Aerotech 3.0 upgrades, rules fixes and new tech.

[Starfox1701]

It's an intriguing idea but I think we can do better. the advantage of a  true turret is the arc. up to 180° for a sponson and up to 360° for a full turret. but it's not as simple as sticking the guns in a new mount. turrets are more exposed so they will get damaged before the armor is blown through. they aren't light so think of it this way you have to mount something that weighs as much as a leopard class dropship , keep it from getting tragedy in the first salvo, move it fast enough to track targets and keep it and it's mount from getting crushed or ripped off every time you fire the main engine and put it out there where it can see the most to make all this worthwhile.

[Maingunnery]

I think that an inverse relationship between bay damage size and arc reach. This means that the Spinal bays do the most damage and the multi/double-arc bays do perhaps only 35 capital damage or less.

[Starfox1701]

You start scaling back damage and you are making the turret more trouble then its worth especially when you start thinking about cost and maintenance. I do however agree that there should be at least 2 types like a sponson and a full turret and that full turrets should do more damage but for all the extra headach I think they both should exceed the 70pt limit found in normal bays because they will both be bigger than a normal bay. None spinal mounts should also replace weapons bays at some ratio on top of any other limitations on the number of them the ship can mount. considering that the tonnage of one can easily equal a small drop ship then there should be some restriction similar to the one placed on docking collars to limit the number. As I said before either they need independent fire control or they take up bay space at say 2/1 for sponsons and 3/1 for full turrets. this will force the ship to buy extra fire control sooner and makes since because the turrets have to watch more sky individually. they need to be armored separately. Think of this like armoring internal components on a mech except that the turrets are outside the ship. in theory you could even put the magazine, spares and quarters in there but at that point you would almost be building an engineless drop ship. Might also put a limit on the size of guns used forbidding small stuff and no Mechwarrior scale guns in cap turrets.

[DarthRads]

Can't find the file, but here is the link I posted in another thread:
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/non-canon-units/empire-aflame-au-fan-projects/msg1010599/#msg1010599
These are my (basic) rules for tech levels of Naval Construction/Material

[Starfox1701]

I'll look it over anything to contribute to the turret debate?

For everyone else who hasn't noticed y'all decided we would do turrets before any guns so I am officially noting this and extending the comment, wishlist, and idea period for 3 more days before we try and hash out a rules set. Please try to stay on the topic at hand guys and girls. It will be more productive that way.

[FedComGirl]

I think you're wanting turrets to do more than the rules require of them. Ships sensors detect enemy targets. Fire Control Systems aim the weapons at the targets. Turrets just allow more weapons to be brought to bare on the target. Technically they already exist anyway. When you look at the amount of space weapons have to cover there's no way they can do it unless they are already in turrets. We're just turning them from Sponson Turrets to Dorsal/Ventral Turrets. As for the Sponsons we're just giving them an increased firing arc where before they'd been restricted.

I would think for Dorsal/Ventral turrets could contain no more than half the possible number weapons located in that arc. Half the front left becomes the ventral weapons. Half the front right becoems dorsal weapons. The remaining weapons may be mounted in Sponsons. If 360 degrees is too restrict their firing ars like they would be on a wet navy warship. Forward turrets can't firing into the aft arc. Rear turrets can't fire into the nose arc.

[Starfox1701]

Right now the weapons are in small ball turrets with limited transverse mounts submerged into the skin of the ship or blisters to provide them with better protection at the expense of there arc of fire. Sure you occasionally see a tiny turret sitting on the spine with one gun in it. But the rules don't reflect any of the more complex equipment that it uses and as near as I can tell its never a big gun mounted that way. Now from a "real life" prospective them moment we start tying up any significant amount of a ships fire power into these more exposed turrets they WILL become a primary target for every ASF and PWS out there plus there will finally be a reasonably chance that they will not just get hit but draw concentrated cap scale targeted fire from other warships out there. They will just be too good to pass up as targets. As far as in game function they will work like other weapons bay except they can be hit instead of the ship by incoming fire and get jammed by damage  limiting their arc again. Construction is where most of the work will go in. Might need some other crits for the turret but considering how thin I expect the armor on them to be don't think they would take much more then 2 solid hits anyway before being destroyed.

