In your letter dated Tue, 15 Jan 91 14:27:22 MET, you wrote:
>
>From: [email removed]
>Subject: Re: Striker and Agility
>
>>The one good thing about simplifying Striker into the MT design system, in my
>>opinion, was to get rid of the "what are the dimensions of your box" section.
>>It really shouldn't make that much difference, but it was, for me, the
>>difference between designing 200 MT vehicles in a year, and designing 8
>>Striker vehicles in 10 years. It might be that Striker would look much easier
>>now that I am used to MT. Putting in armor slope without using actual vehicle
>>dimensions could be difficult. The other thing I should point out is that
>>the new combat rules make armor less critical than it was in Striker. In MT,
>>you need 2x the armor value to get a "high penetration" result, which causes
>>double damage. In Striker, I seem to recall that a +12 difference between
>>armor and peentration was enough to cause a certain kill of the target. So
>>to some extent, armor slope "comes oput in the wash" as we say here. The
>>pinpoint damage rule also sort of simulates aiming for the non-sloped surfaces.
>
> One thing that I definitly dislike about the MegaT vehicle design is that all
>vehicle armour is spread in an layer of equal thickness all over them.
>
> I can understand the need for this when it comes to staships, but I dislike
>the impact of this on tactical situations. Suddenly, it's no advantage to
>fire down on a tank, or suprising it from behind.
>
> A favourite of mine that I used before I even knew that Striker existed, the
>light speeder with several VRFGaussGuns that plays A10 from high elevations
>down through the more or less lightly armoured roofs:)
>
> A simple solution would be to reduce the armour thickness by some factor for
>the secondary surfaces (0.75) and increase it for the front surfaces (1.25).
>
> Thanks for the v1.1. I'm looking at it to integrate it into RebelGuard.
>
>>Rob Dean
>
>-bertil-
Bertil,
I have been considering your comments on the armoring of grav vehicles
since yesterday, since I wanted to make some sort of coherent response. I
think one of the drawbacks of electronic communications is that we tend to
type things without really thinking about them.
The answer to the armoring question depends very much on what style of
fighting you would anticipate. Are grav vehicles going to hug the ground
most of the time, or get up and tangle in dogfights like current fighter
aircraft? Are they going to have friends on either flank, with an enemy to
the front, or is their higher speed and ability to bypass obstacles going to
lead to a confused brawl spreading over many square miles (square kilometers
for you metric types)? Are they going to hide in hull down positions making
it reasonable to put extra armor on the turret? How much threat of attack
from above is there going to be?
Obviously all of these things are dynamic--your VRF gauss gun overhead
attack craft would probably lead to my designing a series of tanks with armor
thick enough to resist penetration from that threat (and maybe a backup PD
laser turret), which would prompt you to field an attack craft with a bigger
gun, etc...
I would expect that grav tanks would mostly hug the ground, reducing the
number of angles that a threat could come from, and also reducing the need to
carry heavy belly armor. I expect that "Pop-up" tactics as described in
various Traveller materials would make top deck armor a priority. I also
expect that the battle would be more of a confused brawl than a nice linear
action, making it more reasonable to spread out my armor protection. Below a
certain level, of course, I have no aspect which is protected from an enemy
tank main gun, but also no aspect which is vulnerable to a lighter weapon.
The best defense then is to concentrate on targeting and SHOOT FIRST. I
forget now where I read an interesting commentary on the design of the M-1
tank, and how its armor layout no longer matched the non-linear battle doc-
trine that the U.S. Army was planning on using, that is, that the number of
shots expected against the frontal armor did not justify carrying all that
weight to protect only one side.
It would not be unreasonable, though, to implement some sort of differ-
ential armor scheme on the grounds that you could then make you own doctrine
to match your weapons systems. In the absence of that, I think you could
certainly try the 1.5x, .75x rule you suggest, and see how it works out.
I'm going to post this and your note to the net for wider discussion.
Rob Dean