Re: Realistic movement thoughts

In message
<Pine.SUN.3.91N2x.970124110657.22176C-100000@byse.nada.kth.se> you
wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Jan 1997, hosford.donald wrote:
> 
> > With X thrust divided by Y mass = Z acceleration, that means the big
ships
> > will have to buy more engines per point of accelleration....which
means they
> > will cost more, and high speed dreadnoughts are prohibitivly
expensive.

Also remember this subject started because Jon Tuffley is thinking
of dropping points from ship design, so expense doesn't come into it.

> 
> Yes, compared to other slower dreadnoughts. However, a speed 8 mass 
> 70 DN will spend exactly as much mass as 5 speed 8 mass 14 DDs on its 
> engines... which makes the DDs much weaker than the DN.

Except the DDs can be in five places at once. They're harder to
take out with missiles and wave guns (since then can be much more
dispersed).

> Samuel, I'm not as much after full-blown realism as after variety. If 
> small ships are inefficient they won't be used very much in set-piece 
> battles - they'll be useful as scouts, couriers etc in a campaign, but

> not elsewhere.

I'd disagree - given the rule I suggested, then they still have
their uses. They provide more targets for the enemy to split
fire between. They can't all be crippled with a single bad set
of threshold rolls. If they're mounting limited fire arc weapons
such as pulse torepdoes, they've got a greater chance of being
able to hit a target.

It just means they no longer have monopoly on the ability to get
in close with the enemy quickly.

Thinking about it, there's also an argument for this allowing for
greater variety. The NSL might go for heavily armed ships, with
15% of their mass devoted to drives to make room for those extra
weapon systems (think of Maulers from EE Smiths Lensmen series).
The NAC might go for lightly armed faster ships, with much higher
proportions of mass devoted to drives.

-- 
Be seeing you,					     ARM not Intel.
Sam.					       Acorn not Microsoft.