The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I recently dropped by merzo.net, where the ships from various science fiction franchises are shown to scale.

Scale is one of the biggest problems in SC.

I have endeavored (in a post on merzo.net, as drachefly) to determine the size of the Vindicator. Based on the intro slide #4 and the cutaway of the crew module, it looks like it's only around 140 meters long.

Does anyone have other visual evidence they'd like to present to better establish the scale of the Vindicator or other vessels?

Considering that Star Control, whilst being an excellent game, certainly hasn't accumulated the masses of background-enhancing 'fluff' we see associated with Warhammer 40,000 or Star Wars, I doubt that an authoritative 'canon' statement of dimensions will ever be defined.

Personally, though, I imagine that the number of men involved in your campaign against the Ur-Quan Heirarchy is much larger than the dialogue in the game might suggest. Warships and suchlike cannot function exclusively on automation, as it's too delicate, and the large extent and scale of battles and fleet engagements involves far too much complex analysis and interaction to be handled by a mere handful of ratings and an officer. Vessels need large crew complements, even if they're just redundant reserves to ensure that losses in vital sectors can be replaced.

As such, when an Earthling Cruiser says it needs "18 crew", I envisage it being closer to "1,800" and that the former figure is simple indicative "crew units" that demonstrates the relative size of vessels to each other.

Check intro slide #4. That clearly shows the scale of the Vindicator. If that ship is freaking huge, there's no way a cruiser has 1800 crew.

welll.....with other things the spathi say there ship can hold 30....does this mean that fwiffo is 1,000 spathi?

Maybe spathi are 1000 times harder to kill

I love the easter eggs on his site.  Notice the "real life ships and buildings" in 1X and the 10X scale  ::)

The Sa-Matra might pose a more interesting scale problem.
The hardest part about putting SC ships:  all of his scale drawings are from the side.  :-/

Well.... It DOES fit their type to always insure that it won't happen to them - just the person(s) next to them. Therefore fwiffo was just a clone to get shot first at the window screen... The REAL fwiffo was in the far back cowering. ;)

Does anyone know how big Vela II is? Because if so, it might be a little easier to caculate - I thought I heard it somewhere - I could be wrong. Anyway the Vindy is larger than our moon - or at least should be.

LOOK AT INTRO SLIDE 4. That thing is not moon-sized.

To be frank I'm a bit tired of the 3km long ships that every scifi must boast.

I'd like to think that the SC universe has some sort of limit to shipsize (with the technology available for the lower species anyways).

If I were to guess from the crew/HP:


Earthling cruiser : Medium sized passenger plane (but more bulky). 40m

Shofixi scout: Something like a large motorboat, mostly engine, warp, explosives taking up space inside though. 7-10m

Then everything pretty much sticks around those sizes (Millenium Falcon for medium sized ships), except maybe the ur-quan ships that could goto 60m or so tops.


The Androsynth space station hijacking story maybe has some hints?

Well, the Androsynth space station story kind of implies that Androsynth Guardians are based on the design of actual space stations intended as long-term habitats (though they may be scaled up or down, of course), one of which (the "Starlight Hilton") was a luxury hotel. So at the least building-sized, perhaps two or three stories in scale.

Why does everyone think the Scout has to be so tiny? Look at the name -- it's a *Scout*, not a fighter. It may be cool to play with the idea that you have little F-4's limping about in space without any support -- it makes the image of Tanaka in his little single-seat cockpit more romantic, and all -- but the Scout as it functions in Star Control 1 *can't* be a single-seat fighter the way everyone seems to assume it is from that Tanaka image.

I mean, *come on* -- TFB actually say they have 6 crew, and now we're *lowering* the in-game numbers? It's a scout ship -- that means it not only has to carry weaponry and drives, but also lug along enough life support (air, water, food, waste management) for really, really long trips -- and, the way Shofixti Scouts work in SC1, where it's explicitly stated that they *look for places to start colonies*, they'd have to bring along equipment for landing expeditions on planets and large-scale research and data gathering at the very least. They'd *have* to have at least a small team on board -- investigating a planet and putting down the beginnings of even a temporary command post there would require more skills than one trained professional would be likely to have.

They've got to be at *least* the size of a large double-decker bus (if we assume really miniaturized future tech) -- I would argue the size of, say, one long corridor of a building, at least 30 m long. "Large motorboat" is just ridiculous. A Scout *is* intended to do more than just be a missile.

Also: The "passenger plane" size for a Cruiser is canonically impossible. There's no friggin' way you can hold *any* number of ICBMs, or even ICBM warheads on highly converted delivery systems, on something the size of a 747. A Cruiser has to at least be the size of an aircraft carrier in order to be firing nuclear missiles at things, probably larger.

Another thing: Remember that the Vela colony is colonized by the crew of the Tobermoon. *Just* the Tobermoon (it's a major plot point that they only have one ship that they used to get there, and when it leaves they're stranded). The Tobermoon was capable of delivering enough people to Vela to start a self-sufficient colony and have several families -- that ain't an 18-man vessel. A 747 could hold enough people to start a colony, but it couldn't feed and house them for several-month-long voyages through space. It really strongly implies that to keep that many passengers comfortable a Cruiser'd have to be at least ocean-liner sized. (And yeah, there might be only 18 crewmen and lots of passengers -- but Cruisers are supposed to be first and foremost war vessels, and I actually doubt you could find that much free space lying around for that many passengers on a ship that was designed to have only 18 crew.)

About the Vindicator: Those are Precursor-sized machines working on it in the slide, not human-sized machines (the bulldozers and cranes and things) -- remember that the manual says that the factory is imposing because all the *parts* of the factory are on immense scale, before the Vindi even starts being built -- everything's so much larger that it's impossible for humans to manipulate the manual controls. (The Precursors are supposed to be scaled on the size of dinosaurs.)

Yeah, there are little human figures there, but the drawing isn't really that hi-res and I'm not quite certain how close each figure is supposed to be to the Vindi, or how far back the Vindi stretches as it stretches away into the distance. It's not really a clear enough drawing to rest a definitive case on, except to say that the Vindicator's definitely bigger than a car and smaller than the Moon. (Though in the game we *do* mistake the Sa-Matra for a moon from a distance, remember? ...And the Vindicator fits neatly into a docking bay in the Sa-Matra that's large enough to be an obvious feature of the Sa-Matra, seen from a closer distance. I would say that the way I picture the Vindi is something like city-sized, like the size of what a colony ship like the Battlestar Galactica is supposed to be. I would certainly write it that way if I were making novels set in the SC2-verse.)

Let's not forget, that every species is a different size. I shofixti scout is probably the size of a F/A-18 super hornet, as it's crew might be rat-sized little hair balls. Ur-Quan are about 5 times the size of humans, so a dreadnaught might be 10 times the size of a cruiser.

30 meters huh? Look here. You have 2 things to judge from, Pilot pic and ship pic. The cabin on the ship is pretty large.
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc2/aliens/shofixti.shtml


(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/shosize.jpg)
Looks like 6 would fit. I could size it up a bit though, to like 13m, that would add a lot of volume.


Space hotels can be small. It can basically be a bus sized thing. The luxury part is being in space, not in a president suite.

An atomic sub can stay under for a long time, and it's <100m and can take ICBMs, and 100 crew.

ICBM in space do NOT need to achieve earth escape velocity, thus the propulsion unit can be much much smaller! As anyone knows, the propulsion unit+fuel makes up most of the mass on rockets/missiles. I'm guessing you can get them down to like 4 meters and 2 feet thick.


I'll draw the earthling cruiser soon.

Just 30 meters. Crew compartments in the mid section, bridge and weapons front. Engine at the back of course, pods could be fuel.

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/shosize2.jpg)

well the ships with missles would would have to be huge to store what seems to be an unlimited or huge suply.

I wasn't basing the scale off of the precursor machines in intro slide #4, I was basing it off of the humans. I know that we don't know the scale of the precursor machines. Heck, if they were HUMAN machines we wouldn't know their scale.

As for the capacity of the Tobermoon, I'm not terribly concerned with it. When you need to take a lot of people somewhere under military-grade discipline, they can be crammed into quite small spaces.Triple-tiered hammocks which collapse during day make sleeping space basically free... all you need is a corridor they can stretch their legs in... how long was that trip, again?

Well, if you follow the gameplay mechanics the cruiser would have to be infinite in size because there's no ammo counter, and the cruiser doesn't manufacture the missiles.

The hiroshima bomb had 15kt of power and it destroyed a city.

A 200kg somewhat modern warhead has 300kt. Many warheads are 1000kg though. You can build nukes that weigh 50lbs. There's also 'bullet' nukes you can fire in regular artillery cannons.
In the story nukes are built until 2025, so I'm guessing they've been miniaturized further.

Although a nuke probably isn't as powerful in space, it's still pretty devastating to be hit by a nuke. This certainly isn't the case in the game (talk about nerfed). The shofixti explosion is more like it.

So either the ships are large enough to handle a nuke hit, like several kilometers, or the nukes are very small and more like regular sidewinder missiles. I think I drew my nuke way to big, half that length is more like it.

In any way the nuke issue is kind of silly, I'd rather use other more concrete indications for ship size, such as the arcade style dogfight action, cockpit sizes, crew amount, etc.. The ships doesn't need to be asteroid sized to function, and it would be pretty silly with a half a kilometer long spinning Pkunk ship.

1.your right nukes wouldn't do nearly as much in space because some things that make it deadly here wouldn't work in space(there is a topic somewhere in the starbase cafe that explanes this)
2.even if they were peas if you could fire a never ending amount you would need to A.have so many that you could never (within logic) run out B.have something to build them. if A is true then it would take up a large amount of space. if B is it would also take up a large amount of space. also look how big the nukes are compared to the ship.

Revised the nuke size. Now it can store 18 of these in the loading bay, and probably a few spares around the ship.
Also made a slice of the living quarters (ie. bunks). There could be a recreation room somewhere else. In subs they use the missile room or even empty torpedo/msl tubes!

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/shosize3.jpg)

Edit: There's only 12 beds or so, but they sleep in shift of course. Captain has a some space in the front area.

Sweet.

like said you need to add something to make the nukes or a couple k of them to make it work.
edit:very good though.

Wow nice, you got any detailed shots of the shofixti fighter?

