Re: FT-UN starships, and improved hulls

In message <007c01c08ee1$25c30ee0$e8b5893e@inty>
	  "Bif Smith" <bif@bifsmith.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> Another idea for the skunk works I proposed a while ago, and heard
nothing
> about, is improved hulls for the UN ships.
> 
> Reenforced hull
> 
> I heard a lot of discusion about UN ships having a strong hull for the
mass
> of a normal hull. Because a hull now has no set strength other than a
> minimum of 10%, how about this system instead?-
> mass/dp as normal, but a cost of x3.
> 1 dp removed from 2nd row and added to the first row, +2cost
> 2 dp removed from 3rd row and added to the first row, +3cost
> 3 dp removed from 4th row and added to the first row, +4cost
> This would make the ships harder to threshold check for the first
threshold,
> but more vulnerable as the dammage increases. For example-
> Normal ship-40DP hull, cost=80
> 1st row=10DP
> 2nd row=10DP
> 3rd row=10DP
> 4th row=10DP
> Reenforced ship-40DP hull, cost=129
> 1st row=16DP
> 2nd row=9DP
> 3rd row=8DP
> 4th row=7DP
> The cost are just a rough guess off the top of my head, but you could
have
> double the DP`s moved to the first row for x4 hull cost etc.
> 
> I`m reposting this because I don`t think I got any replies the last
time,
> and I want to see what people think. Also, the weapons archive has
caused me
> to dig up some of my older or wakier ideas.
> 
> BIF
> "yorkshire born,yorkshire bred,
> strong in arms, thick in head"
> 
Hmm... you could get a similar result with replacing some of the hull
with armour, for example:

40 MASS of Hull, cost =80
all rows have 10 boxes

33 MASS of hull, + 7 MASS of armour, cost =80
7 armour boxes
1st row is 9 hull boxes (16 in total to 1st check)
2nd row is 8 hull boxes
3rd row is 8 hull boxes
4th row is 8 hull boxes

Of course, the behaviour when hit by armour penetrating weapons will be
slighly different. This will be most noticable for high class K-guns.

On a related note, something I've considered (largely for conversions
from an old PBeM run by a friend) is varient strength hull materials.

For instance, a cheap hull material could cost only 1 point per MASS,
but only provides 1 hull box per 2 MASS of structure, while an expensive
hull material could cost 3 points per MASS, but provides 2 hull boxes
per 1 MASS of structure. (the actual figures would need checking, these
are just a quick guess).
Likewise for armour.

Charles