Ship Design All Wrong?

[Commander McLane]

I think in the original novella/manual it was hinted at that larger ships use smaller ships (such as Worms) to load/unload.

Should be scriptable (for atmosphere, not to support huge player-ships) - large ship enters station Aegis and enters a holding position, then smaller shuttles ferry back & forth to the station.

In principle, yes. Has been done, actually, for instance in my bigtrader.oxp, which hasn't been officially released because bigship.oxp was faster.

But—and here comes the big but—practically the answer is no. The reason is once again Oolite's sucking collision detection. If a shuttle gets close enough to a large ship to create the illusion of transferring cargo, Oolite thinks the two ship have already collided, and >wham< there goes your shuttle. Very unsatisfying.

[CheeseRedux]

But—and here comes the big but—practically the answer is no. The reason is once again Oolite's sucking collision detection. If a shuttle gets close enough to a large ship to create the illusion of transferring cargo, Oolite thinks the two ship have already collided, and >wham< there goes your shuttle. Very unsatisfying.

Could this be worked around by making a ship and a station looking exactly alike?

The idea being that if a ship is spawned it would make its way (veryveryvery slowly, mind you) towards the station. Once near the station, it would simply stop at some convenient distance. If possible, but not absolutely necessary, launch transporters to dock with main station. (If not possible, the handwavium goes something along the line of paperworks & customs stuff taking longer than the average player's attention span. Come to think of it, longer than any player's attention span.)
If a station is spawned, it just sits there, with transporters shuttling back & forth between it and the main station. (Why does it never leave? Handwavium answer: It does, just not when you're looking. It takes a long time to un/load one of these babies, right?)

That would create a fairly believable illusion of the thing actually doing what it's supposed to be doing.

[Switeck]

But—and here comes the big but—practically the answer is no. The reason is once again Oolite's sucking collision detection. If a shuttle gets close enough to a large ship to create the illusion of transferring cargo, Oolite thinks the two ship have already collided, and >wham< there goes your shuttle. Very unsatisfying.

Do you mean this separate from actually docking internally with the big ships with docking bays? Because I've seen a pretty motley assortment of ships dock with Dredgers.

[Disembodied]

There's a really good site that considers the limits of physics, and various fictional workarounds, on spaceship design (and various digressions on what people might be doing out there too):

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html

[Micha]

I was meaning more along the lines Switeck was too - the shuttles would dock at both the station and the large ship.

I can't really imagine standard cargo transfer happening through space. The reason pirates do it that way is, supposedly, because blowing up a ship is safer than trying to board and subdue the crew.

As for the small traders / truckers analogy - truckers, as far as I know, are primarily a relatively short-distance distribution network where the bulk haulers can't reach (economically). So, back to Oolite, in-system 'truckers' would make sense if there are large haulers between systems. But cross-system 'truckers' would make less sense in that scenario.

This is all my personal view on it anwyays - beauty of it is everyone can imagine their own 'reality'

[Commander McLane]

I was meaning more along the lines Switeck was too - the shuttles would dock at both the station and the large ship.

Ah, you're talking of the large ship being dockable. That's a different issue and can certainly be done (at the cost of producing large docking queues, of course).

However, practically none of the currently available big ships in Oolite (and absolutely none which act as traders) have a docking bay. Bigtraders.oxp (like bigships.oxp) is about those.

[ClymAngus]

There's a really good site that considers the limits of physics, and various fictional workarounds, on spaceship design (and various digressions on what people might be doing out there too):

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html

It's science right? So the first thing we look up is catastrophic intestinal decompression in a vacuum;

"Distention of these abdominal organs may also stimulate the abdominal branches of the vagus nerve, resulting in cardiovascular depression, and if severe enough, cause a reduction in blood pressure, unconsciousness, and shock. Usually, abdominal distress can be relieved after a rapid decompression by the passage of excess gas."

"Fart man! Fart! Your very life depends upon the cheese you squeeze in the next 10 seconds!"

[Darkbee]

Going the other way, fighters would want a small a head-on or tail-on silhouette to be harder to hit. I'm presuming of course they are either attacking or fleeing from whatever's shooting at it -- if they're in a crossfire from the sides, they're "doing it wrong"(tm)

All fighters should be painted black too (stealth bomber stylee), that would make them pretty hard to spot in the darkness of Space. Although, I would rather hope that a couple of hundred years into the future we wouldn't be manually aiming the nose of our ship to fire lasers.

[Eric Walch]

But—and here comes the big but—practically the answer is no. The reason is once again Oolite's sucking collision detection. If a shuttle gets close enough to a large ship to create the illusion of transferring cargo, Oolite thinks the two ship have already collided, and >wham< there goes your shuttle. Very unsatisfying.

Do you mean this separate from actually docking internally with the big ships with docking bays? Because I've seen a pretty motley assortment of ships dock with Dredgers.

The problem McLane describes does not happen with stations. Stations were explicit excluded from the list of ships that generate a collision pre-warning, probably to make docking possible.

The problem of McLane of a small shuttle touching a big ship is that contact is handled as a collision between two fully stiff objects. The amount of collision damage increases linearly with the others mass. So even the slightest touch with a big object does much damage.

e.g. hitting the docking walls of a big torus station does much more damage than the walls of a plain station.

[Star Gazer]

...a couple of hundred years into the future we wouldn't be manually aiming the nose of our ship to fire lasers.

I would tend to agree that weapons would be more or less turreted, or in movable mountings - after all, trackable lasering is already with us! ...
http://www.gizmag.com/ray-gun-shoots-do ... re/115742/
...but it tends to take the fun out of games!

[ClymAngus]

In some small way to make this thread more useful I've been bopping around the internet locating some nice 3D art that people might draw from in relation to future ship design.

More of a scrap book of interesting stuff really:

http://www.star-ranger.com/Voidstriker.htm
ttp://www.star-ranger.com/Minis.htm
http://s583.photobucket.com/albums/ss27 ... Starships/

[Darkbee]

In some small way to make this thread more useful...

What are you trying to say? Hhhmmm?

I don't claim to have all the answers, but coming up with questions I've never had a problem with.

The "Belter" ships actually look like a logical design strategy... even though aesthetically they are less than pleasing IMHO.

[ClymAngus]

In some small way to make this thread more useful...

What are you trying to say? Hhhmmm?

I don't claim to have all the answers, but coming up with questions I've never had a problem with.

The "Belter" ships actually look like a logical design strategy... even though aesthetically they are less than pleasing IMHO.

What I'm trying to say is a discussion is good, a solution is better (but not usually possible) but a resource on which to draw for the future at least stops a tread sinking without trace.

[sarc]Here I am trying to infuse your thread with longevity, and you go and take it badly..... I don't know, you can't help some people [/sarc]

[Darkbee]

[sarc]I think we need to take this outside. *rolls up sleeves*
Ladies first! *pushes out of airlock and seals it*[/sarc]

Now you make it sound like a thinly veiled compliment. Bravo!

I see where you're coming from now. My comment still stands: Belters look crap but entirely practical in design. Exactly the type of thing I had in mind because they step away from jet fighter plane-esque spaceship building convention™.

[Kaks]

Got to say, I do find the belter designs aesthetically pleasing... & slightly impractical to boot!