Re: B5 style drives

Roger Books wrote:

>>>Any thoughts?
>> 
>>1) How do you handle thrust-1 engines? Are they halved when
>>damaged, or do they go down completely (as a single thrust-1 engine
>>does in the published rules)?
>> 
>>2) Multiple engine modules take more DCP rolls to repair when they're
>>damaged.
>
>We've been playing with the numbers and it looks like 5% fixed +
>3% per thrust point.
> 
>Thrust        2     4	    6
>Drives
>    1		11%   17%   23% 
>    2		16%   22%   28%
>    3		---   27%*  33%
>    4		---   32%   38%**
> 
> *assumes one thrust 2 and 2 thrust 1s
> ** assumes two thrust 2s and 2 thrust 1s 

>A single drive goes down when it fails a threshold.  You have no
thrust.

I was afraid you'd say this :-/

>If you have two drives and they both go down it would take two 
>repair rolls to bring them back up.

...and this too.

The only reason which'd make me use more than one engine in this system
is if my opponents get *very* fond of needle beams.

In any other situation, the single engine has at least the same average
thrust (better, if any of the sub-engines has an odd thrust rating;
never worse), and usually better average maneuvering thrust (never
worse), than if I split the engines up into several smaller ones. It
also gives me some extra Mass to spend on weapons (or armour, or
whatever) and is easier to repair when it does get hit, but that's just
icing on the cake.

Simply put, given the choice between a reduced risk of losing all my
thrust in the 2nd threshold and a considerably *in*creased risk of
having my maneuvering thrust reduced after the *first* threshold, I
take the former any day.

So, well... Interesting idea, but needs more work :-/

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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