Making EM Guns Viable in Space Combat (3e)

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The point is, it doesn't discuss how the armour is laid out at all, and just lists it by type. I would assume that the in0universe designers of armoured spaceships would lay it out and use spacing, etc., as appropriate against the threats they expect to see. We don't need to worry about these details, but only about the final effect (dDR), mass, and price because that's the level of detail Sapceships works at.

A good way to verify that would be to see if spaceship DR scales the same way that DR scales against bullets (and if DR seems to assume that 1" of RHA is DR 70). If it does, that's a sign that Pulver just projected the same model to a completely different environment. I don't think any of GURPS' engineering geeks have ever said that they were asked to create such a model, the pantropes tv guy created his model as a hobby.

Another way to verify is to see if the more protective types of armour have the properties which the engineers designing protection for spacecraft and space stations look for, or if they have the properties of tank armour from the 1940s and 1950s.

Edit: GURPS Spaceships pp. 10-13 seems to list the types of armour I would expect on a 20th-century light armoured vehicle, plus ice, rock, and organic (and imaginary extensions of 20th century technologies). Nothing about layers of bumpers or synthetic fibres.