Well, if you want large ships to be impractical, then some changes would be needed. One option would be a drive that does not scale well. Perhaps reaction-less thrusters can only scale up to a certain size without causing problems(ripping a hole in the fabric of space from pushing too hard or some such), and if you have more than one within a certain range of each other(100m? 1km?) you can only get an effective thrust equal to basic thrust * sqrt(thruster count) without having that same problem(ie. ship goes boom instead of moving)
Make the standard thrust amount sufficient for the size ship you want, and anything bigger must move more slowly. Note that this may allow things like limpet mines/torpedoes that slow down the ship they grapple by just having several thrusters pushing against each other and thus making the total available thrust much less. On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Johannes replied to me: >> What about customs or police ships? You have one or more large galatic >> empires, that span a lot of territory and have either little direct >> control over part of their territory, or have smaller states within their >> territory, or they have long borders for the sizes of their territory. > > Hello Johannes, > > that might be a neat explanation why scouts and patrol craft are > small, but what about freighters and warships? If one 10,000-ton > cruiser beats ten 1,000-ton cruisers every time, because it has > longer weapons and sensor ranges, even a dispersed empire would > get a few large warships. > >> Examples would be the Traveller Empire, > > Traveller had ships like the Close Escort or Patrol Cruiser, at > roughly the same scale as Far or Fat Traders, but it also had > the Tigress and large freighters. I'd like to build a setting > where all ships are small. > >> or the Star Wars Old Republic for >> the first, something like the Star Treck Federation can create the second >> case (as they don't force other countries to join they propably create >> many San Marinos inside their territories). > > Something like a DSN Runabout as the typical ship? > >> For that you need as many ships as you can muster, but all they need to >> outgun is unarmed freighters. Depending on the ecconomic and social >> background, you might also have trouble to recruit as much qualified >> personell as you like, so you might cut down retundancy there. > > Even very small armed craft could deal with large unarmed ones, > but patrolers might need size for other reasons, like a search > and rescue role. A few months ago, I wrote TL11 Patrol ships and > assorted smugglers and yachts or freighters which need to be > rescued. But the freighters were much bigger than the patrolers. > >> There might also be the following politicy doctrine: >> *) Civilized countries do not use military force to further any of their >> goals other then strict self defence. >> *) If an uncivilzed country attacks you, you do not need to show any >> constraints regarding the force you use. >> >> It might be that the military of a country with that doctrine might call >> for the cheapest patrol ships, that can identify any attacker before >> fleeing or being destoyed, and just enough of them to patrol your >> territory. And a some "death stars" to bomb whoever attacked you back to >> stone age or beyond. Depending on technology you might even have small >> cheap "death stars", that stealth into enemy territory, or you send >> enough, that that at least one is almost guaranteed to get through, that >> use nuclear warheads or large comets or similiar to destroy important >> enemy worlds.* > > Defense by MAD assumes that all sides are sane, and play chess. > If any one side is insane, or plays poker and miscalculates, it > could lead to mutual destruction. > > So Mutually Assured Destruction can only be part of the defense > strategy. You also need real defenses, if they are possible. > > But perhaps this could be made to work if there were weapons > which could kill any other ship, whatever the size, but not > planets? > > I'm thinking of real-world combat aircraft. A decent AMM will > kill a B-52 just as easily as a F-15 or an AV-8. So there is > not much reason to get fighters beyond the size of the F-15. > > Another idea might be submarines. A nuclear SSN-774 is better > than a conventional Type 212 in most regards, but their torps > are in the same ballpark, and the displacement of the ships is > within the same order of magnitude, too. > > Compare that with early 20th century warships, where the armor > of a dreadnought could resist the guns of a mere cruiser. > >> Yet an other scenario would be that you have to regulary lead large >> convoys of freightships through hostile or otherwise hazardous >> territories, where the savest routes change constantly but slowly. > > Again a mix of large and small ships, not just small ones ... > >> * Sideline: I wondered why such a tactic was not used in John Ringos >> Posleen series. They had stealth ships that could bring commandos to >> Posleen worlds, they did not expect to be able to conquer thoose worlds >> back anyway, yet they did not use thoose ships to smuggle nuclear warheads >> with timers onto thoose worlds, making it harder or even impossible for >> the Posleen to use thoose worlds for production, and reproduction or >> possibly even as bases. Heck they could even have boobytrapped worlds that >> were about to be conquered, as perfect scorched earth strategy. > > The Posleen scenario was carefully crafted to get a certain > kind of battle, where human infantry (with or without > battlesuits) got to wear the enemy down by attrition. Many > chances for heroic last stands and a few for clever tactics, > not many chances for good strategy. > > Regards, > Onno > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l > -- All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society. -Edmund Burke _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
