FallingPhoenix said:
I don't see how they contradict each other, either.
The tables on p. 53 show a price increase and size decrease because you're using higher TL parts to build an item (e.g. building a TL 12 power plant with TL 15 parts).
The paragraph on p. 52 gives a price decrease and no size change because you're building at a higher TL but using parts from the original TL (e.g. building a TL 12 power plant at a TL 15 manufacturing facility but using only TL 12 parts).
It seems to be like the difference between buying the latest and greatest Intel chip with more processors than last year's model versus buying last year's model today, which hasn't changed in how many processors it has on a given chip, but has decreased in price.
The application of both the paragraph on p. 52 and the tables on p. 53, if I understand it, would be something like: "I'm on a TL 15 world. I want a Jump-1 drive, which is TL 9 tech. I do want a slightly smaller model than the original, so I'm going to buy a TL 12 Jump-1 drive, so I get it at 75% tonnage, but 200% cost. However, that's only a TL 12 item, and my manufacturing plant is TL 15, so by using TL 12 parts, I get a 15% price discount, making my final tonnage 75% of the TL 9 version of the drive, and my final cost (200% - 15%) 185% of the TL 9 version of the drive."
That's pretty convoluted logic, and cherry picking the most advantageous aspects of both rule sets. If this were the case then every design out there, canon and otherwise, would follow this because it's just too damn useful and convenient to do so. Except they don't. If these rules don't, as you state, conflict, then why haven't ALL designs (previously and otherwise) been redone to take advantage of these obviously HUGE advantages? They haven't. Though, in all honesty, that's not necessarily the best of arguments to make since canon designs don't always follow the rules as they are laid out.
The table on pg 53 provides the TL spread for drives and powerplants. The following table (weapons and screens) explicitly states that you can only get the advantage down 1 TL and up 3 before it becomes too outdated. To use your processor analogy one would think Pentium chips could be purchased for pennies. But nobody makes them any more and that tech came out in 1993. Staying with that analogy, purchasing power goes up as tech gets older, but only up to a point, after which it steeply declines and quickly disappears. And notice how you can spend more money to get the same number of transistors on a chip, but in a smaller form factor. That concept fits with the drives going up in price but going down in tonnage.
We can all interpret the rules as we see fit, that's been there since rules first got published. As the person who originated this thread has done, but refuses to acknowledge the issue. The main issue being that the drives from the CRB are built to different rules standards than ships in HG. So using HG rules to build ships from the CRB isn't canon. It's a house rule. Nothing more, nothing less.
Like any other player I like to min/max my designs to cram as much as possible into as cheap of a ship I can get. I have to deal with contract language in my day job so in many ways I'm very much a rules lawyer. What it says vs. what I want to interpret it as. The two rules, as his always been my opinion, are in direct conflict with one another. And the tables on pg53 also conflict with each other because the weapons/screens tech explanation has additional limitations on the TL that the drives/power plants do not. Not to mention the introduction of the section on pg52 explicitly states that ships built using CRB rules have an average TL of 12, regardless of where they are built. The components should already have any conditional changes built into them.
Of course the other issue here is that the components in CRB are also designed to different standards than what HG uses for the larger drives. If you are using the price discount rule, why aren't you using also the tonnage percentage rules as well? You can't even build a Jump-1 100 ton ship because the smallest drive gives you jump-2 by default. By HG rules, a 2,001 ton ship with J-1 only needs 2% of the displacement for the jump drive. By CRB rules a 1,000 ton ship would require an E class jump drive (30 tons) to get the minimum J-1. That's 3% of the total tonnage. As you can see the two sets of rules don't mesh.
F33D said:
You are 100% correct. These rules were modeled on real world activities. The poster who keeps claiming that rules in the book are really house rules just doesn't understand modern manufacturing civilization.
Lol. Do you wake up in your own world every day?? You sure like to come up with things that seem to be that way. Just to help you out, I never stated "that rules in the book are really house rules". What I said was that what YOU are doing is a house rule, and not something governed by the books. It was YOU who took HG rules and applied them to CRB tech, not me. I just pointed out that what you were doing was effectively making a house rule. The fact that you don't seem to like that, well, that's your problem.
I find it funny you like to dismiss anyone who points out your fallacies. Funny because anytime someone disagrees you have to whip out the insults and try to denigrate them into silence. It's time you left the playground and came into the real world of adulthood and debating. Don't like what someone says? Don't reply or be civil in your disagreement. Your track record shows you have a propensity to be a troll, but maybe that's what you are best at. Either way you can house rule whatever the hell you want. But that doesn't make it canon. Never has, never will.
But if you wanna talk about modern manufacturing let's do that. And please don't forget to bring the other side of the equation - the capital side of it. Let's talk about the billions it takes to build a new fab. Let's talk about the capital expenditures it takes not only for the plants but for the R&D. Please, shower us with your infinite knowledge of reality. I've got this great morbid curiousity to understand how your vision of reality differs with, well, pretty much everyone else.
