Re: [DS2] Vehicle Design

Tony Christney wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 1-Aug-04, at 6:29 PM, David Brewer wrote:
> >
> > I can't make out exactly what the proposal is here.
> 
> Probably because it hasn't quite made it to the formal level of
> "proposal" ;-)
> 
> > If I understand correctly (correction welcomed) the vehicle has
> > capacity points, of which a certain number are consumed as a power
> > plant to provide power points. Systems require either or both or
> > capacity and power points, armour requires capacity points and
> > movement requires power points. Is that right?
> 
> Nearly. Movement would be affected positively by the power available
> and negatively by the capacity used by systems.

Gotcha.
 
> > If capacity points are directly exchangable for power points
> > during the buying-power-plant step, then power points can be
> > eliminated from the design system. Everything (systems, armour,
> > movement) just requires capacity points, whether in the form of
> > capacity, or in the capacity that's being traded in for power
> > points.
> 
> I like this idea, although it has to prevent the designer from
> creating large, extremely fast vehicles by spending most design
> points on movement. Something like FT where the movement
> costs a percentage of total mass may work.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant, but I wasn't expressing
myself so well. 

> So I think that having only a single "design point" is a good idea,
> but I don't think that the way they are spent should be linear
> on each of the three axes, or that each of the axes should necessarily
> be independent.

Sure. Physical armour will need to be related to overall vehicle
size... a bigger vehicle means more surface area to cover.

> > The current design system stumbles by not penalising increased
> > armour levels except in points value.
> 
> Yes, but there are other "problems" too. The limited movement values,
> the strict armour ratios, the "points-only" cost of stealth, etc.

I think the big problem with the design system is its linear
nature. Class 2 is 100% bigger than class 1, class 3 only 50%
bigger than 2, class 4 33% bigger than 3 and so on. On this
extremely limited scale class 3 armour represents tank armour,
while class 1 isn't even (per Stargrunt) proof against small arms.
If each class increase represented a consistant 41% or 100% larger
value then there could be more granularity at the lower end of the
scale while fitting in the gigantic Sci-Fi conceits at the upper
end without the range of numbers getting too unwieldy.

-- 
David Brewer

"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Theory of Scientific 
Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of 
facts." - P.K.Dick (from VALIS)