David Applegate
Explorer
I think it is a great product, but I think systems like life support, fuel, consumables, and weapons, and especially turrets are too small.
You have nothing on inertia.
A ship has Mass in space. Gravity creates weight. Larger the ship, larger the mass, hence more substantial inertia. You at least have taken inertia into account on initiative.
Mines in space are naff. Chances of hitting one are less than that of hitting an asteroid. A real space mine would be a small stealth ship using piezoelectric motors to position itself in place. Because they motors accelerate a cold gas and generate little heat, this would be one of the few times stealth would work in space. You aware ships with reactors generator heat constantly? Best stealth on a large ship would be a system to disrupt radar and disperse heat to make it hard to track a ship.
It takes a lot of thrust to overcome inertia, so engines are proportionate to ship's size. Usually 10% with 30% of the ship fuel.
Contrary to popular belief a fusion reactor needs fuel. For example, the sun sucks in and expels gas all the time. Its gravity well is a fuel tank and ram scoop.
Luxury in space, after sixty days you are all on the same canned beans unless you use cryostorage (that is NOW technology) and that takes energy.
Most missiles would be heat-seekers as ship generate huge heat plums. Spaceships need to either vent heat with radiators or the fusion reactors boil the crew.
I think like most games you have too many crew on your ship. The star trek luxury cruise for hundreds of scientists is Naff. The ship fuel tank would be huge, and after all the equipment maybe the ship has room for a dozen crew and one would double as the science officer with a huge area for food storage and never mind all their sensors, they need a Hubble telescope on board. Think submarine. Everything needs to be onboard, especially food and water. A five-year mission would be fine if most of the ship was stores or had supply ships coming behind them every six months.
Never mind fuel tanks for the shuttles..... but they would likely run on methane, hydrogen or water, so ships need to mine asteroids. Many asteroids are water and methane. Ships would constantly be cycling air with every planet with an atmosphere. So they need a system for that, or carry lots of scrubbers and have supply ships to replace them every three months.
You know radiation shielding is not just lead? There are gold sheets, and heat reflectors all in a carbon structure. So metal hulls for ships are a lot more expensive than cars, even if gold lost all value a small shuttle would not still not cost the same as a car, because way time and effort goes into building a shuttle and it has far more material. Try cost of a 747.
Noone would build a battleship. One hundred gunboats armed with nuclear missiles would blow the billion-trillion dollar spaceship into dust for 1/100th the cost. That is why no one builts them today. Even most nations don't bother with carriers because cheaper to build and launch stand off missiles than build warplanes, as missiles have less chance of been shoot down. Most planes in space would be standoff drones, cheaper to build a drone cheaper than it costs build lifesupport for the pilot.
No carriers, one hundred gunboats armed with nuclear missiles would blow the billion-trillion dollar spaceship into dust for 1/100th the cost. But maybe a navy have one or two for stand off attacks and provide drones to fire stand off missiles from as they take on defence stations.
Most spacefighters would be lost to quarter defence guns. Even modern planes and helicopters are standoff platforms as man-portable missiles have proven in the Soviet-Afghan war that cheap missiles for 40,000 dollars destroy a 40 million dollar helicopter.
Most large ships would be tankers, freighters or colony ships defended by medium sized (100m) gunboats.
Airlocks are big. They have iris doors 1.5 in diameter and are over 14 cubit metres. Those only have room for 3.
Force fields are not small, and you need cover the ship in them as they need to be in the open.
Where are the manoeuvring engines? Ships in space burn engines, then drift, then to decelerate do an 180 and burn engines.
How did you calculate width, beam, and length? You know it is possible to double the width of a ship to increase cargo space without increasing the size of most other systems, most changes to ship would be hull, engines and fuel, as they proportionate to ship's size. So would shields.
Otherwise great product. Keep up the good work. Happy to discuss with you in detail. Look forward to new the book.
I am a write and working on my own ships for a novel, happy to do a rpg expansion / setting. If you interested discussing in detail points i raised, message me an email adress.
