Re: Re : Armor Rating and Manueverability Class

On Sun, 8 Nov 1998, Colin Cookman wrote:

> Armor Ratings don't make sense. I look at the existing ships listed, and
> I can't figure out how they could get the armor ratings and the
> manueverability class ratings using the system for making ships
> presented in the book. Is this just sloppy work on the part of TSR, or
> are the standard ships supposed to be special cases, to encourage
> players to buy the standard ships? What's the deal, exactly?

	Leroy answered this question well, but I'd like to add that
another problem is that the ships from the original boxed set were drawn
first and then the stats and deckplans developed.  Sort of "Whoa that's
cool.  Looks like a heavy cruiser to me" type design technique.  Another
problem is that the original tonnages seem to range from 1-100.  I know
the Citadel doesn't follow this, but it is more of a moving planetoid
than a ship.  The only vessel that doesn't follow this 100 ton limit is
the Tsunami.  Even massive vessels, such as the Illithid Dreadnought
whose deck area is obviously far greater than a 60 ton Man O War, are
limited to 100 tons.  When you're dealing with area, the figures between
60 and 100 tons don't look so bad.  But once that third dimension is
added in, the tonnages are ridiculous.

John McCloud
jmccloud@?????.????.edu