Well, I've got it and I, for one, am impressed.
HOWEVER...
How come there aren't any rules for Missile bays?
What's the Mj per mass for a laser at TL X? How come you can't put a
TL 15 laser system in a bay (and, presumabely, get thyself a 2500 Mj or 5000
Mj laser system?)
I never examined the starship rules carefully in the TNE rules, so the lack
of Fusion and Plasma guns as starship weapons didn't bother me. Anybody
know why they've been yanked? Ditto for Particle Accelerator Barbettes...
How come all the "variant" ship types (ie, a variant Beowulf *admittedly*
not as useful!)?
I had thought some of these questions would be answered by the ship
construction system, but I guess not. Anybody know if the Technical
Architecture Manual is going to have design stuff that deals with the
Laser Bay-type questions?
Oh, yeah: What's the *volume* of a missle? It masses 7 tonnes and "...may
be carried in cargo spaces...", but I'm having no luck reverse engineering
it from the turret and barbette volumes...
Consider:
turret vol:42 kl. loaded mass 28.4 tonnes; 300000km Lasercom at TL8
is .110 kl and masses .22 tonnes. One workstation: 7 kl and .2 tonnes
mass. <Not weight, as the table on page 12 suggests :)> So, left over
to contain the missiles is: 34.89 kl and 27.98 tonnes. 2 missiles take
up 14 tonnes mass, leaving 13.98 -> 14 tonnes left. (ie, each missile,
and attendent handling equipment ends up massing 2x as much as one
missile)...And with a vol of 2.5 x missile mass in kl gives 2.5 x 7 x 2
= 35 kl.
All well and good...
Barbette vol: 84 kl loaded mass 70.4; 300000km Lasercom at TL 8
is .110 kl and masses .22 tonnes. Terminal: 7 kl and .2 tonnes.
Missiles and attendent equip take 76.89 kl and 69.89 tonnes. Assuming
the 5 missiles take up 2 x # missiles x mass, this gives us 5 x 7 x 2 = 70
tonnes (correct) and assuming vol is 2.5 x missile mass gives 2.5 x 5 x 7
= 87.5 kl != 77 kl :/
BUT: 2.2 x 5 x 7 = 77 kl && 2.2 x 7 x 2 == 30.8 != 35kl
Even if one of those kludges had worked, Do we then assume that exactly
half of the computed volume is missile and half is "other equipment"?
(ie, 1.25 or 1.1 x the missile mass, resulting in 8.75 kl or 7.7 kl
missiles, respectively...)
And what if you put in a TL *15* turret, and thus use a 300000km
lasercom that only displaces .007 kl and masses .014 tonnes?
Anybody? Anybody?
Dane