Armour + Screens Combined

Hi, Do any of you out there use ships that have both screens and an armoured
hull, if so how do you handle them for the varying damage effects that occur
from different weapons. Interested in any comments or Home grown rules you
use.

Regards...

> Roger Gerrish wrote:

I would think it might be handled as screens would provide the outermost
protective shell and any weapon fire that passes through the screens would be
affected by the ship's armor.

In reply to Roger Gerrish:

> Do any of you out there use ships that have both screens and

Sure do. We tend to use an adaption available on the net (can't remember where
off hand) that makes ships with armour slower than they might be normally.

For ships that combine armour and force fields we usually say that the max
level of protection that can be had is three levels. Of course, as armour
protects against some things that force fields don't, some people have it
mixed, some people combine four or more levels; but the maximum protection you
can get is three levels.

(all this is unofficial, of course)

Hope that helps.

Regards,

We have played with an ablative armor
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pdga6560/ftarmor.html) and
screens. But we limited the screen level, when combined with armor, to Level
1. Worked OK, but because the ablative armor was designed to provide smaller
ships with protection, decreasing in effectiveness as ship size increases, the
combos were on Destroyers and Cruisers.

> Do any of you out there use ships that have both screens and

Here are the armor rules that my group has adopted:

Armor:
(Spelled the US way; it is NOT the same as Kra'vak.   I don't like the
"Armour is the same as Screens" concept. Screens may deflect or absorb beam
weapons and make a ship harder to hit. But Armor wouldn't effect the chances
to hit. I wanted something that is fundamentally different.)

Any ship may be designed with an armored hull. The armor consists of
both plating on the hull as well as reinforced internal cross-members.
As such, armor is part of the structure of the ship and is not subject to
threshold checks. It cannot be lost. Armor is available in TWO levels. Each
level of armor will deduct 1 point of damage from each volley of attacks.
However, the minimum damage for a successful volley is 1 point of damage. The
operations of Needle and EMP weapons are not affected by armor (the systems,
which the needles attack, are outside the armor.) All other attacks are
reduced by armor.

Note: A Volley consists of all of the attacks (of the same type) from a single
ship in a single round. Thus all of the A, B, and C battery fire from a
battleship would be the first volley. Needle beams could make up the second.
Each missile counts as an individual volley, regardless of the missiles
origin.

Armor Costs: Apply the following modifiers to the hull costs for armored
ships:

Level-1 Armored hulls cost an additional 25% of the normal hull points,
i.e. 2.5 X Mass of ship.
Level-2 Armored hulls cost an additional 50% of the normal hull points,
i.e. 3 X Mass of ship.

In addition, level-1 armor takes one point of MASS and level-2 armor
takes four points of MASS. That is Armor level squared in mass requirements.
As you can see, armor is prohibitive at higher levels (9 Mass at level 3 if it
were available.)

No class of ship has any level of armor for free. (Kra'vak designs have
a policy that cruisers have level-1 and capital ships have level-2
armor. But they still have to pay for it.)