[Spaceships] Armor Density

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Langy

Anthony's method should work fine. The only reason ships are restricted to 20 locations is due to the effect ship mass has upon performance (which is mostly fixed adequately by modifying performance by the total number of systems used, except for fuel tanks, which would need to be reworked a bit more) and for reasons based upon volume. If you alter the ship performance based upon total number of modules, you've got a system that needs 20 systems for volume-based reasons (such as number of people that can fit in a hull section or the hit location rules), not mass.

That way works, but is a completely different design system from Spaceships. It's similar to how it was done with the various 3e modular vehicle design systems. A hull of a given size has a given number of spaces, and you calculate mass and performance last.

The problem I see with this idea is one that haunted all of the 3e systems: It's difficult to build a vehicle with a target performance. Basing everything on same-mass modules means that each module give a certain performance (3G for an engine, 12 mps dV for a fuel tank), rather than having to calculate performance at the end.