Indepth guide of ship concept creation for total idiots

[commanderxairon]

ok, so i assume you played Oolite or other space games, and came to oolite in search for customization, you love space things and you feel ready to launch your own dreamed craft to space...

at least that's how i felt when i first tryed to do so with my first (crappy) shipset...


i will give you some tips for design that will help you to make coherently designed ships so you could save some time and develop more skill in the art of shipbuilding, some time, rookie ship builders jump in to any of the programs used to model ships without knowing some of this basic things ill post... i will start the first half of the cake right now... take seat and try to enjoy this and in advace i apologize for my grammar

NOTE: you can or can not take this guide in mind if you want but i reccomend to do so if you want to make your way up in this

1.- take a look of real life existing technology, that will give you a coherent aproach of how a ship should be constituded

the main ship parts and facilities are

-Cockpit
-Hull
-Engine(s)
-Exhaust

aditionally you need

-crew space/living areas
-cargo doors, fuel scoops and if possible tractor beam site
-laser hardpoints, missile outlets(if inside mounted if outside you need more)

2.- here's my point, with the amount of faces you got in spheres, nossles and undetailed and almost fractalic surfaces you could get some detail in the ship actually

3.- think really good and visualize in your head what you wan't to do don't sit in front of the viewport before you don't know what to do, it helps to search inspiration from deviantart artist's who make some hallofa good starships... search on Hhello's profile favorites favourites and see..

ok you understand now that a ship is constituded of several compartments even a fighter does so what is different from a fighter to a ship is the fact that pilot doesn't move from his station and is limited to a short range area due to refuel and limited food supplies wich happens to be like that to make a compact and cheap ship for scorting and assault operations (main use of FIGHTER type ships) i will now proceed to talk about ship types... but before i will tell you how to do a design sheet, that's how all start... you can make it on paint or something simillar but is better for you to have a A4 paper in front of you and a pencil this paper sheet will have al the base information for your ship's build, like Class, Basic Shape, Purpose, Number of crew and that kind of things... so back to the point, the craft classes...


CRAFT CLASSES

Fighter: a Fighter class craft is a ultra lightweight craft with enough capacity to sustain a good amount to of fire into a target it is designed for scorting, and assault so his main atribute is or should be agility and his weakness should be little to no hull, little to no cargo space and little pylon mounting, we can see examples of Fighters on the F-16

Interceptor: an interceptor craft is designed well... for intercept.. .they are brutally fast and where the reason of the invention of the afterburner they are bigger, badder and heavyer than a fighter, they play mainly defensive roles but on an offensive situation they usually carry on long missions (for a light craft) behind enemy lines attacking using his powerfull engines and vast speed to surprise the enemy and return, they should have good enough armor and sightly more pylon capacity than a fighter, but they should be more clunk in their jabbing

NOTE: fighters and interceptors can have multirole capacities but usually they sacrifice some features to do so Fighter Bombers or Fighter Interceptor crafts are the examples, search them on internet and compare them to a "pure role" fighter and you will see, that doesn't diminish their utility but take care not to overpower a craft just because is a multirole

NOTE 2: fighters and inteceptors rely their strenght in their NUMBER, so yeah fighters should be blew up pretty easly so i repeat DON'T OVER POWER THEM if you wan't to play with a fighter you should know that you need to join a faction that reinforce's you with NUMBERS

Bomber: those marduks are designed to deliver hell to enemy placements they should be necesary to face on big capships they should have some tonnage because some weapon OXP's require it they should have well enough pylon capacity depending on their weight and type as they can be heavy, light or the nearly fighter kind Dive bomber wich is esentially a fighter fitted with bombs that "dives in" the hail of gunfire of the capship and deposit a mortal blow on it

Destroyer : a destroyer.. well.. it destroys... XD it is the lighter of the capital ships with simillar tonnage as a light freighter they are designed to siege down enemy positions and be agile enough to have "hit and run" in their tactics they should be very usefull to destroy pirate squads and for guarding cargo convoys you should start to add turrets in this class and not before

Cruiser: heavyer than the destroyer and it excells it in any aspect unless manheuverability it is a heavyer craft capable of deep space operations and military hauling their main purpose is to guard battleships, many idiots like to call his craft a cruiser and doesn't have a clue of what a cruiser is a cruiser CRUISE so is necesary that it has enough space to accomodate damage control devices and should have very powerfull armor to withstand Destroyer class craft attacks also it should have very good "anti fighter" artillery as fast turrets they are the "multirole" of capships because they are in middle of the path between artillery and anti personel works

