One more round of comments on the black globe. I went and actually looked up
the rules for blacvk globes today, and came to the following conclusions:
The new rules really do say that gravity is absorbed.
The new rules are also fairly clear in intending that the energy that
is absorbed is useless for any other purpose.
The energy absorption system is screwy, using "energy" and "power"
interchangeably without explicit reference to period of time, which
is a bit of a problem.
A 100,000ton Jump-4 battleship or cruiser or whatever will have 27000kl
of energy sink, which can absorb 17,550,000 MW (I know--one is energy,
the other power--it dopesn't match. See above)
Ignoring the units problem, this means that this ship will not overload
and explode with the globe turned fully on until the ship is hit by
78 Factor-9 nuclear missile salvos, or 59 hits by a Meson Gun T, which
isn't as bad as I though it might be. However, a flickering globe is
still only worth 6 lvels (-2) of armor for each 10% of capability.
Overall then, a black globe is probably most cost effective on a large ship
which is already heavily armored, where the increase in danger is still worth
the enormous increase in cost to uparmor the ship.
I still don't like them. (-:
Rob Dean