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Throwing rocks at spaceships

Posted: Sat 01 Sep 2018, 23:10
by kbender
During my today's game session, we have run into interesting situation, from mechanics point of view.
Player characters wanted to take down parked shuttle (Ship class 2). They were unable to hack the door, so they want to ground it, so it won't be able to chase them down.
They figured out, that they have Nestera Parox Accelerator Rifle. The heavy anti-vehicle, armour-piercing elefant rifle. So they set it up, aimed at shuttle, took their time and fired.

So now goes the question - what should happen.
1) Ground weapons and armor are from different league than space weapons and armor. That said, nothing should happen, as ground rifle should not penetrate spaceship hull. On the other side, single spaceship should be able to crush any ground defenses (as it is far superior than ground equipment).
2) Spaceships are pieces of sophisticated equipment, that fly to space. They're quite fragile, so the shoot should penetrate the hull. This said, ground weapons work normally against ships and vice-versa. This implies, that space ships are covered by light armor and have resistance of less-than-average meat-bag.
3) Spaceships and ground weapons are from different league. There's some secret coefficient, or rule that says that if you want to shoot spaceships with vulcan pistols, divide damage by 5 rounded down, and if you shoot people with space-weapons, multiply damage by five. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it in rule-book.
4) Small spaceships (Class 0 and 1 for example) are thin armored and can be hit by ground weapons, while class 2 and higher have to thick armor. For some reason they are described by the same mechanics in spaceships section. Or, every spaceship with more than 4 points of armor can't be breached by ground weapons. That also makes some sense...

I can't get that out of my head. I'd be grateful for clarification on that topic :)

PS, My players got a good roll, so I've let them pierce the shuttle, and roll for critical, but somehow I'm unhappy with that outcome.

Re: Throwing rocks at spaceships

Posted: Mon 03 Sep 2018, 12:41
by Doctor KoT
I think projectiles can penetrate hulls (except dart projectiles for vulcan weapons and shotgun grape shots, for example), hit the crew etc -- just roll armor to check the penetration -- but they just to small to make any structural damage (there are black birrs with allmost the same effect, for example).
Heavy armored ships, of course, can be an exception to this rule :)

Re: Throwing rocks at spaceships

Posted: Mon 03 Sep 2018, 13:05
by 9littlebees
I couldn't find anything in the book, so I'd be inclined to go with your final option. Class 0 and 1 ships likely have thinner hulls, and so can be penetrated by ground weapons. However, you should still make an armour roll for those ships. I'd say something like only 2 armour for class 0 (making armour-piercing weapons perfect) and 6 armour for class 1 ships (double the armour stat in the book).