[FT3] Keeping the generic nature of FT.

As I've been reading JMT's "new ideas" thread I've become more and 
more convinced that FT is better served by a descriptive rather 
than a constructive design system.

It comes down to FT's pleasing generic quality. The current design
system for FT is semi-descriptive. Choose your systems, add up the
mass, take a hull of twice that size, give it a thrust rating. This 
is a descriptive process.

Describe some Star-Trek-like ships and you play a Star-Trek-like
game. Desribe some B5-like ships and play a B5-like game. Describe
some Traveller-like ships and play a Traveller-like game. The list
goes on ad nauseum.

If the design system moves more towards constructing ships along
seemingly rational engineering lines I fear that this generic 
nature will be lost, and much of FT's appeal will go with it.

FT is a tactical game. Jon's working proposals, 5% of mass per
thrust number, plays to this tactical nature because thrust is
tactically very important. But take a Traveller-style setting as an 
example background. Here it is the FTL capability (jump distance) 
that is the largest component of the ship, with FTL fuel occupying 
10-60% of the ship, despite the FTL drive having no tactical 
function relevant to FT. In the current, more descriptive, system 
we fudge this sort of trivial engineering detail, but if FT becomes 
more constructive in design and we stop fudging this, then it is 
becoming much less generic. I would not like to see this.

What I would like to see is for FT to be broken down, even more 
strongly than it is, into a generic core component and a set of
customised components that constrain the core and give the core 
some context. I think that this will cover almost every shade of 
opinion in the "new ideas" thread.

The core would consist of:
-the basic game rules, much like they are now
-a purely descriptive design system where mass is not a relevent
concept at all.
-how to assess a ship's tactical points value.

The context would consist of:
-constraints on the basic game, eg. specifying when/if you can 
shoot in the rear arc.
-constraints on allowable designs, eg. specifying how much mass 
each system will take up, how much mass is needed for thrust, how
much for the FTL system, whether you are allowed 4-arc weapons,
trivial things like that.
-how to assess a ship's strategic worth (FTL ships should be 
considered more valuble than non-FTL ships, cargo ships will have 
much more strategic value than tactical value as will ships
carrying ortillery, or ground troops) and how to translate this
strategic value into some rough victory conditions.

This is essentially how FT is currently, only more so.

So you can have a "Full Thrust Universe" context which constrains
you to buy enough damage points per ship to cover the masses
outlined by Jon for thrust and weapons. Maybe some nationalities
will have the technology to be able to make smaller ships with the
same thrust/systems and consequently buy fewer damage boxes.

You can have a Star Trek context where Federation ships are big fat 
knackers with a big damage track because of all the unecessary
family quarters and science facilities, while Klingon ships are
stuffed with weapons but can take little damage and are allowed
cloaks.

You can have B5, "Age of Iridum", or whatever. Or you can have no 
context at all. Do you want A-batteries to mass 4? Pair them off 
with four boxes. Or with three. Mark Kochte can pair his A-
batteries off with one box for that mass-1 A-battery that he 
wants... pity his ships will be so brittle.

Somebody let me know... does this make any sense?

-- 
David Brewer