Nope, but I got these:

Made the Penetrator larger than the Cruiser, cuz of the crew and the Syreen want a little luxery space I presume. I don't think they'll ever capture a wormie since they're only one on the ship and thus go down with it.
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/syrsize.jpg)


The fighters are automated? In any way a man can fit inside. I know these are supposed to siege planets and stuff, but I wanted to stick closer to the ingame GFX. Maybe it has special orbital bombardment weapons hooked up to the reactor (at the center).
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/urqsize.jpg)

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/miscsize.jpg)

Thraddash! Yay.

ah I asked because I was doing a video with shofixti fighters

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/Strange_will/Sho3.png)

And thought of adding Ur-quan but replaced them with Mycon because of the difficulty of doing a ship with so little detail:

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/Strange_will/Urquan4.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/Strange_will/ur-quanbay2.jpg)

But wow your drawings are awsome if you don't mind letting me tinker with your ideas in some 3D software that would be great... :)

Arne said:

What about the Kohr-Ah?

Oops. Well, I think I'm going to just ignore that. It's not like the Syreen capture Kohr-Ah on regular basis. Seems kinda odd to have the Marauder packed with giant worms too, and despite being huge they die as easy as smaller beings. Maybe each worm counts as 10 crew, and you kill segments sort of like centipede/millipede! ;) Maybe they keep a few Ilwraths around that flank intruders.

Anyways:

I'm doing the starbase. It's pretty big. I have a few questions though, before I scale it up to size. I want to make it as small as possible. Right now I'm leaning towards a 60m (r) disc. That would give each crew a train cabin of space.

It has <2000 people. Are any of them in cryo sleep?

Who built it? Ur-Quan or humans?

Can the shipyard be in space, seems retarded to put it inside.

Any size indicators mentioned?

Various ships (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/sc2shipsizes2.jpg)

Starbase wouldn't hold 1900 people unless they're stuck in freezers like fish.

Volume might be 33 000 sq.m.

It seems on subs and warships there's one crew per 100 sq.m. which is more than my optimistic 15-20 sq.m. The starbase is civilian though, and I'm not sure if it's running on emergency capacity or not.

If anyone want to amuse themselves they can calculate the living space per crew on various self-sufficient ships.
volume calculator (http://grapevine.abe.msstate.edu/~fto/tools/vol/index.html)

Crew pod:

12*32*24 box = 9216 sq.px.

5r sphere 4h fill = 184 sq.px

Total: 9400 sq.px

Ship length : 225 px


This gives each crew 188 sq.px.


When I looked at various military ships earlier I got a figure of 100 sq.m. per crew. This is not free space, just density of crew inside the hull volume.

Let's assume the crew quarters are just beds, a small personal space, recreation and hydroponics. There's no engine/power room, and there's no weapon systems taking up space like on a warship. The primary purpose if the crew pod is storing crew.


If the ship is about 140 meters like someone suggested, there's one crew per 40 sq.m. (crew pod is 2000 sq.m.) which I think is quite reasonable. I think it could be less even.

If almost half of the space is walls, bulkheads, hydroponics etc then each crew got a 4*3 meter room of space, 2m to the roof. Lets make half of it a corridor (stuff need to connect), so maybe 2*3 meter of personal space. They might share rooms though and use the extra space for larger recreational areas.

Edit: Gah! Mixed up radius and diameter. Anyways, For the 140m version the crew pods would actually be:

7.5 * 15 * 20 box = 2250 sq.m.

3r sphere 40% fill 14 sq.m.

/ 50 = 45 sq.m. per crew



EDIT That's CUBIC meter I meant... not square area... Gakk!

It seems unlikely to me that a starbase is just a crew warehouse.
The commander says "Ur-Quan slave law requires that we maintain an orbital space platform to assist Hierarchy vessels which are in need of repairs or fuel."
If that's the main purpose of the station, then you can expect that every of those 2000 crew members has some kind of job for which even more space is required. There will be labs, administration centres, a fuel refinery, ship parts storage, and workshops. And ofcourse there's the ship yard.
It seems to me that crew quarters take just a small fragment of the whole.

Personally, I'd make the Syreen & Urquan ships a little bigger.  They both need room for at least 41 Thraadash/Ilwrath/other big races.  The Dreadnaught also must hold 41 fighters, which hold 1 crew each.

The Starbase needs to be much larger, as its stores can hold enough material to make innumerable ships.  I don't know how far away the Mark I is from the windows in the Commander screens, but this massive ship seems kinda dinky.   Since the Ur-Quan made the Starbase to repair/refuel hierarchy vessals, I'd think they'd make it large enough to support a small fleet all at once...  Oh, and doesn't the central area just below the windowed hemisphere (the light blue strip) sort of look like a landing area for shuttle craft?
(http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/sc2/sc2/content/lbm/starbase.0.png?rev=1.1)


Hmm, the Scout; barely seems large enough for 6 furballs, let alone 5 furballs and a human.  Even the Earthling ship seems a little small for just under 20 humans.  The Terminator's a little stuffy considering that Yehat are bigger than humans and will probably need to stretch their wings once in a while.


I'd say the best option we have is giving the scale as we see it in Melee.  Sure, it's so incredibly off (18 humans in a ships that's 1/8 the size of a planet?) as to be a joke, but a big part of SC is about spoofing other Sci-Fi.  
Or... maybe ignore melee and the planet, and create a scale for the Mark I from the slides as Death_999 suggests, then base the other scales from the shipyard or the side panel (fleet).  This way, the ships are big enough that silly questions of "will alien X fit in ship Y" don't occur, and they're small enough that they don't fall into the "aircraft carrier" syndrome of so many Sci-Fi series.

Under the Yehat, are those planet lander prototypes?

If you're looking at the crewpod for the scale of the Mark I, don't forget the  module image that has a cross-section:
(http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/sc2/sc2/content/lbm/modules.3.png?rev=1.1)

That is one of the images I used in my scale calculations.

Also, Arne, there is NO WAY each crew member on a submarine has 100m^2. Perhaps 100 m^3, which cuts that in half (floor space -> volume)

Cult> Yeah I made some scout variants, like the arrowed one better.

I'd like to think that the space station is a habitat. You don't need to store materials in a pressurized room temperature enviroment, seems like a waste of space. The shipyards could be scaffolds that float around in space.

The scout can hold 6 crew, but I could scale it up to 15 meter, cuz the sprite not that small.

Meep> Did humans made the starbase or not? I need to know cuz I'm using parts from the androsynth ships on it, for consistancy. The androsynth ships are human space stations/labs I think. THe Starbase looks like it was built by humans, otherwise it would be green right?


Death> I forgot about the beam that goes through the module! And yeah I'm talking cubic meter of course, sorry! That's what I used for my calculations anyways.


With this layout I get 48 rooms, and I got a large free space in the center and the bottom, plus the park/dome.
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/crewpodrooms.jpg)

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/cabin.jpg)

This is using the 140m figure.

In melee the Mark 1 is much bigger than the other ships, so I think my other scales are correct aswell. This is 100 years into the future so life support and stuff can probably be made pretty compact.


The main problem I have with big scales is that the ships are pretty dogfighty, and have so few weapon systems, that mostly fire forward, just like on fighters. Structural integrity is an issue at larger sizes too. The precursor ship can be made big cuz it's built with special tech I'm guessing.


Edit, when calculating from the intro image, which has <20 human-like silhouettes on it, I get a figure of just over 30 meters high, which would make it over 200-220 meter, or nearly 1px per meter on the module screen of it. There seem to be a joint to the beam connection though, so maybe it can set the height when it lands, so it could possibly be shorter or longer.

Working with materials would be a lot easier indoors. And the Starbase image doesn't show any loose hanging materials.


I don't think Ur-Quan have a pattent on green. But I don't know who built it.
The manual does say it is "huge" though, whatever that means.

Maybe humans built it with some help of the Ur-Quan. Does Syreen have one?

I'm not super on perspective, but:

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/junk/introsize.jpg)

I think L = H*(1.77) (distance to landing feet) I made an error with the bracket, it should extend 3 grids!

P is a person, 5 px high. The smaller one on the left may be kids.

This makes it X meters. I KEEP EDITING THIS NUMBER CUZ I SUCK AT MATH. So far I got 370, 245 and 140.
Edit: H = 33.25, L = 58.85, Length=274.6 ?



They could assemble parts in the starbase, puzzle larger finished parts together outside, like the ISS.

I don't think the shipyard is realistic, since you can buildt like a fleet in less than 2 minutes.

yes the syreen have one that looks the same(so it would be ur-quan)

Scout interiors. Like a Hobbit house I guess. Made 2 floors. They probably like to sit on the explosives so I put it in the front. It's hard to use that part of a wedge anyways. Likewise, fuel goes in the wings.

It's a bit crammed, but I think it works. It isn't exactly a luxery cruiser.

Crew tasks could be, Pilot (captain), Second pilot, Engineer, Detonation expert, Navigator & Sensor supervisor,  Life support systems supervisor / Medic.

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/shofixi_interior.jpg)

Found this on google, Rawk! (http://www.crystalinks.com/marsupial.jpg)

No, there's no reason that it should be a universal rule that Ur-Quan-made stuff is green. The Starbase was almost certainly built by the Ur-Quan -- in the process of conquering Earth they had to destroy all of Earth's space capability, remember

- Perhaps the Star Base never posed any threat and was therefor kept around for use after the war
- Perhaps this Starbase survived long enough for the Humans to capitulate
- Perhaps the Ur-Quan ordered the Humans to build one
- Perhaps the Star Base was towed in from elsewhere
- Perhaps the Ur-Quan had one of their slave races construct it
- Perhaps the Ur-Quan built it from Human materials (there may have been hundreds of destroyed Space Stations floatiing around)

"Almost certainly" my yellow Yehat arse.

Who got owned first by Ur-Quan? Earth or Syreen? Maybe they got a starbase on a later occasion though, like a spare one from earth.


(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/shofixi_pinup.jpg)

The Chenjesu, Syreen, and Earthling starbases are visually the same in the game.  It happens to follow the plans for Alliance starbases from SC1.

Chenjesu were defeated first, then Earth, then Syreen just gave up when the Arilou, Yehat, and Shofixti abandoned them.

