Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 10:11:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Jackson <ajackson@iii.com>
Subject: Creating Spacecraft using Vehciles 

Dataweaver writes:
> On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Onno Meyer wrote:
> 
> > It would be _really_ nice if there was a formula like that in Space to
> > allow stronger hulls, but the table on VE19 isn't easy to extrapolate.
> 
> As an addendum to my last post, let me suggest that the formula for a
> vehicle's HT is a little screwey; it shouldn't drop toward a limit of 5 as
> weight increases, it should drop toward a limit of zero.  Suggestions,
> anyone?  

The fact that doubling frame strength will take you from HT 8 (32.5 hp/ton) to
HT 12 (65 hp/ton) is also a bit weird; it seems like there should be more
variance in there.

I was considering making HT logarithmic, on the same scale as range penalties
and all, so +6 HT is 10x as strong.  If we norm for HT 10, HT should be roughly
6*log10(HP/ton) -- equal to looking up hp/ton on the range/speed chart and
adding 2.  This does make HT 12 vehicles significantly harder -- rather than
requiring 65 hp/ton (divide by 10, rounds up, add 5), it will require 85 hp/ton
(mean between 70 and 100, for rounding).

Incidentally, frame weights in VE2 are a bit futzed for large vehicles anyway;
while it is legitimate that large vehicles should have lower HT (due to
square/cube law), the portion of the vehicle's weight which is frame shouldn't
_decrease_ with size.  I'd probably make frame weight be based on the greater
of surface area and volume (this occurs at 216 cf).... this isn't a big problem
on vehicles up to the size of a tank, but becomes fairly noticeable on a
battleship.

Once you do this, you can permit heavier frames without running into the danger
of making it too easy to make huge vehicles which still have huge HT; I'd just
say that for beyond an XH frame, simply choose a HP multiplier; the weight
multiplier is (HPM/2), the cost multiplier is HPM*1.25.