quote:
But what bothers me is that a super-powerful SDD doesn't make sense from a story-line point of view. I'll say it again: if SDDs are so powerful, then why wouldn't an empire just make ramming suicide escorts with SDDs that could be detonated just before impact? They could destroy any other ship. For that matter, why not SDD-equipped fighters?
Of course, I don't want this to be allowed in the game, because it would ruin it! So, what I'm asking for is a logical pseudo-scientific story-line explanation for why SDDs don't work this way. And I really feel that no one has even attempted to give one yet. (For instance, suicide_junkie's explanation for why SDDs can be so powerful only reinforces my point, from the story-line point of view.)
Well, for a fighter, 10Kt is most of your space. You'd have a devastating ramming ship with no ability to catch and ram an undamaged target
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How about this for an explanation. Ditch the stack of nuclear warheads as the SDD, and have a large tank of antimatter.
Shields would be able to deflect the antimatter just like any normal interplanetary gas (such as solar winds).
Against armor, the antimatter annihilates with the matter in the armor/hull, and boom you die.
So, you have to wait for a boarding attempt, when the enemy drops their shields before you can self-destruct with much effect.
All ships could be imagined to have basic particle deflectors/shielding to keep their hulls from ablating away when they cross a solar system in one month (thats 1% of the speed of light
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Given this is the explaination for the SDD, then it kinda makes sense the engines would be unusable for manuvering during the terminal overload stage, which would be required to get it close enough to the enemy ship.
If you accept this you have to ignore the fact that the SDD still works when the engines are destroyed,
As you've shown, the description is not quite accurate, and it is also the easiest item to change in the game
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So what I think we need is an explanation for why the SDD works the way it does, and paste that into the description of the component.
[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 04 June 2001).]