Politely, I disagree, who is to say I did not take the same laser off the fighter and simply put it with all of its power and targeting systems on the dreadnaught? How would that make it larger, how would that make it smaller, how would that make it any different? Why should it be larger just because I moved it from one hull to the other? The technology didn't change. |
I believe he was saying that since the laser is larger, it should be granted some sort of bonus unless it was reduced to the same size.
actualy it doesnt make sense for engines a bigger ship requires more force to accelerate F=MA then some stupid kid is going to say things fall at the same speed blah blah your stupid at physics its called intertia. It requires more force in space to push something heavy then something light... |
In a perfect environment (in a vacuum), all objects do fall (accelerate) at the same speed. Air resistance is what changes that, but basic Newtonian Mechanics is taught as if the world were a perfect environment. Only the more advanced aspects start to consider every element and then the calculations start to evolve into calculus problems instead of trig. and algebra.
Yes F=ma, but that is for acceleration, which is probably only effective in combat, although all of the ships, no matter what size, seem to be literally just floating adrift in space. Acceleration isn't as important when it comes to total distance one can travel. Then you are getting more into work, and not force so much.
Yes, F = m x a, but we are in space, so their isn't any gravity (unless you want to go into gravitational fields) to work against, thus even the smallest engine can move a massive object, it would just take it a lot longer to accelerate it.. And that is work, not force...
In other words, I can try and push a box for hours, but unless I push with enough force to overcome friction, that box isn't moving. Now in space, if I devote the same amount of time to pushing something of similar mass, it will start to accelerate since I am only working against it's inertia, which isn't force since it's not pushing back.
So in this case, it's W = F*distance, where Force is the actual force I am applying, and not m*a.
Yes, we do need bigger engines to push bigger ships in the same time it is needed to push a smaller ship to the same speed, and that is probably the case since a fleet moves together after all...
Anywho, as for the power of an engine, that is not calculated on size only. (i.e. a size 10 engine doesn't produce twice the power of a size 5 engine). Size refers to volume... so if 10 referred to volume of a perfect cube, the area of a square, the power would be more of an exponential factor**...
** - (Using the size as an area of one side would make it a straight multiple of then)
Using 10 as the volume, you could then say that each side has a length of ~2.15, and for the 5, a length of ~1.71. And for simplicity's sake, let's say only one side of the cube is "pushing" and that the force is consistent over all of the space, we'll give it a value of 1 to make it easy.
So you could then say that the size 10 produces 4.64 units of force, and the size 5 produces 2.92 units of force. (length of side * length of side)
So in actuality, the size 10 only produces about 1.6x the force of the size 5.
Lastly, you could just say that I wasted 10 minutes thinking about that and should just sum it up in one or two points.
1. Keep the size mods that change the components size based on hull size, except for weapons.
2. Throw out the size mods that make components get bigger with better miniaturization, it goes completely against miniaturization,
3. Having miniaturization increase hull size is great, it lowers decimal rounding errors and allows for over 100% miniaturization. (Since theoretically, a component reduced in size by 100% would be reduced to 0.)