[High-Tech] Drills: what's the point of the Armour Divisor?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

...So when you start drilling, the idea is that the (2) is supposed to tell you to divide the DR into two piles, one of which the attack ignores and the other of which the attack ablates?

More like double damage for purposes of ablation. You can think of the AD as dividing the DR in half (useful if you're really just concerned about the ultimate injury). Or you could think of an AD as being "Damage Multiplier (Only Versus Armor)" -- multiply the damage to calculate penetration/ablation, then divide again to calculate injury. Or to put it more concisely, "Injury Divisor", so that you could rate your drills at twice the damage, but divide for injury purposes. It's the same result either way.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Where does either rule say, "ignore armor divisors"? Nowhere, because you don't do that. An attack with a divisor faces less DR in the first place. It's this DR that's reduced, not full DR. If I have a divisor (2), then I need to carve away DR 40 to get through a DR 80 ablative target. On the other hand, if another attack comes along, I've only carved away DR 40, so that attack still faces DR 40, because the DR just has a little hole in it.

Hmm.

Now I'm confused. On one hand, this drastically changes the effectiveness of Conversion Beams: with AD (10), they now capable of bringing DR to zero much, much faster. Disintegrator Beams, with AD (∞), are even nastier (unless the paragraph below is true too).

Also, depending on whether I'm reading your post correctly, there seems to be an implication that after being hit by an AD attack, Semi-/Ablative DR now has two different scores. That seems very non-obvious from the rulebook. To me anyway - can't speak for others.

Originally Posted by Kromm

Please check my examples again. Nowhere am I using injury. I only start applying the injury rules once the damage begins to penetrate DR. That's when homogenous kicks in.

The fact that pi++ is treated as ablative, not semi-ablative. The footnote on p. B559 is quite explicit on this point: "Repeated impaling, piercing, and large piercing . . . semi-ablative; repeated burning, corrosion, crushing, cutting, or huge piercing . . . ablative." And p. B47 is quite clear on how ablative DR works; namely, it's carved away on 1:1 basis by damage points. This is why just about all tools intended for slicing through bulk matter are either burning (burn) or huge piercing (pi++).

My confusion was due to penetration modifiers affecting the speed at which DR is lost.

Originally Posted by B268

Armor Divisors: A parenthetical
number after damage – e.g., (2) – is an
armor divisor. Divide the target’s DR
from armor or other sources by this
number before subtracting it from
your damage (or adding it to the tar-
get’s HT roll to resist an affliction). For
instance, an attack with a divisor of (2)
would halve DR. A fractional divisor
increases DR: (0.5) multiplies DR by 2;
(0.2) multiplies it by 5; and (0.1) mul-
tiplies it by 10.

Basic Set also doesn't seem to indicate that AD interacts with armour diminishing - only reduces the number that is subtracted from damage to calculate injury. And ablation/corrosion are based on damage rolled, not penetrating damage.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The general principle is that unless a rule is explicitly ruled out in a situation where it would apply (and I think a mechanic for DR depletion and a mechanic for DR reduction clearly apply to DR), it does apply.

It's not at all clear that it should apply. Armor divisors don't actually cause the target to have less DR, they make the target's DR less protective against the attack that triggers them.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

More like double damage for purposes of ablation. You can think of the AD as dividing the DR in half (useful if you're really just concerned about the ultimate injury). Or you could think of an AD as being "Damage Multiplier (Only Versus Armor)" -- multiply the damage to calculate penetration/ablation, then divide again to calculate injury. Or to put it more concisely, "Injury Divisor", so that you could rate your drills at twice the damage, but divide for injury purposes. It's the same result either way.

I'm pretty sure that is not equivalent to what Kromm wrote.

[MatthewVilter]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's not at all clear that it should apply. Armor divisors don't actually cause the target to have less DR, they make the target's DR less protective against the attack that triggers them.

I agree. My reading of the rules would be that once the DR has been mostly ablated you would be able to do a bit more damage with the drill (reducing the effective minimum DR from 3 to 2 (rounded from 1.5) for example).