On 5 May 2016 at 19:41, Freelance Traveller wrote:

> It was never about blowing holes in the hull with starships; to the
> extent it was discussed at all, it was really always about blowing
> through non-bulkhead internal partitions or damaging internal systems.

Yep, over-penetration is a problem with any wall that *isn't* a
"pressure wall" (by analogy to firewalls and load-bearing walls in
buiuldings)

Also, Missing someone (or having the shot go all the way thru them)
and hitting acess panels for important system or just about *any*
control panel is a Bad Thing.

Remember, you *don't put wiring and plumbing behind what amounts to
armor. It makes maintenance, repairs and upgrades a nightmare. So
shots *can* hit those.

Hitting the water/sewage stuff is messy and can cause further damage.
Also ships are likely to have lines for drinking water, gray water
(sink & shower drains mostly) and black water (toilets). The seperate
gray and black is because not only are the standards for containing
them different, the way they get processed in life support is very
different.

Hitting HVAC ducting isn't likely to be an immediate problem (unless
you hit the water or waste lines at the same time.), but..

Hitting power lines (or worse yet distribution panels and the like)
is bad.

Hitting control and sensor runs can be *really* bad. Even if you have
redundant cable runs.

And actual control panels? Ouch.

And lets not forget that the control room(bridge) and Engineering are
prime targets for anybody trying to take over the ship.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com