Forums of the Megaverse®

Would Reactive Armor(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armour) work against energy weapons such as a Laser Rifle, Ion beam Rifle, Particle Beam Rifle, Plasma Cartridge Rifle? Would the reactive blocks be activate by these weapons or would they just burn through them to the regular armor?

I vaguely recall seeing something in one of the rifts books with something like the mentioned Electric Reactive Armor. I just can't for the life of me remember what book it was in. I think it was a Naruni or Megaversal Legion vehicle but I can't easily get to my SA2 book to confirm. And I know it's not in Mercenaries.

probably not.

It came up in an HU campaign that a hardware hero armed with an AT-230(Rifts WB-08 pg-125) was firing at a North Korean version of the T-90 and the question was what would happen to the reactive armor. Would it detonate nullifying the shot, would it ablate again nullifying the shot. or would the shot burn through (reducing the damage by 10-15 percent) and the shot then hit the armor underneath.

As I can find no references or rules regarding reactive armor in any of my books, I can only base my OPINION on how such armor is designed to work.

Reactive armor protects against an explosive penetrator by introducing a reciprocal explosive force. The speed at which the "protective" explosion moves is hoped to be high enough to overcome or at least minimize the speed at which the "attacking" explosion is moving, minimizing or eliminating the damaging effects of the attack.

The explosives used in reactive armor blocks are very powerful, but also very stable. It is questionable if a laser or other energy weapon would set a block off. I would say probably not to a laser or ion weapon, but likely for a particle beam. Solid penetrators such as sabot rounds, rail guns, gauss weapons (non-explosive), bullets (including incendiary and tracer), and so on will be ignored by the reactive armor. At most, these attacks would only see their damage reduced by having to first pass through the reactive armor block.

Even in the event of an energy weapon detonating a block, the speed at which the beam, pulse, energetic "projectile", etc. moves means that the underlying armor is already damaged BEFORE the reactive armor block actually even explodes.

Hope this helps until someone else is able to find a rule in one of te many books I don't have.

I just skimmed SA2 and didn't find anything like reactive armor, other than the Archons ceramic armor which takes 1/2 damage from energy weapons, but double damage from "impact" weapons

After a quick skim of the Wikipedia article I would put Reactive Armor in one of these two terms:

Option #1 Reactive Armor reduces explosive damage to 10% of its normal value and reduces the damage from other kinetic attacks by half! Called shots can be made to bypass this damage reduction. Energy attacks do normal damage. A.R. is unchanged.

Option #2 Reactive Armor allows the A.R. to be applied versus explosive attacks, and increases the A.R. versus kinetic attacks by 2. The A.R. versus energy attacks is unchanged.

It would have to depend on the nature of the reactive armour, but modern ERA would be readily set off by energy weapons while providing no real impact on the effectiveness of said weapons.

So, depending on how the rules for reactive armour work in your game, I'd say energy weapons either bypass it entirely, or it has no additional protective effect against energy weapons.

Jefffar wrote:It would have to depend on the nature of the reactive armour, but modern ERA would be readily set off by energy weapons while providing no real impact on the effectiveness of said weapons.

A laser beam is often a series of laser pulses with enough time between pulses so that the vapor/smoke/particulates from the previous pulse has a chance to clear and not block or otherwise interfere with the following pulse. The explosion from reactive armor would put a whole lot more material in the path of the next pulse, so it's possible that lasers would do less damage.

I don't know if the effect would be enough to worry about, though.

--flatline

The only DEW that would be most readily effected by Reactive Armor are Plasma Beams and Plasma melee weapons.

There is a Sci-Fi anime called Aldnoah.Zero that the main char uses reactive armor to 'blow out' plasma swords wielded by the other mecha to protect his mecha.

With the other DEWs it depends on the duration & magnitude of the beam.

DEW: Directed Energy Weapon

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:The only DEW that would be most readily effected by Reactive Armor are Plasma Beams and Plasma melee weapons.

There is a Sci-Fi anime called Aldnoah.Zero that the main char uses reactive armor to 'blow out' plasma swords wielded by the other mecha to protect his mecha.

With the other DEWs it depends on the duration & magnitude of the beam.

DEW: Directed Energy Weapon

the other "big" reactive armor user that Immediately comes to mind to me, is the "bolos" of course they are so bloody nasty that they always have layered defenses, and can often get crippling hits on themselves in one shot.

several of the higher mark Bolos were written up as having a super high durability armor plating "meters thick" backed up /reinforced with "energy shields" anti-plasma weapon reactive armor segments (and layers) over the warhull, projected energy shields that can absorb, and deflect energy weapons and batteries of dual purpose "infinite repeaters" that are commonly used as point defense, and anti personnel/ secondary weapon batteries. in addition they often have mortars, and /or cruise missile launchers. there is a reason they are classified as continental siege weapons.

