Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
The spaces it uses are the only difference between a Spinal Mount for one SM of ship and a Major Battery for a ship of +! SM. You will note that making a ship +1 SM (with all other factors being equal) does not make that larger ship 3x as long. Simple geometry would make it 1.45x in each dimension.
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I don't think that observation lends itself to the conclusion you're coming to (that an SM +
n Spinal Battery is the same weapon as an SM +
n+1 Major Battery). A Spinal Battery is, by definition, nearly as long as the ship itself. If we compare an unstreamlined SM +5 ship with a Spinal Battery to a streamlined SM +6 ship with a Major Battery, the first ship is roughly 15 yards long, while the second ship is up to 40 yards long. This most extreme case does allow for the same weapon that is a Spinal Battery in the SM +5 ship to be a (fixed) Major Battery in the SM +6 one (it's a little longer than 1/3rd the length of the latter ship, but close enough for
Spaceships level of resolution). If we match up the streamlining, or reverse the situation, however, things change - a 15 yard battery is going to be difficult to fit within the first third of a 20 yard ship (both unstreamlined), as is a 30 yard battery on a 40 yard ship (both streamlined), and don't even get me started on trying to fit a 30 yard battery onto a 20 yard ship (smaller streamlined, larger unstreamlined).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
Again, I think this is rules-lawyering. trying to exploit an abstraction Spaceships makes for the sake of simplicity to get around that simplifying assumption.
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I don't think it's really a case of rules-lawyering so much as just trying to get a little better resolution out of the system. Note if he were dealing with anything other than launchers (which are bizarrely unable to be RF/VRF), there likely wouldn't even be a problem - an RF Spinal Battery laser, for example, could easily be described as being 10 weapons (each 1/10th normal mass) mounted next to each other.