BATTLESHIPS: (my favorites) this crafts are designed to cast powerfull hits on the enemy and with powerfull i mean POWERFULL a battleship alone should be able to handle any kind of task and even be able to destroy a space station they are very slow but they carry the heavyer artillery, because of oolite limitations naval grade artillery is impossible to make, so fill up this beast with any ammount of pylons, turrets and armor depending on the tier

Carriers: depending on his tier they have a Cruiser or a Battleship hull equipped with special facilities to carry fighters on them... VE BERY CAREFULL with the measures of this ones as real life carriers can take between 20 and 55 craft inside or more (see the Nimitz class supercarrier) they have good anti fighter turrets but no artillery at the point of whriting this i dont know if there's a way to make a fully operable player carrier

NOTE: as light craft does, capships can be multi role we have examples of that in real life with the EDEM class light cruiser who was specially fitted to be an anti aircraft ship also the so called Battlecruiser class ships who are a mix between a battleship and a battle cruiser because calling "light" to a battleship is simply stupid

NOTE2: as a recomendation i suggest to put fuel scoops in the front of the hull or proe because of the low maneuverablilty of this crafts


CIVILIAN CRAFT

to make a coherent civilian craft you should first have in mind the word CIVILIAN their first option facing a beligerant menace is to RUN and they should be equipped to do so...

Freighters/Haulers: they have a sole purpose.. to move cargo from a place to annother... the ammount of it determines his speed and maneuverability, they should have good enough shields to withstand damage while they run and they should have enough pylons to accomodate extra fuel tanks and different counter measures

Liners: liners transport people, and that's all they do, they should be fast enough to run off in pirates precense and should have enoug pylons to accomodate two or three distress call devices, this crafts are not designed even to defend themselves they just carry people, some of them do it with luxury so appareance is an importan thing on this ones, on the other hand they can be efficient and fast like a bullet train or cheap and smelly taxis to haul a Dr.Nobody from Lave to Rietquat that's up to you and the tier of the ship

you now know what are the difference between ships take this in SERIOUS consideration while designing your craft because it will determine his role, skills and limitations

BASIC SHAPE

this is the biggest problem new shipbuilders have they see ships but they don't know what the fuck is inside the hull and what gives them that shape... i will do my best to explain the shape of the parts of a ship and you as designer will have to play with that to make the basic shape of the ship...

ENGINE

an engine is constituded of 3 basic things... a fuel tank, an ignition chamber and an exhaust... NO ENGINE DIFFERS FROM THIS if not it will be violating phisics the following picture depicts a basical ship engine

we are on space and engines makes also the controlling system for the ship so the allocation of them is very important too in the case of light ships you can (and more probable HAVE) to make a vector thrust nozzle that is a reconfigurable directional thrust exaust that changes the direction of the propultion and with that changes the direction of the craft... with heavy crafts that would be imposible due the size of the engines, so multiple engines are necesary changing the trottle of the engines will change the direction of the ship for example if you have 4 engines; 2 lowers and 2 uppers lowering the power of the upper ones will lift the nose of the craft... and vice versa thats how things work

COCKPIT, LIVING AREAS, AND CARGO BAYS

a cockpit (or bridge on bigger ships) is the command centre of the ship here is where the pilot and crew make their work the living areas are where the crew rests and sleep, usually a big ship has 2 crews that shift turns but if your ship is a small 5 persons craft it works differently but they both have the same priciples... and they work as depicted next

as you can see they need a way to access the quarters and back, also when designing a bridge you should take in count that it needs several things, a place where the pilot's control the ship, a comunication station and a engineering station cap ships thend to separate that in different rooms and in adition they have a fire control room cargo ships have a cargo bay wich is usually connected to the quarters some of them like the anaconda has devices in it for loading and unloading cargo

All those elements are now in your head what you need to do now is to sketch a side and front view of your ship designing his hull to put all those elements in the most efficient way possible, much of those elements can not be on sight but you will note a boost in the coolness of your ship after you concieve it this way

SHIP BACKGROUND

this is very important and should be mentioned afore but i will do so here anyways no ship pop out of nothing, to build a ship you need a purpose a fabrication method and that kind of things take that in mind now that you know what does a ship have to need to be born


SIDENOTE

some ships can be capable of being airborne, that is because of they returning to the atmosphere, that can explain some aerodinamism on ships and things like flaps and other atmospheric maneuvering devices

also the antigravitatory technology is available on the Ooniverce so it can lift up airborne some ships but that requires extra space inside the hull, take that in mind...

