hiya,
Adrian Hurt [email removed] writes,
>Spinal mounts are the single biggest thing on a ship. They are so big that
>they stick out at one end, probably both ends. I have the old game
>"Azhanti High Lightning", complete with deck plans for the cruiser; the
>meson gun is shown on every deck, so it extends the entire length of the
>ship.
How big is a High Lightning class cruiser?
Fighting ships metions several BattleRiders that are in the 30kTon range and
one of them (at least) has a Meson-T spinal mount. A 1MTon ship is 30 times
the size of the battlerider. For a spherical configuration, it is three times
the size in each dimension (for other configurations, it could well be longer
e.g. needle/wedge would likely be longer in proportion), thus the weapon that
took the entire length of the smaller ship now takes only one third the length
of a real battleship, I doubt it would stick out both end of a large ship.
Not that I think of fighting ships as a particularly good reference...(I won't
bother going over its shortfalls again). Back in the good old days of 2nd
edition High Guard it was possible to get a Meson-T into quite a small ship
and I doubt that that has changed much (I did try to do the smallest ship
with Meson-T under MT and failed hopelessly due to the problems of design).
>What I want to know is, what prevents me from designing a battleship with
>two meson guns mounted along the keel instead of just one? That way, there
>is a reason to build huge immense Star Destroyers!
Better yet use three! As a ref I doubt that I'd give a ship like that three
shots at separate targets since it does have to line itself up to bring the
weapon to bear (if I did give it shots at multiple targets the second and
third would have pretty horrible DMs to get correct aim).
>There is also the matter of sensors. Not the general sensors, which are
>dealt with separately, but fire control sensors providing the exact targetting
>data for the weapons. A "weapon" result on the damage table may actually mean
>that a fire control sensor has been hit.
Point well taken. This seems like a nice way to correct the problem.
Pauli
seeya
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