Making fighters more realistic.

[rdouglass]

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Originally posted by capt_spoogy:
I think in the context of the game that the kT (kilotonne) is meant to be used for volume - that's why I suggested that to make it more realistic you should mod the fighter bay to be 100kT in size and 100kt cargo space - so it could hold 4 large fighers - and a carrier might hold some 16-20 or so.

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Isn't volume irrelevant in a Zero-G, no atmosphere environment (at least in terms of acceleration)? So in a space-based concept, mass IS the relevant factor, yes????

[Suicide Junkie]

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In the case of cargo / hangar bays, they displace lower mass of water because they're mostly empty. If it was indicating volume, the measure would be cubic meters / kilometers / feet.

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1 KT of water has a pretty definite volume. so KT could be used as volume.

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Fighter balancing would be easier to do by modding your point defense or making PD use targetting computers / combat sensors. Create a new PD purely for anti fighter role.... (Di any starfire fans?)

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Not that I feel fighters are unbalanced, but that would be the best way to go.

quote:

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Isn't volume irrelevant in a Zero-G, no atmosphere environment (at least in terms of acceleration)? So in a space-based concept, mass IS the relevant factor, yes????

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How very, very true.

The only concern is having 200kT worth of sats/fighters, in a 20kT cargo bay. The ship only feels the 20kT of the cargo bay and is unaffected by whether the bay is empty or contains 200kT of minerals.

This indicates that a ship's mass is more important than size, and a unit's size is more important than its mass.
Which I am perfectly willing to accept.

The cargo bay would weigh 20kT when full. The empty space in the bay would hold 200kT.
The fighter takes up 20kT of space, but only weighs 100 tons.

When designing the ship, you don't care about size (since you're not going inside cargo bays), just mass (for propulsion)

Units have to be stored, so thier mass is unimportant (and negligibly small compared to the ship), but the size is critical (since it needs to be stored within something (cargo bay, planetary warehouse, etc)
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My question. How the heck do you use KT for damage and hitpoints???

[Nitram Draw]

I think the kT is just a unit used to determine relative size and be used as a counting device. I don't think it relates to weight or volume or anything else.
There is no way to simply compare volume and weight, one measures 3 dimensions the other measure mass. Making fighters larger to reduce the amount that can be carried will not change things much, you will just have less fighters with more stuff on them unless you also change the kT of the components.