Posted by: chrislocke2000
« on: March 05, 2012, 09:18:45 AM »Probably too complicated but on the fuel tanks you could design them in a similar way to designing missile magazines. Create tech lines on storage efficiency and maximum flow rate then allow them to be individually armoured much the same way as magazines are.
Storage efficiency would work just the same as magazine efficiency which scales as the tank increases in size.
Flow rate dictates speed at which you can refuel and deliver fuel to the engines. This is a fixed size based on litres / hour rate and does not scale with size of the tank.
Armour scales with the tanks as with magazines.
This allows you to create a range of tank sizes that match to the demands of the engines and allows some differences between highly efficient weight v capacity tanks for bulk transport against less efficient tanks for military ships. The non scaling fuel delivery system also gives a decision between having lots of small tanks that are less efficient but individually less important to a ship v less large tanks whose loss in combat would have more of an impact.
Storage efficiency would work just the same as magazine efficiency which scales as the tank increases in size.
Flow rate dictates speed at which you can refuel and deliver fuel to the engines. This is a fixed size based on litres / hour rate and does not scale with size of the tank.
Armour scales with the tanks as with magazines.
This allows you to create a range of tank sizes that match to the demands of the engines and allows some differences between highly efficient weight v capacity tanks for bulk transport against less efficient tanks for military ships. The non scaling fuel delivery system also gives a decision between having lots of small tanks that are less efficient but individually less important to a ship v less large tanks whose loss in combat would have more of an impact.