Re: Cargo/launch bays
Along this same line. Why require that every "transport" ship have a minimum of 50% specifically "cargo pods"???
In reallity there are many different kinds of specialized cargo ships. This is particularly true of military support vessels. Seagoing Navys and presumably space Navys are always going to need ships with specialized cargo areas for specialized cargo.
You don't usually carry fuel in general cargo ships and weapons are rarely carried in general cargo spaces. Unless we are also going to have a cryogenics tech area ,, then people and troops are not going to fare well in general cargo holds. Planes (read fighters) are a very specalized cargo that basically cannot be carried in anything not specially equiped or must fly individually to new locations.
Almost all si-fi predictions about space travel envision "freighters" as being more like tugs (a very well built engine and control vessel) that can be connected to specialized cargo containers.
In the real world this means that as cargo capacity goes up,, speed and manurability go down.
Because of the low speed and manuvering ability, cargo vessels rarely had expensive attack weapons but often had cheap defensive systems. It must be noted that almost all great Naval powers have created specalized decoys using Cargo/freighters during time of war though. (Both the Japanese and the British used specially fitted freighters as submarine hunters. The US experimented with a freighter that was actually an anti-aircraft platform and almost every Navy has used freighters and cargo vessels for spy/sabatoge missions.) There have long been international treaties that have limited the "offensive" weapons that "civilian" vessels could carry. No reason why the game cannot be set up the same way.
A limit of say 10% of total space used for offensive weapons would be acceptable and in keeping with the spirit of being able to creat "decoys" and "surprises".
Adding an "anger" factor into the AI regarding how alien races react to these "decoys" would be a nice touch too...
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Wingte
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Wingte
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