Re: (FT) Point Value for Hulls

Jeremy Seeley wrote:

>With all of the talk about Escorts, Capitals, Carriers, whatever...
size
>classes, it has made me wonder about the mass cost for hulls.
> 
>The official rule is that mass equals cost, so a 85-mass ship costs a
base
>of 85 points, a 20,000-mass ship costs 20,000 points.
> 
>It seems to me that the size vs. point cost issue could be solved by
>making the cost more realistic.  What I propose is that the mass cost
be >squared (if not cubed), because bigger means bigger in proportion.

I've tried similar ideas ever since FB1 was published. From the tests
I've done, it seems that for ships using the tech systems in FB1 (where
all engines cost 2xMass and all weapons cost 3xMass), the "real" value
of a ship was roughly proportional to its Mass^1.15. For human-tech
ships, this fits reasonably well with your suggested formula (basic
hull cost is the square of the ship's Mass and all internal components
cost 100x their FB1 values).

Unfortunately this relationship breaks down when you introduce FB2
tech.  When some engines cost 3xMass, some weapons cost 4x or even
5xMass, and certain types of armour can cost 8xMass or more, you no
longer have a reasonably fixed relationship between the ship's Mass and
its combat power. Phalon ships in particular are smaller than an
equally-powerful human ship (but using the FB1/FB2 points values they
cost about as much), so with your system they need to use a different
formula for the hull cost than humans :-(

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."