Not exactly - it's kind of a deduction based on various things RFC has said over the years.fleadermouse wrote:Do any of you have citations for the "impleller / drive node physics" comments with respect to ship beam vs length. I have not seen this directly addressed. If so please post them. Thanks
But here are two quotes that informed by thinking; the first from the appendix to Short Victorious War and the second from a 2004 infodump shooting down variable geometry starships. (I seem to recall more about placement; but I'm not finding them in a quick search. I know there was about about the flexibility of beta node only placement vs alpha nodes; in the context of forts and their hull shape; but I haven't found it yet)
Short Victorious War wrote:The nodes which generated the impeller wedge had to be very specifically located relative to the dimensions of a ship. In general, they had to lie within twelve to fifteen percent of the extreme ends of the vessel and well inside the maximum beam which the wedge allowed.
runsforcelery wrote:Not only that, but each ship's alpha and beta nodes are built to function in a very specific spatial relationship to one another. In other words, nodes are built and installed to produce a specific size and shape of impeller wedge and "sump" to feed the mounting ship's inertial compensator. You don't futz around with those relationships once they're established
[edit] You might also want to look at the old infodump on the Reliant class BC, which includes
Do note that this is well before the great resizing so the lengths mentioned have been reconned and don't match the current cannon as expressed in House of Steel [/edit]runsforcelery wrote: The major difference between ships of the wall and BCs, CAs, and lighter units is that the big boys' hull midbodies tend to have more cylindrical and less flattened cross-sections. Their design parameters emphasize filling out the maximum possible amount of hull volume, whereas the lighter combatants shave volume to save mass and achieve marginal acceleration improvements from a given impeller strength.
I think there was a length to beam ideal ratio / rule for the node / compensator efficiency; and that's what was driving my statement that you wouldn't make a fat short ship because the node placement shouldn't work (or at least shouldn't work well)