Ship Design All Wrong?

[Commander Wilmot]

[sarc]I think we need to take this outside. *rolls up sleeves*
Ladies first! *pushes out of airlock and seals it*[/sarc]

Now you make it sound like a thinly veiled compliment. Bravo!

I see where you're coming from now. My comment still stands: Belters look crap but entirely practical in design. Exactly the type of thing I had in mind because they step away from jet fighter plane-esque spaceship building convention™.

I think that the "fighter plane convention" might stick for military and other combat craft. Soldiers have a sense of tradition, one reason why machine guns and repeating rifles had trouble catching on when they were first developed. Also the fighter which looks like a modern aircraft would have a low target profile, be able to possibly re-enter atmosphere, and the wings would provide a good place to put energy capacitors, retro and other maneuvering thrusters, and perhaps the wings surface would hold a system to absorb solar heat and change it to electricity, without the use of solar panels.
An example of such a craft already attempted (sort of:)
 Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar

That being said, I would not mind seeing more boxy spacecraft, but a lot of them seem to me to have even more impractical designs. See the example below, I admit it's some what neat looking, but why all the protrusions.

[Switeck]

From the days of the first glider into the future, aircraft at least have evolved into simpler shapes.

Elite's ships made up of simple geometric shapes might have some aesthetic reasoning behind their shield generators only working well with flat surfaces...and also work best if the flat surfaces are only so large and not at right angles to each other due to edge distortions/interactions/cancellations of each other.

[JensAyton]

You’d think force fields would be easier with convolution bodies of conic sections (spheres, ellipsoids, paraboloids). Flat surfaces might be for stealth, but if so, it isn’t working very well given that effective scanners aren’t even add-ons. :-) (I’m assuming thargoids and pirates don’t carry transponders.)

[ClymAngus]

Ok disregarding my own slightly frivolous statements earlier on. Triangles took up less space. I assume that is the reason why they were used in the original game.

As computing power has increased we have been given the opportunity to introduce the more illogical and strange. I see oolite at the moment with a multiplicity of solutions to the pressing ship shape issue.

I would resist the urge to restrict, in any way shape or form. Give the player the widest choice possible. Through initial diversity all players can find "their" individual game.

I personally am a fan of predatory lines and a slave to 80's sci-fi. Some download our works others do not, revel in the downloads and take heart from those who don't; they are all forging their own path through the void. All is as it should be; more not less.

[DaddyHoggy]

Ok disregarding my own slightly frivolous statements earlier on. Triangles took up less space. I assume that is the reason why they were used in the original game.

As computing power has increased we have been given the opportunity to introduce the more illogical and strange. I see oolite at the moment with a multiplicity of solutions to the pressing ship shape issue.

I would resist the urge to restrict, in any way shape or form. Give the player the widest choice possible. Through initial diversity all players can find "their" individual game.

I personally am a fan of predatory lines and a slave to 80's sci-fi. Some download our works others do not, revel in the downloads and take heart from those who don't; they are all forging their own path through the void. All is as it should be; more not less.

This aircraft looks like this because when it was designed in the 60s, this is the most number of polygons the US Supercomputers for Radar Propagation could cope with... [and I've always thought it would make an excellent - and very E/Oolite-ish escort fighter]

[Killer Wolf]

I'm positive that's the forerunner of the Viper
weld two of them belly to belly.

[Commander Wilmot]

Could I ask permission to redirect this forum? I would like to make some ship oxps and was interested in getting a consensus on what sort of ships are best fit for a certain role. Since I am most interested in making combat craft at the moment, I was wondering what ships are best for bounty hunting? Fast, maneuverable, durable fighters with low cargo space and moderate to large weapon bays or slower, less maneuverable, heavily armored tank-like ships with large to huge weapon bays and moderate cargo space?

[Disembodied]

Could I ask permission to redirect this forum? I would like to make some ship oxps and was interested in getting a consensus on what sort of ships are best fit for a certain role. Since I am most interested in making combat craft at the moment, I was wondering what ships are best for bounty hunting? Fast, maneuverable, durable fighters with low cargo space and moderate to large weapon bays or slower, less maneuverable, heavily armored tank-like ships with large to huge weapon bays and moderate cargo space?

I suppose it would depend, to an extent, on what sort of bounty hunting you're doing, and what count as a "moderate" cargo bay. For vanilla bounty hunting, a decent-sized cargo hold is useful, but if you're picking up Random Hits contracts via seedy space bars, then something more purely combat-oriented would be better. Speaking personally, though, I don't think I'd ever want something tank-like ... for me, Oolite is about dogfighting, so I'd always pick something nimbler and lighter. Other people's MMV, of course!

