On 11Oct2020 0728, Alex Goodwin wrote:

> As I've been gradually applying more rules (as I grok them), Drake et al
> decided to skim themselves some "cheap fuel". Dice karma and hilarity
> ensued.
>
> After limping through Jump and into Prometheus Highport, Nikki had to
> spend four weeks in drydock stripping the _Paradise_'s compromised
> armour shell, untwisting the aft frames, spending approx 500k solars
> chasing up new armour, and then fitting same.  As opposed to 20k solars
> for a load of refined fuel.
>
>
> Further reading through the rules in question (sustained-damage crits,
> and GG skimming) lead me to the question in the topic.  Does PC
> overconfidence + small ship necessarily massively elevate risk of neat
> burial in J. Random Gas Giant?
>
>
> Is this me overthinking things, me misinterpreting the rules (a distinct
> possibility), Mongoose's love of thinking thru
> implications/interactions, or something else?
>
> Sustained-damage critical:
>
> MGT2 Core, p158:
>
> "A ship will suffer a severity 1 critical hit every time it loses 10%
> (rounded up) of its starting hull (points)."
>
> GG skimming:
>
> MGT2 Companion, p 156:
>
> "Crossing from one layer to another, up or down, requires an Average
> (8+) Pilot check with the largest negative DM for depth applied. Success
> indicates the ship has successfully crossed to the new layer without
> much more than some buffeting. In the event of failure, the ship fails
> to cross the layer and is bounced back with considerable violence. A
> second Pilot check, this one at Difficult (10+) difficulty and subject
> to the DM for the layer the ship is currently in, is required to avoid
> damage. If this check is failed, the ship suffers a number of dice in
> damage equal to the number of the layer it is trying to enter. So, a
> ship trying to enter the Deep layer and failing, suffers 4D Hull damage
> unless the pilot can succeed the second check."
>
>
> For some concrete examples:
>
> A stock 200 dton ship (such as the _Butchers' Paradise_ ) has 80 hull
> points, thus it would endure a severity 1 critical every 8 points of
> hull damage.  100 dton ships have half those totals.
>
> A stock 1000 dton ship (such as the container freighter _Astral
> Venture_) has 400 hull points, etc
>
> A stock 5000 dton ship (such as the mobile depot ship _Gadget
> Hackwrench_) has 1,000 hull points, etc
>
> Up towards the higher end, a stock 25,000 dton ship (such as the light
> battleship TCS _Wubbo Ockels_) has 12,500 hull points, etc.
>
> The Extreme Shallows are the highest layer with enough fuel to be worth
> skimming (at 10% of full rate), and cause 2D6 buffeting damage when the
> pilot messes up.  Assuming two points of armour and said armour applies,
> the hapless hundred-ton ship has a ~70% chance of copping a
> sustained-damage critical, assuming no existing damage.  The _Paradise_
> would have a 16% chance of copping a sustained-damage crit straight up.
> The bigger ships would point and laugh.
This is the major problem I think - the rules don't scale at all. They
should apply less damage to small ships, and more to larger ones. Say
something like replacing each 2D damage with 1d% of original hull points
in damage (off the top of my head).

I certainly wouldn't just apply criticals to the hull - buffeting could
cause damage to all sorts of different systems, and as you note it also
tends to cause a death spiral, especially in small ships (because the
damage from hull crits doesn't scale either - in a Type S Scout they're
really dangerous, in an Azanti High Lightning you want crits to be hull
crits, because you have plenty of hit points).

Also, MgT2, p.147 says it takes 1D hours and a Difficult Pilot check to
do a gas-giant refuel. Thus the Companion isn't just making the task
more detailed, but also much harder and more dangerous.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>