Richard Aiken - raikenclw at gmail.com wrote:

>> The Seven Worlds SF setting for Savage Worlds posits globular ships which mount reaction drive engines as pods attached to a series of monorail lines which encircle the hull. Where the lines cross engine pods can transfer between them. As far as a propulsion system goes, this struck me as needless complication made just for the sake of being different. The setting doesn't feature either antigravity or inertial damper tech, such a system would grant only a dubious improvement to maneuverability, while definitely adding additional complexity to break down in combat.

Unless, in that setting, for some reason engines are super-rare and/or expensive, so you try and use as few as possible. But I agree, it sounds a lot like someone's cute idea which would never work out in practice :-)

>> But it strikes me that using such a network to mount hardpoints might make good sense, especially for ships too ungainly to rotate quickly enough to bring a new hardpoint to bear or concentrate all operational hardpoints on one target.

Actually there's much the same problem with spinal mount weapons. They only point "forwards" (or perhaps a few square degrees on all sides os this). IM (admittedly Highly Variant) TU, ships with these weapons are (usually, unless they have a very well-defined field of fire) constantly rotating in order to be able to fire on a much larger volume. Technically, I suppose, they are tumbling, or precessing, so that eventually they can cover the entire sphere around them. Of course this limits them in other ways - taking two shots at the same target is usually not possible without a rather long delay as everything comes around again. Setting up battle tactics so that rotation is not required is every Admiral's dream (c.f. "crossing the T" in WW1/2 naval combat).

IMHVTU TL18 capital ships can be equipped with non-spinal mount meson weapons, which can rotate inside an internal volume. Since they are a lot smaller than the ship carrying them, they effectively have a complete spherical field of fire at all times. Very effective :-)

I make no claim for any of this to be canon, and I am at best a hand-wavy timey-wimey story-telling  GM, not a gearhead, but I think it's a logical step.

Jonathan