NOTE: I also like small ship Traveller universes.

 

Suggested Limiting Factor: The structural integrity issues of larger ships.

 

This is one reason I don't like High Guard. All other factors (such as TL) being equal, engineering realities mean that bigger vessels will always be more fragile than smaller ones. It doesn't matter if you use supertech structural members, because (unless you're a penny-wise, pound-foolish idiot) you're also using those same supertech materials in your smaller ships (which always have much less hull mass to support per cross-sectional volume).

 

So your big ships *should* always be clumsy behemoths . . . not because they can't mount enough manuevering thrusters to be more agile, but because they don't dare to do so. Significant lateral thrust applied routinely will steadily degrade their hull frames, leaving them even more vulnerable to structural damage than they were when they first left the dockyard. Since they therefore can't dodge damage, they are always deployed with swarms of escorts, whose function is to screen them from contact with "lesser" vessels which can still yet manage to carry a few behemoth-killing missiles. It only takes one in the wrong place, after all . . .

 

Or - at least - that's how I do it.

 

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