Heh, fair enough. It's one I've grappled with in a game I'm GMing down in Fan Rules, which is why I ask.
This isn't quite in the spirit of the rules questions sub-forum, but if you don't have an answer, then I have a few possibilities to consider for any future errata/expansions:
- Securing for jump is an onerous process, and adds hours/days to your jump time. This basically eliminates them being used in command circuits, nerfs them badly if using pirate points, and makes units that attempt this substantially less economical when used in commercial contexts. (Perhaps you can expedite this, but you run the risk of ramming damage, just like if you thrust with stuff in the repair bay). This is more or less the answer I've used in my game.
- Make bays use the same cap as mass drivers(one per WarShip, one per facing on stations, none on JumpShips), and that'll limit the effect dramatically. A Newgrange only has one bay, and I can't think of any other canon ships with any, so I don't think this would void any canon designs. This also helps the fluff of the
WoBS Erinyes - if the cap is the same because of the ridiculous bulk of both systems, then swapping a repair bay for a mass driver makes a lot of sense on the part of the Wobbies. A hard cap of two cheap "DropShip collars", which are available only on a full WarShip, means that the rule will have very little effect on the setting.
- A softer version of the above can be done with door limits. They're a bit handwavey as-is, but they're an established rule you can piggyback on. If even a huge ship can only mount a couple dozen doors, then say that each repair bay door counts as 4-6 of them.
- This may be too big a change to do within StratOps, but changing the cost calculations would help a ton here. Collars are expensive and small bays are cheap, which is the only reason this is an issue. I know that keeping collars rare is fairly important to the setting, but this can probably be improved even so. For example, DropShuttle bays increase your K-F drive cost even worse than DropShip collars do. Presumably that's because of "jump harmonics" or some such - if you don't build your KF drive to take that into account, bad things happen. A repair bay that carries DropShips looks a whole lot like a DropShuttle bay to me, and could be under the same rules. (This requires a pretty good explanation for why DropShuttle bays work that way, though, because otherwise it's moving a handwave from a tech nobody cares about to a tech that's pretty important).
I think #2(or #1 combined with #2) is your best bet here - the fact that it explains the Erinyes so perfectly makes it fit the setting surprisingly well, and I think it's canon-compatible.
