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ARMOR
MODIFIER IN BABYLON 5 As the primary means of defense in the universe of Babylon 5 is armor and not energy shields, fans began to debate the question of just how strong was the armor used by Earthforce in the Babylon 5 universe. As we had no idea what Earthforce armor was made of, iron was used as a base material to estimate the low-end armor strength but as Earthforce armor was NOT comprised of iron, the question as to how much stronger metals, armor and building materials would be some 300 years from now became a question that demanded a some kind of answer. When this debate began there were a wide range of opinions. Some said it was 35x stronger than titanium - a number fans got from the "Star Trek the Next Generation: Technical Manual." Some fans argued that B5 armor was no more than 3x stronger than modern armor while others claimed it was as much as 200x stronger. I had my own ideas about this, but knew I didn't just want to pull some number out of thin air, like so many others were doing. So, to get an idea of what kind of limits I should place on my own work, I went to a mechanical engineer - Mike Wong, the author of www.stardestroyer.net. Now, Mike Wong did not and does not endorse the use of armor modifiers and has said as much in his web postings and in private correspondence. My conversation with Mike Wong was not however to obtain his endorsement, nor was it to tout his expertise to justify my own work. It WAS however an honest attempt, on my part, to place boundaries and limitations on my own work by consulting an expert. Again - Mike Wong does not support armor modifiers. So that you, the reader, can better understand how "I" came up with the 20x armor modifier used for Earthforce vessels at this site, and generally accepted by Babylon 5 fans world wide, and so you can understand that Mike Wong did NOT endorse the use of armor modifiers, below is a copy of the letters sent between Mike Wong and myself with regards to this subject.
Again - Mike Wong does not support armor modifiers. What I took away from Mike Wong's comments suggest that armor strength would be - in general - less than an order of magnitude greater in the era of Babylon 5 compared to today. Now there are obviously a lot of factors to consider. We've got:
These features are mutually exclusive, because you can have armor that is physically strong but has little in the way of heat resistance and vice versa. While we have all heard buzz words like plasteel and morbidium cast about in the Babylon universe we still have no clue as to what these materials really are or their characteristics; we simply don't know what they use for armor in Babylon 5. Regardless, what "I" tried to do with the armor modifier was create a general, generic armor modifier that everyone can understand. B5 has mentioned things like beryllium alloys and elements not even on the periodic table such as morbidium, a fictional alloy used in the construction of PPGs that is harder than diamond. This being the case we must take what we know and make a logical estimate as to how much stronger armor will be in the future. So, rather than fidget with trying to pin down the strength of fictional elements, we will instead take our base element - iron - and increased it by a single order of magnitude. We then increased a popular metal used for armor in the here & now, in this case titanium, and increased that by an order of magnitude as well. This gives us our base material of iron multiplied by ten (b * 10 = x), and our modern armor material of titanium (3b * 10 = x). Where b = 1 our base of x for the first equation would come out to be 10, and for the second equation we would have an armor strength of 30. We then compromise our two figures, we get "30 - 10 = 20" and that gives us an armor strength of 20x or 20 times the strength of our base material of iron. And this is what...? Less than an order of magnitude relative to titanium! - or 67% stronger than modern armor used by military forces today. As you can see the 20x modifier is not some wild guess, generalization, or random number pulled out of a hat. The 20x armor modifier is a reasonable estimate based on our current state of development... a number that is LESS than a single order of magnitude greater than titanium, a conservative number for a science fiction universe in which there are no shields or deflector screens and armor is a ship's only form of protection. NOTE: This is a generic number. It does not mean that B5 armor is 20 times stronger than iron in all respects (strength, hardness, creep resistance, toughness). It is a round number and an educated guess as to how much stronger some of these features may be in the future. Whenever possible, it is better to use the base figures and, obviously, the 20x armor modifier will not apply to kinetic impacts or explosions. While some have argued that any armor modifier used skews observational results with regards to the effectiveness of an energy weapon - an opinion I just happen to share - I also beleive that in some cases where we do not have a tangible incident with which to judge the effectiveness of a weapon, an armor modifier may be needed and can be used to help estimate the scope of a weapon's effect when no other "real world" example is available with which to make a more accurate estimate. A perfect example of this is the weapons of the Minbari and Earthforce. At no time have we seen the weapons of the Minbari War-Cruiser or Earthforce Omega class Destroyer used against a real world object like an asteroid; weapons were only used against other ships, forcing us to make estimates based only on those events. Estimates with regards to energy weapons based on damage inflicted upon a vessel where the observer used iron (a metal used by man for thousands of years) as a base material, providing us with a low-end estimate that we know could not be wholly accurate with regards to the given technology level of Earth Alliance or the alien races in the Babylon universe as their ships were not made of iron... under those circumstances the use of an armor modifier can be understood. So, with the lack of real world events to observe and draw upon to establish a solid and accurate low-end estimate for the effect of something like a laser fired at a real world target like, say, the asteroid vaporization in "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" or "Babylon 5: A Call to Arms", for many fans an armor modifier became necessary in order to arrive at, what they perceived to be, a more accurate conclusion. In an effort to make sure that any armor modifier used was within the scope of believability, I established the 20x modifier for energy weapons. Armor estimates, when used judiciously can improve upon estimates based on ship-to-ship combat but - obviously - real world events like the destruction of an asteroid will provide a more accurate figure as no armor modifier is required. NOTE: Michael Wong does not support armor modifiers. His comments were used by myself as a means to establishing an upper limit on my 20x armor modifier. This armor modifier was not established nor endorsed by Michael Wong. |
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