The Cobra III should, for me anyway, be taken as the best all-round ship. If you're making something bigger, then it should be slower and less manoeuverable; if you're making something that's a better fighting ship, then it should have less cargo space; and so on.

[ClymAngus]

If I might throw another 10p's worth in here the most restrictive aspect of ship design (to my mind) has always been landing the damn things. If you can't get it in the rotating port then your screwed, if you can't get it in a rock hermit, screwed.

In a letter box world you are restricted to letter shaped ships (in at least 2 dimensions anyway). Whilst we have seen many many advances in station design, for the vast majority retain (and pardon my French) pony ass front doors. I think an oxp that gives a different station set might be quite cool. But on the other hand that might make some ships eventually incompatible with the original game. Maybe not something that's acceptable.

[Switeck]

Which is why the Superhub is such a significant station. It is so huge that almost anything can dock with it. I'm sure even a Behemoth would be dwarfed by it.

Even the Sothis station seems to have a significantly bigger docking port than standard stations, but it won't allow you to significantly break out of the current letterbox size like the Superhub can.

The Tori station on the other hand...for all its mass and size...has the hopelessly small standard docking port.

Globe Stations, which are roughly the size of standard stations also has the hopelessly small standard docking port.

Black Monks Monastery, Your Ad Here ConStore, Hoopy Casino, and Nuit Station (sadly! considering its docking arms) also has the hopelessly small standard docking port.

Buoy Repair might have a slightly larger docking port...but only in the vertical axis.

Commies OXP has 3 station types...but none with very large docking ports.
Dictators OXP has Imperial AstroFactory, but its docking port is only about as big as a Rock Hermit's.

Other stations are similar.

[Commander McLane]

In other words: they all use the standard docking bay.

Hmm. Might there be a reason why it's the "standard"?

By the way: I find it logical that ship design follows docking bay design. So yes, we won't be seeing ships with a huge round profile, but that's not an unjust restriction. It's much like in RealLife™ the design of river ships is determined by the shape and size of a standard lock, and the design and size of trucks is determined by the width of a standard road and the height of a standard bridge. It doesn't make sense to design something which doesn't fit in its normal roadway.

Also, as long as the standard remains the standard it doesn't make much sense to design singular bigger specimen. Just like it doesn't make sense to have one super-sized lock in the middle of a series of standard locks on a waterway. A trader is supposed to dock at any main station, not only at some. Who would use a ship that excludes him from trade in most systems?

[ADCK]

Hehe I work in warehousing/distribution/logistics in RealLife™

Trucks aren't always built to be shorter than a standard bridge, that's why they have height restrictions marked on all bridges/overpasses and on trucks here in Australia, and if you're dealing with a truck with tray and someone puts a huge pallet on it you gotta be careful

Going with the above theme, I think along the lines of Trucks (Player Ships) and sea freight Container ships (Massive NPC ships, eg Bulk Haulers), and just like in RealLife™ SeaFreight only goes to major cities with a seaport (Let's imagine 1 or 2 systems in every gal would be a capital and have a super-massive station only for Bulk Shipping between Galactic sectors) where the trucks pick their containers up and distribute them to all the smaller warehouses. (The GalCop Stations)

But that's just how I relate to it...

WARNING: Incoming trivia!

A modern day Container ship holds hundreds of intermodal containers which are roughly the same size as oolite cargo by my estimate. Our planet at this very moment has around 17 million intermodal containers. Now imagine that on hundreds of planets in Oolite. SO MUCH CARGO ><

[Eric Walch]

Hehe I work in warehousing/distribution/logistics in RealLife™

Trucks aren't always built to be shorter than a standard bridge, that's why they have height restrictions marked on all bridges/overpasses and on trucks here in Australia, and if you're dealing with a truck with tray and someone puts a huge pallet on it you gotta be careful

There is more stuff standarised in real life. The dimensions of the Titanic were restricted by the Panama channel. And a lot of ships are limited in size by the Suez channel.

One of the things that aren't standardized are refrigerators. My sister moved from Ireland to Germany earlier this year and bought a nice new fridge for her new apartment. On delivery, the fridge didn't fit through the front door.... The other part of the family had a big laugh of course.

I hope that docking port standardization will work better.

[DaddyHoggy]

It is alleged the size of the shuttle was limited by the size of its solid fuel rockets, which were limited by the size of the tunnel they had to get through from where they were built, which was determined by the size of a train track, which was determined by the width of the wheels of a cart, which was determined by how wide the @rse of two horses were side by side...

Probably apocryphal but I like the concept...

[ClymAngus]

Well yes, it is amazing how we are restricted by one standard on top of another. What would be quite interesting would be a station extension, a static orbital frame around the original rotating station facilitating wider docking ports, ship storage facilities workshops etc etc etc. Progress as they say never sleeps.