Table of Contents
Modifications
These are modifications to existing modules over and above the ones in the originals.
Armor
(ss:11-13)
New Armor types:
Beam-Adaptive Armor (UT 190): at $2 million/ton it will be very rare, but allows 3x the normal DR against one type of damage.
Ablative Armor(TL9)(UT 173 ): Any armor can be built as fully ablative, thus multiplies the armor by 5, but the armor of that hull location is reduced by the damage absorbed.
Coverings:
You can add following coverings to your ship armor with following effects:
Reflec(TL9)(UT 173): +2 dDR vs laser attacks, +1/10 armor cost. Other ships get +2 to detect the ship with sensors.
Improved reflec(TL11)(UT 173): +4 dDR vs laser attacks, +1/5armor cost. Other ships get +2 to detect the ship with sensors.
Control Room
(ss:14) You can enhance the standard sensor included in the control room with the options given under Enhanced, multipurpose, science, and tactical comm/sensor arrays(ss:15). In such cases use 1/10 the price of the enhanced sensor of your SM as base price. This has no effects except the hip price will be higher and the special options ofr the given sensor type can be used.
Example: a SM 9 ship swaps its control room built in sensor to a tactical sensor. A SM 9 enhanced sensor has a base cost of $6M, thus the current sensor is values at $600k. The tactical sensor will cost 5 times the $600k or $3M. They may or may not get some salvage value for the old sensor.
Force Screen
(ss:16) Additional optional force screen variant(ss:32): Reality Stabilizer field. See UT194-195. As “reality stabilized” forcefield, but instead makes a radius where no warp/hyper and so on works. The GM has to decide what all technologies are affected.
Read “dDR” as “field radius in miles” around the vessel. You can have both a nuclear damper and another force screen
Habitat
(ss:18) Change: SM 6 ships cannot have own size stateroom modules, they must install a SM 7 module with 2 staterooms taking 3 slots(or 1.5 slots for 1 stateroom)
Minifac: The minifac modules are not used, instead install SM +6 factory module.
The following module can be placed in habitats as “Specialized Rooms for Habitats”:
Life pods (UT:232). You can replace 1 cabin with 5 lifeboats in single use mountings.
Regeneration/rejuvenation tanks(TL 10) and chrysalis machines(TL 11)([[UT201]]): you can change the sickbay beds to regen/rejuv tanks and chrysalis machines in the same way as automeds by adding the tank/machine price.
Note that a removed stateroom allows placing of any other SM 6 module instead.
TL 10-12: With availability of bioplastic regenerating lifesupport that takes very little mass, so one cabin equivalent is 1.5 cabins/stateromms/bunkrooms
Seats
TL 10-12: With availability of bioplastic regenerating lifesupport that takes very little mass, so seats can have full lifesupport at normal density.
Stasis web
(ss:26) Hypertime field:(UT 195): you can designate any statis field to be a hypertime field instead at normal cost or to have both settings for double cost.
Solar panel arrays
Are really not usable as power plants.
The problem with solar panels is really that the required area to get anything comparable to the other power plants is ridiculously large and that the real energy received is so variable based on distance so really solar panels would work fine as the axillary power system for things close to stars like at earth orbit, but not for high energy systems like weapons.
As example the SM +10 major battery as beam weapon outputs 3GJ and thus you likely need a lot more than that to fire it due to inefficiencies.
Total Solar radiation at distance of 1 AU is on average 1.36 kw/m^3, so with a super science 73.5% efficiency(where normal efficient solar cell today is maybe 20%) you would have 1kw/square meter and to get 1 GW(allowing you to shoot maybe every 5-15 seconds depending n your weapon efficiency) you would need a solar panel 1 km by 1 km(SM +19)