Re: Gravity, Tech & others (was Re: Orbits, etc)

On  4 Jul 98 at 0:41, Sabmason@aol.com wrote:

[snip]

> Internal artificial gravity also shows some design flaws - if it
> fails on a standard decks-parallel-to-thrust ship, you're screwed. 
> Climb the floor and celings, and the bulkheads are the floors,
> right.  On a decks-perpendicular-to-thrust ship, if the floor grav
> plates fail, you are still able to manuver somewhat, as the ship is
> designed for that situation.

Well, in my flavour of manuever drives, I made the partial divorcing 
of the inertial frame of the ship an intrinsic part of how the drive 
operates, so when manuevering you don't feel the acceleration, and if 
the drive breaks, you can't manuever and it can't compensate either 
(not that there will be anything to compensate for).

The jury is still out for me on whether there is artificial gravity 
on 'my' ships. Either way, I think I'd have it turned off when in 
combat, and let people endure the very dampened inertial 
accelerations.

For roleplay reasons (when and if required), I decided that I didn't
want ship drives able to level a city when taking off, since players
tend to own small ships sometimes. I favoured the Star Wars
'hairdryer' effect drive. You can stand behind the millenium falcon
as it takes off and have your hair ruffled. My massive PSB
rationalisation is that it reacts against some sort of parallel
dimension, thereby not hurting ours, but still having to pay the same
energy costs as it should to gain the acceleration it is seen to
have.

[snip rest of thought provoking post]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
P.S. If you do not receive this, of course it must have been miscarried;
therefore I beg you to write and let me know. 
     Sir Boyle Roche
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