[FT] Thrust capacity

Are we officially limited to Thrust 8 now? I will put on the web my own Thrust
10 designs regardless, but am curious as to the Official Word(tm). (No, they
don't really have a payload to speak of).

> Laserlight <laserlight@cwix.com> wrote:

> Are we officially limited to Thrust 8 now? I will put on the web my

Don't know what is offical, but I've used thrust 10 in a race scenerio. Plenty
of thurst to cause the players problems when they find there are going too
fast to fly around the beacon and head back
without zooming way off the course :-)

Enjoy,

> Tom Granvold wrote:

FT Racing!  (8-)

I designed the racing ship that Tom is talking about; my theory was, that
since THRUST was a function of MASS, then you could build until your ship was
one giant engine. Couldn't much else other then fly about in circles, but it
would go fast. (Paint it red, and it goes
faster.  (8-) )

(Self serving ad: FT Racing can be found with the GZG-L Archives at:

> Are we officially limited to Thrust 8 now? I will put on the web my

No. As much as you have mass for. (5% per thrust pt.)

> Tom Granvold wrote:

"The Official Word (TM)":
No, the old thrust-8 limit is gone under the FTFB design system; you can
have drives as big as you like, subject to available mass in the ship. This
means that the theoretical absolute limit is thrust-20 (100% of Mass),
but this just gives you a drive unit floating in space! In practice, since you
have to have SOME hull integrity, a fragile hull at 10% will leave you
space for a maximum of a thrust-18 drive - this is a tin can with a
command pod at one end and a bl**dy big motor at the other....

With the new design system, I'd say you could have whatever thrust you can
physically fit into a hull, provided your accel compensators are up to
scratch. But for a warship, you very quickly hit a diminishing return or run
out of space completely.

EG: Mass: 20 Hull: very weak; 2 FTL: 2 MD: 16; 16