Author Topic: Warships with low armor  (Read 14391 times)

Cryhavok101

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Warships with low armor
« on: 16 March 2017, 21:25:59 »
Warships like the Sovetskii Soyuz, Agamemnon, and Eagle have always seemed like they have abysmally low armor, enough so to make them basically flying victims. Or at least that is the way I have always viewed them. Is there an opposing view? Can someone show me what I am missing? Is there a way to use these that their armor levels isn't as big a problem?

snewsom2997

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #1 on: 17 March 2017, 12:46:31 »
Well with the SovSoy at least it would have been supported by dozens of other warships and hundreds of fighters and ASF Carriers when designed in the Star League. When used by the Clans it would generally be a centerpiece not a combatant.

When you think about it, a modern carrier doesn't have any armor. because it has concentric rings of defenders, Destroyers, Subs, Helicopters, and Aircraft.

The Eagle and the Aggie, I don't know, The Eagle is at least fast, trades Armor for Speed, the Aggie traded Armor for Speed and Weapons. 4(6) is pretty fast for a Heavy Cruiser.

Arkansas Warrior

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #2 on: 17 March 2017, 14:21:28 »
If it's the only WarShip on the field, it oughta be able to bully fighters and droppers well enough to not need super-thick armor.  Could be the Addie and Eagle were meant more for patrol and interdiction, where encountering lots of other WarShips is unlikely.   IIRC the Eagle is specifically fluffed as a Thera escort, though.  I suppose you could say that it's vulnerability makes it a more likely target, thus drawing fire away from the *important* ship in the carrier group.  lol
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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #3 on: 17 March 2017, 14:56:26 »
The Agamemnon from the new FWL navy was really low also. It had great amounts of fire power but no armor.
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Cryhavok101

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #4 on: 17 March 2017, 14:58:47 »
The Eagle is at least fast, trades Armor for Speed, the Aggie traded Armor for Speed and Weapons.

Warships don't trade armor for speed. I don't think I can name even 1 warship whose maximum armor value is eve close to the weight of a single MP. Warship armor weighs a relatively trivial amount, with even the heaviest battleships only having a less than 10,000 tons of it.

If anything they are trading armor for a trivial amount of more cargo space.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #5 on: 17 March 2017, 16:26:14 »
Warships don't trade armor for speed. I don't think I can name even 1 warship whose maximum armor value is eve close to the weight of a single MP. Warship armor weighs a relatively trivial amount, with even the heaviest battleships only having a less than 10,000 tons of it.

If anything they are trading armor for a trivial amount of more cargo space.

Which is a pretty good way of looking at it. And probably shows just how screwy things are :)

The Tracker at 100,000 tons requires 6000 tons per point of thrust. Its armor is 129.5 tons and its cargo is 2295.5 tons. The Leviathan III requires 144,000 tons per point of thrust. Its armor is only 5373 tons while its cargo is 51,459 tons.

The Agamemnon requires 49,200 tons per point of thrust, it has 735 tons of armor and 70,770 tons of cargo. It could double its armor for like 1% of its cargo tonnage. Quite a few designs have similar ratios.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #6 on: 17 March 2017, 21:27:45 »
Well, in character, the Sovetskii Soyuz was designed and operated in an era when WarShips were basically transports with some nominal guns and armor. Many of the SLDF WarShips were designed, built, and broken without seeing combat. If they could shrug off micrometeorites and wayward DropShips that screwed up a docking maneuver, that was good enough.

(Out of character, the Sovetskii Soyuz was written up before there were WarShip rules. They didn't exist when TR:2750 was printed. The conversion to BattleForce rules was relatively ad hoc, resulting in vast cargo volumes and thin armor.)

The Agamemnon and Eagle, meanwhile, were first tries by novice WarShip designers.
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Cryhavok101

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #7 on: 17 March 2017, 21:58:10 »
Well, in character, the Sovetskii Soyuz was designed and operated in an era when WarShips were basically transports with some nominal guns and armor. Many of the SLDF WarShips were designed, built, and broken without seeing combat. If they could shrug off micrometeorites and wayward DropShips that screwed up a docking maneuver, that was good enough.

Okay, that is an explanation I can work with, thanks!

The Agamemnon and Eagle, meanwhile, were first tries by novice WarShip designers.

