[FT] ship design

I put together a spreadsheet with Mass from 1-100 and columns to
calculate
the mass cost of FTL, Hull boxes, and Main Drive--the percentage based
systems (ignoring shields as I don't much use them).	Add the totals
of
the three columns and subtract it from the corresponding Mass and you
get
Payload.  This is useful for designing----if you know you want, say, a
wavegun, you can see where it becomes possible to fit it in--and you
also
see which ship sizes are more efficient (for a specific Hull/FTL/Drive
set).
For example, with FTL, Drive 4, and 30% Hull, size 47 is more efficient
thant 48 or 49, with the same payload for a smaller total mass (and thus
points cost).  There are some cases where rounding breakpoints mean it
is
possible to have a bigger ship with a smaller payload--poor design! 
Note
that in some cases the design with +1 Mass for the same payload gets an
extra Hull box, which may (or may not) be useful; if the mass goes up
just
to make the drive larger, though, you may as well be efficient and take
the
smaller ship.

For those of you who don't normally play with spreadsheets, be sure you
can
change the parameters for FTL, drive and hull without having to change
every
cell.

--Chris  DeBoe laserlight@cwix.com
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