[Smivs]

My first point has to be that it is utterly futile to base any aspect of ship design for Oolite on

1.- take a look of real life existing technology, that will give you a coherent aproach of how a ship should be constituded

the main ship parts and facilities are

-Cockpit
-Hull
-Engine(s)
-Exhaust

aditionally you need

-crew space/living areas
-cargo doors, fuel scoops and if possible tractor beam site
-laser hardpoints, missile outlets(if inside mounted if outside you need more)

Currently all we (the Human race) do is throw tiny tin cans into space atop what are little more than controlled bombs. Oolite is set thousands of years into our future, in another part of space populated by many alien races with many alien technologies.
Nothing we know or have today is relevant.

ENGINE

an engine is constituded of 3 basic things... a fuel tank, an ignition chamber and an exhaust... NO ENGINE DIFFERS FROM THIS if not it will be violating phisics the following picture depicts a basical ship engine

we are on space and engines makes also the controlling system for the ship so the allocation of them is very important too in the case of light ships you can (and more probable HAVE) to make a vector thrust nozzle that is a reconfigurable directional thrust exaust that changes the direction of the propultion and with that changes the direction of the craft... with heavy crafts that would be imposible due the size of the engines, so multiple engines are necesary changing the trottle of the engines will change the direction of the ship for example if you have 4 engines; 2 lowers and 2 uppers lowering the power of the upper ones will lift the nose of the craft... and vice versa thats how things work

This is a nice example of where you need to know your canon. The drives used in Oolite are NOT rockets. Their mechanism is unclear but the general consensus is that they move the ships in a totally different way to what we are used to today. They are famously non-Newtonian and therefore none of the above applies.
The 'exhausts' we see are generally considered to be some sort of incidental radiation from the drive process. You will notice that they are blue, not red fiery products of combustion. This is why they do not get hot and the ships do not have directional nozzles.

some ships can be capable of being airborne, that is because of they returning to the atmosphere, that can explain some aerodinamism on ships and things like flaps and other atmospheric maneuvering devices

None of the Oolite ships are atmospheric, except the shuttle. They are spacecraft and are dedicated to and limited to life in space. They do not need flaps/rudders etc.

also the antigravitatory technology is available on the Ooniverce so it can lift up airborne some ships but that requires extra space inside the hull, take that in mind...

Everything takes up space inside the ship. This is why so many of the uber-ships make no sense in the game. They have far more equipment than could reasonably be fitted in (in Oolite terms).

And finally, don't forget this is a game...a crazy game at that. Anybody designing a ship for Oolite should throw any preconceived ideas and prejudices out the porthole and let their imagination run riot. A ship can be any shape it wants to be, with or without parts we'd consider normal or even essential. Oolite is a crazy game as I said, and in some ways, the madder the ship the more it will fit in

[Disembodied]

None of the Oolite ships are atmospheric, except the shuttle. They are spacecraft and are dedicated to and limited to life in space. They do not need flaps/rudders etc.

I think the Adder has folding wings, to permit landing on planetary surfaces ... then again, the Moray Starboat is designed to go underwater, so presumably is capable of flying through an atmosphere as well. But this just reinforces your point about it being a crazy game! Trying to make ships that use fictional physics (reactionless drives, with no fuel consumed in flight, and no inertia) conform to designs restricted by known physics is a lost cause, I think: you might as well argue that modern ocean-going oil tankers should be – like ocean-going Viking ships – limited to the length of a single tree. Choose your story – what sort of physical necessities seem necessary to you – then build your ships to please yourself.

[Cody]

Yep - the Adder was capable of straffing ground targets (I think), so definitely dirtside-rated.

[commanderxairon]

well that's an opinion o.o and right we dont know how they work but an ENGINE to be AN ENGINGE has to accomplish something and that's transforming packed energy into kinetic energy that moves the craft and how it does? making something to it so..


energy +something = kinetic

what exhaust doesnt matter anyways what it matters is that it exhaust and that the ship should have a control system from it period

[Smivs]

You are still equating exhaust with thrust.
The 'blue plume' could just be radiation, a by-product of the 'engine', detrimental to life so it is radiated from the rear of the ship for safety.
The 'engine' itself could be some sort of gravity grapple which locks on to the sun and planet and moves the ship around by varying it's distance from them - a sort of triangulation. Or it could be some weird elactromagnetic thing that generates waves along the axis of the ship that move it.
The point is we just don't know. What we do 'know' is that these ships do not move by means of thrusters or any other form of applying Newton's Third Law.

[Disembodied]

The point is we just don't know. What we do 'know' is that these ships do not move by means of thrusters or any other form of applying Newton's Third Law.

We do know it's definitely not an exhaust, since no fuel is consumed to move the ship. And it's definitely not associated with directional thrust, because no blue plumes shoot out the front of the ship when you slow down.