Hmmm... that could work as an in-universe explanation too... even Comstar or Word of Blake hadn't been actually designing new warships in a long time despite having some available, and if they used examples like the Sovetskii Soyuz as a model to base decisions off of, I could envision a chain of decisions that resulted in it. The Sovetskii Soyuz is designated as a heavy cruiser, so I could see some design team trying to match performance with it when they put together the Agamemnon, and then the eagle followed a similar pattern after.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #8 on: 18 March 2017, 01:00:21 »
Comstar/WOB had some experience thanks to the Suffren and Dante classes though. and those had fairly good armor.

i suspect that the WOB were playing a long game.. giving the FWLN warships that would not be much of a threat to the WOB navy if the FWL held onto them, but which would do well when supporting the star league era ships the WOB had when the WOB took the FWL ships over.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #9 on: 18 March 2017, 05:26:35 »
Warships don't trade armor for speed. I don't think I can name even 1 warship whose maximum armor value is eve close to the weight of a single MP. Warship armor weighs a relatively trivial amount, with even the heaviest battleships only having a less than 10,000 tons of it.

If anything they are trading armor for a trivial amount of more cargo space.

Sort of.

Large amounts of armour require large amounts of SI. Increases in SI require increased thrust.
For example you can't have Leviathan II levels of armour on a Leviathan I's thrust.

There are a few ships that run into this. Usually around destroyer size. That's why their armour maxes out around 100.

Comstar/WOB had some experience thanks to the Suffren and Dante classes though. and those had fairly good armor.

i suspect that the WOB were playing a long game.. giving the FWLN warships that would not be much of a threat to the WOB navy if the FWL held onto them, but which would do well when supporting the star league era ships the WOB had when the WOB took the FWL ships over.

House ships have armour because they operate alone. Same for the Suffrens and Dantes.
SLDF and FWL run fleets. If they are being shot at they have already stuffed up.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #10 on: 18 March 2017, 07:17:54 »
Yes, but at least part of the point here is that these ships don't even max out the amount of armor their relatively feeble SI allows them (which wouldn't take much).

Cryhavok101

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #11 on: 18 March 2017, 08:30:41 »
Sort of.

Large amounts of armour require large amounts of SI. Increases in SI require increased thrust.
For example you can't have Leviathan II levels of armour on a Leviathan I's thrust.

Eagle
Code: [Select]
Thrust: 4-6
Max possible SI at that thrust: 180
Actual SI: 45
Max Armor at that SI: 558 tons
Actual Armor: 450 tons
Armor Type: Standard (worst, but cheapest type, c-bill-wise)
Armor Points: 180 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Improved Ferro Aluminum: 270 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Ferro-Carbide: 360 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Lamellor Ferro-Carbide: 450 (plus SI contributions) (more than 2X the ship's actual amount)

Agamemnon
Code: [Select]
Thrust: 4-6
Max possible SI at that thrust: 180
Actual SI: 45
Max Armor at that SI: 738 tons
Actual Armor: 735 tons
Armor Type: Standard (worst, but cheapest type, c-bill-wise)
Armor Points: 294 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Improved Ferro Aluminum: 441 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Ferro-Carbide: 588 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Lamellor Ferro-Carbide: 735 (plus SI contributions) (more than 2X the ship's actual amount)

I'd say some amount of cheapness went into choosing the armor. Standard is the worst type of armor for a Warship. However, if I understand it right, standard is basically the same material fighters, small craft, and DropShips use. It may have been chosen for it's abundance, since they would have already had industries geared towards it's manufacture, rather than needing to build whole new facilities for something like Lamellor Ferro-Carbide, which would have increased the start-up costs of the project for each warship quite a bit beyond just the cost of armor itself. Otherwise, I can't really think of a reason that makes much sense to me in universe, because compared to the rest of the ship, the cost of armor is pretty trivial, even if lamellor ferro-carbide is ten times the cost of standard armor.

Sovetskii Soyuz (Star League Version)
Code: [Select]
Thrust: 2-3
Max possible SI at that thrust: 90
Actual SI: 80
Max Armor at that SI: 1,328 tons
Actual Armor: 743 tons
Armor Type: Improved Ferro-Aluminum
Armor Points: 446 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Ferro-Carbide: 595 (plus SI contributions)
Armor Points with Lamellor Ferro-Carbide: 743 (plus SI contributions) (more than 2X the ship's actual amount)

The Eagle is 108 tons short of the armor it could mount with it's current Values, while the Agamemnon is short only 3 tons. With their standard armor, neither of these numbers would make a huge difference, and upgrading the armor type would be make a much more significant impact. The Sovetskii Soyuz on the other hand could mount 585 more tons of armor at it's current values, which would be a major increase, enough of a difference to make it tough enough to be a serious threat.

