commercial armor question

[kaliban]

I am designing some light armed IndustrialMechs that have very thin armor (no more than 5 or 6 points in the torsos). It is seems more advantageous to use commercial armor as the BAR5 restriction makes no different if you have 5 or less points of armor in each location. Also BV and cbills costs are much lower using commercial armor instead of heavy industrial armor of the same point value per location.

Am I missing something?

[Syzyx]

Nope. Commercial armour is actually advantageous in situations where you only have low armour.

[monbvol]

Doing that could set you up for taking additional critical hits as if say a Medium Pulse Laser hits a location with 5 armor it'd make a check for penetrating critical and a check for internal damage.

Worst case scenario an AC-10 firing AP could then potentially generate checks for:

1. Location TAC
2. AP specialty ammo
3. Penetrating critical hit
4. Damage to internal structure

[Daryk]

Assuming the IS survives the hit, of course.

[monbvol]

True.

[Wolf72]

more true on 10-15 ton mechs ... if they get hit with anything doing more than 5 pts, it'll probably go all the way thru it!

[glitterboy2098]

more than a few 20 tonners as well. and on anything 10-20 tons, you'll probably want to save as much mass as you can for other things, so using commercial armor to gain those few extra points per ton isn't a big problem.

anything bigger than 25 tons though and you will generally be better served using standard armor.