Personally, I've always believed that the engine drags spacetime in the front of the ship and pushes it out the back. The "exhaust" is a spacetime wake merging back into the normal flow, where the particles and antiparticles constantly being produced from the quantum foam are briefly travelling faster than light, and hence produce the distinctive blue-purple glow of Cherenkov radiation. The faster spacetime is moving as it emerges from the engine, the more intense the glow. The conical shape of the plumes is merely a three-dimensional section of the four-dimensional wake.

A ship design should definitely contain an engine, somewhere. But how big the engine is, is anyone's guess. In my head, it's a great big long spinning thing somewhat reminiscent of a drive shaft in a large diesel-powered ship. But it could equally be a little thing the size of a mobile phone. You pick your preferred physics and you make your choice!

[commanderxairon]

you guys have a point... anyway at last 2 of the 3 parts of the engines are there a chamber where the magic happens and an exhaust, my new theory is that it is like a gravity dragster product of a cold fusion reactor, the exhaust is product of the radiation then and a magnetic field just moves the orbiting of the fusion reaction it is like taking the energy of a rotating pulsar but... there is a problem with that... we are talking then of a masively powerfull kind of engine, who could propulsate at almost the light speed any kind of materials brutal enough, with capacitors that absorve the energy of the reactor and then liberate it on an outburst the simple liberation of that kind of energy would create the jump portals


this kind of engine is much more limitless than the one Simvs imaginated and explains why it can still move on misjumps where no stars are near

but it still doesnt explain the "jump drive fuel" that is consumed between trips and by injection it probably can be a substance that empowers the reaction but the existence of it makes a fuel tank needed XD so all the 3 parts of my engine must be there on the design...

[Smivs]

Like I said, it's a mystery!

[commanderxairon]

i just can't be happy with such a plot hole XDDD anyway like i said you can and cannot take what is afore posted in mind, but i suggest you to do so as any onther fructual ship designer do, i have proven that a fuel tank a chamber and exhaust are needed Fuel for the jumps chambers where anything that happens happen and exhaust that exhaust radiation or the product of the engine cycle that said all the design elemets i tought necesary are necesary... period


thanks for your opinions... XDDD


id like to winston or another commander review this and see if it is sticky worthy


I JUST LOVE THIS KIND OF DEBATES DON'T YOU LOVE THEM?

[Shipbuilder]

Despite our limited knowledge regarding these ships, (we need to remember this technology is way in advance of our current technology), I think the basic principles outlined in the initial post are sound.

Basically to think about what type of ship is being designed, then decide what equipment this type of ship would probably have and then finally reflect some or all of this equipment in the model.

Having said that this is one approach that can be used in ship design however their is not a right or wrong way to develop your ships and after all everyone is free to download or not download any of the released oxps to suit there own tastes.

[Greyth]

A most well thought out space game was I-War (I thought). All ships were based on the ring accelerator principle which spewed ions from an exhaust port thus propelling the ship. Cannon were also powered by ions bled from the main ring. The particle ring was the most massive component of any ship to the extent that the ships were built around the ring. Very good game - but a joystick is a must have as the keyboard controls are somewhat inadequate.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/i ... erId,5509/

[Wildeblood]

We do know it's definitely not an exhaust, since no fuel is consumed to move the ship.

A deficiency in Oolite which is easily rectified, by setting ships' maximum speed low and requiring the player to use "fuel injectors" to get anywhere quickly.

And it's definitely not associated with directional thrust, because no blue plumes shoot out the front of the ship when you slow down.

That doesn't mean there are no thruster rockets, it only means no ship creator has tackled the challenge of modelling them.

[another_commander]

id like to winston or another commander review this and see if it is sticky worthy

I'd rather leave it as non-sticky. This is all about a game of fiction and any ship design is as good as any other. If it looks cool too, even better. Plus, in my opinion, propulsion of ships in Oolite is the result of goblins pedalling. Prove me wrong if you can.

[Disembodied]

We do know it's definitely not an exhaust, since no fuel is consumed to move the ship.

A deficiency in Oolite which is easily rectified, by setting ships' maximum speed low and requiring the player to use "fuel injectors" to get anywhere quickly.

I don't think it's a deficiency at all: I'd say it was working exactly as it was planned. Elite drew heavily on the pen-and-paper RPG Traveller for its inspiration. In Traveller, nearly all spaceships worthy of the name use reactionless thrusters that explicitly require no fuel to operate, only energy, for their in-system manoeuvre drives, and only consume fuel when making interstellar jumps – exactly like Elite and Oolite.

That doesn't mean there are no thruster rockets, it only means no ship creator has tackled the challenge of modelling them.

... and rewriting the game mechanics to use them, for NPCs as well as the player, and, presumably, creating reaction mass on board the ships to be consumed ... actually, this has been done: Pioneer does all this pretty well!