Antiubericity

[Smivs]

So what's the solution? Here's one. Size matters.
We perhaps should apportion sizes (physical dimensions) to equipment and cargo. A drive/thruster should be X metres cubed (M3), an energy bank should be Y M3 a laser should be Z M3 etc. For a ship to be 'Valid', the cubic capacity of the ship can be calculated from its dimensions. A sensible amount of this volume (say 5 cubic metres) should be ear-marked for crew space, and then 75% of the rest can be for gear. The left over 25% is for access ways etc, and to recognise that not every cubic centimetre is going to be useable.
The 75% of room can be filled as you see fit...loads of engines if you want speed, loads of cargo space if you want to haul stuff, loads of energy banks if you want durability, with perhaps a nominal volume for a 're-charger' - the higher the recharge rate the more 'rechargers' need to be fitted in.
Deciding on the the actual sizes of equipment could be the subject of a new thread, and one that I hope would include as many people as possible.
As it's not likely any of this will be coded into the game, I suggest a Wiki page in the OXP section could be devoted to listing the equipment and 'official' sizes thereof, and OXP authors should be strongly urged to use this method to calculate what works and what doesn't.
This method could potentially still lead to a few 'silly' ships (eg mega-fast) coming along, but at least they would be 'possible' within the parameters set, and this method would force them to be well balanced.

Sorry for reviving this discussion. But I hope someone is going to do whats suggested here. Of course we then have to make a list ship parts. After this is made we could quickly see which ship are unbalanced.

I have actually been looking at this on and off for a while now (well since I suggested it) and it's hard. One problem I've had is calculating the size for a cargo pod/cargo bay. Do you squeeze the pods in like, well peas in a pod, (sorry ), or do you leave room around them so they can be moved around within the bay. If you just want to unload your computers and they are at the back of the cargo bay, can you move them out easily of do you have to unload everything else first? I'm coming to the conclusion that realistically a cargo bay needs to be about three times bigger than the volume of the number of pods it will hold...and then we don't know what size the pods are anyway! Indeed they may vary in size. We'd need to use the biggest as our benchmark.
Consider this;- If you scoop up 1T of slaves (a slave), that cargo pod has got to be big enough to contain the slave (who could be a 1/2 ton alien of some sort), along with supplies and life support equipment. That's a BIG cargo pod!
Like I said, it's proving far from straight forward, but I am (slowly) working on it.

[DaddyHoggy]

People I work with in the Army and RAF say you just pack cargo in be it ship or transport plane - the manifesto tells you what is where but it's usually all unpacked in one hit. No niceties about space to move around - if it's light but bulky it just gets stuffed in to the volume available. Only if its small and heavy do you end up with "space".

[Killer Wolf]

given the shape of the cannisters, i've always pictured a system like a beehive crossed w/ one of those old robot arms that pulled mag tape reels from archive : the cannisters would be slotted in honeycomb "cells" and tagged/logged etc, and an arm could select any given cannister to remove (as in cycling your cargo to dump an item) etc.

[DaddyHoggy]

Thing is we buy "stuff" in TCs which we have decided is definitely not a ton(ne) - so if you buy 2 TCs of food - you buy 2 cargo pods - 1 may have tomatoes in it (mostly water and therefore quite "heavy"), the other may be full of pre-made meringues (and therefore the weight of the pod would be little more than the pod itself)

I have always imagined therefore that the cargo capacity of (E)Oolite ships has always simply been the number of these pods that can be jammed into the hold, nothing to do with the "weight" (mass). That's why, on another thread, I suggested special cargo for Anacondas because 750TCs (volume) is wasted because you can't buy that much stuff at the stations, but you could (for example) get in a complete Combine Harvester (without having to break it down into parts that fit inside pods which your Feudal Poor Agricultural world may not have the skill set to re-assemble at the other end - but they would pay a premium for a complete machine plus spares - and thus - for these special cargoes owning an Anaconda would be worth it, and make sense of their existence - to me anyway!)

[Smivs]

The other issue here is cargo Bay Extensions. How the hell do they work?
It's not just something like a shipping container welded to the outside of the hull...well I've never seen a ship with this, have you?
So the extension must be internal. Therefore when designing a ship which is to have the extension as an option, empty space must be left available.
When an extension is bought, what you're actually buying is the fitting out of the empty space...racking/shelving, handling equipment etc.

