Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
anyway @Sayle , potential set of options for phasers that don't require completely redoing how they work, to be appended to relevant weapons votes:
[-] High Performance EPS Grid [COST HERE]
By constructing the entire electro-plasma system from the same ultra-high-performance condiut as is typically used to connect the warp core to the nacelles, total allowable max load on the grid can be increased by several orders of magnitude, allowing a ship to freely fire modern phasers. Unfortunately, this conduit, and the neccessary high pressure EPS taps, are very expensive to manufacture in the required quantity, rapidly becoming prohibitively expensive as vessel size (and, therefore, the total size of the EPS grid) increases.
Adds 0.5 cost per 10,000 Tons of ship mass (before nacelles). Obviously, this one is your preference for a small ship- and 80 kton vessel, for example, would add a whopping 4 extra cost for one. on the other hand, it is absolutely prohibitively expensive on large ships- a 200 kton vessel would be shelling out one hundred cost for a similarly reinforced EPS grid!
Which, obviously, easily explains why we don't do that.
[-] Dedicated Power Runs [Phaser Bank Cost 4 → 6]
On the other hand, one could instead run a fully segregated power feed directly between the ship's warp core and each phaser bank. This would complicate the interface at the core itself significantly, and require the manufacture of extra EPS conduits above those normally required by a vessel, functionally increasing the cost of each phaser bank by fifty percent.
Obviously, the middle road option; a small ship (that even carries enough phasers to care about the ability to shoot lots of them) would probably find it more cost effective to just reinforce the entire grid as above, but a larger vessel, particularly if it was going to mount a relatively low number of phaser banks but still desires to fire the lot at once, absolutely will generally prefer this option unless mounting a truely ludicrous number of banks.
[-] Local Reactor [No extra Cost, Phaser Bank space consumption increased]
Alternatively, each phaser bank could be connected directly to a modestly sized fusion generator for power. This would add negligible cost to the vessel given the wide availability and longstanding maturity of fusion reactor technology, but would require additional space in the hull for the reactor itself, effectively tripling the size of each phaser bank.
Your "I have space to burn, let's get our discoball on" option. Obviously favors big lads with loads of volume to burn and ships that don't care overmuch about internal space, and disfavors small ships or things with floorspace concerns.
[-] Use Standard EPS Grid [No Cost]
of course, you can simply use a standard issue unmodified electro-plasma system built to the standard configuration that has been in use since the Sagarmatha class starship, even if this does restrict a ship to only being able to power two phaser banks at any one time, incurring no extra costs in space or manufacturing.
The "two phaser banks is fine for this ship, we don't need to add cost overhead in any way" option. which may well be desirable more often than it might seem.
There. Two Phaser limit alemorated, multiple methods of doing so with different limitations available for people to argue over, built in explaintions for why not one of the three was previously standard issue, and no new mechanics required. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
[-] High Performance EPS Grid [COST HERE]
By constructing the entire electro-plasma system from the same ultra-high-performance condiut as is typically used to connect the warp core to the nacelles, total allowable max load on the grid can be increased by several orders of magnitude, allowing a ship to freely fire modern phasers. Unfortunately, this conduit, and the neccessary high pressure EPS taps, are very expensive to manufacture in the required quantity, rapidly becoming prohibitively expensive as vessel size (and, therefore, the total size of the EPS grid) increases.
Adds 0.5 cost per 10,000 Tons of ship mass (before nacelles). Obviously, this one is your preference for a small ship- and 80 kton vessel, for example, would add a whopping 4 extra cost for one. on the other hand, it is absolutely prohibitively expensive on large ships- a 200 kton vessel would be shelling out one hundred cost for a similarly reinforced EPS grid!
Which, obviously, easily explains why we don't do that.
[-] Dedicated Power Runs [Phaser Bank Cost 4 → 6]
On the other hand, one could instead run a fully segregated power feed directly between the ship's warp core and each phaser bank. This would complicate the interface at the core itself significantly, and require the manufacture of extra EPS conduits above those normally required by a vessel, functionally increasing the cost of each phaser bank by fifty percent.
Obviously, the middle road option; a small ship (that even carries enough phasers to care about the ability to shoot lots of them) would probably find it more cost effective to just reinforce the entire grid as above, but a larger vessel, particularly if it was going to mount a relatively low number of phaser banks but still desires to fire the lot at once, absolutely will generally prefer this option unless mounting a truely ludicrous number of banks.
[-] Local Reactor [No extra Cost, Phaser Bank space consumption increased]
Alternatively, each phaser bank could be connected directly to a modestly sized fusion generator for power. This would add negligible cost to the vessel given the wide availability and longstanding maturity of fusion reactor technology, but would require additional space in the hull for the reactor itself, effectively tripling the size of each phaser bank.
Your "I have space to burn, let's get our discoball on" option. Obviously favors big lads with loads of volume to burn and ships that don't care overmuch about internal space, and disfavors small ships or things with floorspace concerns.
[-] Use Standard EPS Grid [No Cost]
of course, you can simply use a standard issue unmodified electro-plasma system built to the standard configuration that has been in use since the Sagarmatha class starship, even if this does restrict a ship to only being able to power two phaser banks at any one time, incurring no extra costs in space or manufacturing.
The "two phaser banks is fine for this ship, we don't need to add cost overhead in any way" option. which may well be desirable more often than it might seem.
There. Two Phaser limit alemorated, multiple methods of doing so with different limitations available for people to argue over, built in explaintions for why not one of the three was previously standard issue, and no new mechanics required. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
