Posted by: sloanjh
« on: April 19, 2008, 09:56:38 AM »Quote from: "Michael Sandy"
Hey, back after a long hiatus.
I saw a discussion about a weapon system that used the ship's speed instead of the tracking speed if the ship's speed were higher. That sounds like it would be an excellent FAP weapon.
I know I am missing some stuff, but could you use FAPs like the new Battlestar Galactica series uses its Vipers in an anti-missile role?
Welcome Back!!
I think you're talking about fighters. Steve has pretty much totally reworked them to make their design and capabilities more consistent with that of ships. Here are the high points I can remember (some details may be wrong):
- Fighters design works the same way GB design does. To support fighters most systems now have a mass "granularity" of 0.1 (?). The total mass of the ship is rounded up to an integer (not sure if this is true for fighters).
The "gunboat engine" concept (2x power at 10x fuel cost) was generalized to "fighter engines" (3x power at 100x fuel cost IIRC). "Missile engines" follow the same pattern for speed and fuel calculations (5x at 10,000 fuel cost IIRC), even though they're still designed using the old slider-bar mechanism. This has resulting in MUCH longer missile ranges, i.e. interplanetary distances. Note that missile fuel is paid for during construction - missile fuel tanks aren't tracked by the game.
A "fighter gun" weapon system (I forget the name) was introduced which can take multiple low-probability 1 damage point (?) shots. This was intended for dogfighting and shooting at missiles.
A fighter can use its speed as a tracking speed for fire-control purposes (represents the pilot using the agility of the fighter to track on the target). I think this is implemented through a special type of fire-control system that only cares about range.
"Thin-skinned" ships are allowed, which have zero armor. This results in mass savings for the armor (I think 0.5X, but I might be wrong), but makes the ship vulnerable to strafing by fighters or by long-range laser hits.
Steve also completely reworked armor - it now is degraded while stopping hits. I'm not sure how that will interact with the fighter gun - originally the bullets were supposed to bounce off non-thin-skinned vessels. OTOH this may be modelled by the low hit probability - it might represent shots that hit but don't do damage.
John