I've seen alot of posts about ship design, and now I see MGT:HG has been pushed to September so I figured I got plenty of time to share...
This is the system I kludged together for my MGT game. It draws heavily from Classic High Guard.
Power plants generate power for the M-Drive and/or J-drive, minimum plant being equal to the drive letter of the largest drive in question. It also produces Energy Points (EP) equal to the cross index of the drive chart. A 100dt ship with a Type A plant produces enough power for the type A drive and 2EP.
EP can be used to power weapons or grant agility. Agility is used in my house rule system to grant a bonus to initiative and a measure of how many dodges or shot line up attempts a ship may make per round. This is seperate from manuever. If a ship has no agility and needs to dodge or perform a manuever, he'll have to burn it from the remaining manuever points.
Example: Ship with M rating of 2 and Agility of 2 can dodge twice and use thrust of 2 this round. A pig of a ship with manuever 1 and 0 agility may move with thrust 1 or save that point to put into emergency agility and get a dodge action.
(I am still working the kinks out of shoehorning Agility for MGT, but right now there have been no complaints)
Power requirements for weapons are per Classic High Guard.
Turret Weapons
Lasers 1EP
Plasma Guns 1EP
Fusion Guns 2EP
Particle Beams 5EP (and yes I am keeping the 3dt turret and 5dt barbette)
Small ships have no problem with this system. Example:
A Beowulf upgrades its Power plant to a type B, giving it 2EP. it can power a Type B drive and if it does so gets full agility (agility is limited to the max thrust). It can have 2 Agility, power a laser and stil have 1 agility or power two lasers and have no agility, save for emergency agility from burning thrust.
But lets look at some bigger ships:
Bay Weapons
Meson Bay 100EP
Particle Bay 30EP
Fusion Gun Bay 20EP
Now, how the devil do we get that kind of power from a table that only goes up to 6? Easy. MULTIPLY!
A 1200dt ship (sorry, still going with 1 bay per 10 harpoints) will need a Power Plant Zx5 to power a PAW bay and will take up 365 tons. Fueling this sucker will take 240dt for 2 weeks operation. This will take up over half the ship! 50+365+240 = 655dt
Classic HG only required a Power Plant with a rating of 3 (3 x (0.01x1200)=36EP) 36dt@TL15, 72dt@TL13, 108dt@TL9, 144dt@TL7
What's going on here?
This system works well for the small ships, but gets horrendous for big ships with big guns. I am hoping MGT:HG will come out with Tech Level variants for power. Until then I will assume the current Book 2 based system are 'Civilian' models available at lower techs. I may just rip Power Plants from Classic HG and use them for now until MGT:HG comes out
This is of course to keep the feel of Classic. If you want smaller ships with big guns, go for it.
This is the system I kludged together for my MGT game. It draws heavily from Classic High Guard.
Power plants generate power for the M-Drive and/or J-drive, minimum plant being equal to the drive letter of the largest drive in question. It also produces Energy Points (EP) equal to the cross index of the drive chart. A 100dt ship with a Type A plant produces enough power for the type A drive and 2EP.
EP can be used to power weapons or grant agility. Agility is used in my house rule system to grant a bonus to initiative and a measure of how many dodges or shot line up attempts a ship may make per round. This is seperate from manuever. If a ship has no agility and needs to dodge or perform a manuever, he'll have to burn it from the remaining manuever points.
Example: Ship with M rating of 2 and Agility of 2 can dodge twice and use thrust of 2 this round. A pig of a ship with manuever 1 and 0 agility may move with thrust 1 or save that point to put into emergency agility and get a dodge action.
(I am still working the kinks out of shoehorning Agility for MGT, but right now there have been no complaints)
Power requirements for weapons are per Classic High Guard.
Turret Weapons
Lasers 1EP
Plasma Guns 1EP
Fusion Guns 2EP
Particle Beams 5EP (and yes I am keeping the 3dt turret and 5dt barbette)
Small ships have no problem with this system. Example:
A Beowulf upgrades its Power plant to a type B, giving it 2EP. it can power a Type B drive and if it does so gets full agility (agility is limited to the max thrust). It can have 2 Agility, power a laser and stil have 1 agility or power two lasers and have no agility, save for emergency agility from burning thrust.
But lets look at some bigger ships:
Bay Weapons
Meson Bay 100EP
Particle Bay 30EP
Fusion Gun Bay 20EP
Now, how the devil do we get that kind of power from a table that only goes up to 6? Easy. MULTIPLY!
A 1200dt ship (sorry, still going with 1 bay per 10 harpoints) will need a Power Plant Zx5 to power a PAW bay and will take up 365 tons. Fueling this sucker will take 240dt for 2 weeks operation. This will take up over half the ship! 50+365+240 = 655dt
Classic HG only required a Power Plant with a rating of 3 (3 x (0.01x1200)=36EP) 36dt@TL15, 72dt@TL13, 108dt@TL9, 144dt@TL7
What's going on here?
This system works well for the small ships, but gets horrendous for big ships with big guns. I am hoping MGT:HG will come out with Tech Level variants for power. Until then I will assume the current Book 2 based system are 'Civilian' models available at lower techs. I may just rip Power Plants from Classic HG and use them for now until MGT:HG comes out
This is of course to keep the feel of Classic. If you want smaller ships with big guns, go for it.