Is the Future Modular?

[Danestar]

Military and uneconomic just kind of go together...lol... Also true, having everything automated is no fun for the game. All I am saying is that the math works.

edit - and if you are only a J-1 modular ship, just double the number of Jump Drive Modules. Now you are a Jump-2, as long as you have the right software. I actually don't like the Modular Rules. I prefer to do My "Modular Ships" as breakaway hulls, each with their own Power Supply, crew quarters, and M-Drive. Give the Command Module a Command Bridge as well as some other software.

Military can be economic it's just that priority normally goes to effective and survivable.

I've always liked the idea of modular ships being more like the LASH set up, with the main ship being used to transport several smaller ships to another system. In situations like the modular cutter the smaller ship is more towards a shipping container than a functional space ship.

 

[phavoc]

Military and uneconomic just kind of go together...lol... Also true, having everything automated is no fun for the game. All I am saying is that the math works.

edit - and if you are only a J-1 modular ship, just double the number of Jump Drive Modules. Now you are a Jump-2, as long as you have the right software. I actually don't like the Modular Rules. I prefer to do My "Modular Ships" as breakaway hulls, each with their own Power Supply, crew quarters, and M-Drive. Give the Command Module a Command Bridge as well as some other software.

Ha! Too true! The money military's have spent on questionably logical projects throughout the centuries is incredible - and wisdom is definitely lacking when it comes to some of the bigger $$ projects. Though the taxpayers were sometimes gifted with some outrageously cool objects/locations.

The problem with the book math that I have is that it's min/max gamer logic that fails when encountering reality. To be fair, its not like some military projects have not also failed the same test (LCS, Sgt. York to name a few).

Of course some of these are very much opinion based. I am ex-MLRS, and was reading how the anti-tank rounds that the MLRS M270 could deploy was considered a "boondoggle". It's actually quite clever and one of the red flags to question the article was that it referenced ATACMS - which didn't come until much later. Being able to lay a minefield literally on top of your own troops who may be retreating - and then setting the timers for detonation at X time when you needed to attack through can shift the momentum of a battlefield. We always joked with the tankers in Graf about how we'd be saving their bacon if the balloon went up - and they (fairly) stated that they didn't trust us enough to drive through a minefield we just laid on the off chance we set the clocks right...

 

[phavoc]

There's software and hardware.

Combined with wetware, I heard stories that Soviet trained pilots had extreme difficulty adapting to the NATO style of warfare, and Ukrainian pilots who could speak English were preferred for retraining.

I'm told that Airbus cockpits were from the outset designed to be the same for all their models, which means minimum familiarization.

Boeing does the same - but it's to make the aircraft more attractable to customers since the idea being that pilots have to spend less time getting trained in the operation of the new aircraft based on common cockpit and aircraft inter-operability. Which is why Boeing has continued the 737 model for decades - clean sheet aircraft are expensive to design and test, and then you tack on the cost of re-training your pilots.

 

[Condottiere]

And then you run out of space for expansion, and it becomes a junker, where you have to weld on the upgraded engines at a weird angle, and unbalance it.