Re: (FT) Point Value for Hulls

I 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.

> Overjan wrote
> 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 :-(

Well, the problem is that of tech level, in that the FB2 races have some
things that are super small in comparison to that of the Humans (such as
the
Phalons, with smaller, tougher ships).

Going back to my original suggestion, I think that the hull should cost
the
mass cubed, but provide an amount of space equal to hull cubed as well.
This would make big ships big (and EXPENSIVE).	As for the internals...
this
makes it so that a LOT can fit on those bigger vessels.  Still, I
believe
that keeping the x100 mass cost would be good enough.  Those bigger
vessels
are going to be pathetically expensive.  I have not looked a whole lot
at
the FB2 tech, so it is difficult to say what to do with Alien tech at
this
point, but the rules that I have suggested seem to provide a realistic
means
to portray the economics of starship design, if not compatible with the
aliens, at least it works for those 'oomans.

Jeremy Seeley