Leviathan Heavy Transport
Code: [Select]
Thrust: 2-3
Max possible SI at that thrust: 90
Actual SI: 90
Max Armor at that SI: 4,320 tons
Actual Armor: 950 tons
Armor Type: Lamellor Ferro-Carbide
Armor Points: 950 (plus SI contributions)

I don't have the record sheet for a Leviathan II to extrapolate stats from, but suffice it to say that a Leviathan Transport could get a lot closer to it than it is now, seeing as it has less than a quarter of the armor it could be mounting, without changing any of it's other stats.

House ships have armour because they operate alone. Same for the Suffrens and Dantes.
SLDF and FWL run fleets. If they are being shot at they have already stuffed up.

Those are good points. When your neighbors only have individual ships, a fleet would have different needs. On the other hand, if their neighbors had developed fleets out of their ships, the FWL Navy would have been in serious trouble.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #12 on: 18 March 2017, 10:06:19 »

I can imagine that the FWL navy might have been planning for some type of block 2 refits.
Likely waiting for some experience and having their industries were ready to produce higher grade armor.
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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #13 on: 18 March 2017, 11:26:57 »
I can imagine that the FWL navy might have been planning for some type of block 2 refits.
Likely waiting for some experience and having their industries were ready to produce higher grade armor.

I would hope so for the FWL navy. They seemed to put all the "eggs" in the Thera, they got that ship right.
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Arkansas Warrior

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #14 on: 18 March 2017, 13:27:41 »
Comstar/WOB had some experience thanks to the Suffren and Dante classes though. and those had fairly good armor.

i suspect that the WOB were playing a long game.. giving the FWLN warships that would not be much of a threat to the WOB navy if the FWL held onto them, but which would do well when supporting the star league era ships the WOB had when the WOB took the FWL ships over.
The Dante was designed 120 years before the FWL fleet started shaping up.  I doubt it's design team would've been able to share their experience.
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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #15 on: 18 March 2017, 18:28:13 »
My experience with SLDF warships (and BT warships in general) is that the armor is only part of the equation; capital-grade SI is a seriously tough nut to crack; each point is 10 points of standard-scale damage AND it halves incoming damage.

I have learned to not sweat critical checks, because even if I do get a crit, it might be something that does not affect combat effectiveness (grav deck, cargo, bay doors...).

Warships (and other large craft) also have the added advantage of being able to end-over and roll in order to present undamaged armor facings to the most threatening opponent; space battles are not like (pre-2009) Star Trek battles, where ships basically stand there and blast each other.

And do not underestimate the Aggie; its armor may be criminally thin, but properly used, it can be quite surprising; anybody remember the Aggie v. Fox + 5x Grand Inquisitor (PWS) battle some time back?

Edit: Found it.
« Last Edit: 18 March 2017, 18:56:45 by Fireangel »

Giovanni Blasini

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #16 on: 21 March 2017, 21:28:55 »
Also, that added SI isn't exactly lightweight. You may not be giving up much weaponry for armor, but you do for SI.
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sadlerbw

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #17 on: 06 April 2017, 10:36:23 »
Sorry for the minor necro, but I've been picking through the warship/dropship landscape recently, and its pretty clear it's a bit of a mess. It's also apparent that the two major books with Warships aren't exactly playing by the same rules. Oh sure, they can generally be built without too much tweaking under the current rules, but the design philosophy is way different. To me, it seems like most of the 3057 stuff was designed to get blown up. The imbalance between armor+structure and the amount of damage many of these things put out is pretty stark. It's like the plan was to have big fleet battles with lots of warships, and several were definitely going to pop in any fight. Sort of like Mech fights.

Pretty much everything bigger than a corvette can scrape together 50 capital scale damage between two adjacent facings. Heck, even some of the corvettes can! Sure it isn't all guaranteed to hit and it is usually medium range or shorter to get there, but 50 damage would clean all the armor off any facing and maybe go internal on a bit less than half the ships in 3057 if I am counting correctly. That is just the minimum. If you line up a good broadside shot with some of these cruisers and battleships, putting out over 200 damage is possible. Even if only half the bays hit, you are going internal on any solid hit on most things smaller than a cruiser, and even several cruisers. It just seems like, if warships actually fight each other, they are supposed to get blown to bits reasonably fast.

