Oolite Bulletins

Diziet Sma wrote:

I like the way it looks as if the stern section has four giant clamps that grab the tanker section. If you were to remove the nose part (is it the crew section/bridge?) and put a bridge somewhere at the stern, sort of like a modern tanker-ship, it would look even more like a modular design.

To me it doesn't necessarily look as if the front section were the bridge. It seems to have more clamps, so I'd say it's probably the interface for attaching to a hydrogen harvesting station, and contains mostly the necessary pumping and cooling equipment. In other words: I can easily see it as part of the tanker section. The bridge may be located somewhere inside the the stern section, without being noticeable from the outside (indeed I'd suspect most of the stern section to be a massive shield for the bridge and crew quarters, in case something goes wrong in the tanker section; at least the rearmost ring section of the tanker could be a shield).

Commander McLane wrote:

(indeed I'd suspect most of the stern section to be a massive shield for the bridge and crew quarters, in case something goes wrong in the tanker section; at least the rearmost ring section of the tanker could be a shield).

Interesting idea. Would it be possible to script something like that? If the front part blows up, the aft section is ejected away from the explosion.

Good points..

Gimi wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

(indeed I'd suspect most of the stern section to be a massive shield for the bridge and crew quarters, in case something goes wrong in the tanker section; at least the rearmost ring section of the tanker could be a shield).

Interesting idea. Would it be possible to script something like that? If the front part blows up, the aft section is ejected away from the explosion.

There's no need to script that. That's just normal behaviour if a subentity explodes. Remember, Oolite is newtonian. Actio = reactio. Normally, when you have a small subentity on a large entity, the blowback is of course negligible. But if the subentity contains most of the mass of the whole thing, it sure does blow its main entity away when exploding, so to speak.

Do you happen to have Transports OXP installed? Attack a Woma Fuel Tanker by hitting its tanks. That's exactly what happens, and has always happened. The same for each and every ship with big, frangible subentities. Even an Imperial Courier is driven sideways shortly, if one of its pylons gets blown off.

Initial thoughts were that the front section would probably contain the crew, the fuel tanks located centrally with a rear engine module.

The rear section is indeed intended to clamp to the storage tanks the idea being that with a clamping system the fuel tank sections could be of a number of designs. I do however like the idea of moving the bridge section to the rear behind a protective shield. Perhaps the front section becomes a fuel collection and/transfer module.

One other thing to think about would be are these ship simply fuel transport ships or do they incorporate fuel gathering equipment so that they can collect fuel in large quantities and then sell it ! Perhaps we have versions of both.

I'm also in the process of designing a specific escort fighter model to protect the tankers. After all a tanker wouldn't be able to fight off much more than a worm or shuttle and its cargo would be very valuable and explosive.

With regard to defence maybe these ships rely mostly on missiles and powerful armour to protect the cargo.

I am thinking of creating a tanker model for my next OXP and have been playing around a little with the model I previously came up with.

The front section is intended to be some form of fuel scoop energy converter unit, behind this are 3 storage tanks with the crew section located between the tanks and the rear propulsion unit.

The ship itself will be unarmed and quite slow but will have a high powered protective shield, high performance heat shields to allow it to spend a prolonged period of time in close orbit around stars collecting fuel and will generally be accompanied by a number of defensive escort ships.

Before I get too far into the fine details and start putting the OXP together I would be happy to receive any suggestions or comments that the forum may have.

It's a good-looking design ... you could give it a big blue glow around the front end when it's scooping, maybe.

How big is it? Does it cruise all the way between the sun the station? Or does it collect the fuel, and then dock with some sort of refinery/processing station? Or might it be big enough to have a dock of its own, so freighters can do the run to the station and it can stay in the vicinity of the star?

Disembodied wrote:

It's a good-looking design ... you could give it a big blue glow around the front end when it's scooping, maybe.

How big is it? Does it cruise all the way between the sun the station? Or does it collect the fuel, and then dock with some sort of refinery/processing station? Or might it be big enough to have a dock of its own, so freighters can do the run to the station and it can stay in the vicinity of the star?

Thanks Disembodied.

I like this idea regarding the scooping effect however to have the blue effect whilst it is scooping would require shaders wouldn’t it ? This is something that I have not yet learnt but perhaps I could request some assistance on this if this becomes part of the final design.

Sidewise I haven't made a decision on whether it will be a large ship that can just about dock with a station or whether it will be too large to dock itself.

I was thinking of it travelling to a star then back to a station but again I haven’t got too far with regard to deciding how exactly it will behave.