Scale issues:  I just realized that Umgah and Shofixti pilots are shown in the SC1 ship images (which should be considered pretty darn official).  Of course, we don't know how big the umgah are.  One would think that since they are called "blobbies" and not "little blobbies" they aren't tiny.
(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/images/umgah2b.jpg)
(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/images/shof2b.jpg)
The Scout image puts me to shame;  There's not room for 5 more shofixti, and not even enough room for 1 Human, which means the commander is a liar.  :)

I see.

Aha, I knew I had seen the Umgah in those bulbs somewhere!

My Shofixi ship is enormous compared to that one.



The landars are wierd, not just the mining part that has been discussed earlier, but the landers can also carry a substantial amount of minerals. I think 100-120 per trip? A storage pod is 500?

I doubt 10 landers can be kept inside mark 1, they probably tag along like those fishes do on sharks.

12 crew isn't that much though since they only need to be strapped along the walls like in Aliens / Starship Troopers.

Well, I don't have anything to add to the whole starbase discussion. (I'm pathetic)

I just came here to asspat Arne for all the great art. That Shofixti is something else. Reminds me of a mix between Taz and master Splinter from ninja turtles.

Unless I missed my guess, he used a tasmanian tiger as a template.

Ah. Although not a bad guess, it's a "marsupial lion" (http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/megabeasts/meet/meet_zoom1.html), at least according to the website he got the reference image from.

Those things always look alike to me, so generally I have the worst time ever finding out what they actually are.

EDIT: Oh, and sorry for dragging this into off-topic land. Continue if you may.

Glad you like it. I'm not sure what to think myself.


Starbase exterior shipyard & containers.
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/starbase.jpg)

Perhaps it might be a good idea to "grade" canon in this instance? Seeing as SC1 has a lot less story (and assumingly planning) behind it, maybe SC2 should be considered canon where the two conflict? After all, SC1 basically just worked as "Big fight between good and evil" with some small background stories worked in for flavour. SC2 on the other  took those story elements and used them to build the epic we all love and know. As such, perhaps the Commanders words and ingame events in SC2 (Tanaka having fuel capacity to travel to VUX&Mycon space) and back) should be considered more canon and conclusive than an artists vision of a Shofixti scout in SC1.

You may be able to put 5 more Shofixti in a scout. It's much wider in the back. You could have a row of 2 Shofixti behind the captain, and a row of 3 more behind those.
Or you could have them all clumped up in a big ball of fur like other rodents do.

Yeah, you could probably fit 6 crew in the SC1 scout, but they wouldn't serve any purpose other than being backup pilots. It would be really hard to squeeze in fuel, engines and life support too.

Irrelevant:
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/mormai.jpg)

The Scout could have multiple purposes.
When used as a scouting craft, there's not really much use to have 6 crew members. 1 or 2 would be enough. The rest of the space could be taken by extra fuel tanks, for a greater range.
As a combat craft, one or two would probably be enough too, especially if you're going for a kamikaze attack, in which case you'll want all the space you can spare for explosives. However, if Shofixti consider it an honour to fight, and there are much more Shofixti candidates than available ships, that in itself may be a reason to put more than 1 or 2 Shofixti in, even though it would reduce the manoeuvrability of the ship, which is limited by what the Shofixti body can handle anyway. Kamikaze might not be something pilots set out to do, but rather something they are prepared to do.
It could also be used as a personal transport. Sort of like the equivalent of a car.
Or it could be used as a vehicle for short-range delivery. A space van.
Or as a motor home for a few Shofixti.

For most of these it would be useful if the Scout can fly in an atmosphere, which we don't know for sure. Its aerodynamic shape does seem to indicate so.

Haha, space kitty, I love it! I'm assuming you referenced my icon for that idea, or at least something like it. Couldn't help but notice the similarities. Very kick-ass man

Cheers!

MM> Yeah, I swiped it. Where is the avatar from?

I think it's a cat-bear btw.

Depends on what a "scout" is meant to do. Does it just fly around and take pictures? In order to look for habitable planets or planets worth mining in, one would need to send out landing teams to perform more complex tests, which would be much more efficiently done with a team. This is even more true if the Scout is capable of actually setting up small installations on a planet, as the SC1 Scout is. (In case you've forgotten, the main *reason* for sending a Scout out ahead is because the Scout can make fortifications, mines and colonies.)



Again, only if you take the way combat works in the game absolutely literally. Who's to say the ship *can* actually be piloted by a single pilot? What if, as would be more likely, one person were needed to pilot the plane and one person were needed to act as a gunner -- and, perhaps, one person were needed to keep an eye on radar and communications? (Even real-life fighter planes often keep 2-man crews, one pilot and one weapons or comm systems officer.) And the Scout is a *self-contained* ship that makes long voyages by itself, which makes it far more likely you'll need an engineer or mechanic on board to deal with the ship's systems since you can't just land at a parent vessel for repairs and refueling. (Indeed, the way flying seems to work in SC1, the ships set down at planets and refuel on the fly, which means fuel has to be synthesized somehow, which means more expertise needed.)

Again: Space is big. Systems for crossing space would probably be more complex and harder to run than the systems for vehicles that we know, even with more automation and such. And the ships in SC1 all seem to be very all-purpose, with each one having the capacity to at least set up small-scale habitats on planets that they encounter -- which would make sense, given that *each single ship* is a highly important and powerful force, and that each scenario takes place among 10-12 ships at most.

I don't see why 2-kilometer-long ships are that silly, honestly. Our modern aircraft carriers are way beyond the scale that someone sailing an old-fashioned clipper ship would have thought possible. I'd expect future vessels to scale *up*, not down, especially since you're going to just plain need a lot more resources to cross those vast gulfs of space *at all*, even with the benefit of magic hyperspace technology.

And these ships are not just vehicles for going from one place to another -- they're great big multipurpose habitats, and treating them that way is the only way SC1's strategy system can even sort of be thought of to make sense. (Even if you don't accept that argument, remember that Tanaka's Scout in SC2 had enough resources to keep him alive for several years while just drifting in space. That means, at least, a big onboard food supply.) To me, it's a lot *sillier* to think that the Great War was fought by a handful of 30-m long vessels crewed by a few dozen people while the rest of, say, Earth's billions of human beings just sat on their hands.

From Hayes' description of the surrender:



Maybe this Starbase was a special exception, but I see no particular reason why that should be the case. The SC2 Starbase looks like *all* the Starbases from SC1, which all look identical (Hierarchy *and* Alliance), and like the Syreen and Chenjesu/Mmrnmhrrm Starbases, and Hayes explicitly says that the Starbase is specifically designed for servicing Hierarchy vessels, and that it's lucky your ships can take the same fuel as Hierarchy fuel, and Hayes seems to describe the Starbase's automated manufacturing technology as superior to "vac-suited workers" as though he were used to the latter, and it doesn't display any of the standard abilities of SC1 Starbases (firing on planets, moving through Hyperspace, and so on).

It *may* be a converted Alliance Starbase, but we're given no reason to think it to be so -- if it is, it's an Alliance Starbase that was very heavily converted by the Ur-Quan and probably contains little Human technology.

Umgah genetically modify themselves quite radically, for fun. They may vary dramatically in size depending on their function, or mood.

(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/images/umgah2b.jpg)
(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/images/shof2b.jpg)
The Scout image puts me to shame;  There's not room for 5 more shofixti, and not even enough room for 1 Human, which means the commander is a liar.  :)[/quote]

...And since that image so drastically contradicts *both* the combat simulation *and* the in-game dialogue, which say, respectively, that Scouts can hold 6 Shofixti and that they *do* have enough functions for a Human to serve on one (and be able to fit inside of one), this is a good reason not to consider the SC1 art all *that* official. Everything from SC1 is less canon than SC2 -- hell, in SC2 they changed the *dates* that the game takes place to 400 years earlier, among other things.

I forgot, unfortunately, because I don't have the original picture I made it from. It just appeared on some random image generator. It depicted some cutesy underwater scene with the cat (bear?) riding a sea turtle, racing with another cute animal I can't remember. I believe it was from an anime or something similar (think some hello kitty-like product), unless I'm mistaken.

That's the best I can do for description or where it may have came from. I pretty much suck at those. Sorry. But I'll try to find it again if I can.

Oh, they didn't sit on their hands; they were busy using their factories to churn out spacecraft:


I suspect a _lot_ of cruisers were made since they used automobile parts...

Notice that the ship Arne made is vaguely turtle shaped; perhaps he already is familiar with the art in question?

The Starbase shape is based on Stardock from Star Trek, which is human built I presume. It's huge too. A few km across if I were to guess.

I'll go for the size I made my Scout earlier, it has something like 8x the volume of a ship half its size. There's space enough to support different crew roles.


(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/shofixi_interior3.jpg)
I redesigned the interiors. Upper floor is now the data room (sensors and analysis machines). Bottom floor has sleeping tubes, some seats long the walls if things get shaky. Then there's the usual stuff like engines, fuel, generator, life support and explosives of course.
Edit: lowered 2nd floor

Also updated this (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/syreen05-c.jpg).


The 'canon' material is contradictive indeed, so I feel like I can pretty much make the ships any size I want. It's more fun to make them smaller because then I have to optimize space and make things work.


As for the turtleship, I just thought a half ufo-ish shape would work. I based it of the green background with lines on.

Arne, the problem with using the height to the base is that the legs are clearly in a different configuration... I worked off of the height of the forward cabin. Admittedly, this poses the problem that we are viewing it at an angle, but this can be adjusted-for trigonometrically (I did not, when doing my numbers).

I'll get on it this thursday, after my exam schedule loosens.

Art: 2-kilometer-long starships are not in any way silly, once the capability of gathering material in space is realized (or alternately having space elevators). I am just observing that the images we have do not support the existence of such ships as combat vessels. Perhaps they are too unmaneuverable to be combat-worthy (with exceptions such as the exceptionally long-ranged Sa-Matra)?

Indeed.

A thing worth taking into consideration is that while hightech compared to us now, one does get the impression that the uplifted Shofixti aren't really all that high tech. The Yehat may have given them the essentials, but it's not impossible that they need significantly more space for their life-support systems and engines than other races in the game. other than that I concur with Art, a vechicle scouting for inhabitable planets needs to make landfall, and definetly needs more than one crewmember.

