Oolite Bulletins

Frame wrote:

here is my take on what happened with the sizes..

The cobra is not 130 meters wide, its 130 feet wide as stated In the classic Elite manual. However, somewhere along the translations and reprints, it became 130 meters, in reality: it should have been 39,39 meters wide..

However in Oolite its 130 meters, as a result some OXP that tries to use other universe ships like the X-Wing from Star wars, looks ridiculously small, because they are true to their stated size...

In reality, the Author of any oxp or other universe ship, should take the intended size of his ship and multiply it by a factor of 3.25, that way everything in Oolite looks and feels correct.

So the adder is as stated 45 meters long, however do we divide it with 3.25 we get a more correct 13.85 meters long or 45 feet

Cheers Frame..

That's what happens when Europeans work with Americans.

Dave McRoss wrote:

Ehm...nice job of research, you show a lot of patience and a uncommon will to complete the task. Kudos to you!
But I noticed the sizes:
I compare them with real aircrafts/spacecrafts...and I'm a little perplexed:

The Adder is only 2,5 meters short of a B-52 (lenght 48,5).
The Space Shuttle (I'm talking about the Orbiter Vehicle) is 37,23m long.
IHMO they're too much big. All of them.

Like the other guys said, there are a lot of threads in these boards which started when people made a similar observation to yours.

But the matter is very simple. I guess you are actually playing Oolite. So I guess you have seen other ships in space, followed them, shot at them, etc. Therefore simply ask yourself: did their size seem okay to you while playing? How would it be if they all were just half as big as they actually are (or even smaller)? Would you ever even see any of them (I mean, notice details on them, not just a single pixel or two for a ship)? Would that be satisfying for your gameplay? I guess not. And that's precisely the reason why all structures (not only ships, but stations as well) are deliberately bigger in Oolite than in RealLife™.

Note: Elite/Oolite is a game, not a proper space simulation.

Dave McRoss wrote:

PS: Try to compare the cabin's glasses with those of real vehicles. This is like to have a wall of an house entirely made of glass or space-resistant trasparent material. They're shaped for a smaller ship (look at Viper).

Well, yes, if Oolite were a realistic space simulation, which it isn't, and never claimed to be.

And actually, even if Elite/Oolite were a space simulation, the answer would be no. Would you actually really expect a space ship to have cabin glasses in the first place?

The usual explanation is that there are no glasses at all on a ship, and the cabin is not located directly behind the hull, but buried somewhere safe deep inside the ship, and has a view screen which is connected to some cameras on your ship's hull. So, whatever the blue fields on the front parts of the ships signify, they are certainly not windows.

Yeah I know Oolite isn't a Space Sim, but "for the game in my mind" sizes are fairy important.

I note this sort of discrepancy mainly because when I come near a Space Station, the Station seems smaller than necessary.
So I asked to myself what is the sizes of Cobra Mk II, i searched some threads on forum and I found the answer.

But, thanks to Frame, from here onwards I will assume measurements in feet, it makes just more sense, and the game in my mind will become more satisfactory than before

On a more conceptual/moral note: Don't worry about me, I always try to find plausibility in sci-fi games...just because I hope one day they will cease to be mere fantasies and interstellar voyages become reality.

PS: I used the term glass improperly, perhaps I should talk about some kind of titanium metal who become trasparent when it was put on electricity.

Let's just accept that Oolite measurements/distances etc are totally bonkers. For all we know the entire ooniverse might exist in a methane raindrop on Titan, so the measurements are actually in nanometres!
As the chart is to scale, it could just as easily be 2 pixels per foot on a 10 foot grid, so view it how you will.
Indeed, Oolite has other weird measurements as well...cargo is measured in 'TC's' whatever those are (definitely NOT tons or tonnes), so lets just invent an Oolite measure of length (the 'Measuron'), which can be any size you like, and that's the problem solved!

What is the average length of a full-grown adult Trumble?

I always too TC to be "Trade Container". Less of a designation of weight and more one of standardized volume.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

I always too TC to be "Trade Container". Less of a designation of weight and more one of standardized volume.

Yes, it makes senses too.

IIRC, "TC" is short of "Tonne Canisters" - as written in the good ol' C-64 ELITE's "Observer's Guide To Ships In Service"...

Tionisla Carat

I see it as a clever ploy to reduce dogma. For those of us prone to this kind of thing the scale issue presents the over ordered mind with an unassailable problem. By going round and round in neat little circles this keeps the order junkie in all of us away from ordering things that could really screw stuff up.

Many solutions have been suggested, none of them are or ever will be the silver bullet that kills the conversation dead. But then it is an important life lesson to learn that sometimes things don't make total absolute sense. Just like pi sometime we have to learn to live with a touch of disorder and anarchy.

In a nut shell, if its metres things break, if it's feet other things break, if you try and go for some thing in the middle then EVERYTHING breaks (but the ships seem to be a fairly nice size.).

Lets be honest here by keeping the size an enigma, no one can compare the ship size to anything else outside the game. That way you'll never get into a trekker or jedi my ships bigger than your ship pissing match. Which is a good thing.

ClymAngus wrote:

I see it as a clever ploy to reduce dogma. For those of us prone to this kind of thing the scale issue presents the over ordered mind with an unassailable problem. By going round and round in neat little circles this keeps the order junkie in all of us away from ordering things that could really screw stuff up.

Many solutions have been suggested, none of them are or ever will be the silver bullet that kills the conversation dead. But then it is an important life lesson to learn that sometimes things don't make total absolute sense. Just like pi sometime we have to learn to live with a touch of disorder and anarchy.

In a nut shell, if its metres things break, if it's feet other things break, if you try and go for some thing in the middle then EVERYTHING breaks (but the ships seem to be a fairly nice size.).

Lets be honest here by keeping the size an enigma, no one can compare the ship size to anything else outside the game. That way you'll never get into a trekker or jedi my ships bigger than your ship pissing match. Which is a good thing.

Wise words....

I am not sure that comparing ship sizes to a space shuttle or jet plane is really much use anyway. These are inter-stellar ships, not pokey little station-to-surface shuttles! You try flying a NASA space shuttle even over the sort of teeny tiny distances from Earth to the Moon and see how far you get befort that thimble of a fuel tank runs dry.

glenalec wrote:

You try flying a NASA space shuttle even over the sort of teeny tiny distances from Earth to the Moon and see how far you get befort that thimble of a fuel tank runs dry.

That's correct. However, Oolite ships don't actually use fuel for flying from planet to sun or moon, or anywhere inside a system. They only need fuel for their witchdrives (and for injection). That's because there is no vacuum in Oolite, but the ships are actually burrowing through the semi-rigid phlogiston which fills the systems.

If you want a much longer and more precise explanation, it can be found here.

Back to the topic of feet/meters. Maybe say that the sizes are in feet, but the ship's computer (that's what generates the views, afaik) interpretes them as meters, giving us the size on the screen?