Re: UNSC designs

Beth Fulton wrote:
> If its any help I found the easiest way of making modular ships (when
> designing my IAS) was to specify a final hull size I wanted, put on
the
> engines (you'd also have to put screens on here if you wanted them)
and say
> that part was fixed and then make up heaps of different modules (all
21
> mass in my case) which had different weapon/cargo/bay configs etc in
them
> and then just slotted them into the base hull to get the final product
-
> ie. may design page looked like
> 
> Mass:.......
> Hull integrity..... (OK this would get more complicated if you tried
to
> give different sections different hull integrities)

Well, you could simply deal with that by saying that for 'reasons of
structural integrity' or some such ALL modules have to have the same
integrity.

> FTL.......
> Thrust....
> Weaponary on fixed design part.....  (usually a class 1 and a PDS)
> Remaining unused space available for modules = Mass - sum of paid bits
(as
> mine were representing cargo ships having their cargo modules replaced
by
> weapons modules they were on the large side and thus had enough room
for
> 3xmass21 modules).

Alternately, you could simply have a collection of modules, and fit them
together. You can even do this without having set 'final masses' just by
rounding DOWN when you have to round (eg. thrust). (PSB: The modular
design gives greater flexibility at the expense of some efficiency).

	For example, each module is 10 mass. Each module has a hull
integrity,
and must use the appropriate amount of mass for hull. For the sake of
simplicity, I'm allowing 'armor modules' to just add an armor rating.
Weapons can be split over multiple modules (maybe using Andrew Martin's
(if I'm right) method for splitting DSII systems over multiple
vehicles), as can other systems. A thrust module doesn't provide thrust
until the end, when it's calculated as:

(Mass of thrusters * 20)/(Mass of Ship)

Multiply thrust by 20 to signify 5% of mass as 1 thrust. Round down to
nearest thrust.

-Brian