From: | Jeremy Roberson <ROBERSON@***.EDU> |
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Subject: | Armor |
Date: | Thu, 29 Apr 1993 12:45:56 -0700 |
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