Design our ship - Size

[Tsukiyumi]

Thanks, guys. I didn't need your help to feel old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltron

I damn well remember it; I've still got a full set of the original metal toys around here somewhere. Combined into Voltron, the f*cking thing weighs about six pounds.

[Sionnach Glic]

What about his welcome? [/grammar nazi]

It's very welcome.

[Mikey]

What about his welcome? [/grammar nazi]

It's very welcome.

Anybody remember Danger Mouse?

"Chief, you're back!"

"Yes, Penfold, what about it?"

[Sionnach Glic]

Danger Mouse? That takes me back.

[Reliant121]

What about his welcome? [/grammar nazi]

It's very welcome.

Anybody remember Danger Mouse?

"Chief, you're back!"

"Yes, Penfold, what about it?"

omg i used to love that.

[Mikey]

Reliant remembers the same cartoon that I do?

*kicks heels*

Ha! I don't have to pick out a headstone yet!

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Reliant remembers the same cartoon that I do?

*kicks heels*

Ha! I don't have to pick out a headstone yet!

He probably caught reruns on Boomarang(or the british equivilent) or something

[Reliant121]

Reliant remembers the same cartoon that I do?

*kicks heels*

Ha! I don't have to pick out a headstone yet!

He probably caught reruns on Boomarang(or the british equivilent) or something

Exactly (Boomerang was aired here as well)

[Mikey]

OK, OK. I'll start composing my epitaph. How about, "I told you I was sick?"

[colmquinn]

"I told you I was sick?"

I believe spike milligan has that on his grave, a comic genius.

[sunnyside]

Since you can change your votes I would encourage those who are voting medium to shift to the more popular small to overtake large. A simple big ship full of guns is fairly trivial, and it's been done before, in many series, in fact you probably came up with a design like that yourself when you were 13.

Trying to make design choices under the constraints of a small ship will be more interesting and require more tradeoffs.

Also one person shifting from large to small would tie it up.

[Teaos]

Actually polls over. I set it to run for 7 days. So the big ship won out.

I'm just trying to decide what to do next.

The ships is going to be a large sized vessel and according to the debate a pure battleship.

So I was trying to think what is the next point going to be and how to work it out. Since we have limited resourses I'm trying to work out a realistic way of weighing the options. If we decide for more armour the ship will probably be slower and there will be less of them built. Also the size of the power supply and what type and how many. Also the general ship lay out.

There is no rule on stuff like that but we cant just say "Bring the nacelles in closer and armour them" with out having the trade off of less speed. But how do we know the loss of speed unless I just make figures up.

Every decision has Pros and cons but I'm trying to think of a way to represent that in a poll.

I'm thinking I'm going to do armour next and represent it by every 10cm of armour drops the production rate of the ships by something a few ships over all and drops the top speed by a few percent points. Thus you choose a ship with 45cm of armour you drop the production run by like 4 ships and the top speed gets knocked down 8%. I'll think it through then do it tonight. Any ideas you have would help.

[sunnyside]

If you want to make it easy on yourself you could simply say that you get a constant fleet strength value (via the DITL calculator), so if you doulbe the strength per ship you halve the production run. You may want to set a realistic strength max or armor/weapon maxes for a ship in the "large" catagory. Or just let them go at it and reserve the right to say you can't fit 500 photorp launchers on a nacelle or what have you.

Trade offs would have to be justified in design. I.e. if you wanted massive armor but still a very high combat manuverability you could argue that you have huge power sucking impulse engines and thrusters which make it so you couldn't operate as many photorp tubes.

You may wish to assign strength values for additional features or trade offs. For example adding internal volume for troops, cargo, or what have you would add some multiplicative factor for the strength values of armor, speed, manuverability, and shields as the extra volume requires more armor straight up, shieds have to cover more, and it takes more power to attain velocity. Moving the nacelles in may add some multiplicative factor to speed strength costs and might reduce the possible max speed.