[TML] Perfect ship VS ship combat system poll

[Tom B]

Having stood on the bridge of the USS Missouri, I'd have to call shenanigans
on part of that. They had an outer bridge with one seat that was armoured by
hull metal and some (presumably bullet proof) glass. There was an inner core
to the bridge which was armoured by what looked like 12-14" of solid steel.
Then you had to go through that (if coming from the front) and through
another armoured bulkhead to get to the map room or maybe flag bridge.

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 8:17 AM, Tim Rattray <tim.rattray at gmail.com> wrote:

> and the important stuff is behind that.  (Important like engines,
> magazines,
> wet hull, drive shafts, rudder controls, but not the bridge!


On the matter of armour vs. acceleartion: Why does having the *capacity* to
accelerate translate to a need for more armour? That's vastly illogical.

Impact KE = mv^2 where m is mass and v is velocity. Acceleration does not
exist in that picture. It is how fast your ship is going (a 1 G ship moving
at 0.08c will hit a micrometeor pretty hard vs a 6G ship travelling at
0.00001c) that matters (well, the aggregate v between you and the
meteorite).

There should be a certain amount of armour required to safely travel
particular speeds (for said micrometeorite and orbital debris collisions),
but it should not be tied to acceleration. For that matter, one could argue
(I'm not, because shipping specs would never rate based on this....) that a
ship that can manoeuver more aggressively to avoid micrometeors would in
fact need *less* armour than a slower slug.