Re: DS3 design (long)

John K Lerchey wrote:
> 
[...]
> I too am in favor of more flexibility for armor ratings and values,
but I
> am against armor taking up capacity.	I don't think I've ever read of
a
> case where armor took up *space* in a vehicle design.  What I've read
> leads me to believe that amror is *heavy* and thus impacts speed. 
It's
> the weight, having to be moved by the engine (power plant) that causes
the
> problem.

The way I see it, if armour impacts mobility (or speed, or
power-to-weight ratio or however one sees it) then adding armour
definately subtracts *something*. To add armour to a design
without changing any stat including speed must come at a cost. If
space is the currency we spend when designing a vehicle, then it
subtracts space.

If we don't want the extra armour improvement to downgrade
mobility then we are going to boost up the power-to-weight ratio
by increasing the *size of the engine*... thus adding armour has
*taken up space* that could have been used to carry men or
systems. It has reduced our firepower.

If mobility type also costs space, we could cross off the extra
space the armour costs with the space we remove from mobility type
to downgrade from faster to slower. It has reduced our mobility.

[...]
> If there is not enough differentiation in classes then perhaps there
> should be more classes.  Making each class bigger in relation to the
> previous one still won't readily reflect differences in vehicles which
are
> *close* to the same size.

Ignoring vehicle design, what is the actual *game* difference
between two size classes? They have different signatures and...
that's it really. What is a signature anyway? Genuinely stealthy
aircraft have radar cross-sections orders of magnitude smaller
than non-stealthy craft, not just 3/4 or 2/3.

How important is it that one vehicle is 3/4 the volume of another
regarding targetting by ultramodern fire control? I'm guessing
"not much". Literally shrinking a vehicle to 75% volume suggests
it has 90% of its length and 83% of its cross-section as a target.
That's just peanuts... surely we can group them together as the
same target class? If the rules were to group them together,
shouldn't the design system follow?

-- 
David Brewer

"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Theory of Scientific 
Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of 
facts." - P.K.Dick (from VALIS)