It would be a mistake to think of this as a fighter. It is more like a Hind or Apache helicopter gunship translated into the far future, with a pinch of Huey for seasoning.
Regarding power use: * Each pulse of the main x-ray laser uses 144,000 kWs. That means the power cells (480 rE cells at 450,000 kWs each) would hold power for 1,500 shots, or about three minutes of fire. That is way above real world numbers for fighters or gunships. * However, there are other uses for this power. The point defense beams use 3,840 kWs each, so one main gun shot can be traded for 37.5 point defense shots. * Last but not least, going FTL uses 86,400,000 kWs per engine (there are two). The design assumes that hyperdrives can be 'stacked', so a maximum power (i.e. maximum speed) entry takes the power of 1,200 main gun shots. * Killing the deflector brings an 11-fold increase in the recharge. The listed shots allocate 80% of stored power to the drives, 16% to the main gun and 4% to the point defense. Balance to taste, but too much fire means you can't hyper out any more. Regarding the armor: * Thermal-superconducting armor doubles DR vs. x-ray lasers, which is balanced by the armor divisor for a net zero effect. * The deflector increases the PD when it is running (to PD 8), not the DR. PD 8 brings a very real chance of dodging incoming fire. * The increased frontal DR comes from shifting armor to the front. I purchased overall DR 1,125 and shifted DR 225 from each other face. * To penetrate the frontal armor, a burst would have to hit with four rounds, which means a roll made by 5 or more. Not the way to bet. Against targets in its own weight class, use missiles. I would have thought that the MIRVed 10-kt warheads on a short-range missile would draw more comments :-) Regarding reactor fuel: * GURPS Vehicles (first edition) had small and large fusion reactors, with 20 and 200 years of internal fuel respectively. The stats for large reactors came from Space, where fusion reactors ran on internal fuel to balance them with the lighter but power-hungry antimatter reactors. * The small fusion reactor has disappeared from VE2nd, but there are nuclear power units (which can represent fusion power at the GM's option) and Super MHD fusion (from Vehicles Expansion 2) with lower endurance. In the 60-MW range, the only alternative would have been AM, but I didn't want AM for the mothership so the little ones didn't get it, either. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