The reason for the question came about because in a Heroes game the GM was having a hero team going up against North Korean Blackwind MBTs and one of the heroes has an Ion Blaster that fires and energy bolt and he was wondering what effect the reactive armor blocks would have.

As it turned out the HKs came in fighting Israeli doctrine and not soviet which was a mistake.

2nd thoughts

Reactive armor would not 'react' till the DEW's damage bleeds through the outer skin of the r-armor to set off the explosive in the r-armor.

Thus the r-armor would just add a little bit (relitively) of extra SDC verses DEWs. And a little bit of 'hanabi' (fireworks) that go off in the middle of the battle.

If the bolt travels at the speed of light, I don't see reactive armor being able to react in time. I guess it depends on how the system detects the incoming danger, but my gut tells me it wouldn't be effective to something going that fast.

Not that you couldn't set it up to defend against that sort of thing, but you'd have to know your enemy employs weapons of that type.

That's the thing about military hardware. They often make the armor to protect against known weapons. If a weapon is unknown, there's a decent chance there isn't a substantial defense for it.

After a little research two called shots to the same spot make reactive armor obsolete anyway.

say652 wrote:After a little research two called shots to the same spot make reactive armor obsolete anyway.

While that's true...in palladium that's 4 actions, out of the average 4 actions for most basic trained soldiers.

If the tank doesn't kill you while you're setting up the first shot, you're lucky.

Alrik Vas wrote:

say652 wrote:After a little research two called shots to the same spot make reactive armor obsolete anyway.

While that's true...in palladium that's 4 actions, out of the average 4 actions for most basic trained soldiers.

If the tank doesn't kill you while you're setting up the first shot, you're lucky.

Probably counts as a small target, too, with whatever the appropriate penalty is.

--flatline

Depending on the model, those blocks can only be a few inches by a few inches, so probably harder than a headshot, especially on a moving tank (which, after the first hit, it's probably going to be) and ignores other defensive systems the tank might engage while under attack (like smoke launchers, adding a nice -6 or worse penalty to the attack).

Marcethus wrote:I vaguely recall seeing something in one of the rifts books with something like the mentioned Electric Reactive Armor. I just can't for the life of me remember what book it was in. I think it was a Naruni or Megaversal Legion vehicle but I can't easily get to my SA2 book to confirm. And I know it's not in Mercenaries.

I don't know about Electric Reactive Armor, but Phaseworld's Draygon Industries (DB6) has the body armor equivalent of a variable laser rifle for defense (instead of offense) that augments normal laser resistant materials (initially 1/2 damage, but the system will reduce it to 1/10 given enough time).

MercOps and/or Naruni Wave 2 might also have something with NG/Naruni materials.

Jefffar wrote:It would have to depend on the nature of the reactive armour, but modern ERA would be readily set off by energy weapons while providing no real impact on the effectiveness of said weapons.

As a reactionary element I agree, there likely isn't going to be any real benefit. The technology really isn't designed to interact with DEW.

However "pre-emptive" elements do exist in Mutants In Orbit ship systems that RAW would have an impact (pg83-4: Chaff Thrower, Sand Caster), though these are space systems so on the ground/air their duration might not be as good (without some form of assistance). They are said to reduce laser damage (varying degree), and each offers other advantages.

ShadowLogan wrote:

Marcethus wrote:I vaguely recall seeing something in one of the rifts books with something like the mentioned Electric Reactive Armor. I just can't for the life of me remember what book it was in. I think it was a Naruni or Megaversal Legion vehicle but I can't easily get to my SA2 book to confirm. And I know it's not in Mercenaries.

I don't know about Electric Reactive Armor, but Phaseworld's Draygon Industries (DB6) has the body armor equivalent of a variable laser rifle for defense (instead of offense) that augments normal laser resistant materials (initially 1/2 damage, but the system will reduce it to 1/10 given enough time).

MercOps and/or Naruni Wave 2 might also have something with NG/Naruni materials.

Jefffar wrote:It would have to depend on the nature of the reactive armour, but modern ERA would be readily set off by energy weapons while providing no real impact on the effectiveness of said weapons.

As a reactionary element I agree, there likely isn't going to be any real benefit. The technology really isn't designed to interact with DEW.

However "pre-emptive" elements do exist in Mutants In Orbit ship systems that RAW would have an impact (pg83-4: Chaff Thrower, Sand Caster), though these are space systems so on the ground/air their duration might not be as good (without some form of assistance). They are said to reduce laser damage (varying degree), and each offers other advantages.

Ironically, those defences would have a chance of being effective in atmosphere; in space, they would just disperse in straight lines away from each other rather than stay in a cloud.

SHHHHHHH...no logic while RPG physics is talking.

You can still enjoy the irony.

I do, and it's delicious. Though, they just wanted to give you a way to defend against missiles and thought a cloud of space junk was a good answer. Oh well, right?