The Phoenix hull was originally the only model Constellation that could equip one size larger power plant, presumably to power the point defense system and shields, making it slightly more durable than the other models. Has this changed to be balanced in some other way?
TL;DRBecause component sizes have changed, the Phoenix can't take a larger power plant, so it gets a competition-class one instead that gives more power at the cost of durability.
We can't reasonably size up a power plant anymore, because the sizes have changed since we first initially...
The entire system has changed since 2014.
The entire system has changed. So if we wanted to put a larger power plant in here, there just wouldn't be any room. So what we've done instead is we've put in upgraded competition-class power plants. And what that basically means is, what you usually think of a competition, it would be like a racing, finely tuned, high performance, but the tradeoff for the high performance that you're getting is going to be its durability. So you're going to get more power out of the power plant, but you're going to have to replace it more often, basically.
We've talked about this quite a bit, and if you want the documentation on this, I'm going to recommend going to the Shipyard series of articles available on robertspaceindustries.com. Components have three basic descriptors. There's the size, there's the grade, and there's the type. It's size one through 10, if I remember correctly. I think there are up to 10, but I don't think we've actually used any of them. We've built a scale that allows us to expand in the future. You'll see the details there. But then the grade is grades A through E, as far as the quality, with A being the highest grade component and E being the 'well, I've got to get from point A to B, whatever I got.' And then the type being the tuning: there's your civilian type, then there's your military type, and then there's your stealth.
Competition and industrial.
So since the size system changed and we can no longer effectively do a one-larger power plant, what you're saying is that we've improved it from a civilian type of power plant to the competition type.
Exactly.
So you'll get more bang for your buck out of that. As IFCS 2.0 comes online and Item 2.0 continues to come out, our backers will get more and more information about this system. But we detailed it all almost exactly a year ago in the Shipyard, so you can check that out.
There is a whole bunch of documentation. We've figured out all of the different sizes, everything, and they all have names and descriptions. And we just don't have them all made yet.