Whether or not mounting dorsal and ventral guns takes away from side guns is something we will have to decide at least in part to how disruptive they are to the current game balance. Right now tonnage is the only limit to how many guns a ship can carry. Naturally if the turrets end up burning 2000 to 5000 tones apiece they will limit the tonnage left to mount guns elsewhere so there is some self limiting factors to the approach I am championing. 360 is justifiable for any one of our dorsal or ventral turrets on a ship purpose built to exploit them. Refits to existing designs will have to be taken on a case by case basis. No ship I have seen currently has a sponson mount in the art and they would always be limited to a max of 180.

[FedComGirl]

Why make them more complex that Battlemech turrets? Some have weapons are in ball turrets. Some in regular. Some turrets have even had their arcs restricted because of added equipment. But even when you give them an official Turret with tonnage mechs don't gain a location. Personally, I think they should but they don't. So why should turrets on Aerospace units be any different? Just because they're in a turret shouldn't make any difference to their being targeted. If you can target turrets you can target bays. If you can target bays, you can target the bridge and the command and control center. Can we do those things? I don't remember seeing anything that says we can but I could have missed it.

I suggested only putting part of your ships weapons in different turrets because if you did, you'd leave blind spots. And technically all turrets would be 360 degrees. I said sponsons because the space part of the game isn't 3 dimensional. I think if we're to make turrets separate locations we're going to end up completely redoing ship construction rules.

[Starfox1701]

Warships and dropships are vehicles not mechs. vehicle turrets do have separate locations shown on the sheet . also even Mech turrets use critical space for the motive equipment. I think warship turrets should be designed like vehicle turrets and should at least use an additional line for the equipment they need to function. they would also be armored as per the components armoring rules if it proves too difficult to adapt the existing vehicle turret armor rules. The only complex thing I think will be figuring out how they get hit. after that damage is pretty standard and straight forward. there are already plenty of rules on the books to adapt so we should only need to make up a few whole cloth.

[solmanian]

It should but based on the fluff the tech is all but unchanged for many centuries

IIRC, IO suppose to have rules for the KF drive evolution? Something about gradually longer ranges and better recharge rates. It didn't just jump from 10-15 LY a jump to 30 LY... In the Dark age it's probably nearing the 40s. Of course the 30 LY range is still relevant because the galactic infrastructure is already built as chains with 30 LY links...

[FedComGirl]

Mechs are vehicles. And while Aerospace are vehicles they're also built and function differently. Just look at their firing arcs. If a fighter is the same as a tank why doesn't it have a side arc? They have wing arcs but they just extend the front and rear arcs. The can't actually fire to the sides. Vehicles can.

With the exceptions of simple ball turrets and pintle mounts I think turrets should be separate locations for all units. They certainly shouldn't be taking away any internal space since they're technically adding it. But that's not how the rules treat them. Since the rules don't treat them that way, why should we?

There were improvements made to KF drives that let them get 60-90 or so light years or more but some were one way trip only. I don't remember which book they were in though.

[Starfox1701]

Yea but we are not talking about mechs or fighters or tanks. We are talking about turrets the size of buildings on objects the size of small towns. You can't say that the chin laser on a 20 ton locust is mounted exactly the same as a ventral turret on a 1,000,000 ton warship with 4 HNGauss cannon in it. the physics alone doesn't track. Warship and by extension dropship turrets and maybe ASF need to be somewhat different then all the other ones in the game. ASF might need to be in their own category though.

Hear again you are thinking mech. Warships at the least don't really have internal space limits at all the only limit is overall tonnage so a turret neither adds or takes away space from the ship unlike a mech or fighter. I'm reasonably sure dropships function about the same way but would have to go back and check..

