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

[Pax]

Originally posted by 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??

Where buckytube's rule is, in UNITS.

Satellites, WPlatforms, FIGHTERS.

They don't care about armor-vs-not-armor. They only care about HIT POINTS.

Pack in the high-cost BuckyTubes into your fighter; it mak cost as much as an escort (1 per year per planetary SpaceYard3), but damn, it'llbe near impossible to shoot down ... heh!

But even 1 or 2 of them, really REALLY does a fighter good.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah, it can be abused on Fighters... Troops too

I think I might just limit the zero-mass BTG to 1 per 5kt of hull size or so.
Just one visible mount should do it.

[CombatSquirrel]

Before you fix it, S_J, let me have just a few more games with my favorite: the special, made-to-order, BuckyDrones...

Cost to manufacture and fire: 265,000 Rad/Min/Org

The look on the enemy crew's faces peeking out the portholes as it sucks up PD bLast after PD bLast after PD bLast while barrelling down on them: priceless

Combat Squirrel

[Suicide Junkie]

I need to come up with a good policy on BTG...
If I have a maximum BTG on ships, with BTGs beyond that costing 1kt, it would be worse than Armor 1's.

For ships, I think I'll allow the below-max BTG to cost a small negative in minerals, since its replacing metallic bulkheads.
Beyond the limit (at which point your ship would be mostly composed of BTG), BTGs will cost more.

BTG for Sats and Platforms seems fine to me, and can be allowed to stand as unlimited.

Troops and fighters, and probably drones, will not get regular BTG. Instead, I'll make it an upgrade component for something else, or a maybe a mount for major structural items (Cockpit, lifesupport, engines, etc). It would add some structural points, and slightly reduced mass if possible without going to zero mass.

Are those usages/effects too different, or does what I'm saying make some sense?