"Um I think I'm lost. I'm think that the Impeller Ring and Nodes (the drive) are 2 diffrent things. The Ring holds the Nodes right?"
Yes, but right now they're combined into one unit for the sake of simplicity.
"Have you concidered using SJ Propulsion system (forget the name. Bigger ship = more engines needed for same movment). IMO this would work well concidering that, while all ships in HH are suppose to reach the same top speed, smaller ships are able to accelrate faster than bigger ships (its in the tech bible)."
This results in higher top speeds with more engines; I'm not sure you can just slap more nodes in the HH system..you can make them more powerful but add more?
"ship has to have an Alpha and Beta Impeller Ring (required) that gives you a standard +1 movment point. The size could very depending on the size of the ship or not."
Can be varied depending on the NODE size, but not the ship size. SE4 doesn't go there.
"I think thats what your getting at with the Small Impeller Node Ring, Imperller Node Ring and Larg Impeller Node Ring, right? If so you could simply name them; DD Impeller Rings, BC Impeller Rings, DN Impeller Rings and so on. While I don't know how to stop someone from using a DD ring on a DN you can make a minaiml size requirement so it can not fit on a smalle ship (which might be a good reason to just have them all the same size, but where the fun in that )."
Can't restrict them based on ship sizes other than making them not fit; it's why I'm calling them small-Capital rather than DD-SD. It would look a little weird seeing a SD with a DD impeller drive..
"You could also think about having a Impeller Drive reasurch field which is seperate from the normal propulsion field."
The impeller drive field IS the propulsion field in this mod
Well, I suppose there are reaction thrusters, but those are so limited I'm not going to bother moding them.
"Next the Nodes, which if I understand it right, will be like (and work like) normal SE4 engines, just change the name. You could either keep the same size for all the node regardless of the ship size or not. But I don't remember their being any diffrent sizes for DD nodes or DN nodes. I could be wrong, but if i remember correctly how fast a ship was able to accelrate related to not how big its nodes where but how they where placed on the Impeller Ring (you could only space them so close together, but you only had so much hull space to work with)."
It depends on the node's *power* IIRC; and I think you're right in that you can't just go slapping nodes wherever you want. Which is why the node ring idea; it doesn't feel right to me to just put in more impeller nodes for more speed. You could have a DN filled with nothing but alpha nodes that way.
"Any of that make sense? My guess is that you would want Alpha and Beta Nodes in which case you might be able to have a requirment of equal number of Alpha and Beta Nodes on the ship. (But the only thing diffrent between Alpha and Beta Nodes is the name)"
Can't be done- you can't require a ship to have anything other the Bridge, Life Support, Crew Quarters, Fighter Bays, Cargo Bays, or colony modules. The Alpha and Beta nodes are different according to Ashes of Victory's tech drawings- the betas are much smaller.
Not sure I follow your system though. If all the impeller drive unit did was provide one movement point.. why bother mounting it?
Phoenix-D