when I was tossing up the possible cost projections, it was more or less trying to imagine something that was more rational than Fasanomics really allows.
I should've probably done them as BV, not C-bills, costs to reflect the difference in roles, but here, too, there are too many wrong answers when compared to what's in the Canon.
so my apologies folks.
I blundered all the way around.
Nah, it means you are being sensible, and we missed some details.
So in this case KF core prices are proportional to their mass, and even more expensive as the mass goes up? I.e. a core for a 200 kton vessel will be more expensive than two cores for 100 kton vessels, as if you screw up 3/4 of the way on the 200 kton's core, you almost have to rubble it and start over. But the cores for the 100 kton ships would have been complete.
Other ideas:
- For Fire Control, make it where larger ships can have more weapons per arc before Fire Control limitations occur? Or make it based on the number of Bays present?
- For Bay Damage-dealing capacity, instead of the flat 70 pts limit, make it where the limit is (Vessel Mass)/10,000? So a 100 kton Sampan has a limit of 10 pts per bay, while a 2.4 MTon Leviathan II has a limit of 240 pts per bay?
- No armor limit. If you want a slab of metal, you can have it. Of course that tonnage also means less room for other stuff. Of course I'd also want to reduce the pts of armor per ton
- Smaller ships have lower Structural requirement per unit of thrust. So a 100 kton ship with a T/OT of 5/8 will have a lower mass fraction than a 2 MTon vessel with T/OT of 5/8
- Larger ships can have nastier Targeting and Jamming systems. An ASF trying to get a lock on to a Warship that has a 1 kton Jammer will need to get very close to hit
- Make weak weapons less likely to score damage against larger ships. This means anti-shipping ASF need weapons with high individual damage, rather than just mounting a mess of Medium Lasers and thinking they are good
- Energy weapons would mainly do straight damage against armor, but kinetic weapons would be used to break through Threshold (this makes the Clan Gauss Rifle very nasty, as it has range and is good at breaking armor)
- Armor would not provide a lot of Threshold, but Armor-Support Structure would. So you need internal bracing to help protect vs kientic hits, while vs an energy-using opponents you just put additional layers of armor on
- ASF not in a squadron take penalties to their to-hit and enemy units get a to-hit advantage against them (the pilot is trying to monitor everything equally well, meaning equally poorly). This encourages fighters to get into a squadron, reducing the number of counters you have to keep track of. (If the lone ASF are destroyed due to being easier to hit, that is another way to remove the counters)
- Monitors exist but are not strategically viable. They can only defend the system where they are built, so the only way to use them offensively is to park a shipyard far enough out from the target system, assemble pieces of the pre-fabricated Monitor at that yard, then bring it with you. Add in better sensors and the locals will likely know where that yard is before you have finished. At best you might get a 300 kton ship built in time, but at that point it might be better to have a Star Lord with six Combat Dropships as they can be moved around much faster than the Monitor can be built.
For ship designs, think of these ships as Sampan-series:
- all of these designs are fairly balanced in armament. No specialization except in removable pods.
- Pods are used to replace any removed engines, and mass the same as that removed engine (i.e. 6% of the ship, so a Frigate-scale pod would mass 14.4 ktons, and a Frigate could carry up to 5 of them)
- All classes are designed to fight anything smaller, and provide missile support vs anything heavier
- Corvette - a 7/11 @ 120 ktons, using the same basic casings as a Merchant to let its shipyard crews practice. It will have a balanced armament, and any pods would be used to replace any removed engines. 2 Dropships to help hide its identity
- Frigate - 6/9 @ 240 ktons, a straight doubling of the mass, so allow a Frigate to carry either a Frigate-scale pod, or two Corvette-scale pods. Non-Frigate pods would stick out clumsily meaning they would not be protected by the armor.
- Destroyer - 5/8 @ 480 ktons, a straight doubling of the mass, so allow a Destroyer to carry either a Destroyer-scale pod, or two Frigate-scale pods. Non-Destroyer pods would stick out clumsily meaning they would not be protected by the armor.
- Cruiser - 4/6 @ 960 ktons, a straight doubling of the mass, so allow a Cruiser to carry either a Cruiser-scale pod, or two Destroyer-scale pods. Non-Cruiser pods would stick out clumsily meaning they would not be protected by the armor.
- Battleship - 3/5 @ 1,920 ktons, a straight doubling of the mass, so allow a Battleship to carry either a Battleship-scale pod, or two Cruiser-scale pods. Non-Battleship pods would stick out clumsily meaning they would not be protected by the armor.
Each increase in ship mass would first be accompanied by studying what pods were primarily used by the smaller hull. So if they found that the Corvette mainly carried ASF pods, then the Frigate would have ASF as a larger feature of its inherent armament. Similarly, for the Destroyer design they would study the Frigate pod use, etc.
Larger vessels moving slower makes sense as the larger vessels need more of their mass% as the thrust goes up (assuming two ships with as much as possible identical, mass is based on volume, while structural strength is based on cross-section area).
