In regards to 4e spaceships. I've looked over my copy of it and it appears that damage capabilities far exceed damage resistance without screens. At TL10 a size 5 cutter/PT boat analog can effectively have 9x16cm missile launchers and lob a salvo with a pretty good chance to hit with all 9. Gunner 14 + 2 for acc + 2 for 9 shots +4 for proximity fuses - 10 for roll = margin of success of 12. With a recoil of 1 for conventional warheads and 2 for nuclear or antimatter that is a bunch of hits for the targets point defense and dodge to take care of. A reasonable dodge could take care of 2 or 3, and a typical point defense could get maybe another 2 or 3. But a single conventional 16cm warhead is going to do 6dx4 x 5 for closing even bad closing velocity. That is 3.5 x 4 x 5 = 420dHP in damage. Even a size 7 destroyer analog would only have 50 dHP and 30dDR with 30% of its mass assigned to armor. It would only take 1 hit to blow a ship 10 times the size of the cutter all the way to dHP x -5 and destroyed automatically. With antimatter or nuclear warhead the damage is far worse but fratricide of the warheads makes it far easier for the point defense. This damage progression looks to hold most of the way up the size modifiers.
To get armor levels capable of surviving this kind of attack the destroyer would need more than 3/4 of its mass in armor alone. A far better solution would be of course more point defense and blowing the littler craft away before it can launch. But this could easily encourage smaller craft with as little crew per ship as possible due to the inevitable lucky missile hit. And I agree that the solution for maintenance would be some form of droid or self-repair system on the vessel itself. A couple of LAI computers could maintain/administer the drudge work onboard. While the crew is for the unexpected dynamic situation the LAI isn't trained for. Just my observations. Clint _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
