I'm trying to strike a balance between things I'd like tweaked, and things that're
definitely out-of-scope for a minor update, so I'm leaning conservative
for once in my life, if only for individual tweaks because good
lord did this thing grow.
Ship Design
- Already mentioned, but some integration of the Starship Operator's Manual, especially with gravitics, would be appreciated.
- A line break between the Manoeuvre Drive Rating and the Reaction Drive Rating would be appreciated, it's a bit hard to parse right now.
- Nix the section under Jump Drive on page 17: 'Only fusion and antimatter power plants can generate the intense burst of energy necessary to operate a jump drive.', since the express boat can rely on batteries just fine.
- Mention that bridges are just the interface for the crew to interact with the ship, and that drone or robot ships can operate without them.
- Some mention of an ejector seat under Cockpit would be appreciated, though far from critical.
- A computer can be hardened against Ion systems, but what does that actually do? They don't consume power, and it can't be 'the computer turns off if you halve Basic Ship Systems', since that'd prevent jump dimming. Can I suggest adding a section under the Ion trait that a ship effected by Ion weaponry has its available Bandwidth halved, or something similar?
Weapons
- Change the firmpoint text on page 26; 'a firmpoint is typically a forward-facing fixed mount', just to avoid confusion with the turret rules.
- The missile flight times table is inconsistent with the range bands in the CRB.
- Minor typo, under Bays on page 31: '... and are rarely, if ever, found on civilian spacecraft.'
- Could I convince you to cut down the Large Particle Bay's range to Very Long? With the lower time-to-kill in 2022 not giving you much of a chance to close in with an opponent, that sort of range advantage is way too dominant.
- Up the Large Repulsor Bay's capacity to 1,000 tons, the drop is a bit weird.
- The mention of the summary in the Spinal Mount section is odd: 'Spinal - meson (TL15) - 5x' isn't how any of the ships are shown, and it's inconsistent with how most other weapons are recorded. Can I suggest that be changed 'Meson Spinal Mount (TL15) x5', with the multiple included in the summaries?
- The Smaller Weapons rules are a bit hard to parse - can I suggest simplifying them a touch by saying they're 0.25t per 250kg or part of, a fixed mount costs Cr5,000, and a turreted mount costs Cr50,000? If not, some clarification on if the >250kg weapons are mounted in spacecraft turrets/fixed mounts or just normal turrets/fixed mounts would be appreciated.
Spacecraft Options
- Consistent rules on when and when not to round up with a given component (e.g Fuel/Cargo).
- Some clarification on Modular Hulls - can they not include any power plants at all, or are they restricted to just powering what's onboard the module?
- Remove the High Burn Thruster section, add mention under Reaction Drives that they can be operated cumulatively with the Manoeuvre Drive, but without compensation. Move g-LOC rules alongside.
- There is a lot of detail under Concealed Manoeuvre Drive that doesn't need to be there; I think it'd best be moved under the Manoeuvre Drive section.
- Make explicit mention under Fuel/Cargo that they can feed directly into the jump drive, and give an example of why that might be useful (reducing a trader's jump range to carry more cargo, for example). A lot of the description is no less applicable to the collapsible fuel tanks.
- When discussing cargo options (or the Grappling Arm) make it clear whether 'tons' refers to metric or displacement.
- Might be excessive - can the Cargo Net be cut in favour of adding its capability onto the Jump Net, with the latter being renamed Cargo Net? Cleans the section up a bit, and prevents confusion when discussing an 'interplanetary jump net'.
- Remove mention of the Neural Activity Sensor under Deep Penetration Scanners; it's too high TL and unnecessary for what it does.
- Might be worth requiring Aerofins to be installed on streamlined spacecraft - otherwise aerofin-equipped partially streamlined ships can significantly outperform streamlined ones, which seems odd.
- A worked example for the recalculation of the Docking Clamp, e.g 'If a 200 ton ship with Thrust 3 docks with a 100 ton ship, the combined ships would be reduced to Thrust 2' (and if there's room, a full discussion on thrust-tons or jump-tons as a means to recalculate?).
- It's a bit munchkin, but the Construction Deck is identical to the Shipyard except it doesn't require crew: a restriction something like 'only spacecraft or vehicles below 100 tons' in exchange for being a bit cheaper might be worth considering?
- The text of the launch tube implies that it can launch 10 small craft at a time, but after those're expended it can only release 1 per round. Can I suggest keeping it at a flat 10? Canon carriers don't have many launch tubes to begin with; the Skimkish would take eight hours to fully deploy its retinue with 1 per round.
- Larger change, but considering almost every ship has the same number of launch tubes and recovery decks, could that same '10 per round' rule be applied to recovery decks? Retreat would be virtually impossible, otherwise.
Space Stations
- Replace steps 2 through 4 with text pointing to the relevant section from the ship design sequence: they're redundant. And wrong, in the case of the Manoeuvre Drive's cost and power requirement.
- Make explicit mention of the Mail Distribution Array in the description of the Deep-Space Communications Relay - they should be two parts of one system.
Customising Ships
- To memorialise the argument I had with one gentlemen who never quite understood what I was on about: could the costs for Early Prototype and Prototype be adjusted to +900% and +400% respectively? A 10x and 5x increase is a touch more intuitive.
- Why restrict major refits to decreasing capability? Upgrading a given airframe is well doable IRL, it feels like restricting player choice for no real gain.
Sensors
- Can the formatting on the Sensor Hand-Offs page please be adjusted? I know it's tricky, but it's virtually unreadable at the moment!
- The diagram for the same could use some adjustment. Suggestion: the central ship has a green pulse towards the target ship, indicating a successful sensors check, with the three friendly ships located behind it - one further back than the others. This ship, and one other, have a red dotted line indicated a failed hand-off: the first from being out-of-range, the second from not having bandwidth available. The third ship has a green dotted line, indicating a successful hand-off.
Crew Roles
- Discuss crew watches - I've seen a few questions on why military ships need more crew.
Also, sorry if this is egotistical - can I have another bash at tweaking the ship summaries? Only I caught a few errors I made last time and I'd like a chance to fix them. In my defense, it was 3am when I finished.
that's really sad when i think about it