[Wrangler]

I think that handling of armor would be something that could be improved.

I'm not sure how.  Recently XTRO: Republic published new Pocket Warship, which has insane amount of armor boxes to fill. 
I know it causes problems, but won't be possible have a option for way for armor damage is handle?  I know were not swapping Capital Armor on Large Spacecraft like a DropShip, but it would be easier if the armor was calculated in Capital Armor scale.  So if someone attacked a ship, it would handle that.    Less boxes to fill. 

Squadrons of Aerospace fighters i believed were handled this way, but not individual fighters.

I do think it be pain specially if your going be fighting, if you have vehicle that going be encounter ships using capital weaponry, at least entire board can record damage the same way without converting back and forth. Less conversions the better.

[Starfox1701]

Ok for the down and dirty rough draft. 

Warship and dropship turret construction.
The following only apply to turrets and not to other types of weapons mounts. The following rules are classified as experimental and at this time only cover their use in building new vessels classified as warships and spheriod dropships.

Turrets may be mounted in the following locations of a vessel, left side fore and aft and right side fore and aft. in addition turrets may be mounted as dorsal or ventral turrets. These notations indicate from what direction a turret may be hit and take damage and determine in large part into what arcs a turret may fire it's guns.

Any dropship may mount 1 turret for ever 5,000 tons of mass or fraction there of. Warships may mount one turret for 25,000 tons of mass. Each turrets mass may not exceed 5% of the vessels mass. Turrets of this type may only mount capital and subcapital weapons. these weapons must be grouped by type in accordance to the rules for standard weapons bay but do not suffer the restrictions imposed on the number of damage point that are generated.

In addition they must contain any required ammunition not to be less then 10 rounds for ever individual weapon in the turret and sufficient heat sinks to fire all the weapons in the turret. Tonnage equal to 10% of the mass of all weapons and equipment excluding ammo must be added to account for the turrets structure. This counts towards the overall 5% limit on turret mass.

A turrets has 1 point of international structure for ever 100 tons of mass it masses excluding ammo and armor. Maximum available armor for the turret is calculated as per standard rules for the appropriate vessels rules but using only the individual turrets's internal structure value. Total armor mounted counts towards the 5% overall mass limit and turrets are not required to carry the maximum allowance but must mount at least half the maximum allowance rounding up. If this causes the turret to exceed the 5% mass limit then the turret is too heavy and must be lightened.

Ships mounting dorsal and/or ventral turrets must purchase additional fire control computers as if they had exceed the number of bays limit per standard construction rules for the vessel type.

Ok comments so far

[FedComGirl]

Actually I'm talking about turrets being allowed for all Aerospace craft. And the turret's size depends entirely on what's in it. A turret isn't going to be as big as a house when all it mounts is a larger laser. And why wouldn't the turrets be mounted in exactly the same way? Other than dimensions what's the differences between a Battleship's turret and that of a Pike Support Vehicle?

Actually, I'm thinking simplicity. The simplest way is to just say this bay is a turret, add 10% to it's tonnage and assign it's firing arcs. Difficult would be to design larger aerospace units the way naval warships and mobile structures are made. With 3 dimensions. Not just two. You'd be adding at least 4 armor locations before even getting to turrets. What do we do about the weight of the Structural Integrity and Armor? Then you get into how many turrets each location can have. And how many hexes each unit occupies. And when you consider that there's some Dropships bigger than some Warships you really need to take size into account. That's complicated. I don't mind getting complicated but that would mean redoing all the ships.  And the rules you just made are complicated and even go against every other rule concerning turrets. Aerospace units don't factor internal structure that way. You're rules also make it impossible to give a dropships turrets yet the Leopard Dropship has one. Some art show multiple turrets.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/thumb/b/b5/Leopard_3025.jpg/800px-Leopard_3025.jpg

