Re: [FT\DS2] Fleet and Army sizes for games

stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
> 
> Mr. Bell wrote:
> > Reconfigurable warships should be more expensive than standard
> > because of the increased access points needed in the wiring,cabling,
> > ducting,plumbing and structural systems to allow them to be
> > configurable.
> ...
> > There is a reason that no wet navy has tried this, even though it is
> > nice on paper.
> 
> I don't know... depends on what scale you're talking about.  Just
about every
> Navy since World War II has flown fighter craft that can carry about
whatever
> sorts of armaments you feel like hanging off a pylon.  You could carry
extra
> fuel tanks, bombs, missiles, whatever... if the plane's capable of
lugging it
> around, you can arm it.  The most obvious example in the U.S. Navy
today would
> be the F/A-18 -- stick air-to-air missiles on it and it's an
interceptor;
> stick air-to-surface missiles on it and it's a bomber.

They are not ships, they never operate for more than a few hours at a
time,
typically spend as much time down for maintenance that they spend
flying, and
can be brought down by a single slug into the wrong component.	They
prove my
point by being more fragile and less reliable.	Also note that the gun
pods
are less reliable than internal guns and the stuff hung from a pilon
does most
of its own thinking.  Lastly, the pilon would be lighter if only one
kind of
load could be hung from it.
> 
> I see no reason why fighters or even small ships in FT couldn't
advance that
> technology forward to a degree where, such as in the case of my
"submunition
> bombs", a ship armed partially or entirely with expendible ordnance
couldn't
> be fitted with just about any other similar-sized ordnance in place of
whatever
> it used up on the previous sortie.
  
Fine, but they should be limited to the same arc and same use.	A
fitting for
a submunition cannot handle an all arc class-1, or a scattergun (unless
they 
only used the same arc.  You will notice that everything hung from an 
aircraft's wing has exactly the same shape, which limits what it can do.

>I don't know if it would be real
> believable that a "ship of the wall" could just have all its weapons
torn out
> and replaced, no.  However, even "ships of the wall" have some of this
ability
> in FT in the form of whether they wish to deploy ER or normal missiles
in their
> SML magazines.  Similarly, I see little cause for why, if the
technology is
> available, a small craft couldn't simply deploy any sort of ammunition
in its
> one-shot arsenal, possibly mounting these on pylons much like
present-day
> fighter craft...

I suspect what actually happened was that SML's were originally the size
and 
mass of SML-ER's, but a breakthrough added 50% to the range or allowed
them to 
only be 2/3's as long, so magazines could handle 50% more short SML's
with the 
rest of the handling equipment remaining the same.  This also explains
why
there is only one kind of launcher, but two kinds of racks. 

>and maybe mixing those weapons pods with spare drive pods,

You cannot just bolt engines onto a frame.  If the pod boosts thrust by
33-50%,
attaching it to the craft is a major exercise as these are not fighter
craft
where you bolt on a JATO rocket, the FT universe puts a mass unit at
around
100 tonnes.  The thrust loads for a dead load and an engine pod are in 
opposite directions and very different in size: weapon pod, pylon pulls
weapon; drive pod, pylon pushes ship.