I do quite like the idea of it docking with a refinery/processing station. Do we have any already developed or is that something that will need to be developed ?

Shipbuilder wrote:

I like this idea regarding the scooping effect however to have the blue effect whilst it is scooping would require shaders wouldn’t it ? This is something that I have not yet learnt but perhaps I could request some assistance on this if this becomes part of the final design.

You could use Oolite Materials for this, and/or non-blinkin flasher. Needs some scripting to make it work only while scooping.

Switeck wrote:

I'd expect tankers to exist in the form of modified Anacondas that devote some/most/all of their normal 750 TC cargo capacity for extra fuel-scooping capacity. Thus, with just one "bombing run" the Anaconda might gather enough fuel for 10-100 ships to max out their fuel.

I like this idea

Maybe also some modified Pythons or Boas exist in military use as support tankers, rather like how RAF V-force "Victor" bombers or VC-10 transports were converted to tanker duty to support long-range operations. A GalNavy support tanker in-flight refuelling might even be a interesting thing to have in a mission OXP?

Given that these tankers would be hauling refined Quirium fuel (a key component in Q-bombs), I'd expect that they'd be liable to go "boom!" without much persuasion in combat as well. I can see some tanker pilots indulging in some gallows humour in naming their vessels, with names like "Little Boy" (a Python tanker), "Fat Man" (an Anaconda tanker), "Castle Bravo", "Grapple X", "Tsar Bomba", "Gerboise Bleue", "Smiling Buddha" and "Ivy Mike"...

Ranthe wrote:

Given that these tankers would be hauling refined Quirium fuel (a key component in Q-bombs), I'd expect that they'd be liable to go "boom!" without much persuasion in combat as well.

Apologies for going slightly off-topic, but this made me think! Regular ships don't explode in a quirium fireball when destroyed, despite many of them no doubt having quirium fuel on board. This suggests that just igniting quirium will not lead to a quirium explosion. Two conclusions, and a question, then...
One) Q-bombs are designed to explode and possibly have special detonators or something to achieve this.
Two) The destruction of a quirium tanker would not necessarily result in a quirium exolosion.
The question...Why then do StarJellies explode with a quirium blast?

Smivs wrote:

Ranthe wrote:

The question...Why then do StarJellies explode with a quirium blast?

That's easy.. they "eat" quirium.. therefore they get quirium 'gas'.. so when you ignite their 'farts'.. well..

Diziet Sma wrote:

Smivs wrote:

The question...Why then do StarJellies explode with a quirium blast?

That's easy.. they "eat" quirium.. therefore they get quirium 'gas'.. so when you ignite their 'farts'.. well..

I knew a Boffin would be along with a plausible scientific explanation before long...

Smivs wrote:

Ranthe wrote:

Given that these tankers would be hauling refined Quirium fuel (a key component in Q-bombs), I'd expect that they'd be liable to go "boom!" without much persuasion in combat as well.

Apologies for going slightly off-topic, but this made me think! Regular ships don't explode in a quirium fireball when destroyed, despite many of them no doubt having quirium fuel on board. This suggests that just igniting quirium will not lead to a quirium explosion. Two conclusions, and a question, then...
One) Q-bombs are designed to explode and possibly have special detonators or something to achieve this.
Two) The destruction of a quirium tanker would not necessarily result in a quirium exolosion.
The question...Why then do StarJellies explode with a quirium blast?

Interesting point there Smivs and explanation Diziet

My view would be that prhaps the Quirium is under pressure within a Star jelly therefore its destruction and subsequent explosion is due to the release of this pressure at the time of the initial explosion.

Regarding standard ships then perhaps they don’t store the fuel in a pressurised manner to avoid such a destructive explosion (An inbuilt safety precaution perhaps).

This all leads me on to my next question if star jellies contain pressurised quirium but standard ships carry unpressurised quirium how would the fuel be stored in tankers?

Logic would suggest that for developed worlds tankers would be forced by law to store the quirium in an unpressurised manner however tankers for less technologically advanced worlds may be tempted to store in a pressurised manner as this would allow much more fuel to be collected in a single trip. i.e. the old case of profit against safety.

Perhaps in this case a tanker would be produced at the shipyards with the safety precautions built in to the design but a number of unscrupulous owners would convert the tankers to carry pressurised quirium in an attempt to make more credits.
Taking all of this in to account it I am thinking of developing the OXP so that a limited number of tankers would explode as a star jelly would but you would have no way of knowing which these would be.

If nothing else it would provide a bit of risk of the unknown for anyone just happy to blast away at the tankers.