[PvK]

Again, from what SJ says, it sounds like it is possible to get around most of the issues I anticipated with unlimited-engine QNP, if you use different sorts of values from the ones I used in Proportions. P&N seems like a great mod - I'm really hope I get more time so I can give it more of a shot (I've only started one game of it so far, though I've been tempted by the mentions of replacement players needed for PBW games).

I wouldn't say either system is better - they're both good and interesting (way more so than the unmodded system).

I still rather like the results of the Proportions QNP. I wouldn't change Proportions to unlimited-engine QNP, although it might make an interesting racial advantage. Proportions offers a nice range of propulsion designs possible with different combinations of engine types, with interesting trade-offs in cost, speed, fuel consumption, and combat mods. Those things could still exist without engine limits, but the engine limits add some baseline abilities to ship classes which give the classes themselves performance differences to consider. I like that small ships can go quite fast with just a few low-tech high-output engines (but can't go insane speeds by tripling the number of engines, even though they have "room" to do so), while massive ships take a lot to keep up to speed, and usually can't keep up with the fastest small ships. If you really want a fast large ship, though, you can spend a lot and develop gravitic drives (which isn't as efficient for smaller ships, so there is an interesting backwards efficiency effect there if that tech is developed) and/or deploy scale-mount emergency propulsion (which can be a nasty surprise for enemy light ships if mounted on a heavy interceptor ship).

PvK