Re: [FT] Tech Trees

Roger Burton West schrieb:
> >using waste space. This is 
> >fine if all you are simulating is dated tech across 
> >the board. 

> >OTOH, what if you're trying to simulate different 
> >tech progressions? You have (as I see it) two 
> >areas you can approach this from: Limiting 
> >system types by "tech level" and affecting the 
> >costs and or masses by the same degree. 
> 
> Limiting system types: this is fairly easy. I've seen 
> campaign rules which say "to develop system X, you must first have 
> system Y"; in fact, I'm planning to work on some of my own fairly 
soon. 

For many of the systems, you could make this fairly fine grained:
Not just Beams / no Beams, but count each beam strength as a separate 
tech level, so you start wit Beam 1, progress to Beam 2 etc. 
You could calls multi-arc weapons as separate levels. Start with 
single-arc weapons, progress to 2 and 3-arc ones 
Limit the number of specific systems a ship can carry, e.g.at low tech, 
only a single beam-3 or a single Fire-control system. 

> Changing costs/masses: this gets harder. Not because it's 
> a bad idea, but because the mass/cost system is very granular; 
> an FCS taking 2 mass rather than 1 is a huge penalty, and there's 
> nothing in between.	

It's messy, but as a house rule you could use fractional mass/points 
cost, say an FCS for 1/2 or 1.5 mass. 

Greetings