Re: FT III alternative rules

Mike Miserendino wrote
>This could be true if we looked at the beam weapon with a close
resemblence
>to todays turrets cannons, but the actual mass of the weapon might be
>allocated as follows: 90% in non-moving mass(barbette containing energy
>generation/storage, etc.) with only 10% used for the actual turreted
weapon.
>I don't think gun elevation will make a difference in FT unless the
weapon
>is quite huge(or your playing wet-navy).

My intention for this sugestion was as a means of encouraging the use of
smaller beams and not any attempt to reflect reality. The rationalle I
gave
was wholly that and many more are plausible (perhaps the beams are
streams of
plasma or of matter and anti matter particles and it takes time for the
containment fields to decay to the stage where the beam will interact
with
the matter of the ships hull destructively rather than drilling a small
hole
in the hull which could be rapidly sealed by automatic	hull rupture
equipment or even by slamming a patch over the breach manually! - before
you
try pointing out that most damage is caused by explosive decompression
remember tou have to hit a pressurised compartment for this to occur and
most
of a ship isn't (Oxygen is expensive and heavy to waste in unoccupied
sections of a ship not to mention making it vulnerable to such damage)
and we
have obviously progressed beyond chemical drives) or the damage is
caused by
tracking the beam over the hull and so the inertia of tracking the
larger
beams with sufficient accuracy at short range is beyond the tecnology of
the
time.( the engineers are of course working on the problem!) or maybe God
prohibits it!!!
- There are , I am sure umpteen different explanations beyond these 3 in
any
event if I want to closely reflect reality it would reqire too much
book-keeping for my liking.

Craig Mitchell