[FT] nasty idea for spinal mounts

Jim Bell is always quick to come up with a radical idea. He proposed that
spinal mounts might do damage down columns (vertical rather than horizontal).

Here are some strange consequences.

You can do tremendous damage, and through a fluke of design hit 0 or almost
all damage control parties on a ship. Also, that tremendous damage might cause
no threshold checks, but when threshold checks occur, they'll come fast and
furious (a weapon that should make you think twice about hanging around).

In a few cases, you may find that the spinal mount hit has eliminated the last
box on the 3rd row, though boxes remain on the first or first and
second row.  Do you take a threshold check on 4+ or not ?  Are the
"orphaned" boxes lost, leading to a triple threshold check?

In a few really rare cases, you'll lose the last box of the last row, and
still have boxes in the first or first and second row. Assuming you don't
consider the other boxes orphaned (and the ship destroyed), is there a
3+
threshold check then? What if all crew factors are lost and the ship is not
destroyed?

This concept of applying damage vertically has some unusual consequences.
Similarly strange consequences would apply to a beam where rerolls against the
hull penetrate lower levels of the hull instead of going vertically across
once each level of armour is penetrated. Suppose a special beam type called
the penetrator tends to go very deep into the ship when it rerolls damage due
to 6's. Against a ship with one (long) row of armour, any 6's can be rerolled
with damage penetrating to the hull. Rerolls after that penetrate to the next
lowest layer of hull, and rerolls against the last layer of hull either: a)
pass harmlessly out the side (full penetration), b) slip back up to the top
layer of armour (beam tracks to new spot on hull), or c) start upward from the
bottom row (tunneled to the middle of the ship, now tunneling out the other
side). Such a weapon could create all the same contradictions mentioned above.

> Jim Bell is always quick to come up with a radical idea. He proposed

I has initially proposed a "disruptor" type weapon that would have this sort
of effect. Let's say that the response was underwhelming.

In the specific case of spinal mounts, I'd advise against it because a
devastating hit from a large spinal weapon SHOULD force some thresholds. It is
possible, using vertical damage, that the ship wouldn't roll a single one,
even after taking a massive amount of damage.

> McCarthy, Tom wrote:

> Jim Bell is always quick to come up with a radical idea. He proposed

[snip]

You have pin-pointed most of their drawbacks, yes :-/

One important consideration is this: Do they hit the first *column*, or do
they hit the first remaining box in the *uppermost row* and go straight down
from there?

If they hit the first *column*, they need to inflict at least 50% more
damage than a similarly-massed/arced/ranged normal weapon in order to
compensate for their near inability to inflict threshold checks...