In general, I'm pretty happy with the change in mass to account for the different ship sizes. It always bugged me that an engine gave the same movement for the same mass whether mounted on a tiny or huge hull. The new scheme is impressive.
However, there appears to be one glitch in the system: not only is module mass impacted by hull size, but the way the scaling factor is implemented, you lose much of the advantages of hull miniaturization.
I noticed this as the size of my sensor and construction modules (which is what I pay most attention to) kept creaping upwards for the same hull size. I finally figured out that it appears this is how the mass of a module is determined:
(base module mass) + (scaling factor) * (base hull size * hull miniaturization factor)
Let's take the Construction module on a cargo hull for example.
It originally has the following mass: 45 + 5% * (90 * 1.0) = 49.5
However, let's say you attain (through various techs, et al) a 30% hull miniaturization factor.
Under this scheme, the constructor module now has: 45 + 5% (90 * 1.30) = 50.8 mass
This quickly results in you gaining NOTHING from general miniaturization for said modules. Every time you miniaturize, your module grows in size proportionally. So what's really the point of miniaturization?
I think this is just a programming error, and probably due to using the wrong variable. Modules should be sized according to the BASE hull size, without any additional miniaturization taken into account. It makes no sense that an increase in miniaturization knowledge would force an INCREASE in module size.
I suspect that internally, there's a variable named something like "CARGO_HULL_CAPACITY", which contains the value of the *current* mass capability. This is not what should be used by the module calculation. It should be using the fixed BASE_CARGO_HULL_CAPACITY (or similar static constant).
I know this happens for the sensors, survey module, and construction module. I'm not sure where else it shows up. A code review is probably a good idea to make sure that similar things aren't happening to all the various add-ins for a hull.
