Paper models (revisited)

[BlackKnight]

Greetings, fellow Travellers!

I saw a link to a website with paper models of several Elite ships recently but I cannot find it now - ISTR it was in a thread about ship/docking port sizes or possibly who designed which ships, but my darn PC "crashed" while I was out of the house (but my wife and two cats were still there...) and I can't find the page again.

It's not just for me, you understand - there's a thread over on the Starship Modeler forum where a gent(?) called Happy Martian asked if anyone remembered a game called Elite, since he wants to build a 1/72-scale Cobra III.

Can anyone help, and would it be worth possibly making an entry on the Wiki for paper models? I've tried searching there but cannae find it, Cap'n...

a T d H v A a N n K c S e

[ClymAngus]

http://mackayj.doosh.net/shipnet.html

You mean this one?

[DaddyHoggy]

Welcome to the Forums Brave Sir Knight, now stand aside, for I am your King...

Edit: (hoping you're an Monty P fan )

[BlackKnight]

http://mackayj.doosh.net/shipnet.html

You mean this one?

Brillig! That be favourite. Sorry, I mean, "Wonderful! That's just the site I was looking for!" Now I'll pop back over to the SM (oo-er) board and post it there... Cheers!

@DaddyHoggy...

Nih! I'm not a Monty fan, I'm just a very naughty boy... (though I have been using a Pythoon to build a bit of cash, y'know). 'Fraid I've not seen much Python stuff except things like (parts of) Life of Brian, the Polygon sketch and the couple of other bits that the teevee channels roll out whenever they mention (non-exploration) Michael Palin or (non -Fawlty Towers) John Cleese.
It's a deficiency I will sort one day - time, money and the next cargo run permitting!

And I've been around for a while, just lurking in the background... but thank-you for the welcome.

[polyh]

Welcome to the Forums Brave Sir Knight, now stand aside, for I am your King...

[DaddyHoggy]

[Happy Martian]

Greetings all,

I am said gentleman from Starship Modeler. Elite has always held a fascination for me, all the way back to playing it on a Beeb B at school. I'm just surprised that, with the simple design of the ships, not more people have tried to recreate them in the real world, either in plastic, resin or other material. So I've challenged myself to build a Cobra Mk3 in 1:72 scale. This works out at 55cm wide and 27cm nose to tail. Should be fun (and a major shelf filler ). If I've got the energy after finishing and detailing the shell, I'd like to add a hypothetical cargo bay. If not, I'll hit the Boa or an Asp.

Thanks to the Elite manual and the Ship Net site, the dimensions and angles for all the external panels of the ships shouldn't be too hard to work out.

A discussion I've began with Blackknight though is about the size of 1 TC. A Cobra Mk3 has cargo capacity of 20TC but an Anaconda, which is about the same size, width and lengthwise but twice as tall, has a capacity of 750TC. The maths don't add up. Do they use a fourth dimension on the bigger ships ?

Another thought is on landing gear. Elite's Cobras had none, Frontier's had wheels with (what I think are) supports that are much too long. I'm certain the ships designers would have chosen skids of some kind, better for weight distribution. Any ideas ?

Thanks for any help you guys can offer.


HM
Most definitely not a Knight and I've never said "Ni" in my life

[DaddyHoggy]

Hello Happy Martian! Welcome to the site.

I remember many years ago reading that the 750 ton capacity was a mistake - the capacity of each ship was written down on a piece of paper, and a spot of coffee (or some such) bled the 1 from 150TC capacity into a 7 and so the anaconda became a 750TC ship and by the time it was spotted it was too late and it was canonical.

The only way round it sensibly is to consider that perhaps the Cobby3 has bigger engines, better/roomier cabin space, thicker hull plates, etc, etc - so the internal volume is less important than the arrangement of the hold - it still doesn't work for 750TC v 20TC but all you can do is ignore it for the Anaconda and go for what's sensible for the Cobby3.

[BlackKnight]

A discussion I've began with Blackknight though is about the size of 1 TC. A Cobra Mk3 has cargo capacity of 20TC but an Anaconda, which is about the same size, width and lengthwise but twice as tall, has a capacity of 750TC. The maths don't add up. Do they use a fourth dimension on the bigger ships ?

Had a thought about the cargo space; given that the containers have a hexagonal section, maybe the Conny stacks them like a bees' nest with them all fitted in nice and neatly (and requiring a complicated cargo-handling system), whereas the Cobby has a very wasteful shelf arrangement that leaves (HUGE) gaps around each container but makes it much easier for a one- or two-man[1] team to move the crates around.

