Heighliners (The Dune Idea!)

[ToxicSlurpee]

OK, so I've been reading Dune books again (I'm a nerd...so what?) and I got to thinking about how to do Heighliners in SEIV, and I think I've figured it out. I don't really intend on using the idea, so I'm just posting it here.

Essentially, Heighliners are ginormous ships that cart around ridiculous amounts of other ships through "foldspace." They are capable of very quick movement about space and really only go planet to planet. They have a Navigator on it (he's mutated from taking too much melange) that is capable of mentally guiding the ship from place to place.

Anyhoo...you'd need to make Heighliners and Colony Ships the only ship types. Depending on how you want specifics, you could vary, but Heighliners should be at least 3000kT or so. Multiple sizes would be nice. Limit the engines per ship to keep their movement relatively slow (QnP might work), and make their engines somewhat large. Then, make an Emergency Propulsion pod called a Navigator that adds a LOT of movement to the ship (10/20/30 or so, more so for more advanced Versions). It should be mid-sized for a component to represent the Navigator's Tank and the Foldspace components themselves (I'd say like 60 kT).

Heighliners would also need like 60% cargo and/or fighter bays, depending on what you prefer. They're not designed to hold weapons, and would be somewhat easy to hit. You could put a hideous amount of armor/shields on them, however. Heighliners should also get a disgusting amout of Supply and should have better access to infinite supply.

This way, Heighliners can move very swiftly from planet to planet, but are sluggish when away from planets. Colony ships should be more or less like standard ships, but would be smaller than the Heighliners themselves, and would have an entirely seperate set of components. Foldspace should NOT be available to colony ships. The specifics of colony ships would vary depending on whether you use standard colony rules or Proportions-like stuff.

Anyhoo...ALL other ships would be fighters. QnP could be better applied here, as this would be a different scale than the Heighliners. These smaller ships would have limited supply and would NOT have access to infinite supply (with the exception of bigger ones, I guess). Fighter-type ships would be as small as before (15/20/30 kT), with larger ships being 150 kT to 800 kT in size. This way, ALL military ships would be cargo and need a Heighliner to carry them around. They can be fast, but should only be able to survive outside of a Heighliner or planet for a short amount of time.

Drones can be the troop carriers, and could represent dropping troops from orbit in disposable pods.