The Starship Armory ยท Chapter 4
Two Scales
Vehicles and people measure damage differently.
One point at vehicle scale is ten points at personal scale.
That holds for damage, for Armor, and for Blast. A vehicle with Armor 2 has the equivalent of Resistance 20. A weapon that deals 5 Hull Damage deals 50 damage to a person.
A Vehicle Weapon Against a Person
- Make the attack as in Chapter 3. The person is Scale 1, so a gunner on a Scale 3 vehicle adds 2 Bane Dice, and one on a Scale 6 cruiser adds 5. A weapon with Point Defense or Anti-Fighter halves those Bane Dice, rounding down.
- On a hit, multiply the Hull damage, including the Successes, by 10.
- Subtract the target's Resistance. The rest is Wounds.
- Critical Injuries are inflicted and rolled as for any personal weapon.
Blast X at vehicle scale: spend 2 Boons, and every person within Short range of the point of impact suffers X times 10 damage, less Resistance. Solid cover between a person and the impact stops it.
Cover. A person inside or behind a vehicle or a building is protected by its Armor. Resolve the attack against the cover.
A direct hit from a ship's weapon will put almost anyone down. It does so through Wounds and a Critical Injury roll, like every other weapon in the line.
The Edge of It
A player character who is hit by a vehicle-scale weapon may spend a Story Point to have been caught at the edge of the shot. The character suffers half the damage, after multiplying and before Resistance.
A Personal Weapon Against a Vehicle
There are three cases, and a weapon is only ever one of them.
An Ordinary Weapon
- Work out damage at personal scale: the weapon's damage plus Successes.
- The target's Resistance is its Armor times 10, reduced by the weapon's Pierce.
- Divide what gets through by 10 and round down. That is Hull Damage.
Small arms can bring down an unarmoured skiff this way, slowly. It cannot hurt anything with Armor 2. A pistol never hurts a ship of any size.
A Weapon with Siege X
Siege is mass: a plasma charge, a demolition pack, a siege engine. It sits between the two scales, and it multiplies against people as well as walls.
- Multiply the weapon's damage plus Successes by X. Against a person, that is the damage, before Resistance.
- Against a vehicle or a structure, divide by 10 and round down for Hull damage, then subtract Armor.
A Weapon with Breach X
Breach is a weapon built to defeat armour: a rail slug, a shaped charge, a missile. It does nothing extra to a person.
- Against a vehicle or a structure, multiply the weapon's damage plus Successes by X, divide by 10, and round down for Hull damage.
- Subtract the target's Armor, ignoring X points of it.
- Against a person, the weapon deals its printed damage.
No weapon has both Siege and Breach. Neither uses Pierce against a vehicle.
A weapon cannot inflict a Critical Hit on a vehicle unless it dealt at least 1 Hull Damage.
Ion X on a personal weapon deals X System Damage to a vehicle, as its own entry says. It is not divided.
| Weapon | Hull damage | Against Armor 1 | Against Armor 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rifle, damage 8, with 2 Successes | 1, only against Armor 0 | Nothing | Nothing |
| Rail Lance, damage 14, Breach 2, with 1 Success | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| Missile Tube, damage 18, Breach 3, with 2 Successes | 6 | 6 | 6 |
Nothing a person carries does more than a ship's Standard gun, and it is fired once.
Siege and Breach on Personal Weapons
Both qualities are defined in Chapter 5. The heavy weapons of The Stellar Armory carry one or the other.
| Weapon from The Stellar Armory | Quality |
|---|---|
| Rail Lance | Breach 2 |
| Beam Cannon | Breach 2 |
| Shear Projector | Breach 2 |
| Missile Tube | Breach 3 |
| Plasma Cannon | Siege 2 |
A Universe's own anti-vehicle weapons should carry Breach 2 if they are built to stop a ground car and Breach 3 if they are built to stop a tank. Weapons that flatten things without aiming at their armour carry Siege.
Personal Scale Weapons on Vehicles
A weapon with the Personal Scale quality is mounted on a vehicle and deals personal-scale damage. Its listed number is not multiplied against people and is divided against vehicles like any carried weapon. The Pintle Gun and the Riot Projector are the two in this book.
People Inside
Damage to a vehicle does not pass to the people in it, with three exceptions.
- A Critical Hit result that says so.
- An open vehicle. Blast reaches its crew and passengers.
- A vehicle that is disabled while moving. Each occupant makes an Average Reflexes check or suffers 3 Wounds, and 6 if the vehicle was flying or at Speed 4 or more.