You have nothing on inertia.
A ship has Mass in space. Gravity creates weight. Larger the ship, larger the mass, hence more substantial inertia. You at least have taken inertia into account on initiative.
Mines in space are naff. Chances of hitting one are less than that of hitting an asteroid. A real space mine would be a small stealth ship using piezoelectric motors to position itself in place. Because they motors accelerate a cold gas and generate little heat, this would be one of the few times stealth would work in space. You aware ships with reactors generator heat constantly? Best stealth on a large ship would be a system to disrupt radar and disperse heat to make it hard to track a ship.
It takes a lot of thrust to overcome inertia, so engines are proportionate to ship's size. Usually 10% with 30% of the ship fuel.
Contrary to popular belief a fusion reactor needs fuel. For example, the sun sucks in and expels gas all the time. Its gravity well is a fuel tank and ram scoop.
Luxury in space, after sixty days you are all on the same canned beans unless you use cryostorage (that is NOW technology) and that takes energy.
Most missiles would be heat-seekers as ship generate huge heat plums. Spaceships need to either vent heat with radiators or the fusion reactors boil the crew.
I think like most games you have too many crew on your ship. The star trek luxury cruise for hundreds of scientists is Naff. The ship fuel tank would be huge, and after all the equipment maybe the ship has room for a dozen crew and one would double as the science officer with a huge area for food storage and never mind all their sensors, they need a Hubble telescope on board. Think submarine. Everything needs to be onboard, especially food and water. A five-year mission would be fine if most of the ship was stores or had supply ships coming behind them every six months.
Never mind fuel tanks for the shuttles..... but they would likely run on methane, hydrogen or water, so ships need to mine asteroids. Many asteroids are water and methane. Ships would constantly be cycling air with every planet with an atmosphere. So they need a system for that, or carry lots of scrubbers and have supply ships to replace them every three months.
You know radiation shielding is not just lead? There are gold sheets, and heat reflectors all in a carbon structure. So metal hulls for ships are a lot more expensive than cars, even if gold lost all value a small shuttle would not still not cost the same as a car, because way time and effort goes into building a shuttle and it has far more material. Try cost of a 747.
Noone would build a battleship. One hundred gunboats armed with nuclear missiles would blow the billion-trillion dollar spaceship into dust for 1/100th the cost. That is why no one builts them today. Even most nations don't bother with carriers because cheaper to build and launch stand off missiles than build warplanes, as missiles have less chance of been shoot down. Most planes in space would be standoff drones, cheaper to build a drone cheaper than it costs build lifesupport for the pilot.
No carriers, one hundred gunboats armed with nuclear missiles would blow the billion-trillion dollar spaceship into dust for 1/100th the cost. But maybe a navy have one or two for stand off attacks and provide drones to fire stand off missiles from as they take on defence stations.
Most spacefighters would be lost to quarter defence guns. Even modern planes and helicopters are standoff platforms as man-portable missiles have proven in the Soviet-Afghan war that cheap missiles for 40,000 dollars destroy a 40 million dollar helicopter.
Most large ships would be tankers, freighters or colony ships defended by medium sized (100m) gunboats.
Airlocks are big. They have iris doors 1.5 in diameter and are over 14 cubit metres. Those only have room for 3.
Force fields are not small, and you need cover the ship in them as they need to be in the open.
Where are the manoeuvring engines? Ships in space burn engines, then drift, then to decelerate do an 180 and burn engines.
How did you calculate width, beam, and length? You know it is possible to double the width of a ship to increase cargo space without increasing the size of most other systems, most changes to ship would be hull, engines and fuel, as they proportionate to ship's size. So would shields.
Otherwise great product. Keep up the good work. Happy to discuss with you in detail. Look forward to new the book.
I am a write and working on my own ships for a novel, happy to do a rpg expansion / setting. If you interested discussing in detail points i raised, message me an email adress.
