Yangfan said:
What's stopping people from cheating on their ship size?
::blinks::
Having a layout in somewhat of a scale, we fixed the size of the Vampire patrol craft being one example. Also the size of the ship should match the discription of its insides, a massive ship shouldn't only describe what would effectively fit into one of its 15 or so decks, and a tiny craft shouldn't have massive cargo bays capable of holding several shuttles and a few tanks. To some extent it would be by the administrators judgement.
But trying to go ethier way with it is illogical, trying make the ship larger than it should be costs more, and making it smaller than it should be makes it so a greater percentage of the ship is damaged when it is hit by weapons in battle, therefore making the ship more vulnerable to weapons fire, and more expensive to repair(because a larger percentage of the ship, and its systems will be damaged). Besides that I'm hoping that the players hear are mature enough not to cheat.
Yangfan said:
Also, shouldn't a large freighter cost less than a small gunboat?
Yes it should, that is if the materials that it is built from, and its systems are cheaper. The modifiers would there to adjust for certian problems, such as it currently costing the same amount to shield a small craft such as a scout or corrvette at say level 6 as it would to shield a command cruiser at level 6.
Millia said:
Yang has a point there.
A minivan is less expencive than a sports car. But probaly not more espencive than a tour bus.
In car terms my point is that yes a Mini-van would be cheaper even though it is larger; because its body is made out of thin low grade steel panels instead of high strength carbon composites and fiberglass; it has a 6 cylinder engine that produces 150hp and costs $1,500 dollars to manufacture, instead of the sports car that has a 12 cylinder engine that produces 650hp and costs $10,000 to manufacture; the mini-van also wouldn't need the other things that the sports car would, high grade sports tires, complex fuel management systems, aircraft aluminum grade frame, road sensors...ect. The tour bus would be expensive because it has to have a fairly powerful engine to move itself, its generally made of high grade materials, decked out with all the latest gadgets, probably a kitchenette and bathroom, and it can probably tow that Sports car along behind it, along with some mountain bikes up top, it also carries lots of passengers and a fair amount of cargo while its at it. So you can see how the logic works there too.
/automobile metphor
OsakanOne said:
Finally...
If the points system is difficult as tax, is anyone going to bother with it?
I don't think its that difficult it only took me 5 or 10 minutes to figure out the point value(in the current system) of a standard Lorath Zahl Class. Besides the few people that are keeping track of ship contruction(which is pretty simple if you have the point values for each ship), the average player won't notice the difference, except for the setting being slightly more realistic in numbers.