The one in the picture has a dorsal turret and sponson turrets with a limited firing arc. That Leopard doesn't mount capital or sub capital weapons. The Slayer Aerofighter doesn't either. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/thumb/6/68/Slayer_3025.jpg/691px-Slayer_3025.jpg

[Starfox1701]

First off you seam to have ignored the fact that I haven't yet addressed either existing ships and fighters in the posted rules and that both ASF and areodines as new construction. Second both of your examples are problematic since neither turret could possibly benefit from wider arcs then  they currently have. Especially the slayer. I have been focused on warship turrets in my discussions and I thought I made it clear that ASF would likely not be able to use similar turret construction rules.

focusing on the Leopard for a second there are at least 3 if not 4 different illustrations of that dropship and none of them can agree on whether it is a turret or if the command deck is in the line of fire. The Leopard is built in at least 3 different nations and so how would you even begin to determine which weapons on each model are mounted in the dorsal mount or if its a turret and where it can shoot? what is the definitive image to work from? Retrofiting each ship will have to be done on a case by case basis and all the dropships will be a huge pain in the behind.

In the end there is no simple answer. so if its going to be work I figure we might as well do it all as right as we can.

[Starfox1701]

No opinions at all?

[Starfox1701]

So after all that no one is going to say anything?

[Starfox1701]

I guess no one is actually interested in working on this

[Starfox1701]

OK re posting this to try and drum up interest

Warship and dropship turret construction.
The following only apply to turrets and not to other types of weapons mounts. The following rules are classified as experimental and at this time only cover their use in building new vessels classified as warships and spheriod dropships.

Turrets may be mounted in the following locations of a vessel, left side fore and aft and right side fore and aft. in addition turrets may be mounted as dorsal or ventral turrets. These notations indicate from what direction a turret may be hit and take damage and determine in large part into what arcs a turret may fire it's guns.

Any dropship may mount 1 turret for ever 5,000 tons of mass or fraction there of. Warships may mount one turret for 25,000 tons of mass. Each turrets mass may not exceed 5% of the vessels mass. Turrets of this type may only mount capital and subcapital weapons. these weapons must be grouped by type in accordance to the rules for standard weapons bay but do not suffer the restrictions imposed on the number of damage point that are generated.

In addition they must contain any required ammunition not to be less then 10 rounds for ever individual weapon in the turret and sufficient heat sinks to fire all the weapons in the turret. Tonnage equal to 10% of the mass of all weapons and equipment excluding ammo must be added to account for the turrets structure. This counts towards the overall 5% limit on turret mass.

A turrets has 1 point of international structure for ever 100 tons of mass it masses excluding ammo and armor. Maximum available armor for the turret is calculated as per standard rules for the appropriate vessels rules but using only the individual turrets's internal structure value. Total armor mounted counts towards the 5% overall mass limit and turrets are not required to carry the maximum allowance but must mount at least half the maximum allowance rounding up. If this causes the turret to exceed the 5% mass limit then the turret is too heavy and must be lightened.

Ships mounting dorsal and/or ventral turrets must purchase additional fire control computers as if they had exceed the number of bays limit per standard construction rules for the vessel type.

[idea weenie]

The turret rules for having additional hit locations would seem to get too complex too quickly.  You would have to track additional damage locations (vees only get 1 turret for up to 3 body locations), plus the need for ammunition inside the turret means you would have to track a separate ammunition supply from the ship itself.  Similarly, the heat sinks have to be fully mounted in the turret, instead of the weapon integrated into the ship's cooling system.  You are effectively designing a separate unit that is attached to the dropship.

Perhaps we should look at the Support vee turret rules for ideas?

[Starfox1701]

correct me if I'm wrong but warships already track ammo bye weapons bay. as far as the hs go that's a construction thing with no bearing on gameplay unless you are rpging. I will admit I haven't figured out hit probabilities yet but that aspect is really the only change I see in game. everything else Will function by existing rules and dealing with these are not any more complicated than turrets on a surface warship. in fact I plan on harrowing those turrets record sheet for the cap scale ones.

