Jul 10 15:02 1998

To: Jerm

Copy to: Dan
Copy to: Jert

From: Froccer

Subject: re:Hit Loc. and Dodge

In message "Hit Loc. and Dodge",
Jerm writes:

> Dan and I were talking and 5% of the hits would not be lethal due to the
> amount of M.D. in the helmet. As Dan said the head would be the most
> vunerable spot therefore the most protected. If we came up with
> percentages for the various parts I believe it would work.
>
> Crusader
>
> Main body - 70?
> Head - 125% of main body
> legs arms and lower torso would be dependent upon the mobility of the
> armour. Crusader for example has a zero prowl penalty, therefore lower
> MD for the extremeties.
>

I highly disagree with this mode of thinking. There is nowhere near the amount
of material in the head of the body armor that would cause it to have more MDC
than the main body of the armor. Such a situation would be very awkward to
maneuveur in: the head would be much larger and heavier, making the guy look
like those cheezy cartoon character with the disproportioned head and would
keep the person inside in a continual state of imbalance (remember his HEAD
weighs more than his body).

> Arms - 30%
> Legs - 40%
> Abdomen - 60%
>
> An armour with a higher prowl penalty would have these
percentages
> bumped up.
> Since Crusader has no prowl penalty it would be the base and as the
> prowl penalty went up the MD directly does also
> ie. -10% prowl arms 40% legs 50% abdomen 70% etc.
>
> As for Joe Blow the soldier all the shots he shoots will hit the
> structure and will inflict the full damage 30 round clip X 3d6 = 540MD
> The big difference compared to a rail gun is that these shots are
> dispersed over an area of a building while a glitter boy's 360 MD is to
> one point which will damage the structure considerably more. This way a
> soldier will not do damage to a building which would be equivalent to a
> small tactical nuke.
>

Actually, the glitterboy's rail gun does 3d6 x 10 MDC making it a total of
180 MD compared with the Joe Blow's 540 MDC. Also, what is the difference
between doing damage to a wider area versus doing it to one point? Will the
MDC of the structure not be destroyed when its MDC is reduced to zero? This
also points to the frailty of conventional railguns (like the one on the
Coalition Spider Walker that is longer than a couple of school buses and weighs
over a ton each). These railguns only do up to 60 MDC. I don't know about you,
but the next time I design a robot vehicle, I'm going to mount an infantry
weapon on the top of it, and hook it up to my nuclear generator.

Froccer