On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 23:14, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > > > * If there is significant trade between high-population worlds, > who is going to carry the required megatons of cargo? If > freighters are in the kiloton or megaton range, why would > warships be any smaller?
Warships scale on what weapons they need to carry to fight other Warships. In the days of sailing ships most ships could functionally be either merchantmen or war ships this changed with technology. Today your average merchant ship is much larger than most warships. Aircraft carriers being the exception, but functionally they are very specialized cargo carriers. So think in terms of how big a weapon is needed to get the job done. Merchantmen carry cargo, they are designed to move as much as then possible can as fast as they can. Merchantmen tend to grow in size faster than warships. Yet if battleships are that large, > why not carry a backup crew, and a company of marines, etc.? > Are they needed for the mission? That is the other big thing about warships, they have defined missions. > * As written, the scale effects in the rules favor relatively > large ships. The square root in the maintenance requirement, > cube-root-squared for hulls, while engines are linear. Small > ships only have an advantage if large ships run half empty > on the route. > Couple of ideas cost could increase with the size/performance, i.e. twice the engine four times the price. Or you can go with the classic Traveller solution where larger engines require higher tech levels. -- Evyn _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
