Protection - Defense & Soak

In general terms, a vehicle’s protection is an amalgam of its maneuverability, the durability of its hull or chassis, the strength of its shields, and the thickness of its armor. In some settings, vehicles have simple protections like thick wood and metal plating, while in others, they are protected by reactive armor, diamond-hard carbon panels, or even energy fields that absorb oncoming attacks.


Genesys divides these protections into two discrete statistics: defense and armor.


Defense


Defense reflects a vehicle’s ability to completely deflect or reduce the damage of incoming attacks or collisions through ablative armor, deflector shields, point defense systems, illusory duplicates, or other, even more esoteric technologies.


Defense works the same as described on page 104; each point of a vehicle’s defense adds b to any incoming attack roll (melee or ranged) made against the vehicle.


Armor


Armor is a flying vehicle’s second line of defense, and the only protection available to the majority of ground vehicles. It represents deflective plating of all varieties, and it soaks up damage from attacks and impacts that are able to penetrate a vehicle’s defense.


A vehicle’s armor soaks a number of damage points equal to its rating. Remember that because it functions on planetary scale, one point of a vehicle’s armor is equivalent to ten points of soak on a personal scale (see Planetary Scale versus Personal Scale, on page 224).