I the ships are huge they face the problem of structural integrity when turning or altering course, plus G-forces on the crew unless those are nullified. A way to counter this is to make the ships very slow, which means that with huge ships, the game is taking place in ultrarapid (as in hyperspace).

Death> It does look higher on the intro pic, but if the legs are of constant length, and they're attached on the same place on the 'skiis', then it's... uh the spine that's variable, or it's actually in the same config as later. Edit: Oh wait maybe it can be skewed... Edit: yeah it can, but that would tilt it, swinging the nose and rear up and down.

Well - as you said - hyperspace might and is probably quite different when it comes to physics. Obviously the Vind-y cannot spin as fast as in UQM else your crew would look like a pancake against the walls.

This could all be fixed by:

A: Making a really strong ship with G-Force dampers that somehow take the acceleration and null it. (if its possible)

B: Set the auto pilot from hyperspace and simply cruise on in from Hyperspace already facing the correct direction - just hope nobody gave you any bad directions.

C: The ships park in truespace - simply let smaller ships come to you or dispatch them yourself. The "mother" ship simply comes from hyperspace - never moves until it returns to hyperspace.

If you can make artifical gravity (as seen in all ships) can't we just counteract G-force with gravity?

Crew could be in the center of the ship (wouldn't counter acceleration though). The problem is more that the hull might break from the forces, unless they use some kind of field or mystery alloy.

As for space elevators, Edit: Well, possible in theory maybe, but in practice they would be very difficult to build.

It's probably better to use small moons and asteroids for material. once you have construction capabilities in space.

Even if you put the crew in the center - it would have less, but they would still be flattened against the wall. Besides - then the "center" of the ship most be huge to house alll those people's living quarters. That and the fact that everything not strapped down would risk quite a bang.

The main technical issues for a beanstalk are making carbon nanotubes stick to each other, and building a climber. Current guesses are that the second challenge is the harder one.

A rotavator design bypasses the climber challenge, and incidentally requires only 200 km of cord, not 300,000 km of cord. And it's generally more useful. I bet we can make a rotavator in 30 years. So, by SC time it should be a piece of cake.

Space elevators are for wimps and tree-huggers.  Project Orion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion) is where it's at.  :)

Orion looks interesting. I'm gonna add one of those rockets for my SC project (probably a derelict CCP one from the 1950's). Seems they're about 40-60 meters tall.



I think they're actually building mini nukes for the Cruiser, since earth is slave shielded and the starbase probably was searched by the Ur-Quan.


Edit: This might be of intrest
Some old SC stuff (webarchive'd) (http://web.archive.org/web/20021005003035/home.att.ne.jp/wave/rainbow/Toys_for_Bob/indexE.htm)

2KM ships? Sure, if you have a bajillion RUs just for fuel you could do that. Big ships take big resources to run, and big resources to make. No one seems to have those kind of resources to burn in Ur-Quan.

I'd say the best ship to get a sense of scale is the flagship. Figure out the size of the modules, and you figure out the size of the ship. I'll assume each module is about 15M long x 50M wide x 40M tall. That seems like more than enough space to fit anything in. 6-8 Stories tall, with room for adequate space on two sides of a hallway, and bulkheads. There are 16 modules, so that means the module section is about 240M long. Add on the bridge and rear portion, and 300M seems like a good possible estimate. The ship may be bigger or smaller, depending on how large you see the ship modules.

As you can see, that's a far cry from a 2KM behemoth. In light of that, the captain comments on the huge size of the flagship, and how both the base and the ship need to be retrofitted to be able to use the shipyard. So the starport was obviously not designed to handle such large ships, and the starport was retrofitted for the Ur-Quan. So the Ur-Quan don't have such large ships either. The Ur-Quan are known to have the largest warships of them all, so all the other ships must be much, much smaller by comparison.

Don't forget the fuel costs for the flagship are insane! The captain himself commented that your fuel needs are so large, that you have to supply your own fuel from offworld resources. You can easily stripmine a few systems just to get the fuel needed for your ship. All the other ships have negligable fuel costs by comparison. A nice consolation, is because your flagship makes a hyperspace signature so large, it can also carry 12 other ships in tow free of charge.

The only ship that could come close to 2KM would be the Sa-Matra. That can't be classified as a warship, though, at least not for the Ur-Quan who dug it up. It's a flagship, the only one of its kind, made to be invincible, to inspire fear into the enemy, to do everything that a warship can't, and to be the cornerstone of the entire fleet. Think of a mobile space station and Godzilla all wrapped into one.

Besides, if you can build two flagships, why not just make a single bigger one? Or maybe build 40 warships instead. Admit it, you can wage war with 40 warships alot better than you could ever do with one flagship.

Jesus! I never knew that propulsion system was so far along. Gigantic space battleships, here we come!

Only thing is Nasa won't stop talking about their new Ion thrusters. Those things are for moving 5 pound satellites, damnit. They won't even put much into plasma thrusters.

I never knew we had the prospect of building things on that scale in the near future, but the fact remains that nobody is going to be motivated enough to do it.

"Think of a mobile space station and Godzilla all wrapped into one. " you mean it's  flying, green, clay and a B movie?!!

I think I showed that the crew modules only need to be 7.5meters (Crewpod (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/crewpodrooms.jpg) and cabin (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/cabin.jpg)). This makes the ship 140m.

I think my cabins are very luxurious and roomy. StarTrek excepted, you don't give crew more space than they need. Why do that when you can either squeeze in more crew or more weapons (probably the latter)?


Speaking for big ships however, is armour. A 2km ship could have so effective defences that 40 smaller ships simply can't damage it. Remember what happened to WW2 tanks. Same thing happened to armour and swords, until the crossbow / concentrated explosives came that is...

Some ships have invulnerable forcefields though, and a larger version would probably draw more power and thus have similar operation times? Here a small ship might be as good, defence wise atleast.

The advantage with 40 ships of course, is that they can be at 40 places at the same time. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

Speak for yourself, I want my ship to have 2000 sq. ft. of Captain's quarters, an indoor pool, garden and enough closet room for beezer's beany baby collection. Just strap the nukes to the hull.

This is a lot of assuming. You don't know, for example, how much room life support takes place in a crew pod, how large the mechanisms that fire the ion-bolt guns are, and so on. Remember that the Spathi accuse you of having weapons "capable of punching a hole through a small moon" -- this is obviously somewhat hyperbolic and vague, but even so, we're talking about a universe where ICBM warheads do minor damage against ships, and one Ur-Quan Dreadnought has the resources to overpower an entire planet, and blast through defenses that permeate a star system. *One ship* seems to be a pretty big deal in the Star Control universe.



...And you still seem to be forgetting we almost never have actual *units* to put these claims into perspective. An "RU" is, itself, a completely arbitrary unit of resources. Less than one RU of uranium seems to be sufficient for the Starbase to run life support and synthesize food and oxygen for 1900 human beings.

All right, so that's a game-mechanics thing and not strictly a plot thing -- nevertheless it seems pretty clear that for doing anything *except building ships and fueling them* an RU is an *enormous* amount of resources -- by *our* standards, the resources necessary to actually maintain a space habitat the size of the Starbase would be significant, but for you in SC2 it's peanuts.

Actually, to me the subjective size of an RU is pretty huge, and makes me think ships are pretty huge. I have to strip-mine several major deposits of metals on a whole planet to get enough RU to make an Earthling Cruiser. "Mining out" a solar system is a relatively trivial task in SC2, while by our lights, mining *all the iron* on Mars would be a pretty huge amount of resources for one project to require. (And yes, I know, we probably aren't actually mining all the minerals from these planets, just certain easily accessible deposits. Even so.)



Well, yeah, I'm not sure what you're arguing now. I'm the proponent of *all* ships being pretty huge by modern standards, and the flagship being *super-huge*. They couldn't build more than one flagship if they wanted to -- they lack the technology.

But that doesn't mean that the flagship, as you're assuming, is a relatively small ship and means the other ships have to be tiny. And there's a point at which having one big ship is a lot more helpful than having many smaller ships -- for one thing, the requirements of propulsion through HyperSpace may require an engine that's a certain minimum size, and hence require fuel supplies a certain minimum size, and it may therefore make sense to build ships around that basic minimum. (This, by the way, is part of my objection to dinky-sized Cruisers -- they don't have to be ICBM-sized warheads, but for the Cruiser's missiles to be named as "nukes" and to be explicitly relics of the "atomic age" and *not* involve some sort of exotic energy-generating technology, they must be a certain minimum size. It's called critical mass. It's why we don't, and can't, have "mini-nuke" weapons.)

It's a subjective matter, but I just find the idea of little tiny ships weird. The absolute *minimum* size in my mind for a starship is something the size of an actual spacecraft like the Space Shuttle, and I would picture most starships being bigger. They travel really long distances -- they have to carry all kinds of resources *to be able* to go that far. You should think "ocean liner" or "battleship" when you look at them, not "fighter plane" or "motorboat".

Modern Navy Destroyers are 100 meters and Navy Cruisers are 200 meters in length. I think Earthling Cruisers should be some where in that range. By the way, this is an interesting picture of the earthling cruiser:

(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/images/vux1_sc1.jpg)

I'm not sure what structure that guy's cleaning limpets off of. If it's the main hull the cruisers are small, if it's an engine it's moderately sized, and if it's a wing then it's big.

If you look at this picture:

(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/images/human1_3b.jpg)

You can see little red viewports on the wings which seem to match up with the port hole in the first picture. This would make the cruiser a little over 200 meters in length, 65 meters wide, and 45 meters high.

Re: mini nukes of the cold war era.

This one best illustrates the how small a 'nuke' can get:
Edited in another link:
Davy Crocket (http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/FP/projects/nucwcost/davyc.htm)
Davy Crocket (http://www.guntruck.com/DavyCrockett.html)


28cm cannon from 1953 (http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/showthread.php?t=22164) (Ebaum though, but I've heard of cannon nukes, and they're limited to a certain caliber.

Some guys with suitcase sized nukes, 400-174lbs (1965) (http://www.brook.edu/FP/projects/nucwcost/madm.htm) More modern suitcase nukes are 50-100lbs maybe.

They could be built smaller, but there's a ban for mini nukes atm. so no (official) research is being made.


