Proportions 2.3 nearing completion

[Spuzzum]

Well, Spuzzum the Lummox is now entirely flummoxed. You win. ;-)

[DirectorTsaarx]

Just to add some more fuel to the discussion... I always assumed kT referred to "displacement", like it does with sea-faring vessels. In which case "1 kT" means it displaces 1 kT of water. At which point it has less to do with mass than with volume. (Although one could argue that density was the important factor, but that's just mass divided by volume, so that 1 kT still isn't really mass (or even weight, which is a measure of the effect of a gravitational field on mass)).

Have fun debating!!!

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
Just to add some more fuel to the discussion... I always assumed kT referred to "displacement", like it does with sea-faring vessels. In which case "1 kT" means it displaces 1 kT of water.

It's funny you mention fuel, because that I believe is actually the source of the terminology. Someone posted here a while back, (can't remember who or where, but I wanna say it was Baron) that the source of the kiloton unit of measurment for ships originated with old pen and paper space games such as Traveller and Starfire. In those ships were fueled by liquid hydrogen, which was stored in tanks and measured in kilotons. Other components were measured relative to this in the amount of fuel that a similer size tank could hold. And weapons rating according to this is how large a component they can destroy according to this scale. At least that's how I remember it. It made sense at the time.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

Despite the ability to adjust the 'weight' of population, I'd really like to see the return of dedicated population quarters. It's unrealistic to be able to load a bunch of people like they were cargo pallets & then drop them somewhere else and pickup a bunch of mines or satellites or some other dead weight. People don't live in containers. They need living space with life support, furniture, food, and minimal entertainment (communications?), etc. You should have to use special transport components for population. In this sense SE IV is a step back from SE III. I wonder if we could get MM to install another 'option' to allow dedicated population quarters since the image for them is included in SE IV.

[PvK]

I agree Baron.

I've tried to approximate this in Proportions 2.2 by adding a starliner module component that offers savings over a massive number of cargo bays, but gives combat penalties so people will have disincentive to use them on combat designs.

PvK