One other thing to take into account.  Large tough systems that have a HTK of 2 or greater can survive multiple hits low damage hits on occasion.  The way this works is when damage less than the HTK of a system is applied there is a percent chance of the system being destroyed equal to the (damage done/hits to kill).  This is checked separately for each time a system is hit.  For example a turret with a htk of 10 is hit by a damage 1 meson.  Each time it is hit there would be a 10% chance of destroying the turret.  In theory that turret could be destroyed with the first hit, or it might still be there after 20 hits.

This can be very important when fighting a meson equipped enemy.  Mesons of all sizes only do 1 point of damage per hit.  The caliber of the meson (10cm vs 30cm) only changes the range and reload time, not the damage.  A ship with lots of high damage systems can survive longer when being hit by mesons than one that is full of 1 htk systems.  Be aware however that most of the sensors and fire control systems are going to be 1 htk systems regardless of their size so a ship can be blinded fairly quickly while still be able to fight.

Brian

I thought that higher HTK components have a higher chance of bring hit, therefore a size 1 magazine that's all armour would be damaged more often than other more important systems because of its great HTK, I could have sworn that this was a strategy being discussed on a forum somewhere.

If you look on the ship window, you should see a DAC on one of the tabs. This is the list of components that can be damaged/destroyed. There is also an eDAC for microwave weapons.

*DAC = Damage Allocation Table.

So is the idea that there is a "die roll" to see which system is hit? And if 5 points of damage penetrate, 5 rolls are made?

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Armour_and_Shields

"Component armour
Turrets, magazines, power plants, engines, fuel tanks, etc) the armor on these components reduces the chance that a point of internal damage will destroy one HTK point on the component. The chance is equal to (armour) / (armour + HTK), so 2 points of armour on a 3 HTK turret means 40% of the time it will be undamaged by a hit.
Note that all internal damage is applied one point at a time."

I suspect that damage is applied on one component one point at a time until it is destroyed, and after that remaining points spill over to adjacent components in the same manner.

I don't think there are actually adjacent components. Other than that its right on, at least as far as I know.

I think I understand the way armor and shields work.  But I'm not sure what happens once they are penetrated.  Two scenarios I'm wondering about:

- A strength 10 laser penetrates 5 layers of armor (no shields).  Does it do one point of damage to internal systems, because it is only one square "wide"? Or does it do five points of damage to systems?
- A strength 3 meson cannon hits, ignoring armor and shields.  Does it damage one system? Three systems? Are the three points of damage scattered randomly, or are they "adjacent"?