Did anyone answer where they get the nukes from with the shielded earth and probably cleaned space station? Personally I don't think they used the larger ICBMs other than for special missions. They used the radioactive materials to make mini nukes to fit on the Cruisers.



Also, nuke research, fusion and fission, might have gone on until 2015. They were likely to use the most hightech versions first. Where does it say ICBM btw? ICBM earthling only yeilds this thread on google...


Hyperspace might also be harder to 'open' the larger you are, and this way restrict shipsizes. No one knows. I guess you can make an arbitrary rule to suit your preferences here.


Edit: Deus> Everything from SC1 is less canon than SC2. Maybe it's a good idea to grade canon in this case? This is why I size up the Scout and size down the Cruiser.

That's true. But an earthling cruiser costs 1100 RUs to make. That comes out as 55 fuel units for the flagship, plenty for cruising for a couple months. Would you consider a flagship that burns cruisers for fuel to be big?

So, the game wasn't picky about how many radioactive resources the space station needs. What the captain didn't tell you, was that for every 8 RUs that a radioactive resource is worth, he's keeping 1RU for himself. Who's to say just how much he's pocketing from his resource system?  I think it's fair to assume that a typical player should be dropping off resources at the base regularly through the course of the game, so keeping the station intact would be a non-issue. ;)

Arne managed to cramp them in with an eighth of the space, with a lower floor to spare. A flagship cetrtainly isn't going to have the crew living as pod people though, and crew modules would likely have a few dining areas, redundant systems, stores, the space dome, etc. The sort of stuff that'd keep morale high, while still having adequate space. It's true, the module size will be up for debate, as you can never really get a true sence of scale. Like I said, the size of the flagship could be more or less depending on how you see the modules.

The spathi could be talking about Phobos and Deimos, and would still not be lying. Just the thought must make them quake with fear. Small moons like that are relatively fluffy, and although a high-caliber bullet probably wouldn't make it through, it would go in pretty deep.

Nukes aren't that impressive to begin with. ICBMs can fly so far on Earth, because they have an atmosphere to push off of. The simplest heat source inflates the air, and pushes the rocket extremely far. In space, all propulsion must be provided by the nuke itself. A space ICBM could be using a radioactive fuel source for the rocket, to give good speed at a relatively moderate weight.

Even then, nukes SUCK in space for 2 major reasons: No atmosphere to explode, and no focus for the damage. The instant a nuke explodes on a hull, half of the energy and material is already blowing up into space. A high percentage of the heat is being reflected off the hull, which is likely to have heat shielding. A large amount of energy would be divided around a sizable portion of the hull dissapating the damage further. And a good ship hull would give the nuke little material to explode. A bunker-buster style nuke would do pretty damn good, if it was capable of penetrating the hull. But that'd depend on the propulsion system being capable of getting those kind of speeds, and high speed comes at a cost of payload.

I'll agree there. But in space, you have to remember that volume goes up as a cube factor. So if you take two ships of the same shape, but one ship is twice as long as the next, it's really 8 times larger than the little ship. So if you compare my estimated 300M Vindicator, to say, a 15M Shofixi ship, (yet another lame guesstimate...) the flagship would be 8000 times larger. Of course, that's not taking the shape of the ships into consideration, but it is still something to think about.

Oh, and if the theoretical 300M Vindicator was compared to a possible 2KM Sa-Matra, the Sa-Matra would still be about 300X larger. Just thought for food.  ;)

"Everything from SC1 is less canon than SC2."

If we followed your logic, the we'd have to consider everything in SC2 less canon than SC3, right? Besides, I don't know of anything in SC2 that says the earthling cruiser is not 200 meters in length.


"This is why I size up the Scout and size down the Cruiser."

As cool as your art is, the shofixti live probably live in burrows, they don't need rooms, and the earthling cruiser has a lot more than 18 nukes. Even if it uses mini-nukes, it still needs to be 200 meters long to hold a nearly infinite supply of ammo, especially given how thin and stick-like it is.


"Even then, nukes SUCK in space for 2 major reasons: No atmosphere to explode, and no focus for the damage. The instant a nuke explodes on a hull, half of the energy and material is already blowing up into space."

I think you are wrong, I believe a detonation directly on the hull would do tremendous damage. It's a distance burst you're thinking of.

"Everything from SC1 is less canon than SC2. Maybe it's a good idea to grade canon in this case?"

These wasn't really my words, I was quoting other people from earlier in this thread. And you can grade canon by author, so SC3 isn't really canon in that sense. If it was, the captain would have horrible looking kids!

The gun of a small motorboat (SC1 scout) damages a 200m ship by 1/18th, while a nuke, the primary weapon, fails to destroy the small motorboat?
That is why I scaled the scout up and the cruiser down. Since I consider the Vindicator to be 140-200, I can't have a 200m cruiser either. I'm using the relative sizes of the ships to judge how large they are.

I did make bed tubes for the scout. What's inside the tubes can only be speculated about.

The cruiser need to be of infinite size to hold an infinite amount of nukes, unless it manufactures them aboard using materials from space. I figured 18 nukes is pretty good. I could make them smaller though, seing how small Davy Crocket is, but I sized them up so they would show in relation to the ship.


I'm not sure if you can concentrate the power of a nuke, but you can with regular explosives. Basically it concentrates the explosion into a beam that cuts through the hull and pressurizes/heats/wrecks the insides.

It's just not true that an in-space detonation of a nuclear weapon would be harmless. The fact that the energy of the detonation would be delivered in the form of pure radiation rather than absorbed by the atmosphere and delivered as a shock wave does not, as far as I know, make the detonation any less deadly. (I'm not an expert on this, but ISTR that NASA actually did a report on how dangerous it could be to set off nuclear blasts in space.)

I meant to reply to this:



It's not just the fact that one is later than the other -- SC3 is written by different authors, while SC2 is by the same authors. More importantly, SC2 is much, much, much more story-driven than SC1 -- SC1 has very vague bits of story that allow you to have a setting for a strategy game. SC2 *changes* quite a few bits of SC1 to make the story better, like by taking the generic 26th-century "future" Earth and making it a 22nd-century Earth with a rather detailed history linking it to the modern day.

This is utterly false. ICBM's are rockets with no wings; the only way they interact with the atmosphere is via drag.

The cruiser really needs to be big enough to carry over 100 nukes, given it's reliance on them. If it was just big enough for 18 nukes, it would only have enough firepower to kill one ur-quan dreadnaught, which is just ridiculous.


"The gun of a small motorboat (SC1 scout) damages a 200m ship by 1/18th, while a nuke, the primary weapon, fails to destroy the small motorboat?"

An F/A-18 Super Hornet can carrier tactical nuclear weapons. I'm sure a starship of similar size (shofixti) can carry at least an equal arsenal. The "motorboat" might not be destroyed by the nuke, because it is too small and fast to be hit directly, and only suffers the weak area effect of a space detonation.

Deus> The fighterplane you mentioned is almost 17m long. The shofixi scout is maybe 3-5 if we're to believe the SC1 art.

It's possible, that they fitted some extraordinary nuke on the scout though.

If the shofixi is so small, why does it have a collision area one third of a cruiser?


The gun still remains. It can destroy an UrQ ship with fourty shots.

When they sunk Bismarck, they first got a lucky hit on the rudder with a torpedo. Bismarck coudn't steer and some Brittish battleships caught up with her. Then they fired at her for 2 hours with their battlecannons and it wouldn't sink! They also shot some torpedos at her, without the desired effect. The Germans themself sunk it in the end, to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

Yamato and her sister ship were under fire for hours by hundreds of american planes before getting sunk, and the most severe damage was done by the bombs/torpedos (secondary), not the guns (primary).

Besides fitting 6 crew in that thing, they also have a massive nuke, life support, a front cannon 1/4th as powerful as a nuke capable of taking out >200m hightech dreadnaughts with 40 shots, and engine plus fuel. Not likely.

"Deus> The fighterplane you mentioned is almost 17m long. The shofixi scout is maybe 3-5 if we're to believe the SC1 art."

Yes, so the scout might be 15-20 meters long. The only SC1 art I've refered to is the earthling cruiser's.

"If the shofixi is so small, why does it have a collision area one third of a cruiser?"

Why is a dreadnaught half the size of a planet?


"The gun still remains. It can destroy an UrQ ship with fourty shots."

Kind of like a couple proton torpedo's destroying a space station the size of a small moon, right? We can't make assumptions about weapons that don't exist yet.


"When they sunk Bismarck, they first got a lucky hit on the rudder with a torpedo. Bismarck coudn't steer and some Brittish battleships caught up with her. Then they fired at her for 2 hours with their battlecannons and it wouldn't sink! They also shot some torpedos at her, without the desired effect. The Germans themself sunk it in the end, to prevent it from falling into enemy hands."

They were shooting primitive weapons. I'm sure things could be different in a few centuries. A while ago, people thought stone fortifications were pretty hot stuff. . .then came the cannon.


"Besides fitting 6 crew in that thing, they also have a massive nuke, life support, a front cannon 1/4th as powerful as a nuke capable of taking out >200m hightech dreadnaughts with 40 shots, and engine plus fuel. Not likely."

Again, we don't know enough about their tech to make these kinds of assumptions. Even SC1 canon is better than blind guesses.

As others have said, this is, also, wrong. The "must have air to push against" thing is one of the oldest fallacies about rockets. If this is how rockets like ICBMs actually worked space travel would be impossible. That's *not* how Newton's Third Law works -- all that needs to happen is that propellant comes out the back, and the rocket moves forward, whatever medium it's in.

The Apollo moon rockets basically *were* refitted ICBM delivery systems -- it was our ICBM technology that let us make moon rockets in the first place. That, itself, tells you something about the scale on which nuclear weapons are built.

Yes, the nukes on a Cruiser are probably smaller tactical nuclear weapons, but even so -- if there's any Cold-War-era stockpiles in there, those missiles are gonna be *big*.

Deus> So, in the left corner:

Motorboat piloted by 6 little rats!
Techlevel: noob
Suggested volume: 100 cubic meters
Forward gun damage: 1


AAAAAaannnd in the right cornerrrrr:

Ur-Quan battleship!
Tech level: 20 000 years
Suggested volume, 500 000 cubic meters
Forward gun damage: 6


We don't know anything about the anatomy of the cruiser. Those might not be windows, that's an assumption. It could be vents, decor or anything.

