P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor

[DavidG]

I was wondering what the idea was behind Bucky Tube Gel Armour in P&N. Since it has a size of 0 could you not make a ship almost invincible by adding a whole mess of them??

[Suicide Junkie]

Lots is good, but they are expensive.
They are also lacking the armor ability, so they are NOT hit first.

What they will do is give you a good chance of not losing other important components, like lifesupport.
If you have, say a 30 component cruiser, and you add 70 BTG, you can expect that less than half of the weapon impacts that get through both your shields and armor will actually cause important damage.

[DavidG]

Ah that's what I was thinking they would do. I was also thinking they might make pretty good suicide ships for busting up mine fields since you could make a ship that can take a lot of damage.

[Baron Munchausen]

Yeah, it is unrealistic for any component to have zero size. Even if it has negligible weight, it's got to be taking up space in order to be able to absorb hits. I think 'ablative' armors ought to have a size of 1 kt no matter what. But whatever. Like anything else in SE IV, if you don't like it you can change it to suit yourself. Which I did with my own concept of ablative armor.

[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, but size isn't important in a spaceship. Mass is.
Since this mod uses QNP, the KT "size" of a component is a measure of mass, not volume.

The Buckytube Gel is meant to be a replacement/upgrade for your ship's decks & walls. You won't actually be making the ship that much bigger, and it would acutally get lighter since you're using BT gel instead of solid tritanium (or whatever).

If you add hundreds of them on a little escort, yeah; it would probably look like a giant ball of snot, but you'd be hard pressed to shoot the bridge through all that goop!
It would still manoeuver like an escort though, since its mass has not increased substantially.

[ October 24, 2002, 02:26: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Val]

Just leaves those nasty snot trails as it flies around