Its been awhile, so I'd like to mention that the construction rules were figured out after rereading Tech Manual.
The movement part still boggles me though. Its made mentioned that the airship stockpiles thrust points, I assume to account for the fact that they use fractional thrust. Thats fine. What confuses me is how the spending of thrust works, and how evidently its tied to how fast the ship is already moving in.
As an example, my airship is moving at velocity 0.25 in Cycle 1. I decide to give it a constant thrust of 1.0 during the cycle, and can use one thrust point on the first turn of the cycle, which can be used to accelerate, decelerate, land or hover. I assume as I can't spend anymore thrust points, I don't burn anymore fuel points. And per the example, the velocity of the aircraft is maintained. So at the end of Cycle 1 on turn 4, my ship gains +1 Velocity to 1.25 Velocity, which immediately gets halved due to atmospheric drag and goes from 1.25 to 0.625 rounded down to 0.5 Velocity.
On Cycle 2, we maintain a thrust of 1.0 and can spend Thrust points on Turn 1 and 3, and use both times to accelerate. So 0.5 goes up to 2.5 at the end of the turn, before getting halved to 1.25. 2 Fuel points spent total.
On Cycle 3, we can now spend 2 thrust points on turn 1 and 1 thrust point on 2-4, and maintain our current thrust. To avoid going out of control, we only spend 1 thrust point to reach 2.25 speed which is halved to 1.0. 1 fuel point spend.
Etc. etc. until we eventually and slowly reach full speed at 3.0 Velocity, thus maintaining a rather inconsistent velocity (1.5 velocity halved after then 2.5 etc) but spending very little fuel to keep going.
Am I getting this right?
