RCS:Armour

From MegaTravellerWiki

Types of Armour

Armour in the Revised Combat System is divided into three categories: Hard, Flexible, and Soft. If an armour type is not specified, it is considered Flexible.

Hard Armour

Hard armour is designed to deflect or halt incoming attacks, but if the projectiles have sufficient force or a large enough surface area, they will stave in the hard armour with relative ease. Hard armour is most effective against focused weapons, and least effective against broad weapons.

Soft Armour

Soft armour is designed to slow an incoming projectile over time until the projectile is halted completely. The energy of the projectile is dissipated as ripples through the material and as waste sound and heat, transferring a fraction of the energy as a broad wallop to the wearer beneath. Soft armour is most effective against broad weapons, and least effective against focused weapons.

Flexible Armour

Flexible armour is a combination of a hard material in a soft weave; for example, chain maille is a suit of armour that has been made out of hard metal, but it has been woven into a cloth-like shape. Flexible armour is a fair compromise between hard armour and soft armour and is neither particularly effective nor particularly ineffective against either broad weapons or focused weapons.

Types of Attacks

Weapons are broken down into two categories: Focused and Broad.

A Focused weapon is a weapon whose damage-dealing component is delivered to as sharp a point as possible. A knife, a sword, a claw, a bite, a laser beam, or an armour-piercing bullet are all considered "Focused" weapons.

A Broad weapon is a weapon whose damage-dealing component is delivered as a blunt point. A standard bullet (!), a splash of flame, or a club are all considered "Broad" weapons.

A Focused weapon does not necessarily open bleeding wounds, and a Broad weapon does not necessary produce bruises. It merely refers to the methodology of the weapon's propensity to damage flesh: whether it attempts to concentrate energy on a single point (or an extremely narrow line of points) or whether it attempts to distribute energy to a given surface area.

Armour Penetration

Apply the standard Penetration rules as listed on p.70 of the Player's Manual, but with the following modification:

If a weapon is Focused and is being used against Soft Armour, or if a weapon is Broad and is being used against Hard Armour, then the weapon is particularly effective against that armour type.

To reflect the additional benefit provided, ignore a Marginal Success and apply full damage. If achieving an Exceptional Success, increase the level of the Exceptional Success by one, such that a 2+ becomes 4+ and a 4+ becomes 6+.

Armour Ratings

Armour in the RCS applies to each hit location individually. A person can no longer be totally protected from small arms just by slipping on a Combat Environment Suit!

See the MTWiki PPP:Vestments/Armour list for a full list of armour.

Layering

Armour is cumulative, with each particular layer requiring penetration in order to cause damage. Each particular layer is struck in turn.

You may wear up to three armour layers, but have a limit of one hard armour layer.

Form-fitting outfits, such as battledress or combat armour, cannot be layered. Most of the armour specified in the Player's Manual cannot be layered with other armour, per the rule on p.71.

Coverage

Many forms of armour have significant gaps in them. Each piece of armour has three ratings: forward coverage, flank coverage, and back coverage. Full armour, like battledress, has full coverage in all directions.

Coverage for a piece of armour is expressed as a number in the form of "1+" through "6+". If the number is "1+", then the armour provides full coverage in that direction. If the number is "2+" or higher, then the armour does not provide full coverage and the defender must roll 1d6 to determine whether the attack missed the armour. If the attack misses the armour, it impacts the next layer, or -- if there are no more layers -- impacts the person directly as if the person had no armour.

Example

Smiley is wearing a bulletproof vest (AV 3 soft) with ceramic plates (AV 5 hard, shatter when hit). The combat vest provides soft armour with full coverage against all directions, while the ceramic plates are considered a hard armour layer on top of the combat armour with a coverage of 4+ against a frontal attack only.

Smiley is shot in the chest by a 10mm pistol at close range, the attacker having achieved a margin of success of 3 (a "2+ exceptional success"). Smiley rolls 1d6 to determine if the bullet strikes the ceramic plate -- he rolls 5, so the bullet successfully strikes one of the plates (or fails to avoid hitting one of them, depending on your perspective). A bullet is a Broad attack, whereas the ceramic plate is hard armour, so the bullet receives a positive shift in damage against the ceramic plate, from a "2+ exceptional success" to a "4+ exceptional success". However, because the bullet has a penetration of 3, versus the armour's rating of 5, it achieves zero penetration. A 9mm bullet ordinarily inflicts 3 Damage Value, which is quadrupled to 12 Damage Value due to penetration success. However, because it has achieved zero penetration, this is divided by 10 to produce 1.2 DV, reduced to 1 DV. The ceramic plate shatters, but has almost entirely eliminated the bullet.

The exceptional success has already been applied, so we do not multiply the damage of the bullet again. We are left with 1 DV Broad against the next layer, the 3 AV Soft bulletproof vest, which absorbs the damage harmlessly.

Smiley is shot again the next round, and no longer has any ceramic plates to protect him. The Pen 3 bullet strikes his AV 3 bulletproof vest, achieving a low penetration result. Fortunately the attacker wasn't lucky enough to achieve any exceptional success this time around, so the bullet is reduced to 1.5 DV (rounded down to 1 DV) by the low penetration; unfortunately, this means that Smiley does sustain 1 DV of Lethal Damage to his chest... not enough to put him out of action, but certainly enough to hurt.

Damage Transmission

This optional rule makes armour behave much more realistically, but also greatly increases bookkeeping and is recommended only for computer-assisted gameplay. Against weapons that inflict Non-Lethal Damage by default, soft armour is usually quite helpless and a significant proportion of the original impact will still transmit through the armour. Naturally it is the referee's discretion as to whether a particular attack can transmit through armour (e.g., a conducted energy weapon is unlikely to penetrate deeply enough through Kevlar to cause any appreciable harm to the subject).

This rule significantly alters the prevalence of Soft and Flexible armour and encourages people to move to larger, bulkier Hard armour. Hard armour, of course, has its own problems...

If an attack strikes Soft or Flexible armour, some of the damage that is blocked will still inflict Non-Lethal Damage. Total all of the DV that were absorbed by the armour. All DV that pass through the armour are applied directly as Damage Dice, as usual. The DV that were absorbed by the armour are now totalled and used as a number of dice to roll. The result is divided by five and rounded down to determine the final number of Damage Dice of Non-Lethal Damage to inflict in addition to the original damage suffered by the attack. The Damage Dice of Non-Lethal Damage cannot exceed the number of DV that were absorbed by the armour—in other words, the attack cannot inflict more cumulative damage than it would originally have done were the armour not there in the first place).

Example: Darrell takes an 10mm bullet (a Broad projectile) to the chest while wearing an AV 3 soft bulletproof vest. The Pen 3/2 slug would ordinarily achieve low penetration (50% damage) against that armour, thus inflicting 1 DV of Lethal Damage to the unfortunate victim on the receiving end. 2 DV of Lethal Damage were absorbed by the armour, however, and a quick throw on 2d6 produces a 7. Darrell receives an additional {7/5, rounded down} 1 DV of Non-Lethal Damage, which he adds to 1 DV of Lethal Damage. Together, the 2 DV of damage may be enough to push him to the next wound level, where he would need to roll to avoid being stunned.

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