Besides, with a moon sized UrQ, why would the windows be of the right size? Maybe they're using cameras in the viewports? We don't know anything about future technology. If they're standing in front of a window, maybe it's just a screen?


Edited again: I think with contradicting material and logic, you have to assume a little and since I have to assume some sort of size for the ships, I chose proportions that:

• A, is playable in 2D, works graphically.
  
• B, is consistant with the ingame gfx where it can.
  
• C, reflects the power of the ship.
  
• D, would work logically, but with the usual scifi suspension of disbelief of course.
  

I'd use an unusual suspension of disbelief compared to regular sci-fi, as SC is commonly seen as a sci-fi parody.

In the left corner:

Fighter piloted by six fuzzy bunnies (is that better?)
Techlevel: Spacefarring, around that of yehat.
Length: 20 meters.
Weapon: Energy weapon tapped into a power source capable of powering interstellar engines.

In the right corner:

Old snot-green piece of ancient history.
Tech Level: Unknown, ur-quan spend most of the time fighting.
Length: 300 meters?
Weapon: Really big gun.

Winner = Ur-quan.


"We don't know anything about the anatomy of the cruiser. Those might not be windows, that's an assumption. It could be vents, decor or anything."

If those are not the windows, then where are they?


"Besides, with a moon sized UrQ, why would the windows be of the right size? Maybe they're using cameras in the viewports? We don't know anything about future technology. If they're standing in front of a window, maybe it's just a screen?"

Then why is the "screen" showing the guy on the outside, what's happening on the inside, in stead of the other way around? Plus the guy in the vac suit is the same size as the guy in the ship, so either way we know how big it is and get the scale of the ship off of that.

If an Ur-quan ship is not 1/2 a planet, then maybe a scout is not 1/3 a cruiser.


"I think with contradicting material and logic"

Only the in-battle art is contradicting, as it needs to be functional and can't eat too many system resources.

Lots hawter than Tanya or whatever :p

Shofixi Scout
Fighter piloted by six small and furry sexmaniacs.

Techlevel: Spacefarring, around that of Yehat.
Length: 4 meters as suggested by the SC1 art, or 10-20 as a guess.
Volume: 7 cubic meters or up to 100-200.
Weapon: 1 (Energy dart, possibly powered by an engine capable of propelling a small motorboat though space)
Primary weapon / volume efficiency: 0.14 to 0,005

In the right corner:

Ur-Quan Dreadnought
A species that has fought and survived for 20 000 years, but they're possibly also sexmaniacs, or used to be.

Tech Level: Unknown, but a species that spend most of the time fighting species from the entire galaxy will evolve their weapons (Darwin says so).
Length: 300 meters
Volume: 500 000 cubic meter.  
Primary weapon damage: 6 (Fusion blast, possibly powered by an engine capable of propelling a 300 meter ship though space)
Primary weapon / volume efficiency: 0,000012
Weapon efficiency compared to smallest shofixi scout: 1 / 11 667

Shofixi weapon technology scaled to UrQ size, Weapon damage: 70 000
Shofixi armour technology scaled to UrQ size, 'Armour': 583 333

Winner = A dussin of scouts even without the Kamikaze. 40 dart hits on the hull. Of course you can always win against the computer by picking of the fighters and then detonate).

There's no point in going overkill with weapon damage, but the UrQ's would probably have enjoyed a little more than 6 damage.




Are the fighters piloted or not? It says autonymous, but launching uses one crew (which doesn't directly mean they're piloted). Autonymous could mean independent though?

Edit:
If you don't like my numbers you can divide them by ten, then divide them by ten again. The ratios are still absurd.

Something that occured to me now is that maybe it's not only the GFX that has been scaled, but also the performance/stats? In that case the 'true' indicator of size (other ship pics) becomes sort of silly I think, with the actual gameplay contradicting it twice.


I like to edit:

(http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/sc1sizes.gif)
~4meter Scout as suggested by a pic, and 300 something meters Dreadnought (bigger than 200m cruiser, as suggested by 'window' sizes).

Summary
Personally I'd go for relative sizes close to the gameplay gfx mixed with the performance of the ships, because that's what people have  been in contact with the most. Yes, I'm ignoring the planet, since I don't think anyone takes it seriously anyways. I'm also pretty much ignoring the ship stat pics, since they aren't seen as much, contradicts the more exposed indicators of size, and they're ugly. I can't tolerate ugly as an artist.

Since I mentioned relative sizes, I must use a ship to scale everything after, and that is the Vindy, cuz people have been staring at that one a lot too.

Maybe we should list reasons for and against stuff? I'll start.

Notes:
If possible, put a - argument as + in another category! (inverted)
Keep - arguments under - and + ones under +, no 'althoughs'.




OVERALL SHIP SCALE

Kilometers
+
In melee, they're the size of a moon, judging by the planet.
At this size, the ships might survive the blast from the nuclear missile fired by the Cruiser.
At this size, ships don't have to worry about internal space.
In space you can build really big.
You can strip an entire planet surface of resources just to afford building a ship.
Inflation might push ship sizes this far.
-
There might be structural integrity issues, if the ships move as fast as the melee mode.



Battleship size (hundreds of meters)
+
The Ur-Quan dreadnought can launch fighters, suggesting carrier size.
The earthling Cruiser might be this size.
At this size, ships don't have to worry much about internal space.
In sci-fi this is a common size for ships.
-



Fighter/bomber/corvette size (15-70m)
+
Ships behave like fighters and only have a few weapon systems, mostly a forward gun that require the whole ship to turn.
Since this is the smallest reasonable size to build crewed ships, it explains why no smaller ships are seen in the game.
The design and detailing of certain ships indicate this size.
Crew numbers (common to various earth vessels this size) have similar crew figures.

-
Everything has to be squeezed in really tight.




SHIP SIZES

Vindicator is 140-300 meters
+
Intro art may indicate this size.
Crew modules may indicate this size.
-
Building the ship used up the resources of an entire planet.
It's mentioned as being very powerful, capable of destroying moons and stuff.



Shofixi Scout is a few meters
+
SC1 art seem to indicate this size.
-
It's unlikely that it would be able to carry 6 crew and possibly a human at that size.
It also need to carry fuel, life support and many other things.



Earthling Cruiser is several hundred meters
+
It can store enough missiles to never risk running out.
Ship art show something that might be small windows, allowing this size to be estimated.
This is the size used for ships of this design in Star Trek, which the game refers to on more than one occasion.
Cruisers are about this size.
-



Umgah Drone is 30 meters
+
There's some Umgah seen in blisters/cockpits on the ship.
-
The Umgah could be any size.



Nuclear missiles (fired by cruiser) are 20 meter long ICBMs
+
The story mentions MX missiles, which are ICBMs.
The missiles are really huge relative to the ship.
-
The story mentions all missiles having been dismantled.
With the earth slave shielded, and the space station probably checked by UrQ, there's no way to get these missiles?
The MX missile uses a multi warhead (http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm118_4.jpg). This is not reflected by the game.
In space, there's no need for several stages, as the missile don't have to fight gravity.
The missile doesn't drop any of the stages.
The damage infliced by these missiles seem a little low.






General inconsistancies
Ship sizes vary drastically between the solar system screen, melee screen, ship stat images.

"Personally I'd go for relative sizes close to the gameplay gfx mixed with the performance of the ships, because that's what people have been in contact with the most."

Then the dreadnaught is 300 meters, the cruiser is 200 meters, and the scout is 65 meters, approximately.

These figures work perfectly with your guidelines. The cruiser even has turret(s), as you'd expect a capship to have. The U-quan could have turrets too, but maybe they didn't want to limit their firepower with smaller turret mounted guns, when they could have a massive, stationary, fusion cannon.


"Ships behave like fighters and only have a few weapon systems, mostly a forward gun that require the whole ship to turn."

Again, many ships do have turrets. There are two disadvantages to turrets that might have prevented them from becoming more popular. 1) Turreted weapons are smaller than fixed ones that can run the length of the ship. 2) Using a turret to fire in a direction not opposed by your engine (i.e. something other than forward) could blow you off course (unless you have special tech, like human lasers (no kick) or orz stabilizer thingies.)


"Since this is the smallest reasonable size to build crewed ships, it explains why no smaller ships are seen in the game."

No, the Ur-quan fighters are smaller, as is the planetary lander.


"Crew numbers (common to various earth vessels this size) have similar crew figures."

Considering the automation that is refered to in the game, I don't think this is a very strong point.


"Vindicator is 140-300 meters"

I think it is bigger than this. Between 500-1000 meters long.


"Crew modules may indicate this size."

But were these modules designed for humans or precursors? How much space must be devoted to life support, hydroponics, waste recycling?


"Building the ship used up the resources of an entire planet."

Perhaps that's the available resources of a small colony on a planet.


"Nuclear missiles (fired by cruiser) are 20 meter long ICBMs"

No way. The missiles are small, but there's plenty of them. I still think they should kill 6 crew, though.


"Ship sizes vary drastically between the solar system screen, melee screen, ship stat images."

This is to be expected in a 2d game. Anyone who's worked on games like this knows what I'm talking about.

I think we should forget the melee- and solar system scale when thinking about the sizes of different ships.  The turning-rate and acceleration for all ships in melee has been scaled for gaming purposes only. If we consider the G-forces, it is clear that melee isn't actually "real".

I have always thought of Vindicator's battles pretty much like in an anime show "Starship Operators". Zelnick is giving commands on the bridge, then a few officers do what they are told. It's not like Zelnick has a joystick which he uses to swing Vindicator around like an F-22. So Vindicator is clearly a "carrier" type ship. Ur-Quan being a "dreadnaught" is the next biggest thing. Not like it could dance around Vindicator, but it would still clearly out-maneuver it so that Vindicator wouldn't be able to face it (not like it even would have to, it has side and tail guns). The next biggest thing would be Earthling "cruiser". It couldn't out-maneuver a Dreadnaught, but would be fast enough to face it and use it's primary weapon directly. The smallest class would be a Dreadnaught's "fighter". It would be fast enough to "dance" around any ship. I'd picture a fighter vs Vindicator pretty much like an X-Wing vs Imperial cruiser in Star Wars. So the "fighters" are the only ones with a joystick and a pilot. A Shofixti Scout is the only thing that doesn't fit in this picture.

