BattleTech fan since the early '90s, game design enthusiast since forever.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

DropShip Engines

In FASA's 1980s DropShips and JumpShips sourcebook, the engines on the Triumph, Condor, Fortress, Overlord and Excalibur all equal [ship mass]*[thrust]/15 - 50, and the engines on the Seeker, Monarch and Behemoth are close to that.


The Avenger, Buccaneer and Union are at [mass]*[thrust]/15 - 75, while the smallest ships, the Leopard, Fury and Gazelle are right around [mass]*[thrust]/15 - 100. The curve


[mass*thrust]/15 - [(14494*mass*thrust - 11150000) / (311*mass*thrust - 1279000)]

fits most of those engines. I don't expect to fit them all perfectly--when I worked through the JumpShip construction data I found typos, copy errors, and weirder inconsistencies which make that impossible. I'm pretty confident that the Mule and Mammoth engines have a digit wrong, and that the Vengeance's engine was calculated from a thrust of 3, instead of the thrust 4 its listed at. (I'm not the first to notice this about the Vengeance, but danged if I can remember who I've heard it from before.)

I'd feel pretty good about my equation, except that the ships which don't fit are all fast- the Achilles at thrust 8, the Seeker at thrust 5, and the Intruder at thrust 4 (in a band dominated by thrust 3 ships). So I don't think I'm accounting for thrust correctly.

I'd hoped to solve this by Thanksgiving, but que sera sera.