Another thought - inspired by DaddyHoggy's post; Maybe whoever wrote down the ship sizes for "Jane's All The Galaxy's Spacecraft" got it right, but then spilled a Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster over their notepad and their editor misread the text. Or, since all ships appear on the screen as being roughly the same size - from the Adder and Asp to the Python and Anaconda - could it be that the ship's computer displays a standard-sized image regardless of how big the vessel actually is, and that some journo simply took screenshots and worked out the sizes of ships from these rather than actually visiting a shipyard or hangar, and his editor didn't check before publishing? Or that the Cobra was measured in feet-and-inches while the Anny was measured in yards or metres (or decameters[2])?

I now return you to your regularly-scheduled normalitites...

(I was going to post a long and rambling comment on the landing gear but decided that was more appropriate for the SM forum as it doesn't really have any relevance here since we never get to see it... )


[1]Ever wondered what the SqueeWee word for SqweeWee is? (Gracias, Terry Pratchett)
[2]IIRC, one decimeter is 10cm, one decameter is 10 m. Or is it the other way around?

[goran]

Or, since all ships appear on the screen as being roughly the same size - from the Adder and Asp to the Python and Anaconda - could it be that the ship's computer displays a standard-sized image regardless of how big the vessel actually is...

That would explain some collision detection problems.

[0235]

Greeting, im am honoured to be a member of such a great games forums, those paper models are good, i have a thing for paper models

[Eric Walch]

For internal purposes, Oolite calculates for every ship a volume and multiplies it with the density to give a mass. For almost all ships the density is defined as 1, so mass (in ton) and volume (in cubic meter) are for most ships the same.

Just for the sake of comparison I asked for the mass of a barrel: 884 ton and an anaconda: 429 553 ton. The barrel seems a little bit oversized for just a 1 ton contents, but we knew already it was 20 meters long.

When I divide both numbers on each other I see that there fit 485 barrels in the anaconda volume. That means just stocking more efficient alone won't help. The anaconda needs some onboard equipment that compresses the barrels to fit 750 of them in the hull. And probably they also need some kind of glue for it after decompressing, in case the container was filled with china.

[BlackKnight]

The barrel seems a little bit oversized for just a 1 ton contents, but we knew already it was 20 meters long.

Even a ton of feathers won't need a container that large!

Seems a bit big - may I ask where you got that size from? Especially if your first sentence was right and Oolite defines ship's density as 1, with mass and volume roughly equal... I once calculated that one displacement ton of Liquid Hydrogen (approx 1440kl) would need a cube about 3m per side at 1 standard atmosphere.
I've always pictured the cannisters in Elite to be a standard-sized hexagonal barrel with the 'ton' referring to the displacement rather than the mass or density of the cargo within. A ton of steel as a solid block will sink like the proverbial stone, but a ton of steel as a hollow shell will happily float until some rotter starts making holes in it (or the steel rusts )

[Eric Walch]

I remembered the formula and sizes wrong. Sizes are always in meters but for weight there is no unit given.

I looked it up this time. The formula is: mass = volume x density x 20. I forgot the x 20. That probably means given masses are in kg and 1 cubic meter has a weight of 20 kg. For ships build from high-tech space stuff that light weight makes sense. This means the weights in my previous message are no tons but more likely kg. (Or maybe I think to much in decimal systems and it are US hundredweights (= 45.3 kg) or an other exotic unit.) When it would be kg than a 1-ton barrel would have a mass of 884 kg. That's still no ton but already comes close. When you call the tons, US tons (= 907 kg), you even come closer.

Seems a bit big - may I ask where you got that size from? Especially if your first sentence was right and Oolite defines ship's density as 1, with mass and volume roughly equal...

When I open the cargopod with the program DryDock, see a size of LxWxH = 6.0 x 9.6 x 5.8. This is half as long as stated earlier. You can also get the dimensions by opening the .mod files. inside oolite or the oxp's. (When you open such a file with a kind of auto-cad program and feed it to a 3D printer, you can probably print out a wax model of the ship and you can save the folding of paper models)

When you are interested in comparing ships you can install the debugOXP, target a ship, and type: "player.target.mass". It will return the mass of the target (without units).

Reading all this I wonder if Oolite calculates volumes right. With above formula for mass it has used a volume of 44 m3 for its calculationds. A square barrel of 6.0 x 9.6 x 5.8 has a volume of 334 m3. The pentagonal barrel has a smaller volume than a square one, but not 7.5 times smaller.

[ClymAngus]

If it's something fundamental then cool maybe a tweak is in order. If it's just one ship then some creative linguistics a la star trek would probably do it.

"You see the main reason anaconda's cost so much is the dimensional expansion stasis field situated in the hold. Just remember whilst the compression process is graded, so that it doesn't rip apart any organics moving through it, it's advisable to NEVER EVER turn off the field after the hold has exceeded 90% of it's "normal space" limit.

Unless of course you want to turn your anaconda into a crude mass bomb. Which due to recent terrorist attacks (filling up on radioactives and pop your field in the upper atmosphere above the continent you want to poison) carries a Galcorp standard, 3 generation genetic death sentence."