Nanotube armor plating

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  • Last Post 20 November 2018
Nightstalker666 posted this 16 November 2018

I had an idea I never finished for making ultra expensive lightweight armor back when carbon nanotubes were the newest toughest thing I'd heard of. Graphene along the same lines of carbon structure is in real life proving much more viable and nearly as tough for much the same chemical-bond reasons. so I wonder given a couple thousand years human technological advancement; how long would it take to make a ton of such stuff? ferro-fibrous sounds pretty complex and tough to make from current technological perspective but it's only a few times the expense of normal armor. I still think this armor should be ultra expensive and tough to manufacture at a decent rate but if the buyer's a rich starlord?.. now what I wonder is just how tough and light should I make it for construction rules. 

 

so here's my quick and dirty formulae just looking at the price, bulk and AF per ton of other materials available for comparison. 5 tons of clan ferro-fib is 96pts @100K C-bills. I would think 24 pts a ton at maybe 75000 CB's would be steep but fair. also no bulk/crit-space being the major winover. but the manufacture of it would take a specialized facility at least five-times as costly and probly ten times slower production than another armor manufacturing factory would be. does that sound reasonable? it IS munchtek afterall and to the GM and players decision whether to even allow such into the game but I want to hear opinions and hopefully intelligent peple will see and make their thoughts on this known instead of the usual trolling naysayers

 

I figure a 50% boost to AF is kinda high but simpler on the calculations. I also I forgot to mention my question of how to give it a minor detraction like taking an extra point of damage per five or ten points of ballistic damage and the possibility of an extra critical hit if a critical is made.

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Prince posted this 16 November 2018

Hmmm, hard to make it "sound" like it fits, in the sense that Battletech makes something sound just science-y enough to work. Perhaps at it's core it's still an offshoot of Ferro Fibrous, but replaces the carbon armor layer for the nanotubes? It would handwave away the issue nanotubes have, i. e. extremely brittle since they can't take side-loads.

I say use your stats- maybe drop the armor level per ton a little, maybe have take some crits- but can't be mounted on omnis, like Hardened. Maybe even give it a big weakness to something, more for when you put it on an enemy 'boss' character it makes things a little fun and arcade-y.

icehellion posted this 16 November 2018

The problem would be to make it fair in games where price is not really taken into account.

Nightstalker666 posted this 18 November 2018

I love clan tech but prefer to avoid letting players utilize their priceless society. I also take a lot of time away from the gameplay table to make sure those costs are crunched properly. I'm oldschool and don't use the BV system except to look at force balance. I used to do all the calculations by hand when I was a kid because back then the math was a funn accomplishment but now I use the Drawing Board- which I wondered if anyone has a good patch or add-on for?

Prince posted this 20 November 2018

The problem would be to make it fair in games where price is not really taken into account.

End boss armor. Done.

 

Prince posted this 20 November 2018

I love clan tech but prefer to avoid letting players utilize their priceless society. I also take a lot of time away from the gameplay table to make sure those costs are crunched properly. I'm oldschool and don't use the BV system except to look at force balance. I used to do all the calculations by hand when I was a kid because back then the math was a funn accomplishment but now I use the Drawing Board- which I wondered if anyone has a good patch or add-on for?

THE DRAWING BOARD

Oh, you sweet summer child; TDB hasn't been updated in 15 years. If there's an update anywhere, its likely on PrydeRockIndustries.

Nowadays, everybody either uses MegaMek Lab or good old Solaris Skunk Werks- which is hilarious, since the Offical Battlemasters STILL supposedly support HeavyMetal as the "official" creator when it hasn't been updated since 2005.

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