Pirates and Nomads

[Suicide Junkie]

Some kind of hybrid system would be the answer, but the problem is making the step gradual so you don't have hull sizes that are way underpowered compared to the next smallest hull size, the way we sort of have now with LC to Cruiser in the stock game because of the extra crew and life support required.

Which was why I mentioned that the QNP scale would change.

Make a set of "light ship drives" that are only allowed on small vessels (due to the required mounts). These would use a QNP scale of 1mp/50Kt/1speed.
Make another set of "medium ship drives" that are only allowed on 500-800 KT ships (again due to the required mounts). These would use a larger scale of movement, and provide half the normal thrust; the ships hulls in theis range would require half the EPM.

End result is that nothing changes on the surface, but the medium hulls can hold twice as many engines before they cause an RCE.
Since all of the medium hull sizes are nicely divisible by 2, the EPM still works out to a legal integer number.

[ September 17, 2002, 17:43: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]