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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Jeremy Roberson <ROBERSON@***.EDU>
Subject: Armor
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 12:45:56 -0700
All, right, more organized this time: Armor!

What I would like to know is, since we're starting from scratch anyway, are
we going to make armor ablative or not? For those of you not in the know, there
are two kinds of armor:

Ablative
The classic Car Wars/Battletech armor-as-hit-points method. As the
vehicle takes damage, it loses armor value directly proportional to the damage.
You get hit for 5 points, you lose 5 points of armor. When your armor = zero,
you have no more armor. It can be replaced. Think of it as being like those
ablative tiles on the bottom of the space shuttle; removable and degradable.

Non-Ablative Armor (or, I-think-there's-a-term-for-it-but-I-can't-remember-it)
This is modern armor. It's all or nothing; either a given round is
going to penetrate (and likely kill you) or it won't. Put into numeric terms:
I have 500 points of armor. Missile hits for 480 points of armor. It doesn't
penetrate. Armor is intact. Someone shoots another missile for 560 points;
the round penetrates for 60 points of damage inside, ans there is now a hole
in the side of my vehicle. For those of you familiar with Car Wars (I know
we're trying to stay away from that game but it illustrates so many concepts
so well) this is like metal armor. Of course, after a couple of penetrations
the armor needs to be replaced, but since it doesn't take damage as often as
Ablative armor, it doesn't need to be replaced quite so often.

J Roberson
Message no. 2
From: "Michael A. Kauffman" <mak9@******.EDU>
Subject: Re: Armor
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 17:28:44 EDT
Wow discussion!

J, (can I call you J?), first in reference to to the " weirdness" of the
numbers 2 and 7. I don't think the number 2 is weird. It's used quite often.
Now 7 is often concedered a lucky number. Well thats beside the point. My 7
comes from 20/3. Let me explain this, but first a fact on vehicle armor in
the conversion from SRI to SRII. one point of armor in SRI equals 3 points of
armor in SRII. When I first though about armor I was thinking SRI mainly
because RBB was written for SRI. I came up with a 20% increase. Then I
realized that this was wrong for SRII and divided by 3 (and rounded to 7%).
I did realize that this was a "weird" no. but I didn't whether I wanted to up
it to 10% or lower it to 5% (less "weird" no.). So I through it into the net
for discussion. My personal perference is 5% but let's talk.

Second, my perference is non-ablastic(sp?) armor. It keeps in line with
normal armor and the way vehicle armor is now.

Mike Kauffman
AKA Amonchare
(now who's rambling)
Message no. 3
From: Jeremy Roberson <ROBERSON@***.EDU>
Subject: Armor
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1993 08:50:38 -0700
OOps. WHen I said I thought SR armor was ablative, I meant *non*-ablative. Gosh,
one litte prefix makes all the difference in the woyld.


J Roberson

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These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.