Ablative Armour

[Rimmer]

Just trying to figure out how the Ablative Armour works, from the defiant in the LUG DS9 book. Looking at it it seems like it adds 8 points to the resistance factor of the defiant, giving a total RF of 12 !!!!!! then upon further reading it says that the AA of 8 points is reduced by damage (eg: take 5 points only have 3 left) which sounds more like structural capacity, giving the defiant an effective 88 points of structual capacity instaed of the usual 80. Now the first way seems way to powerful, the second to weak. So which way is it supposed to work, and what house rules do you guys have to keep some balance. Cheers in advance.

[Owen E Oulton]

Ablative armour "ablates" or burns away, as it is struck. Realistically, the ablative armour should only be affected by damage that gets through the shields, being a physical coating on the surface of the ship.

[Rimmer]

So essentially ablative armour gives you 8 more structural points. so a defiant class will have for all intents and purposes 88 structural points instead of 80.

Woo-Hoo bring on the borg cubes.

[Phoenix]

Ablate by one for every attack the gets through the shields.

So, for the first hit you have 4+8 resistance, second hit 4+7...etc, all the way down to 4+0 (armor gone) for the ninth attack.

[Rimmer]

Good idea, but now it's a bit to powerful. I mean come on an effective resistance of 12 !!!!!! if even for the first attack ? when added together 12+11+10 etc etc it give the defiant an effective additional 78 structural points.

Screw the borg cubes, bring on species 8412, and two on sundays

Unfortunatly neither appeals to me (although this one is getting my inner munchkin drooling ) so it looks like some house rules are in order.

[Phoenix]

Riker: "Tough little ship!"
Worf: "LITTLE!?!"

Well if you take the full 12 as resistance, then it could be said a Galaxy Class has an extra 40 Structure after 10 attacks also . Now I come up with +36 for the AA, About the same as moderate back-up shields, also keep in mind that most attacks average around 20 (all things considered equal).

So for an example a shieldless Defiant class is hit by a De-cloaking Romulan with it's Type J Disruptor. That's 20 points of damage, the AA sucks up 8 points of it, Normal Resistance takes another 4 off, the hull (or system) gets the remaining 8 points of damage. So all that really happens is the fight takes longer to finish then with a lesser equiped ship. Now while this may set off the munchkin alert you need to remember this ship was designed to be "The Little Uber Ship" of choice for the "Combat Monster" within all of us.

How does a Defiant rate for other Starfleet missions, Science: poor (lack of sensors and labs), Diplomatic: poor (lack of space), Exploration: very poor (lack of range, and diversions). All the Defiant is, is an armored, warp capable, really big, gun.

Ok, I'm starting to rant here, sorry.

[Rimmer]

No problem, everyone is allowed a little rant now and then the house rule that we are using at the moment for ablative armour, is that ships with AA have 25 structural points per size level instead of the usual 20, so the defiant has 100 structural points instead of 80. Opinions ?