I've been fiddling around with FFS (the TNE version) to try and model the ships from Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica as I think MWP's BSG game pretty much, well, sucks...at least for my style of play and desired level of detail. At first I was thinking that the main guns could be coilguns or railguns, and using a one or two meter bore, came up with some pretty insanely massive projectiles. While this would be the closest to canon (both the series bible and "The Science Of Battlestar Galactica" refer to them as 'railguns' or kinetic weapons), it would also be quite limiting - ranges wouldn't be much more than maybe 100km-150km, and even that may be questionable given that velocities probably ranged from 6000m/s to 10000ms/ with a potentially top velocity around 15000ms. So now I'm looking at fusion guns. I wanted to start at TL16 and then work my way lower, so I could find what the best possible outcome would be and then devolve it to what might actually be fielded. Here's the dilemma...When I create a fusion cartridge that's 1m diameter by 5m long, it has enough energy to punch through a battlestar's armor (The Science Of BSG postulated that Galactica's armor was currently 5m thick) at close range, but the recoil cradle mass for one gun was somewhere just shy of 600 tons (600,000kg) with a volume of 300dtons. A dual turret would then be somewhere short of 700 tons. Does this sound reasonable based on the formulas given in FFE? -- Kurt Feltenberger xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com “Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me