Also I really don't like this idea of just cramming cargo into a tight space. For one thing it's become clear as I've looked at this that the ships are actually quite large, and if the cargo bay is just the size of X cargo pods, this would take up just a tiny part of the ship.
Also, a traders ship is used more like a small van rather than say a frieghter, doing small runs and drops rather than just carrying one cargo to one destination, so access is important. You need to be able to get to that container at the back if it's your next drop, so you need room to get to it and get it out, and equipment to handle these large objects, all of which must be in the cargo bay to start with.

[Smivs]

Just a thought, but this thread is moving away from its original subject, the problem of silly Uber-ships.
We're now looking at a method to help design sensible ships.
Would it make sense to move this thread and start a new one specifically for this subject? Called say 'OXP ship design guidlines' or something like that.
Perhaps it might even be more appropriate in Expansion Pack.
Admins?

[DaddyHoggy]

The other issue here is cargo Bay Extensions. How the hell do they work?
It's not just something like a shipping container welded to the outside of the hull...well I've never seen a ship with this, have you?
So the extension must be internal. Therefore when designing a ship which is to have the extension as an option, empty space must be left available.
When an extension is bought, what you're actually buying is the fitting out of the empty space...racking/shelving, handling equipment etc.

Also I really don't like this idea of just cramming cargo into a tight space. For one thing it's become clear as I've looked at this that the ships are actually quite large, and if the cargo bay is just the size of X cargo pods, this would take up just a tiny part of the ship.
Also, a traders ship is used more like a small van rather than say a frieghter, doing small runs and drops rather than just carrying one cargo to one destination, so access is important. You need to be able to get to that container at the back if it's your next drop, so you need room to get to it and get it out, and equipment to handle these large objects, all of which must be in the cargo bay to start with.

Nah, efficient dockside cargo handling means it is much quicker to take everything out, remove from your manifest what you need, then put it all back (and top up with new purchases) - this bit can be fully standardised irrespective of the ship's design.

This is what has happened with the ISO container - its standardised ship design, crane sizes, and the length of truck trailers...

[Smivs]

The fact is both methods probably work well in their own way. What I'm looking at though is a way to 'calculate' whether a ship 'makes sense' in terms of the Ooniverse and its canon.
As I mentioned above one of the problems is the shear size of the ships. They are actually enormous
To derive a formula that would work (in the sense that it would help confirm that a new ship is sensible) we would have to assume a certain size for everything, and cargo space is the obvious candidate to take up some of the slack. That is why I'm looking at the extra space in the cargo bay irrespective of whether it's useful or not.
If we don't do this something else would have to be stupidly large, like crew quarters the size of the Millennium Dome or engines the size of a house...in a cobra!
The other area I'm looking at to take up this slack is fuel tanks...there is the potential there to use a LOT of room up.

[DaddyHoggy]

The fact is both methods probably work well in their own way. What I'm looking at though is a way to 'calculate' whether a ship 'makes sense' in terms of the Ooniverse and its canon.
As I mentioned above one of the problems is the shear size of the ships. They are actually enormous
To derive a formula that would work (in the sense that it would help confirm that a new ship is sensible) we would have to assume a certain size for everything, and cargo space is the obvious candidate to take up some of the slack. That is why I'm looking at the extra space in the cargo bay irrespective of whether it's useful or not.
If we don't do this something else would have to be stupidly large, like crew quarters the size of the Millennium Dome or engines the size of a house...in a cobra!
The other area I'm looking at to take up this slack is fuel tanks...there is the potential there to use a LOT of room up.

I really like what you're trying to do, so keep it up.

Given the standard ships, some ships are quite large but have no cargo space, others are quite small, but manage to have some, and the Anaconda isn't that much bigger than a Boa but has a massive OTT cargo capacity (given that we know that a RL(tm) coffee stain introduced this aberration, it has nevertheless become canon) but it all needs to be justified through the spec of internals (fast ships have big engines therefore less free internal space, the Boa has nice cabin space for crew, Anacondas have submariner style bunks, [guessing/suggesting!] - I think the original Traders manual talks about the massive improvement between Python and Boa of the size of the navigation system) - so that OXPs ships can fit on or at least around a hyper dimensional line that bounds cargo, speed (therefore engine size) and cost together...