In general all in-game ships would be either "dreadnaught" or "cruiser" class. The actual fights would be nothing like the melee familiar to us.

We are also forgetting that there can be more people in a ship besides the actual crew. We could say that it takes 18 skilled people to optimally handle an Earthling Cruiser IN BATTLE. Besides that, there could be scores of "passengers" aboard, which would explain the expedition to Vela.

When an enemy ship warps into battle, the distance between the combatants would still be very big in true space. (some other than Vux, because their superior mathematics would make them warp right behind you) We are talking about being at least minutes away from each other. From that distance it would be impossible to hit the enemy with unguided projectile weapons, unless the enemy would be "carrier" class like Vindicator. Laser-weapons would work, but their range seems to be pretty limited. So in almost all cases, both ships would need to get closer to make any damage.

And let's not forget that in "SC2 reality" the battles aren't actually 1vs1. There would be a lot of strategy we are not familiar with.

(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc2/shipspecs/vux-spec.jpg)

The vux intruder is REDLICOUSLY large... see the windows... hmm

PR3 has actually said it is a tug.

What is a tug?

A Tugboat, a ship that guides larger ships when in the confined space of a harbor. I don't know if it is really a tug, but it's called a "service vehicle", so it something to do with maintenance or another non-combat role.


"The vux intruder is REDLICOUSLY large... see the windows... hmm"

We don't know if those are windows, and if they are, we don't know how big they are. We would need a close up shot with something of a defined size (like us humans). The intruder is probably somewhere between 100-200 meters long.

The Mark I is carrier sized compared to our ships, not Precursor...  Which reminds me, shouldn't we think about Precursor scale with the MarkI?  For example, the central cylindar needs to have a walkway/transport-tube large enough for two Precursors to pass, as well as enough room for fuel/water/power lines.  Of course, the humans could have cluttered the walkway up with other things since they wouldn't need the whole space.

According to http://merzo.net/ 300m would make the Mark I 11m bigger than the Classic Trek Enterprise, and when you compare this length of Mark I with merzo's scale human gifs, it looks like a pretty good match for the intro slide.  500-1000m Mark I makes the humans look way too small.

this seems a little contradictory...
Building this ship used up whatever resources were left after the Precursors built an untold number of them (they probably abandoned the site when their wasn't enough easily available resources for a full Service Vehicle).  Also, its weapons are described as being able to punch a hole through a small moon; that said, the Spathi Captain didn't find anything surprising about this; perhaps the asteroids you shoot in combat are large enough to be "small moons" such that even a mendosuki dart will cause a Spathi to state that the ship in question is not peaceful.

"The story mentions all missiles having been dismantled"no they wern't just hidden see here:"The tens of thousands of thermonuclear weapon components stashed away in the Peace Vaults were and additional bonus which surprised even the Chenjesu." this is from here:
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc2/sc2_hist3.shtml

Deus> It's likely that the pixel artist placed the window lights there to make it look sci-fi. It could also be christmas lighting, as used in Alien (The belly of the planet lander).
Also, on fortresses, the windows were often made as small as possible to prevent the enemy from lobbing in cannonballs through the windows. It's also reasonable to believe that they don't need windows at all in the future, since they can use cameras and thus not have the weakness of exposed windows (You know, the 'On screen!' thing they use in StarTrek).
There could be a few emergency windows in case of a computer failure. Maybe this is what's seen on the pic with the earthlings.



Yes, that would work. But it's somewhat arbitrary to ignore the Scout and accept the Cruiser. It's consistant to ignore both.


The cruiser has zappers. There's no visible turrets other than on the Orz. The Arilou has a turret underneath.

During the Civil war, the Monitor pretty much revolutionized sea warfare. Ships no longer had to turn to shoot. Up to this point, turning the ships into position has been a major problem during battle. With a turret you could shoot at any point when within range. You don't see any battleships nowdays without turrets do you?
Having a single gun pointing forward on a 300 meter battleship would make a ship seriously vulnerable to fighters.
Yamato was one of Japan's most pretentious overkill ships. Guess what? It didn't have a single gun running the entire length of the ship.


Yes, that's like 150 turrets. I know we're dealing with spaceships here though, but similar mechanics apply. Smaller fighterlike ships often have a single weapon pointing forward, turning the entire ship isn't much of an issue, and there's no room for turret mechanics. As soon as fighter planes got larger (bombers), there were naturally smaller planes that could stay 'on the tail', and they had to slap on turrets to stand a chance, since they couldn't out turn them.

A frigate has turrets, and so does a bomber. So by that logic even ships my scale would have them, I'll explain below why they don't:



The Dreadnought is large enough to carry small autonomous fighters. This is not unreasonable with my scale. The Dreadnought simply reached the critical size threshold for being able to work as a carrier for small fighters. The other ships did not. This also partly explains why so few ships have fighter defence (flak), there's just one carrier to worry about (besides Orz, sort of, but they're NKotB).

With 300 meter ships, a lot of ships would be able to carry fighters and scout ships, and many modern battleships this size does. They also have defence against them.


The planet lander size is unkown. It can take 12 crew is it? I'd like to think it's scout sized. It also costs 500, as much as a Scout. It can however carry 1/4th of a Vindy Storage pod worth of resources, which would potentially make it HUGE.





Isn't it just the Vindy that's automated though? Anyways it's still an indicator favouring my position.



It doesn't say who built the crew pods? Even if it's a Precursor design, most likely they were re-enginered to fit in as much crew as possible.
Life support can be made very compact even today, see ISS, or even the Apollo missions. You can't get more compact than that. SC is in the future and there's likely to be many positive advances in this area. The Precursor may also have life support machines in the design, atleast for oxygen if they didn't wear suits on Vela.
With a good life support system, all you need to do is introduce energy to fight the entropy. This energy is most likely provided by the other ship systems.



Agreed. Well, not really, I think it should be regular Sidewinders/Mavericks or possibly micro-nukes. Not sure how to solve the infinite supply though. Maybe suspension of disbelief. Infinite ammo is something people are used to accepting.




Tiberian> We can always assume that it's a paraphrase for something, and the scout is really just a representation of a squadron of 50 Scouts.  
If the game is playing in ultrarapid, the Captains are really incompentent and have a reaction time of minutes. They're also very bad at aiming, swinging their ships off course for half a minute by mistake.
I prefer the smaller scale because it's Star Control as it plays, no need for paraphrases. Conforming SC to realism would make it something else than SC.


Culture20> I don't think it is contradictory. The


The arguments for one size catergory speaks against the others. Otherwise I'd have to put a lot under - in many categories.


Bob's mother can juggle: Bob said his mother could juggle (although he's been known to lie at more than one occasion).
This one would need to be split into what Bob said as a + and Bob is a liar -

+ We do know that the factory used up all the accessable resources of a planet.
- We can guess that the precursors may have used the factory before.

+ The Spathi made a remark about the Vindy being able to pop moons.
- The Spathi's are known for stretching the facts a bit...


Michael>

yes but if they showed them to the chenjesu they must have rebuilt them.

About that we can only speculate. Maybe they just showed them the warheads, or a model of a missile as it looked once.

It does say components in your quote. Components are parts.

Well, it's a *Precursor* tug. It's certainly nothing like a tug (or "service vehicle", probably the more accurate term -- a ship only meant for guiding vessels within a harbor probably wouldn't have attachments for weapons) for the New Alliance -- for the New Alliance it literally functions as a carrier, since apparently a whole flotilla of ships can dock with it (or hang out in its warp bubble or whatever) and be carried by it through HyperSpace.

Just like how the Sa-Matra, to the *Precursors*, would be a battleship akin to a Dreadnought, but for the Ur-Quan functions as an enormous unstoppable battlestation.

well the pods are made in the starbase meaning it can make the ion gun so perhaps it wasn't ment to have guns.

"It's likely that the pixel artist placed the window lights there to make it look sci-fi. It could also be christmas lighting, as used in Alien (The belly of the planet lander).
Also, on fortresses, the windows were often made as small as possible to prevent the enemy from lobbing in cannonballs through the windows. It's also reasonable to believe that they don't need windows at all in the future, since they can use cameras and thus not have the weakness of exposed windows"

Yes that's what I was saying. I have always been a bigger fan of the ships in the "Aliens" universe, than star trek ships where they have cut a half million port holes. I guess they find structural integrity to be less valuable than natural lighting.


"Yes, that would work. But it's somewhat arbitrary to ignore the Scout and accept the Cruiser. It's consistant to ignore both."

You just said the scout art is too small, you're the one who wanted to ignore it.


"The cruiser has zappers. There's no visible turrets other than on the Orz. The Arilou has a turret underneath."

It doesn't really matter if you want to call them "zappers", they still do the same thing.


"During the Civil war, the Monitor pretty much revolutionized sea warfare. Ships no longer had to turn to shoot. Up to this point, turning the ships into position has been a major problem during battle. With a turret you could shoot at any point when within range. You don't see any battleships nowdays without turrets do you?
Having a single gun pointing forward on a 300 meter battleship would make a ship seriously vulnerable to fighters.
Yamato was one of Japan's most pretentious overkill ships. Guess what? It didn't have a single gun running the entire length of the ship."

It is vulnerable to fighters and it turns faster than a turret (perhaps it has internal force dampeners). Again, powerful turrets might blow you off course.


"With 300 meter ships, a lot of ships would be able to carry fighters and scout ships, and many modern battleships this size does. They also have defence against them."

Defenses like say, point defense lasers, frag crystals, auto cannons, rapid fire lasers, and engines that can leave those fighters in their dust? As far as carrying fighters, the question comes, why would you want to?


"Isn't it just the Vindy that's automated though? Anyways it's still an indicator favouring my position."

No, your starbase is heavily automated, as well as dreadnaughts. It is highly likely that the tech-worshipping humans would also use a lot of it in their vessels. If not, a cruiser even the size of yours would be way under crewed.


"Not sure how to solve the infinite supply though. Maybe suspension of disbelief. Infinite ammo is something people are used to accepting."

Perhaps cruisers synthesize materials as done on the starbase.

It came with an ion cannon 'out of the box'. This may have been chosen by the humans who oversaw construction, though.

