"Here's the truth: capability is created by allocating some portion of an object's total mass & value towards it! Yes. This makes so much sense. What does it mean? Well, a ship has some total volume. You can choose to devote that volume to cargo storage, or to a tech lab, or to a production facility, etc. Do not think of capability as just coming from an object, but think of it as coming from space itself."
Nice to see some of the ideas of a ship editor / ship building system that allows for maximum freedom based on logical constraints taking shape, an "old" thread about this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1981&p=701#p701
JoshParnell wrote:I did not mention dedicating ship's volume to guns specifically because it doesn't make sense, as you say. This does not remove hardpoints, it only impacts things that are considered to be 'internal' (tech labs, production facilities, cargo storage, crew quarters, etc.)
I don't agree that counting weapons make no sense, I think it does. In a maximum freedom system why not let the player build a ship with 90% weapons if they want to?
It's underpowered engine will ensure it can neither go anywhere fast, catch anything nor hardly turn fast enough to hit something ( if direct fire weapons ).
It's underpowered reactor will ensure it has a reloading time making battleship mainguns seem like quickfire chainguns.
It's overpowered weapons will ensure it quickly runs out of ammo.
And so on...
Weapons add mass which will slow the ship down, and they will also add volume too even if it's on the outside. Actually mass/volume on the outside is normally
worse then internal due to how it makes the ship much slower to turn and more vulnerable!
Logically speaking you could envision two kinds of weapons:
Internal weapons, can't track at all just fire straight forward, but are protected by armor.
External weapons, mounted in turrets for tracking or auto tracking, but are vulnerable and not protected by armor.
The same thing with engines and sensors really. Internal which means less flexible but better protected. Or external for that maximum performance but fragile systems outside the armor.
Bigger capital ships could also have slower armored turrets.
Loads of nice trade-offs to be had!