[Poro]

Just to contribute to the off-topic meandering...

The other issue here is cargo Bay Extensions. How the hell do they work?

I've always thought of them as more expensive equipment/rigging. Instead of large bulky robotic arms lifting things around, you have special anti-gravity/levitation pads which take up less space. Instead of heavy duty supports and bulkheads, you have slimmer ones made of higher quality alloys. No more large motors shifting that conveyor belt - more expensive ones with smaller components. As these things are reduced, the support infrastructure for them is also reduced, freeing up more space. In other words the machinery 'behind the scenes' is stripped back and replaced with miniaturized more expensive versions.

I appreciate that this will not account for those ships with very large 'extra' capacity improvements. Also, I'm sure there is something on the wiki about this... mentions shifting bulkheads or something.

It's not just something like a shipping container welded to the outside of the hull...well I've never seen a ship with this, have you?

Wolfwood's Cobra Rapier has a frangible extra cargo hold which is slung underneath the hull.

[Smivs]

It's not just something like a shipping container welded to the outside of the hull...well I've never seen a ship with this, have you?

Wolfwood's Cobra Rapier has a frangible extra cargo hold which is slung underneath the hull.

There's always one, isn't there

[Smivs]

Probably time to recap a bit.
What I am trying to do is come up with a simple formula for calculating whether a ship 'works' or not.
It will be along the lines of taking the cubic volume of the ship, then subtracting the cubic volume of all the equipment, fuel, cargo, living quarters etc (to include 'dead space' to allow for all the options that could be retro-fitted). This is why we/I need to agree a sensible volume for each element.
Basically the closer to Zero the final figure, the better. A ship with a small 'Plus' figure at the end will have a bit of room to spare, and a ship going into minus figures has a problem. The bigger the minus, the sillier the ship.
If I can get this working (and to be honest I'm not even really close yet), it will be a dead easy way to check any new ship for 'sensible-ness' and should alert any OXP author if their new 'pride and joy' is going to incur the wrath of the Oolite Canon Police.

[Disembodied]

If we don't do this something else would have to be stupidly large, like crew quarters the size of the Millennium Dome or engines the size of a house...in a cobra!

There's no reason why the engines shouldn't be pretty chunky ... after all, they punch holes in the universe and violate all manner of physical laws. That's got to count for something. Then there's all the energy units and shield generators and inertial dampeners and the like, not to mention the sorts of structural bracing necessary for the kinds of gravity shear you get inside a wormhole ... Crew quarters, though, are bound to be small. On merchant vessels, space = money, so personal space is going to be at a premium.

[Arexack_Heretic]

Not on a Ferdy, which is designed to be luxurious.

What you need is several classes of ship, e.g. the roles a ship is intended to fill. (the roles entry in the ship's list should be a guide)

A ship intended as cargo hauler will be a cargohold with engines basically, allowing for extreme cargo capacity, but adding weapons will be relatively cumbersome as lines will have to be drawn and extra powerplants installed etc.
I suggest that each role gets a list of modifiers, so that items fitting that role 'cost' less than the on the basic cost in space or creds.


I would suggest adapting an existing system for ship design such as used in the paper and dice game Silent Death, but I doubt it can be downloaded.

[CheeseRedux]

I missed this discussion first time around, but have read through the thing now, and thought I'd give it a crack.

I've been fiddling around with the numbers of a couple of ships, and I was actually making a bit of headway until I ran into a showstopper: Conflicting data. I was grabbing data from the Wiki at first, but wasn't sure I had gotten all the ships, so I dug out KZ9999's reference sheet, and that has different fricking numbers. Now, I'd like to believe that the Wiki is up to date, but it lists the Boa and the Boa2 with the exact same dimensions. That pretty much kills any notion of "if you want a ship that's faster and carries more cargo and equipment, you need a bigger ship". Now, before I toss the Boa2 in the "broken" bin with the Anaconda and move on, I'd very much like to know which set of data is considered canon. Or "most canon" if there's no 100% answer.

Anyway, the basics of what I was doing are fairly simple; A ship has a volume, x amount is needed for the engine, y for the various equipment, which leaves z for cargo. The hard part is then to fiddle around with the proportionals to find something that fits with all (or most) of the core ships. But I'm putting it down for now, until the data snafu is sorted.

Besides, RLtm is rearing its ugly head again.