The 3067 stuff feels different, like battles with big fleets weren't the goal anymore. There is a whole lot more armor and standard-scale weaponry, and slightly less capital-scale weaponry. It also feels like there is more fighter/dropship transport capability, but that might be my imagination. Several ships can still generate 50 capital scale damage at medium range, but that only has the potential for going internal on the Eagle, the Carrack, and the two corvettes. Furthermore, there are actually a couple of cruiser-class ships that can't manage to crack 200 damage on a perfect three-arc broadside. The Eagle and Aggamemnon are certainly throwbacks to the 3057 way, but they do have better secondary weapon arrays at least. The biggest thing seems to be that 3067 is much more conscious about NOT letting you bracket fire too much. Just about every capital weapon bay in there has no more than two guns in it. In fact, I think the only capital bay with more than two guns is the broadside NL array on the Leviathan! 3057 seems a little less cautious about stacking NAC's (bigger ones at leat), and happily piles up NL's and NPPC's.

I think the craziest part of it all, to me at least, is when you start looking at the newer PWS and assualt dropships. You've got the armor of a half-million-ton Star Leage frigate on a dropship that weighs less than a tenths of that! Sure you are missing a boat-load of SI, but the fact that you have dropships with more armor than warships is just crazy! I was looking at TRO:3085, and the Interdictor PWS is 9400 tons with, unless I misunderstand the armor conversion, the equivalent of 68 capital-scale armor on its nose, 51 on the wings, and 34 on the aft. The Isegrim managed 67 capital-scale armor on the nose, and that beats most Destroyers! Sure the dropships don't have the same firepower, but just the idea that an 8500 ton dropship has better frontal armor than Lola III at 680,000 tons is staggering to me.

Cryhavok101

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #18 on: 06 April 2017, 10:45:05 »
The biggest thing seems to be that 3067 is much more conscious about NOT letting you bracket fire too much. Just about every capital weapon bay in there has no more than two guns in it. In fact, I think the only capital bay with more than two guns is the broadside NL array on the Leviathan! 3057 seems a little less cautious about stacking NAC's (bigger ones at leat), and happily piles up NL's and NPPC's.

To be fair on this specific point, if I remember correctly, bracket fire wasn't a thing when these ships were designed. I don't recall bracket firing being a thing in BattleTech until Strategic Operations came out.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #19 on: 06 April 2017, 20:21:38 »
I think the McKenna has low armor for a battleship, less then the Texas.
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Cryhavok101

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #20 on: 06 April 2017, 20:52:38 »
The Star League's McKenna only has ~43% of it's max possible armor at it's current SI. The Clan one is at ~38% of max possible armor at current SI.

The Texas has lower Max Armor levels, but also doesn't even come close to max armor for it's SI. The Star League's Texas only has ~67% of it's max possible armor at it's current SI. The Clan one is at ~61% of max possible armor at current SI.

Even though the Texas class has about 500 more total armor than the McKenna, it's still kinda low. The McKenna could take itself out with it's own broadside attack pretty quickly.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #21 on: 08 April 2017, 22:10:34 »
I think the craziest part of it all, to me at least, is when you start looking at the newer PWS and assualt dropships. You've got the armor of a half-million-ton Star Leage frigate on a dropship that weighs less than a tenths of that! Sure you are missing a boat-load of SI, but the fact that you have dropships with more armor than warships is just crazy! I was looking at TRO:3085, and the Interdictor PWS is 9400 tons with, unless I misunderstand the armor conversion, the equivalent of 68 capital-scale armor on its nose, 51 on the wings, and 34 on the aft. The Isegrim managed 67 capital-scale armor on the nose, and that beats most Destroyers! Sure the dropships don't have the same firepower, but just the idea that an 8500 ton dropship has better frontal armor than Lola III at 680,000 tons is staggering to me.
The armor, yes, but not the SI; since PWS SI is still at standard scale, they rarely have more than single-digit capital scale armor equivalent. Since they also have only four armor facings (versus the six of a warship), their armor will not last as long either.

Their other issue is the range of their weapons; only capital missiles are viable range-wise, but modern AMS and point defense renders those mostly moot, meaning that their main punch comes from masses of sub-caps or even larger masses of conventional weapons, requiring the PWS to close within knife-fighting of the warship in order to strike.

As I have stated on other occasions; heavy-duty PWS are intended to take on other PWS or conventional dropships. Against anything but the lightest already-obsolete warships, they are eggshells with hammers.

Cryhavok101

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #22 on: 08 April 2017, 23:14:43 »
they rarely have more than single-digit capital scale armor equivalent.

