Hi RoS
I share your attitude towards the goal of an erratta free product.
As proposed in a few places, I think that the FF&S type of architecture will work well if we can kick out a number of modular pieces for it so that people can build "HG-like" and "LBB2-like" ships without needing to get into the guts of a FF&S type of design system.
Unfortunately there are a lot of pieces to "stress test" before that becomes practical, and we still need to come up with the framework for designing those components. My first pass proposal would be that if you are building a "module" design for T5 it should be a multiple of 14 cubic meters, "structure" should support 6 G's and it should be within 5% of 10 tons (mass) per displacement ton of volume. With this as a base guideline, you can easily "snap" pieces into starships without worrying about recalculating their thrust capabilities.
Other constraints would be things like "what size are the basic modules?" This is (apparently) unimportant at the HG level, but if you're building the modules at the FF&S level, there is a big difference between dimensions of 5x6x7m and 30x2x3.5m. For HG these are both 15 Td, for bracing and hull materials cost they are radically different, and weapons systems that fit in the first may not fit in the second (and vice versa)
This also requires some decisions from MWM fairly early on in the process, since changing something like power output from fusion plants would throw a fairly significantly monkey wrench in the works if it happened "midstream". At the moment I am using FF&S as the "base" system, since what is needed is a proof of concept for discussion, not the "final" version.
I'll start a thread on this later, once I have some modules to demonstrate, and a basic design philosophy. It's a lot easier to look at something and say "this I like, This I don't like, and I can't understand these bits" than to try and visualize the whole thing at once. I've already had to re-think my basic approach twice, and I'm trying to figure out how to integrate pieces into various hull forms, since you should be able to use the same basic module in an "airframe" hull as an "unstreamlined" hull. This has interesting implications on the hull form design. This *does* work nicely if we use the proposed "cylinder slices" sequence for small craft.
Again, if folks want to run with this, it should be forked from this thread, and should probably live in the "fleet" forum, since it's only really applicable to ships. ("modular" ground / grav vehicles are probably easier to specialize with a complete redesign than try to design for "interchangability")
Scott Martin