Oolite Bulletins

I had a little measure and a little play in GIMP and came up with this:



Pretty sure there's nothing wrong with my maths if the figures from earlier are correct - so shuttle = 24.5 tons, baseline cobby3 = 20 (TCs) perhaps we really do need to assume that TCs have nothing to do with Ton(ne) Cannisters as a weight...

I had already had the feeling, and these pics confirm it, to my mind at least, that B&B were on the money when the dimensions of the Cobra MkIII were stated in the original Elite as 65/30/130 feet, as opposed to the Oolite dimensions of 65/30/130 metres.

Reducing the size of the Cobby to a smidgen less than 1/3 of what we see in these pics would make it about right, from what I can see here..

The Shuttle is designed for a crew of 7, yet that massive Cobby in the pic carries only 2? Look at the size of that window on the Cobby... frankly, it looks fairly ridiculous at that scale..

Was there any logic behind why the size alteration was done in this manner, or was it more to do with laziness (or mis-reading the manual), just substituting one unit of length for another, rather than converting it (in round terms) to 20/9/40 metres?

Given the size/scaling issues in the Ooniverse in general - 30km wide planets and the like I think we just have to separate Oolite metres from RL(tm) metres and be satisfied that while its fun to do a Cobby3 (or any other Oolite ship) has no place in the Real-world. (oddly enough suddenly the fact that an Anaconda carries 750 TC (pretending for a moment that a TC might somehow be equivalent of a RL(tm) metric Tonne) isn't so ridiculous.)

Given the size/scaling issues in Oolite, reducing the Cobby to 20/9/40 metres (and the other ships commensurately) would actually improve the situation, I'd imagine..

the problem Mr D is if you make one smaller you make the other smaller. To reduce ship size further reduces planet size.

I do have a universal "fix" however. Make planets moons. That way we get to go mind effingly epic. Imagine, gentlemen if you will; witching into a system to be confronted by the swirling mass of a "hot gas giant" as this monster fills your screen you see a speck, which slowly grows to be your 30km moon. Around that spec is another spec which is the station.

Sobering indeed.

Now that I know what I'm doing, I'll try to add one to the Heathrow Fly-In

Things I want there so far:
The Wright Flyer - for a sense of history
Concorde (overall length 61.66 meters)
747

Now
Space Shuttle - I found one piggy-backed on it's 747 carrier so may as well use that 747 instead of the one above - It also has the complete Stack assembly for height. And if it's there, I'd better include
Soviet Shuttle Buran on it's An-225 (The world's largest aircraft)

All I have to do is get them all to scale.

On the size thing, I for one am quite happy with the feet to meters conversion. These are not low earth orbit vessels, they're interstellar vehicles which need all the associated support systems in place, gawd knows how much room a artificial gravity unit would take, let alone wormhole generators, laser systems capable of hitting and causing considerable damage to something 20kms away et al.
The shuttle needs none of these things, it's basically a storage box build into a glider that gets to orbit by having a bomb strapped to it's belly.

The only issue I see is the perceived "window", but as already discussed, most of these things don't have windows as such, the pilot uses a dynamic viewscreen. I put the "window" down to a designer's throw back to the days when they were needed and a feeling that the ship looks "better" with one.

DH:
" perhaps we really do need to assume that TCs have nothing to do with Ton(ne) Cannisters as a weight.."
I would think the weight is Ok, but these things also need a load of support systems to keep the goods intact, no point buying slaves it they arrive at the destination as dessicated meat because you packed them in a TC designed for Alloys. TC may take up a lot of space, has someone measured? Do they all weigh 1t, but perhaps contain differing amounts of cargo depending on the cargo? Alloys don't require Life Support, pretty much just Dehumidifiers, so using a TC for slaves would be excessive.

But, I'm going to shut up now, being a noob on the board, I don't want to tempt a flame-war.

Lucifer-Starr wrote:

But, I'm going to shut up now, being a noob on the board, I don't want to tempt a flame-war.

Ain't no such animal. Seriously, polite disagreement and the occasional huff is about as bad as it gets here. Speculate away! Personally, I agree with you: an interstellar craft, capable of punching holes in spacetime (and travelling down them unscathed, not to mention surviving the odd missile and laser exchange), might well be a little on the chunky side.

To be honest, I'm not really that fussed (but I like metres). I just get a little annoyed with the duplicity of the fudge that's all.

If someone with some clout said something eather way then we could all busy ourselves ironing out the small issues. It's important to remember with a bit of work either COULD be made more applicable.

As for flame wars. The fact that if you like oolite then this is the Only forum. Means that moderation is a self editing necessity and tends to deter bad attitudes. It would be quite easy to "cut off your nose to spite your face".

But, I'm going to shut up now, being a noob on the board, I don't want to tempt a flame-war.

A fresh pair of eyes and a new viewpoint is always welcome.

I don't think there has ever been a "flame war" on this forum and I don't think there ever will be - the closest we've ever got I think is a vigorously defended and slightly entrenched position on a few things.

I'm happy with the TC standard cannister size for most objects - but have always wondered, for example, that "machinery" covers a lot of things - and if an agricultural world wanted to buy the 32nd century equivalent of a combine harvester would they be happy for it to turn up in 32 1TC cannisters and a set of Ikea style self assembly instructions. To this end I have always had in my mind the thought that when you say you want to by 18 tons of machinery you're not buying 18 individual TCs but some background clever purchasing system* has identified that planet X needs an new moisture-vaporator and that weighs/takes-up 17TC plus a TC worth of accesories. When you're opened up on-route by a pirate the moisture-vaporator is blown to kingdom come along with the rest of your ship and an single TC cannister of machinery "the accesories" tumbles out of the wreck...

*To this end I think you should have to pick your destination system before buying the goods you wish trade with.

gawd knows how much room a artificial gravity unit would take

Is there anything in the literature to indicate that these ships do indeed have Artificial Gravity? Or inertial dampers? I think its all done by suposition and insinuation and a side order of expectation...

I think the underlying issue is that elite didnt really deal with these things. Ships were kind of whatever size looked good when you fly around, stations are about the righjt size to dock in etc. There is also some ambiguity about the units being metres or feet. If we divide everything by 3 to see a cobra in feet instead of metres, then it is much more sensible.

But then everything else is silly, size of planets makes even less sense. Ideally, I think we could make ships something like 3 times smaller, assuming their measurements are in feet, others in metres, but that changes all kinds of dynamics in-game -- docking for example becomes trivial, and the feel of the game would be very different.

I think we can assume something like inertial dampeners, just from the flight characteristics of the ship – and the fact that we're not reduced to a thin paste smeared around the walls of the cabin every time we change velocity ...

motionless to half light speed in about 6 or 7 seconds -- I think that proves that there are more than some heavy duty seatbelts.

If I was going to try to fix the scale issue, I’d start by writing a new game. :-)