Oolite ships dimensions... feet or meters?

ClymAngus · Post by **ClymAngus** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:57 am

aceshigh wrote:
I just want to know the scale I should draw the textures for the ships!

If it vexes you that much then do 2 png textures one for a ship in feet and one for a ship in metres and bundle them together in the oxp that way a player has a choice depending on their particular pervesion.

If the game won't bend the the programmer must.

aceshigh · Post by **aceshigh** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 12:13 pm

ClymAngus wrote:
aceshigh wrote:
I just want to know the scale I should draw the textures for the ships!
If it vexes you that much then do 2 png textures one for a ship in feet and one for a ship in metres and bundle them together in the oxp that way a player has a choice depending on their particular pervesion.

If the game won't bend the the programmer must.

you are being ironic, but thats not such a bad idea

ClymAngus · Post by **ClymAngus** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:24 pm

aceshigh wrote:
you are being ironic, but thats not such a bad idea

Ironic would be a useless prase ment to be-little. This is more a logical neat side step to the problem. If the answer is unknown then the responce itself must be a variable between the answers two extremes.

Also you'd be amazed how easy it is to put a couple of top layers with the nessessary size sensitive items. A lot is relative. Landing gear, guns, colouring, cargobay doors.

Your really only talking doors and maybe windows, possibly view screen. Even then the windows can be made so that they would be small on a feet ship and large on a metre ship.

You'd be surprised how much of this you can fudge.

Has anyone thought of making up a new unit of mesurement and mass to cover these problems maybe a distance in between metres and feet?

If Blakes7 can have minispacials (?) Then I'm sure we can work out a system of measurement (maybe based on atomic mass and size) that would sit nicely in between feet and metres so we could all just pack it in.

Post by **Disembodied** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 2:21 pm

aceshigh wrote:
- Oolite Ships have "flames" behind. That means they carry reaction mass to expell. Well, its true, its much more efficient than anything in existance today. But still, you need BIG fuel tanks. (considering they carry lots of cargo) [...] Now, add fuel mass for a reaction engine as seen on Oolite, and add cargo compartments for carrying TONS of textiles around...

Oolite ships do not have reaction engines. We know this, because they can fly around a solar system, stopping and starting – going from rest to 35% of C and back again inside the space of a few seconds – for ever if they want to without ever using any fuel at all. Plus, although they shoot "flames" out the back, they don't shoot any out the front when decelerating. They don't even have any front-mounted engines to not shoot flames out of. (extensive and contradictory sets of technobabble explanations available here)

Fuel, in Oolite, is for making wormholes, and for pushing the (normally non-fuel-consuming) engines into overdrive. And we don't know how much fuel the engines use. A full tank, capable of shunting a ship across 7 light-years, might contain anywhere from a few grams to a few tons of quirium.

aceshigh · Post by **aceshigh** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 6:21 pm

I decided I will design each ship in the proportion I like. While the feet versions are too small, my experiments with the metric version are too big (a Viper is huge internally, and it shouldnt since it only carries one pilot and no more than 10 passengers... and no cargo!)

Thus, metric is too big and feet (1/3) is too small. It seems like HALF of the metric measurements would be the better measure.

I will make some experiments. One way or the other I intend to follow the scale BETWEEN the ships. Maybe with exception to the stations, which I intend to maintain at 1km diameter (with the feet measurements, the station would be only 333 meters wide)

_ds_ · Post by **_ds_** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 6:30 pm

aceshigh wrote:
… the stations, which I intend to maintain at 1km diameter (with the feet measurements, the station would be only 333 meters wide)

No; they'd be 304.8m wide (give or take a few mm).

aceshigh · Post by **aceshigh** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 8:18 pm

_ds_ wrote:
aceshigh wrote:
… the stations, which I intend to maintain at 1km diameter (with the feet measurements, the station would be only 333 meters wide)
No; they'd be 304.8m wide (give or take a few mm).

yeah, whatever. I usually divide feet by 3 to get the approximate metric value.