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Message Received: Jan 17 2006, 10:06 PM
From: "Thomas Barclay"
To: gzg-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc:
Subject: [GZG] Cruisers and Destroyers in the FT World
Brian B said:
The reason this doesn't necessarily transfer well to FT is simple:
Space isn't full of water. From what I remember, the ability of
larger ships to fo faster than smaller ships, at least in the Age of
Sail, had to do with drag and the dynamics of the hull interacting
with the water.
Agreed, with feeling :)
Tomb:
Well, it might. Yes, you are right that it has to do with inertia, hull shape,
etc. But in the FT world, maybe larger mass FTL drives are inherently more
efficient. Hence your SDN, even paying the same 10% mass for FTL, still has a
more efficient (from a campaign standpoint) drive. This is one of those economy
of scale factors. Smaller ships can do FTL too, but perhaps they are either
slower (smaller mass of drive) or else capable of less endurance (lighter mass
drive can't hold the field up as long... insert other goobledigook PSB wherever
you feel necessary). So this effect could be obtained in a campaign, if it was
desirable. Or perhaps, if you wanted to, you split those theories in two: Smaller
ships (lighter fields) can go further in hyper, but larger ships can go faster.
Or vice versa. So thus you'd create a class of ships that can move quickly in
FTL and another that can execute longer ranged manouvers in FTL.
I see endurance as being more important than speed in the larger ships
_Garnhamghast is: drunk, so sorry for the inconsistencies. At least I didn't aay Freakin'.
ua.berkeley.edu
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