I did some cross-checking between COACC and the Referee's Manual, and came
up with the following:
Regarding Penetration of Missiles: If you assume the values are equivalent
to the values for a mortar round of the same damage, you get:
Missile Penetration Damage Equivalent Mortar
IRHM ATA 18 16 12cm
SARH ATA 26 28 20cm
ARHM ATA 26 28 20cm
Portable SAM 15 13 9cm (interpolated)
Light SAM 18 16 12cm
Medium SAM 28 30 22cm
Heavy SAM 29 32 23cm (interpolated)
Regarding the amror values for aircraft I get:
Assuming the aircraft to have the equivalent displacement of a hull in their
wings folded position, and using a 9ton roughly equal to a 13disp ton hull,
and assuming that the airframe weight is the skin (not a particularly good
assumption, but what the heck):
A Simple airframe would have an armor modifier of .024 (Armor 0)
A Fast Subsonic airframe would have an armor modifier of .121 (also 0)
A Transonic airframe would have an armor modifer of .243 (close to 1)
A Supersonic airframe would have an armor modifier of .49 (close to 2)
A Hypersonic ariframe would have an armor modifier of .73 (close to 3)
This was checked at TL7, armor type C.
In any case, alomost any hit would be considered "High Penetration" on an
aircraft.
However, there is still a problem when it comes to aircraft damage. If you
look at something like the Phantom (oops..I mean the laramie (-:) you will
see that it has a base damage value of 108/270. Am I supposed to multiply
this by 10 for use in "personal" combat? It's derived from the vehicle rules,
so tenetatively, I'd say yes. But, for sake of argument, let's say no for a
moment. I fire at an oncoming Laramie with a handy Heavy SAM. (Never know
what you might need on an adventure <snicker>). Achieving exceptional success,
I see that I do 4x damage. 128 pts. Whoof! <Cut to big cloud of smoke,
applause of audience, etc.>. So far so good, although with Normal success
it would take four missiles to knock this thing down.
But, if we *are* supposed to multiply by 10, we have a damage value of 1080,
meaning that I need 9+ exceptional hits to knock down one plane. If I have the
misfortune of needing to use an air to air missile instead, I could use up
67 1x damage IRHM (Sidewinders, red Tops, Aphids, whatever) to knock down
one jet. At "damage as written", that is still 6+ missiles.
All of this is a contributing factor to the reason why my Traveller games very
seldom actually use much more of the rules than the task system and the back-
ground.
Any comments?
Rob Dean
(I'm not really such a dreadful rules lawyer in actual play.)