounded. That might be a fair trade if they were the same cost, but at 5% of the price it's really hard to justify not using semi-ablative armor pretty much everywhere.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by Varyon

They need to be unstreamlined (which is indeed appropriate for capital ships) and have 2 systems in each hull section dedicated to armor, which is pretty substantial (30% of the ship's mass is in armor*). And doing this doesn't protect them from the fighters aiming at weakpoints (at -10 to hit, true, but the bonus from the capital ship's SM offsets this markedly) - you need 4 armor sections (60% of the ship's mass is in armor, at which point it's dense enough that it's targeted at -1) to protect from that. Well, under Spaceships 1 rules anyway - needed armor modules is reduced if using the more realistic armor volume rules from Pyramid #3/34. Regardless, you're talking about some very heavily armored ships. If using the optional rules for exposed radiators, those can't be protected by armor (at least, not while exposed), so the fighters can take those out, forcing the target to basically shut down in 30 minutes - a solid mission kill that can set it up for proper destruction (either by heavies or a boarding party, depending on the feel you're going for).

All that said, that's a pretty good observation, and something to keep in mind if you want primarily energy weapons.


*For reference, a Main Battle Tank built using Spaceships would likely have somewhere around 60% of its mass in armor.

All very true points, and if you notice in the Spaceships series, capital ships - even with shields - usually mount 2 armor systems in at least one facing. And considering how lenient Spaceship rules are for pointing a facing at your opponent, this makes the bigger ones quite scary. Just a general heads up. Personally, if I wanted fighters to hurt capital ships through volume of fire, I'd make armor ablative like shields. That'll give more of a video game feel than simply unarmored ships.