Re: variable hulls

Frits Kuijlman wrote:

>Now that we're on the subject of variable hulls anyway, what about
2-row 
>hulls?

They have too large synergy effects with screens and similar systems to
use 
a single cost. Can't remember the values offhand (and it is too late to
dig 
the files up now), but IIRC the "proper" cost for 2-row hulls range from
4 
per box on unscreened ships (or when fighting Kra'Vak or similar enemies

with screen-skipping weapons) up to 8 or 9 per box on ships with level-2

screens if the enemy used mostly beams or similar screen-degraded
weapons.

The other hull types also have this kind of synergy effects, but on a
far 
smaller scale.

>For 4 rows hull efficiency is 1/4*(1+1+5/6+5/6*4/6),
>and system efficiency is 1/4*(1+5/6+5/6*4/6+5/6*4/6*3/6).

These formulae are only correct if your ship is unarmoured, has no
screens 
(or the enemy uses screen-ignoring weapons, eg. K-guns) and is equipped 
with an "infinite" number of Fire Control Systems (in reality 5-6 FCSs
is 
enough to count as "effectively infinite", but most FT ships don't even 
have that many FCSs).

(BTW, your "hull efficiency" looks like the probability that one
specific 
Core System - ie. the Bridge, since that's the only one which knocks the

ship out cold - will remain intact. Is that a correct interpretation?)

If OTOH your ship has screens then each hull row has to be weighted by
the 
protection given by the screen times the probability that the screen is 
still intact; and if the ship ha a finite number of FCSs each hull row
in 
the system efficiency formula also has to be weighted by the probability

that at the ship has at least one intact FCS left (because if it has no 
FCSs left it can't use any of its surviving weapons). Armour adds to the

first hull row unless the ship has so much armour that
armour-penetrating 
damage causes it to reach the 1st threshold before it has lost all the
armour.

Putting these extra factors will probably mess your numbers up a bit :-/

>Anybody do any serious simulation on this?

Yep. Four or five years ago :-/

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry