Robots as Spaceships: Armor Options

In a previous post, I compared Gurps: Spaceships armor to the very best personal armor in Gurps, and came to the conclusion that spaceship's armor was weak, especially T8 body armor and ultra-tech armors. Since that post, I've participated in a few conversations about spaceships armor in Gurps. I still think that its on average weaker than it should be, but how much weaker depends on the context. Here, rather than advocating a single "one size fits all" armor tweak, I'm going to look at options for getting the sort of armor your game needs. 

• Deflection Boost
• Uncheap Armor
• Simple Armor Facing
• Awesome Future Armor

Boost Factors

When increasing spaceships armor, there are several ways to think about increasing armor. None of them is "correct", and they frequently give the same results, but some ways of increasing them feel more natural than others, so we'll give you the choice of calculating a boost however you want. Here are the options for calculating it:

• Multiplication: multiply all armor values by a fixed value (1.5 for boost 1, 2 for boost 2, and 3 for boost 3)
• Armor Tables: Use the armor value for a that's SM + (boost value) larger than standard
  
• Size Modifier Table: Go to the size modifier Table and look up (SM + TL + Boost -6). Read yards as DR. In the above lookup, the TL is the first TL the armor used appears at, so for Steel the TL is 6. This is especially useful because SM+0 robot armor doesn't appear on most spaceships tables
  

Use which ever method works best for you. Armor tables  and Size Modifier Table gives the same result, while multiplication is fairly close to the other two.

Deflection Boost

In Gurps 3e, the decision was made to set 1 inch of Rolled Homogeneous Armor (RHA) to be 70 DR. Rolled Homogeneous Armor was a cheap and common steel armor used in the first half of the 1900's, (IE TL6). A lot of ballistics testing was done on it, and gurps firearms stats and a lot of its armor are based on those statistics. However, the conditions of these tests were not recorded, and its unknown how many of these numbers reflect ideal strait-on hits. A lot of misses against armor have historically been the result of hitting at a poor angle rather than an actual miss. The deflection boost options gives the armor the benefit of the doubt on this question, and adds boost 1 to the armor. This options applies to all spaceships armor in a campaign. Its probably generous, but not exceptionally so.

Uncheap Armor

The numbers in spaceships for various metals and alloys hover a only touch below person armor made of steel or iron, especially when the armor numbers are taken as a whole, instead of chosen by a player looking at stats for the best deal. Spaceships armor is also often very cheap to buy, compared with the rest of the system. One common claim I have seen for steel armor in spaceships is that it seems to have been cheaply mass-produced, rather being carefully face-hardened or put through other expensive processes. If using "Uncheap Armor", we will triple the cost of the armor and add boost 1 to it. This option applies to individual vehicles, not campaigns, though it may not be available in some campaigns

Simple Armor Facing

Historical and realistic vehicles are very meticulously armored. Tanks sport huge piles of armor in the front, moderate armor  on their turret, and comparatively weak armor on their sides. Battleships protected their turrets, had a thick "belt" of armor on their sides at the water level, had thin prows, and changed the armor on their deck depending on the threats of the time. We could meticulously armor our robots and vehicles, but that takes time. In this option, we just say that places that are well armored have double the DR and places that are poorly armored have half the DR. Some areas may remain with normal DR. This is somewhat sloppy, but its useful way to remind ourselves of how tanks can be so tough and to remind us that almost every vehicle is built with weak points. We should take some care to make sure that the doubled areas and halved area are about equal in size, but shouldn't worry about it too much, because the point is to work it out quickly. For example, tanks often have a heavily armored front but weakly armored sides and back (excluding the turret). This option applies to individual vehicles, not campaigns.

Awesome Future Armor

While spaceships follows a nice steady armor curve, high tech provides a spike in armor effectiveness at TL8, and Ultra-tech continues through with those high numbers. This is an optimistic view of armor, but many games, settings, and genres call for optimistic armor. If you want armor in the future to be awesome, go ahead and add Boost 3 to your spaceships armor to let the vehicles and robots (and Mecha!) be as well armored as the foot soldiers. This should probably not be combined with the other options, except perhaps simple armor facing. This option applies to specific armor types, rather than whole campaigns. We could say that metallic laminate counts as Awesome future armor, but that Light Alloys do not, or we could say only Diamonoid or higher tech armor gets to be awesome.

Armor By Default

We plan to use the Deflection boost in most our designs, as it will improve robot armor a little. Awesome Future armor will be called out when it is used, as well as Uncheap armor. Simple Armor Facing will be used a lot, but we'll try to point out its use.

I hope you find these options useful, and I hope they help you think about armor. May your Mecha only be blown up sometimes!