A quick question about sheilds (I`ve being playing FT for aprox 3 yrs, and
this has been bugging me since I read the rules the first time, but only now
remembered it to post it (D`ohh)).
What`s bugging me is the mass used for sheilds. A level 1 sheild is 5% mass of
the mounting ship, a level 2 10%. If a ship masses 90 mass, a level 1
sheild is 5 mass, a level 2 9 mass. What is bugging me is that wouldn`t twice
the sheild have twice the mass? (IE, work out the sheild as 5% ship mass times
2 instead of 10%?).
I use the printed 5% and 10% rules myself, but I had some free time * to
post this, and wanted to see what anybody else thought.
BIF
*free time, a mythical thing used to discribe someone whit no fleet of
miniture starships left to paint.
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 12:46:24PM +0000, david smith wrote:
> What`s bugging me is the mass used for sheilds. A level 1 sheild is 5%
(Actually, no, the bottom end is 5/10 mass - but the same applies for
e.g. a mass-170 ship, where a screen-1 is 8.5 mass (becomes 9) and a
screen-2 is 17 mass.)
> What is bugging me is that wouldn`t
Well... that depends. The construction rules describe "a level 2 shield
generator", not "two separate devices", even though the SSD shows it as two
systems; this might simply mean that it's one big system designed with a bit
of redundancy (similar the way main drives work).
I agree that it would make more sense as a strict mass rule, particularly
since you can install three separate "screen generators"
and any two of them will do the job of providing a level-2 screen...
> On 18 Jul 2003 at 12:46, david smith wrote:
> What`s bugging me is the mass used for sheilds. A level 1 sheild is 5%
I'd look at it the other way round, why does half the shielding take more than
half the space? (After all it's the 5 mass that's been rounded up).
The FT design system is quite abstract and doesn't concern itself with what
actually makes up the X mass of each of the components.
"Due to the power couplings on the Relly Good class Destroyer we'll have to
use the Mk 17a shield generator rather than the Mk 17b. Same shield coverage
but takes up more space."
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 01:57:30PM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote:
Oops, sorry, you're right, it's 3/6 - not sure where I got 5/10 from.
R
5 from 5% and 10 from 10%?
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 14:06:45 +0100 Roger Burton West
> <roger@firedrake.org> writes:
> BIF wrote:
> What`s bugging me is the mass used for sheilds. A level 1 sheild is 5%
But the level-1 screen *isn't* 5 Mass - it is only 5% of 90 = 4.5 Mass.
The only reason why it *seems* to be "5" Mass is that FT doesn't deal in
fractional Mass points so you have to round it to the nearest integer...