Ship vitals and fight penalties
A vital is a system a ship cannot fight without, such as the reactor, the cooling fins, the air plant, the drive and the guns, and a ship loses a fight when one of them fails and not when its hull is used up.
9 numbers, 0 with an outside source
- A0 numbers at grade A
- B0 numbers at grade B
- C0 numbers at grade C
- D0 numbers at grade D
- E9 numbers at grade E
Functionality
1 topic
Life support
- Neither side aims at LIFE SUPPORT. A round that gets through the plate gets inside instead.
- There it can wreck cargo, kill a crewmate, hole the reactor plant or vent a compartment.
- Otherwise it takes 8 off life support.
- At 40 or less life support fails.
- Every 20 s it stays down, bad air can kill a hand at 15%, unless GENERAL QUARTERS has the crew suited.
- While it is down or its air plant is cut, your guns lay wider and every hand loses morale every 20 s.
- Life support is mended before every fight.
Values
9 numbers: 9 E
Each value is read from the game code. Sort by any column heading, or filter by grade or by a word.
| Quantity | Value | Grade | Source | Why this value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share of a system's full condition at or below which it counts as crippled | 0.4 share | EAuthored | No source recorded | Chosen by the game as the 40 percent line every vital already uses for its own crippled state, so the five vitals read on one scale. |
| Share of full condition left when one fin panel is gone (7 of 8) | 0.875 share | EAuthored | No source recorded | One minus one panel of the eight fin panels: arithmetic on a choice of the game, so no source applies. |
| Air plant condition when whole, a percentage | 100 percent | EAuthored | No source recorded | The scale the game uses for the air plant, 100 whole and 0 gone; it is a unit of the game and not a measurement. |
| Air plant condition when the air has run out, a percentage | 0 percent | EAuthored | No source recorded | The floor of the same scale: the crew goes to suits and fights on with the crippled penalties, so a ship is not out of the fight at zero air. |
| Share of shrapnel wounds that get through a suit | 0.5 share | EAuthored | No source recorded | Chosen by the game: a suit stops vacuum and spall and does not stop a penetrating round. Measured, a suit saved about one wound in 14 fights. |
| Aim a crew gains for the first volley by keeping the guns hot instead of suiting up | 10 points of hit chance | EAuthored | No source recorded | Authored, not measured: a fight lasts a mean 2.8 rounds, so the first round is about a third of the fire, and the 10 sits between the readiness bonus of about 5 and the life support penalty of 15. |
| Aim lost by a crew worn down by hard burns | 10 points of hit chance | EAuthored | No source recorded | Chosen by the game as the lightest penalty, below overheat 20, life support 15 and radiation 12: a tired crew is the risk a hard-driving hull chose. |
| Aim lost by a crew with radiation sickness | 12 points of hit chance | EAuthored | No source recorded | Chosen by the game between life support and fatigue: worse than tiredness and less than a depressurizing hull. It reads the crew's acute dose, which the radiation page grades separately. |
| Aim lost by a crew caught mid-boarding by an interception | 12 points of hit chance | EAuthored | No source recorded | Chosen by the game at the same size as the radiation penalty; a crew still stowing salvage is not at its stations. No source covers it. |
Real-world basis
6 points
- A ship is a set of systems, and a hit on the hull is only dangerous when it reaches one of them.
- A warship is lost in a fight when a critical system fails and starts a cascade, even if the hull is mostly whole.
- That is called a mission kill: the ship cannot fight on, though it may still float.
- The reactor, the cooling fins, the air plant, the drive and the guns are the vitals of a ship in this game.
- The fins and the air can fail and the ship fights on with penalties, while a reactor with no containment ends the fight.
- A crew that is tired, sick or caught off its stations shoots worse, and each of those costs aim.
Game and reality differences
2 points
- Each vital is a single track from whole to gone. A real ship has many parts of each system, and only the fins are split into panels.
- The reactor has no floor above a kill: containment at zero ends the fight, while the fins and the air can reach zero and the ship fights on.
Source absences
2 points
- No source on the shelf provides values for the following:
- Aim lost by a tired, sick, or distracted gun crew. Every accuracy penalty is authored, sized against the others.
- Crippled line for a ship system. 40% is authored, one line for every system.
Sources
2 documents
- Atomic Rockets, astromilitary, the armored cruiser passage: An armored cruiser trades endurance for enough armor to maybe survive a hit from a capital ship's gun without being mission killed. The term names a ship that cannot fight on and does not need to be destroyed. "without being mission killed" (all uses)
- Atomic Rockets, heatrad, Combat Radiators (the Achilles Heel passage): Drives, power plants and most weapons make huge waste heat, and radiators are hard or impossible to armor, so they are likely the first thing an enemy shoots. (all uses)