The Castrum has an SI of 150 and armor facings of 1000+, converted to capital scale that is an SI of 15 (low for a warship), but armor of 100 or more (higher than most light warships, and even some heavier warships). The Aesir/Vanir has low SI, but double digit capital scale armor. The Isegrim is the same way, as is the Interdictor, Arondight, Draagau, and Tiamat.

I am not really sure where your 'single digit' figure is coming from. Are you talking about the cobbled-together-out-of-desparation piles of junk from the Jihad, or actual purpose build PWSs?

Their other issue is the range of their weapons; only capital missiles are viable range-wise, but modern AMS and point defense renders those mostly moot, meaning that their main punch comes from masses of sub-caps or even larger masses of conventional weapons, requiring the PWS to close within knife-fighting of the warship in order to strike.

I've seen it pointed out quite often that most capital fighting happens at medium range, thanks to electronic warfare disrupting targeting and making it unlikely to hit anything at longer ranges. Besides that point, it can also be pointed out that a DropShip is capable of being built with considerably more speed that a warship, simple due to having a higher percentage of mass available to get put into the maneuvering drive, since the DropShip doesn't have to use half their weight on a K-F drive. Between the two, range isn't a huge issue.

Even if it were an issue, sub-capital weapons can reach long capital range, and only missing the extreme bracket is not a huge problem... especially if you are more likely to have naval C3 than a warship is.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #23 on: 10 April 2017, 13:34:41 »
The armor, yes, but not the SI; since PWS SI is still at standard scale, they rarely have more than single-digit capital scale armor equivalent. Since they also have only four armor facings (versus the six of a warship), their armor will not last as long either.

Oh, I get that, but it's still one of those things where you look at it and say, "They had to do that to make the game not totally broken, because it makes NO sense otherwise." It's not like it is just the newer 3085+ stuff that is crazy either. Looking at the small assault dropships in 3057 is enough to cause head-scratching. The Avenger is a 1400T dropship with 23/20/18 capital-scale armor, 81 total. The Claymore at 1400T has 25/20/15, 80 total. If you look at a warship in that same book that is 100 times its mass, the armor isn't much different: The Tracker at 140kT is 18/15/15/15, 93 total. The Vigilant at 140kT is 16/16/14/13, 92 total. The Mako at 200kT is 38/31/31/38, 200 total, which is a lot more armor, but the weight difference is around 150 times the dropships!

So, for comparison, Imagine a Clan Elemental battle suit. It weighs 1T. Now, imagine it had similar armor as a unit 100 times its mazz. Say, an Atlas D. Even if you are generous and only have it match the armor of a single location, that is at least 34 armor! If you look at total armor, and say it gets about 60% of the Atlas' total, that would be 177 armor...on an Elemental! That would be absurd, even if it does only mount a small laser and a two-shot SRM2. Even if you fudge a bit and say 60% of a Cyclops 10-Z, which is only 90T and has fairly low armor for an assault, you end up with about 90 points of armor...on a 1T unit.

Things get a little more reasonable if you move to the top end of the dropship weight class. The 100kT Castrum is about 10% of the mass of a Nightlord, and has 25% of it's armor. Still off, but better than 1% of the mass and 80%+ of the armor!

I'm not saying the armor is necessarily broken gameplay-wise. If you didn't have low-end capital-scale armor, then dropships would have zero chance of surviving fire from capital scale weapons. As it is, they still might get one-shot, but they at least have a chance against some of the laser bays and smaller AC's and PPC's. So, game-wise it kinda has to be that way, but when you compare it to other scales in the game, it looks crazy. Now, the fact that they can do so little to actually hurt a warship...that is a different problem, and one I don't think you should have to make 100kT dropships to fix!

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #24 on: 11 April 2017, 00:12:41 »
Who cares about DropShips.

A little thought exercise.
A Leviathan II has 6000 points of armour and a broadside of about 500. Assume 50% accuracy so 250.

So 24 turns for a Leviathan to strip a Leviathan.

Do you want a game 24 turns long?

Obviously a Leviathan is at the extreme end. A McKenna takes about 6 turns to strip itself. The questio  becomes what number in between is adequate?

Cryhavok101

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #25 on: 11 April 2017, 00:31:14 »
So 24 turns for a Leviathan to strip a Leviathan.

Do you want a game 24 turns long?

Obviously a Leviathan is at the extreme end. A McKenna takes about 6 turns to strip itself. The questio  becomes what number in between is adequate?

Personally, I am okay with both existing, I was mostly looking for an in-universe reason for the lowest end to have been created. Game mechanics are fine do x to get Y result in game, etc. but the mechanics and fluff need to support each other, or it loses me. Both are equally important. I did already get an answer to those questions.

