Problems with Submissions

This is Steven Petrick Writing.

One of the problems with submissions is a tendency for the submitter (not all submitters, but there is a minority that does this) to think he has found a loophole and decide that he is going to drive a supertanker through it.

An example was a recent submission of base designs.

The author of these noticed that there is a considerable gap in the number of internals between a Base Station and a Battle Station. Taking this as a starting point, he assumed that he could design base stations that had a number of internals that was 67% of the way between what a Base Station had, and what a Battle Station had. He could then keep the shield costs and life support costs of his bases at size class 3 (Base Station), while in the process putting more weapons and power on his Base Stations (in some cases more weapons and power than any existing Battle Station).

Having done this, he then submitted his Base Stations for approval, and was surprised when they were rejected.

Part of the problem is that he failed to realize that a lot of that "gap" between a Base Station and a Battle Station is to allow for the use of Base Augmentation Modules (which his bases would also use) and Pods being docked to the base. (A Base Station in SFB could conceivably have six Cargo Pods docked to its Module Docking Stations instead of Modules, but even if it just had six Cargo Modules on those six Module Locations you are adding 72 boxes to it which covers at lot of the difference between a Base Station and a Battle Station.)

And, of course, the submitter did not bother to explain what he had done, he simply assumed that if the bases looked pretty they would be approved. When they were rejected as both too big and over-gunned, only then did he start arguing that since they were still smaller than Battle Stations (pretty much admitting that he did design them by simply subtracting a Base Station from a Battle Station and adding 67% of the remainder to his Base Station designs) there was no problem.

Bases have to have room for augmentation Modules to allow them to grow. A Base Station could not be used in Y120 with Fighter Modules and a PF Module. Those Modules will appear in the future adding those abilities to the Base Station.