Karl Streiger, on 14 November 2013 - 12:14 AM, said:
Well i have finally found out that the Alamo Rules have changed:
- a Alamo deals indeed only 10 damage of Capital Damage to the armor of a craft. But a critical hit is applied - on 10+ the structural integrity of any craft in space takes 100dmg must be enough to destroy most War Ships (Exception -> Avalon, Mjolnir, Du Shi Wang, and the Leviathan Battleship)
Best defense is a lot of anit air craft weapons and point defense weapons.
in BattleSpace - a Alamo only dealt damage on the rolled 10+ -> autokilling the target
To penetrate the Dire Wolf you need 740 standard damage -> to deal that with a shilone that thing has to move with a velocity of 114 ~ 34km/s (if i transfered the scale right)
I can' see any ramming rules in my old BattleSpace book - > although i thought they were there.
So ramming with an aerospace fighter doesn't look like an option -> maybe the usage of a drone programmed dropship.
Funny -> would really be interesting how the Clan battle for Terra would look like.
Well, this is why you had the critical hit results on the old damage tables. Every armored unit in Battletech has/had weak areas in the armor/structure (armor seams, thermal vents, control line passage ports, ect,) that had to be there or the unit could not function or be repaired/maintained. While well-protected and/or extremely difficult to hit, there is always a possibility of an attack hitting one of these areas and getting past all the defenses to strike at a vunerable section. So, to use your example, apply the damage as per a critical hit and see what results you can get.
ManaValkyrie, on 14 November 2013 - 02:14 AM, said:
A bulkhead is not armoury, on a naval vessel, a bulkhead is an internal dividing wall that seperates various compartments to maintain integrity within a vessel should collision, flooding, fire.etc occur. In a naval vessel (especially military) Bulkheads compartmentalize ships heavily. This prevents rapid spread of bad conditions. A ship at battlestations will be closed down to full integrity, i.e. every bulkhead opening will be closed and fully sealed.
The likelyhood that a compartment or two is lost would possibly be high, but the whole ship, unless the fighter actually rammed an armoury or the ships reactor, which are usually some of the most heavily armoured and compartmentalized sections, its doubtful that a small ship would take out a much larger ship with collision. Besides most weapons/warheads aren't physically armed until they fire or have been fired and most ordanance is actually pretty hard to set off accidently in modern settings.
The explosives are usually of a type that won't detonate or explode due to fire/heat but require a specific trigger mechanism/chain to actually detonate.
Well, as noted above, we're talking about an unusual strike where a very high amount of damage was done to places of the ship that were never designed for that kind of strike. This tends to play havok with any planning for damage control or mitigation, and can produce results completely at odds with what would be expected from a similar hit in ordinary circumstances (look at the HMS Hood for one famous example).
As for weapons being armed, weapons are still dangerous devices that are inherently designed to do damage. In normal conditions, it is supposed to do this at some distance from the firing unit, but it will do so wherever circumstances are right for it to activate. Missiles still have their warheads and fuel that can detonate under enough energy applied, autocannons have propellant, energy weapons have power feed lines and transformers. Also, some weapons are always armed as a rule, such as countermeasures devices and preloaded cannon shells. This is why a misfire in a magazine is still a catalysmic event for a unit, as even deactivated weapons can do massive damage. When dealing with damage from incoming fire, all design specs go out the window as the weapon is drastically and violently redesigned in ways the engineers never envisioned instantly.