Dumbluck, I am indeeeed willing to take on the hull/propulsion work; I've had a few more ideas, in fact.
I've been thinking of the ship sizes; I think dropping the 150kT hull off the bottomof the scale, and shifting every military ship-hull
name] and
image one step "up" woudl work nicely. Thus, you would have:
code:
200kT ... Escort; each engine 20kT
300kT ... Frigate; each engine 30kT
400kT ... Destroyer; each engine 40kT
500kT ... Light Cruiser; each engine 50kT
600kT ... Cruiser; each engine 60kT
800kT ... Battlecruiser; each engine 80kT
1000kT ... Battleship; each engine 100kT
1600kT ... Dreadnought; each engine 150kT
(the 1600kT size for the dreadnought is for mQNP purposes, see below)
Alternately, what about shifting them like so:
code:
(Light ships; +100kT per increase)
200kT ... Escort; each engine 20kT
300kT ... Frigate; each engine 30kT
400kT ... Destroyer; each engie 40kT
(Medium ships; +200kT per increase)
600kT ... Light Cruiser; each engine 60kT
800kT ... Cruiser; each engine 80kT
1000kT ... Battlecruiser; each engine 100kT
(Heavy ships; +400kT per increase)
1400kT ... Battleship; each engine 140kT
1800kT ... Dreadnought; each engine 180kT
The second one allows for roughly the same range of sizes (only +300kT at the highest end). either one would allow for a 2000kT base engine size, preventing use of un-mounted engines entirely (making the mQNP usage "idiot-proof"). Just divide the tonnage of each ship hull by 200, and you would have the size/cost % for each engine, from 1% for the Escort, up to 8% or 9% for the Dreadnought (depending on which size set you wanted).
Designing an escort for early scouting, presuming most other components remained Stock SE4-ish, would give us a 200kT hull. Bridge, LS, Crew, that's 30kT. 5 engines (the max) is 100kT more, total of 130kT. If Supply Bays come in 10kT increments, there's now room for 7 of them -- or 4 of them, and an early APB for dealing with other hostile scouts; in either case, teh supply capacity woudl be the same as 3.5 or 2 current supply bays.
Currently, 6 engines, bridge, quarters, life support, and three supply containers makes a 150kT escort; one less supply bay allows mounting a meson bLaster.
So the two would be reasonably comparable, IMO.