[Nebfer]

Well here's my take on large craft "fuel" use rates

Ships mass in tons, "fuel" used per day at 1G in tons and the amount of "fuel" points per ton of "fuel"

Code: [Select]

Naval capital "fuel" use rate
2,000 to 49,999.........25t...10
50,000 to 99,999........50t...9
100,000 to 149,000......100t..8
150,000 to 199,000......100t..7
200,000 to 299,000......200t..6
300,000 to 499,000......200t..5
500,000 to 999,000......400t..4
1,000,000 to 1,499,000..400t..3
1,500,000 to 1,999,000..800t..2
2,000,000 to 2,500,000..800t..1

Dropships
under 1,000t.......4t...80
1000 to 4,999......6t...70
5,000 to 9,999.....8t..60
10,000 to 14,999...10t..55
15,000 to 19,999...14t..50
20,000 to 24,999...18t..40
25,000 to 39,000...22t..30
40,000 to 54,999...25t..20
55,000 to 69,999...34t..15
70,000 to 84,999...42t..10
85,000 to 100,000..50t..5

Not the most realistic but at the lest it avoids the silliness of having any ship above ~300,000 tons only use ~39.5 tons per day... Also all dropships use this chart, instead of military getting a free pass...

An alternative is to use 1/2,000th of the ships mass as the tons per day at 1G, I.e. a 500,000 ton destroyer would use 250 tons per day. An endurance of 100 days would require 25,000 tons of "fuel", which is a fair bit more than the ~4,000 tons B-tech would use.

I also would like to up the mass on the armor so that the mass for a point of armor is closer to this.
Standard: 30 tons/point
Improved Ferro-aluminum: 27.5 tons/point
Ferro-carbide: 25 tons/point
Lamellor Ferro-carbide: 22.5 tons/point

Possibly with the ships max armor being noted as say one point per 250 tons of ship (a 1,000,000 ton ship can mount up to 4,000 points, as such a ship with max armor would spend around 9 to 12% of it's mass on armor)

with the increased armor mass and fuel the KF drive will have to get lighter, so 33% for the compact and 75-80% for the standard drives I think should be enough.


I would also more define the crew, the Crew for large craft and military would have a base crew of 1/2000 of the the ships tonnage  (a 1,000,000 ton ship would have a base crew of 500), Gunners remain the same. Now the ship requires cooks (1 per 50 base crew, gunners, officers, and others), 1 medical team (of 5) per 150 personnel, launch crew is 1 tech team per launch capable door plus one per squadron of aerospace craft (including small craft, 6 for IS 10 for clan), and 10 personnel for the coms gear.
Officers is 1/5th of the above totals (or 1/10th if you want a few less officers...) round normally
So for a 500,000 ton destroyer that requires 30 gunners, and 4 launch doors and 3 squadrons of "aerospace craft" it would have a base crew of 250, with 7 tech teams (49 personnel), 10 com techs, 15 medical personnel (3 teams), 9 cooks for a total of 363 crew, this requires 73 officers for a total 436 personnel.

[Starfox1701]

The one problem I see with your consumtion rates is you seam to have the ships burning mor fule when the drivers are in there cruise mode then in combat mode which according to the fluff is just plain backwards. I want to study the other ideas mor though befor comenting.

[Nebfer]

The one problem I see with your consumtion rates is you seam to have the ships burning mor fule when the drivers are in there cruise mode then in combat mode which according to the fluff is just plain backwards. I want to study the other ideas mor though befor comenting.