And to be clear, I am okay with far longer games than 24 turns, I just don't finish them in one sitting. I am also okay with 4-6 turn games, that I want to complete the same day I start them. Both have a place in my gaming.

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #26 on: 11 April 2017, 09:34:54 »
Who cares about DropShips.

A little thought exercise.
A Leviathan II has 6000 points of armour and a broadside of about 500. Assume 50% accuracy so 250.

So 24 turns for a Leviathan to strip a Leviathan.

Do you want a game 24 turns long?

Even longer if you talk about structures.

Obviously a Leviathan is at the extreme end. A McKenna takes about 6 turns to strip itself. The questio  becomes what number in between is adequate?
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Fireangel

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #27 on: 11 April 2017, 17:57:32 »
I am not really sure where your 'single digit' figure is coming from. Are you talking about the cobbled-together-out-of-desparation piles of junk from the Jihad, or actual purpose build PWSs?

Capital scale equivalent; the Aesir/Vanir has 25 points of standard-scale SI, which translates as three whole points of capital-scale SI (single digit).

Isegrim? 21 standard = 3 Capital, Taihou? 30 standard = 3 capital. Single digits.

Besides the Castrum, what PWS has double-digit capital-scale equivalent SI?

Compare to warships in the modern environment; the Fox has 100 capital points of SI, the equivalent of one thousand points of standard-scale SI; it has more SI than most PWS have in both SI AND armor.

As I have pointed out in other threads, any ship that closes with a capital warship needs to be able to take it out in one turn and survive return fire. Range is a big thing; if the warship can engage your PWS before you can engage it, you are in trouble. Only the smallest, weakest, and/or demonstrably obsolete warship designs are vulnearable to the most powerful PWS that can be fielded (Vinnie, Zec, Carrack), anything larger has at least parity, and even larger classes can eat Castrums for breakfast.

Ruger

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #28 on: 11 April 2017, 18:34:28 »
As I have pointed out in other threads, any ship that closes with a capital warship needs to be able to take it out in one turn and survive return fire. Range is a big thing; if the warship can engage your PWS before you can engage it, you are in trouble. Only the smallest, weakest, and/or demonstrably obsolete warship designs are vulnearable to the most powerful PWS that can be fielded (Vinnie, Zec, Carrack), anything larger has at least parity, and even larger classes can eat Castrums for breakfast.

Not sure I'm seeing the issue...pocket warships are the fast attack boats (like the PT and E boats of WW2, or the Pegasus-class hydrofoil or Komar or Osa-class missile boats of the 60's, 70's and 80's)...can they take out, or at least heavily damage, destroyers, cruisers or other warships? Yes...if they get lucky, or have overwhelming numbers...but one on one, there's no contest...

Nor should there be...

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Fireangel

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Re: Warships with low armor
« Reply #29 on: 11 April 2017, 18:46:18 »
Looking at the small assault dropships in 3057 is enough to cause head-scratching. The Avenger is a 1400T dropship with 23/20/18 capital-scale armor, 81 total. The Claymore at 1400T has 25/20/15, 80 total. If you look at a warship in that same book that is 100 times its mass, the armor isn't much different: The Tracker at 140kT is 18/15/15/15, 93 total. The Vigilant at 140kT is 16/16/14/13, 92 total. The Mako at 200kT is 38/31/31/38, 200 total, which is a lot more armor, but the weight difference is around 150 times the dropships!

Warships use capital scale armor and SI, dropships (even PWS) use standard-scale armor and SI.

Capital scale is x10 standard scale, so the Tracker is 930 at standard scale, Vigilant 920, and Mako 2,000.

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Now, the fact that they can do so little to actually hurt a warship...that is a different problem, and one I don't think you should have to make 100kT dropships to fix!
100kt PWS are not the solution; beyond 64,900 tons, the tonnage required per SI, combined with reduced coverage or armor by ton, really eats into the usable tonnage of the ship, making it extremely inefficient.

Some time back, I designed a 100kt PWS, then realized that I could get exactly the same thing, with marginally less less armor, for only 64,900 tons. Some time later, I designed a significantly smaller version, with similar (although abridged) capabilities for only 19,900 tons.

The bigger the DS, the less efficient it is. Seriously, canonically we have not even scratched the surface of the potential of PWSs... but they are still eggshells with hammers when facing true warships (Vinnies, Zecs, and Carracks need not apply).