[grumbler]

PF: Agree in principle, but ROF should play into the calculation as well. Assuming that it takes 5 turns to get within range, a fighter IT (ROF 1/15 turns)would fire twice in a combat, while the ship Version (rof 1/2 turns) would fire 15 times. The imbalance isn't as great as it seems at first blush.

My real problem with the ship-based ion torpedo is simply that it doesn't get any of the economies of scale that large, etc mounts give to equivelent DF weapons. I think we need to look at creating component enhancements for seekers as well.

I also think that the way to increase range might be better handled using compnent enhancement (like currently done for satellites and bases) rather than just improved weapons themselves. As it is, ships like the shadow escorts can considerably outrange other races' capital ships. By considerably lowering the range of the weapons themselves, and especially light weapons, and then adding back in range using large+ component enhancements, we could restore the advantage ship size gives in the real world - not just more weapons, but bigger and longer-ranged ones.

All: When I talk about a "complete re-write" of the mod, what I am talking about is a re-thinking of the mod from the ground up, based on experience with the game. Not all that much would have to be re-written or changed - mostly just the components and vehicle-size files.

For instance, do we really want to cripple the speed of the larger ships in order to have a few "x50" ton ships? Doersn't it make more sense, now that we have played the game, to make the engine per move divisor 100 rather than 50? Planet killers should be slow, sure, but a max speed of 5 (9 with all possible bonuses)? Why, using newtonian physics as our model, are we deliberately letting the 253 limit, rather than space avaiable for engines, drive the max speeds?

Anyway, those are the kinds of things I am talking about when I say re-write (and probably mean re-examine). If no one is really very interested in this, then I can live with the decisions made to date (after all, I can just mod things to suit myself and leave the "official Version" as per the consensus).

Seeing all the work that was done before I came on the scene, and having read all 160+ pages of this thread, I know that lots of this has been hashed out in some form or another. I just think that experience may give folks a different view when re-examining decisions made in the past.