Are you sure about that? at 10 points of fuel per ton that's 100kg per point theirs 1,440 turns in a day, that translates as 144 tons per day at .5Gs or 288 tons per day at 1G

At x fuel points per turn, amount of fuel used per day in tons at 1G vs their proposed strategic use rate at 1G per day
10 = 288 tons vs 25 tons
9 = 320 tons vs 50 tons
8 = 360 tons vs 100 tons
7 = 411.43 tons vs 100 tons
6 = 480 tons vs 200 tons
5 = 576 tons vs 200 tons
4 = 720 tons vs 400 tons
3 = 960 tons vs 400 tons
2 = 1,440 tons vs 800 tons
1 = 2,880 tons vs 800 tons

The Dropships are the same (at 80 points per ton thats 18 tons per day)

Keep in mind that tactical mode is the one that uses fuel points per ton, and is the one used in game, Strategic mode is the one rated in tons burned per day at 1G and is used for interplanetary travel.

[idea weenie]

What would be interesting is each ton of fuel offers 2 amounts of Fuel points:
1) Strategic Mode
2) Tactical Mode

These would have their own multiplier (civilian, military, elite; poor, 3025, Star League, Clan) applied after that, and the final fuel point multiplier for Tactical and Strategic is then listed.

When you use the fuel at the listed setting, at the start of the scenario you take the total tons of fuel the ship has, and convert that using the appropriate multiplier (so a military ship that is on tactical mode would multiply that by the tactical mode multiplier).  During the tactical mode, you subtract the ship's current tonnage from the fuel points.  At the end of the tactical mode, you divide the remaining fuel points by the multiplier, and that is the number of tons of fuel you have remaining.

I.e. a 100-ton ASF has 10 tons of fuel, and a 4000 tactical multiplier.  So at the start of the scenario, the controlling player notes 40,000 ton-pts of acceleration.  The ASF is fully loaded and accelerates at 2 for the first turn, using 200 pts of fuel (2100 tons * 2 pts of accel).  Later in the turn the ASF fires off 3 tons of ammo of various sorts.  Next turn the pilot accelerates at 3, using a total of 291 fuel points used (97 tons * 3 accel pts).

This way if a ship is twice the mass of another, it will use twice the amount of fuel.  If the above ASF was being used as a cargo shuttle and had 30 tons of weaponry removed, it would only burn 70 fuel points per accel.  If the 100-ton ASF was loaded with 10 tons of external ordnance, it would be burning 110 fuel pts per accel until it emptied its external stores.

If you don't want this level of detail, then just note that the ASF have X amount of fuel points per ton, and they use a number of fuel points equal to their tonnage at the start of the game (so a 100 ton ASF will always use 100 fuel pts per thrust point).  At the end of the game, reverse the process to determine the number of fuel tons remaining.

For strategic mode, you could leave it as tons, and note how many tons are consumed per Burn-day.  Burn-days would be the primary factor used when calculating strategic maneuvers.  After the maneuvers are done, you can then convert back to tons.  For example, setting your Jumpship in a very slow decaying orbit at a Zenith/nadir point might cost you a quarter of a burn-day.  So you take your ship's sheet, look up the fuel tons used in a burn-day, and divide that by 4 for the positioning.  This will keep you in position for up to 4 weeks.  After the 4 weeks, you take the Strategic multiplier, divide that by 4, and that is how many tons of fuel were used up.  (Or you just keep track of tons directly.)

(Personally, I'd prefer if station-keeping was listed as .01 Burn-day per day, instead of .1.   The gravity at a Nadir/Zenith location is extremely low so using the engine at .2G is massive overkill.)

I'd like a system where the ship's mass is directly proportional to the fuel tonnage used.  You take the on-board fuel tonnage, multiply it by the class of system and technology base (reflecting level of maintenance and overall tech base), and that is the number of fuel points available per ton.  The ship then uses a number of fuel points equal to its mass.  There might be large hull efficiency factors (so ships over 100 tons but equal or less than 100 ktons have slightly better efficiency than vessels 100 tons or less), but overall the fuel consumption graph will be a straight line.

[Thunderbolt]

Nope.  If you're looking for an upgrade of existing technologies in the canon setting, making the fuel usage realistic just isn't going to happen, because, among other things, it's a titanic step backwards comparatively.

