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Okay, here's a technical question for you;
What damage is incurred when a spacecraft rams a forcefield?
What factors come into play when calculating damage?
We have examples previously of ships running into shrapnel/chaff clouds(damage= @d6 MD x speed of colliding ship), and forcefields deflect material objects(requiring special equipment/magic to penetrate them), but non-material forcefields?

Okay, so we have at least two factors at play here, speed of colliding vessel and possibly the relative speed of the forcefield it's going to hit, and respective MDCs of the colliding vessel and the forcefield.
I figure both ship and forcefield are going to take damage, but should it be a simple fixed rate(like the aforementioned 1d6 MD per Mach number), or should the respective MDCs of the two colliding bodies be factored in? Or perhaps the mass of the colliding vessel, since that, combined with the speed of the colliding vessel, is going to add damage done to the forcefield.
Even if a massive enough vessel overpowers a forcefield and bulls through, as it collapses, the forcefield could still scrape away hull, antennae, turrets and other exposed gear from the vessel, leaving it weakened.
Okay, THREE factors then; velocity of colliding vessel, mass of colliding vessel, MDC of forcefield.


And then you add in forcefield vs forcefield, with collision damage coming off the forcefields, and the stronger one holding while the weaker one bounces off.

Thoughts? Solutions?


(Addendum...okay, maybe we can work out some ramming qualities...the CS Mark VII, at 43 tons weight rams for 1d6x10 MD at 40 MPH and 2d4xq0 MD at 80 MPH...not bad for a ground vehicle.
The CAF Battle Ram, of 220 tons mass, can deliver a flying ram, presumably at its atmospheric flying speed of Mach 1, which I'm calling 670 MPH, doing 5d6x10 MD. No mention of what it might do at its space flying speed of Mach 8, which is probably kamikaze damage)

Or...I could just sleep on it....

Well normal ramming rules would apply IMHO.

Per HU2E (pg85, which is the most recent modern vehicle rules book I have, don't know why Rifts doesn't have these rules in RUE) for ground based vehicles, the speed has to be within 10mph/16kph of both parties or it constitutes a crash. It also means that the attacking spacecraft takes a percentage of the damage (unless designed with ramming in mind, and even then damage is focused to specific section). These rules are largely found in the 1E RT or Macross2 RPG (and N&SS, possibly others), but I have found largely absent in more recent main books (WHY?)

Now Aircraft (and spacecraft follow the same) rules (pg88-9 under Chicken Tactics) do allow for ramming, but even here they say it isn't a good idea and do not elaborate on damage (possibly indicating it constitutes a crash regardless unless specifically designed for ramming attacks IMHO). Speed and Mass/Weight are used for crash damage (pg89), I'd just plug in MDC for MDC objects and call it a day.

The inclusion of (generic) force fields doesn't change much IMHO, it just acts as extra MDC for both parties (should they both have FF). Depending on the damage inflicted to the rammer they could in theory go splat on the shields of the rammie (we see something like that happen in Star Wars Ep6 at the beginning of the Battle of Endor in space, Robotech has that happen in Ep24 of the NG/GCM arc (might also happen in Ep25) and could be implied to happen when missiles strike the SDF-1's various barriers (PPB or ODB) though I forget off hand if missile strikes are even shown (beam weapons yes)).

Well, I was considering an experimental weapons system(or low-altitude aerial defense weapon) that could throw a forcefield in front of a speeding target....unexpected wall/collision hazard,

So your main concern is damage then?

Yeah I would just treat it as a crash (in most cases, unless traveling really slow like sub-100mph/160kph). Damage per RUE (pg345) is 2d4 per 10mph/16kph (it was previously 1d8 IINM in older books). Now RUE lists it as SDC damage, but if we're dealing with MD materials I'd say the damage is converted to MD, otherwise bodyblocks and such wouldn't work and we know they work via examples.

That means at Mach 1/670mph it would cause 2d4x67MD (536MD on max roll), assuming MD for MD structures (and SDC for SDC structures). At space speeds of Mach 5+ it'd probably be terrifying to collide with a FF. And I'm sure someone could workout a table for speed to convenient die rolls.

If you want to be really evil, have the FF also act as a Vibro-field(s) or some other "aura" effect to make collisions more damaging since that is the desired goal (in this case I think there is magic that functions this way in terms of traveling through something, but at the moment can't think of examples, though the Dominator Star Fortress in DB13 springs to mind for some reason).

If flying close to a significant gravity source (large moon or planet) I'd also add in falling damage if it loses flight capability which means it does 1d6 per 10ft/3m (RUE pg345 again), with enough altitude that could be deadly (1d6x100 per 1000ft of fall, hit something at 50,000ft and cause it to drop that's 50d6x100, even leaving at SD damage that would be 5d6x10MD on impact with the ground if it was MD like previously you'd be looking at 5d6x1,000MD).

If this is a surprise attack (or "cloaked") I would allow for some mechanism to veer away to avoid potentially splattering on the FF.