Rewriting things to make for realistic fuel usage also does a number on the canon.  For starters, throw out any idea of DropShips travelling from distant jump points to inner system planets.  That just straight up isn't going to happen.

Ages ago, when Cray and I worked on BT2170, and enforced more realistic fusion rockets with highly realistic specific impulses (Isp), we found that the effect on DropShips was significant.  A ship the size of a Union class, for example, ends up being a lance transport in place of the Leopard, because the mass fraction of fuel needed to deorbit, land, take off again, and return to orbit was exorbitant: to get 80 thrust points, equivalent to 1 ton of ASF fuel in canon, on a 3600-ton Union class DropShip took 2206 tons of fuel, or better than 61% the total mass of the ship, using an Isp of 5000, which was a bit generous, but within the realm of possibility for high-thrust fusion torch.

One way to deal with it is, obviously, to switch to a low-thrust, high Isp setting on your engine, which should be theoretically possible, just like in canon, though in our case, we went with a more realistic 0.1 G and 125,000 to 250,000 Isp.  That would get you a delta-v of 1,119,895 m/s for your roughly 61% mass fraction in fuel, or just shy of 1/3 AU (0.3234 AU) per day, once you factor in turnover to decelerate.  So your transit from Sol's jump point, around 10 AU out, takes you a month instead of a week.

So, yeah, that would take some major rewriting of the canon.

If 2 TP = 1 G of acceleration, and if 80 FPs could sustain 1 G for 40 AT turns (2400s) for (say) a ~50t ASF, then

M G = (dm/dt) v

M G dt / dm = v = 50e3 kg x 10 m/s/s x 2400 s / 1000 kg ~= 1000 km/s (approx)

If so, then the canon rules are tacitly implying an exhaust velocity of order 1000 km/s = Hydrogen at 100 MK (mega-Kelvin) -- the exact optimal temperature for deuterium-tritium fusion.

Offer there is an implied connection to BT, as 'Mechs mount the same engines as ASFs, and suffer a (relative) -2 (jump) MP penalty (as compared to ASFs).  Which makes sense because 'Mechs jump on worlds with 1 G = 2 TPs of gravity to overcome before any net motion can occur.  (In space, 'Mechs might "jump" with +2 jump MP, +1 MP on 0.5 G worlds, -1 jump MP on 1.5 G worlds, etc.)

And so the tons of reaction mass stored in JJs could power hundreds of turns of jumps (even at full thrust over the entire jump, which is not the canon description, which seems to be more an initial pulse launching the 'Mech onto a ballistic trajectory slowed at the end with another pulse).  Completely consistent with canon not including fuel consumption with JJs.  Typical 'Mech jumps would consume of order 1-10 kg / turn (far more than the ~grams of fuel present in the engine for power at any one time, might suggest the reaction mass must first be fused to generate the required temperatures, in which case most of the exhaust would be fresh He)

If (say) large DS drives operated at (say) 10 GK they could exhaust H at ~10,000 km/s for a significantly improved Isp (~100 tons per burn day per Kton = 10 tons per 0.1G burn day per Kton... to achieve the Isp of ~0.5c required for canon DS descriptions would require >1 TK core temperatures... 100 MK for 'Mechs & ASF seems perfectly Sci-Fi plausible)

[I am Belch II]

I know HeavyMetal Aero is way out of date, but is there any new program that is being upgraded with the new tech.

I would like to see something that makes a Advanced Warship a advanced warship, with better targeting, better armor, sensors or ways to keep the crew down because of Automation would be neat.

[Wrangler]

Megamek lab been coming along with large warships/space stations.   There also a spread sheet been circulating to be able to make record sheets for large aerospace vehicles.

[I am Belch II]

Megamek lab been coming along with large warships/space stations.   There also a spread sheet been circulating to be able to make record sheets for large aerospace vehicles.

thanks for the update. I really want to put many many many new tech on my ships to make them much better. I wish that Aerotech would get some attention and upgrades.