Yes, but I'm consistantly ignoring both the Scout size and the Cruiser size suggested by those pics. It's obvious that they cared more about getting the proportions and ship balances right in melee than they did in getting the ship stat pics right.



It?
The Mauler certainly doesn't have a problem getting of course. It's apart of it's strategy. There were stories of WW2 warships getting pushed sideways a lot during salvoes. This didn't make them drop turrets.



Oops, you forgot Mycon, Vux and even UrQ themself... no wait, they're getting completely owned by fighters. I guess the architect of those massive spacehulks screwed up, unless they didn't expect fighters around because the ships are pretty small as they are.

My point with turrets is, with a turret you can always fire. Being able to do little damage at any time has historically proved more valuable than being able to do a lot of damage only under certain conditions (where you might need to expose yourself) (as far as battleships goes anyways).
It's rare with weapon systems that are so large proportionally that they need to be fixed along the axis of the ship/plane, other than on fighters (tank/train-busters specifically).
When playing Syreen and being chased by fighters or a plasmoid, you have to spin around, shoot, spin, thrusts, spin, shoot. You have to do this with a lot of ships. The builders of the ships would have realized this isn't practical, and crammed on some turrets if they could. I guess they couldn't cuz the ships are rather small.

I'm having trouble thinkning of a sci'fi where they have weapons on fixed mounts and large ships. I think there was a Mauler type of ship in a SW xomic, and there's always deathstar of course.  
 



No, the starbase has been modified (if not built) by the UrQ. The Commander seem very impressed that the shipyards are automated and much more effective than normal human workers in vac-suits. It's probably not human technology.
6-40 Crew is perfectly reasonable for ships of my suggested scale. I'm using numbers from real ships, and common sci-fi, plus hull space calculations. I'm not guessing.

Lots of Japanimation depicts their space battleships as having a spinal main cannon, a ton of turrets, and a fleet of fightsrs. The SDF-1 "Macross" and Nadesico are two fictitious ships that come to mind. The main cannon is designed to puncture capital hulls, (or in those cases as an ultimate cannon) while the turrets handle more vulnerable targets. Some pics:
http://www.midnightanimation.com/gallery/robotech/unspacy/sdf1.html The macross. The two parts in front separate and power the main cannon.
http://www.akira.ru/nadesico/gallery/nadesico.htm The nadesico. The two front nacelles power the main cannon.

Of course, those are huge, honking flagship types. The Vindicator wasn't designed for war, but the advanced tech makes it just as good. The Sa-Matra, a precursor warship, doesn't seem to have any such main cannon either, although the standard armanments far surpasses anything that other races have.

The Ur-Quan dreadnoughts, despite being the largest warship, aren't really meant to be huge. The Ur-Quan do not like being near each other due to their killing instincts, so they would rather have more ships to give them some breathing room, rather than a huge and uncomfortable ship, prone to mutiny.

There could be a hyperspace penalty for having huge ships. Sending a larger ship through hyperspace could conume a huge amount of fuel compared to a ship with just half the signature. Such a setup would favor a large amount of small ships, which would consume less fuel than one huge ship. Also, there could be design issues with making hyperspace engines beyond a certain size. Comparing offensive and defensive investments could favor smaller ships, as opposed to putting all of your eggs in one basket. Any number of things could favor smaller ships over larger ships.

There are a few things that would favor larger ships. One such thing could be powerful, easy to produce and hard to penetrate armor. With antimatter available, this is nearly impossible at best. Energy shielding is another, as large and powerful shields can absorb an unlimited amount of damage from weak enemies. Shields aren't very common in SC2, though.

About turrets and multiple guns...
That may have been a design desision to make space combat easier. Turrets are a pain for one player to handle, so instead almost all of them shoot straight foward. Multiple guns would also be a pain to handle, so ships are given just two weapons to deal with. A single player can't just pick up a controller with a hundred buttons and try to do space combat.

Ion gun? Ooohhhh.... you mean the precursor ion torch. I thought that was for precursor ship maintenance. It just happens to be a little powerful for performing maintenance on normal ships.  ;)

Yes, I realize they made the ships simple because it wouldn't be playable if the player had to micro-manage 40 turrets. So they designed the ships as fighters, and that's why I think they should be small. WYSIWYG, sorta.

The ships could indeed be hundreds of meter and mostly have a forward weapon, but then I'd expect to see smaller and larger ship classes. With small ships, you can only go larger. To prevent larger ships, I'll have to make up a rule to prevent ships from getting large. It's better than having to make one up for both smaller and larger though.
The hyperspace penalty was what I thought of too. Some ships already are invulnerable, so more armour mass wouldn't protect them better either.


My main gripe with large ships though, is the design. The detailing on the ships would be absurd at that scale.


So, I guess I don't see any reason to go big. The ships don't look big, don't behave big, and don't have to be big.

I haven't read all of the eight pages, but here is my main thought on ship sizes.

I think that the smaller a space ship is the better. Larger ships need more material then smaller ones, obviously. If you are going to make 100's of Earth Cruisers, then for the sake of money, labor, and time you should make them as small and efficient as possible, but not too small that it hampers their battle value. Take this example: The U.S.A. needs to build 1,000,000 cars as fast as they can, because these cars fight an evil that is threatening to destroy the country. Now, would the government decide that we are going to build 1,000,000 semi-trucks or 1,000,000 little easy to make cars that do the job well enough?

Lastly, you have to factor in that Earth's government should treat their building materials as if they are limited, because the government will never know when they will run out of materials to build with.

Ok, there is my view. Hope it isn't to confusing.

"Yes, but I'm consistantly ignoring both the Scout size and the Cruiser size suggested by those pics. It's obvious that they cared more about getting the proportions and ship balances right in melee than they did in getting the ship stat pics right."

I think you've got that backwards. The melee proportions are ones that will give the player some idea of which ships are bigger or smaller, while allowing the gameplay to be very fun.


"It?
The Mauler certainly doesn't have a problem getting of course. It's apart of it's strategy. There were stories of WW2 warships getting pushed sideways a lot during salvoes. This didn't make them drop turrets."

It = Ur-quan Dreadnaught. The mauler is not exactly a marvel of combat engineering. Maritime ships are partly in a gas body, and partly in a liquid body. They will not get blown very far, but a spacecraft in a vacuum will.


"Oops, you forgot Mycon, Vux and even UrQ themself... no wait, they're getting completely owned by fighters. I guess the architect of those massive spacehulks screwed up"

Why would they carry weapons against fighters, if they don't have to face fighters (with exception to the scouts).


"My point with turrets is, with a turret you can always fire. Being able to do little damage at any time has historically proved more valuable than being able to do a lot of damage only under certain conditions (where you might need to expose yourself) (as far as battleships goes anyways)."

Apparently, some species agree with you (earthing, orz, arilou, etc.), while others don't.


"I'm having trouble thinkning of a sci'fi where they have weapons on fixed mounts and large ships."

That's ok, SC does not necessarily have to be like everything else. Remember, SciFi is just guess work, it's not fact (hence the name).


"6-40 Crew is perfectly reasonable for ships of my suggested scale. I'm using numbers from real ships, and common sci-fi, plus hull space calculations. I'm not guessing."

If you have never toured the inside of a real life starship before, then you probably are guessing. If you brought a roman naval officer aboard a modern warship, he might wonder why you had so few oarsmen.


"About turrets and multiple guns...
That may have been a design desision to make space combat easier. Turrets are a pain for one player to handle, so instead almost all of them shoot straight foward. Multiple guns would also be a pain to handle, so ships are given just two weapons to deal with. A single player can't just pick up a controller with a hundred buttons and try to do space combat."

There you have it, that is the real life reason the ships behave the way they do in the game. It's just a matter of fun, gameplay. The spec art shows what they are really supposed to look like (that's its job!)


"Yes, I realize they made the ships simple because it wouldn't be playable if the player had to micro-manage 40 turrets. So they designed the ships as fighters, and that's why I think they should be small."

Fighters that carry as many as 42 crew, can transport entire colonies, punch holes in small moons, carry hundreds of nukes, carry turrets, hold and launch 41 fighter of their own, and have names like cruiser or dreadnaught?


"The ships could indeed be hundreds of meter and mostly have a forward weapon, but then I'd expect to see smaller and larger ship classes."

There are small classes, like that "motorboat" you were complaining about. You can't get much smaller than that. And 300 meters is pretty damn big, on the other side of the scale.


"My main gripe with large ships though, is the design. The detailing on the ships would be absurd at that scale."

You don't need to go nuts with the '70s star-destroyer/battlestar-galactica style. Not every every square inch needs to have a micro-structure painted on. You're current drawings have plenty of detail for 5-300 meter long craft. Some ships might even be very smooth. You don't have to redo all your art, just because it might turn out that the ships are bigger than you had once believed.

thats why I said the starbase could build them.

The Monitor design was given a turret soley because it (and its intended prey, the C.S.S. Virginia) had a turning radius of ~2 miles.  It's possible that designers of a spaceship that can turn on a dime decided the turret was an out-moded relic (its also possible that alien cultures never concieved of a turret as a design; it could be just the Humans, Arilou, and Orz, and the Arilou and Orz might have gotten the idea from humans [Orz via Androsynth]).

Regarding anti-fighter turrets:  Fighters don't play into SC combats because no race uses them except the Ur-Quan, and every race except Humans already had their ship designs & production facilities for those ships before the war.  All ship weapons prior to humans were designed to battle other cap-ships.  Chenjesu probably asked Humans what tech they had that could blast through neutronium-titanium alloy hull, and the humans pulled out their nukes.  Then when the Chenjesu explained the ships the enemy used, the Humans added the Star Wars lasers to the mix, being the only ships with good defense against the Ur-Quan fighters.

" The Monitor design was given a turret soley because it (and its intended prey, the C.S.S. Virginia) had a turning radius of ~2 miles.  It's possible that designers of a spaceship that can turn on a dime decided the turret was an out-moded relic (its also possible that alien cultures never concieved of a turret as a design; it could be just the Humans, Arilou, and Orz, and the Arilou and Orz might have gotten the idea from humans [Orz via Androsynth]). ' didn't think about the moniter but I was going to point out that we might be the only race that
thought of turrets and we moved past them because we liked nukes better.

I'll try to shorten this dowm I got a meeting with my accountist in a few.




And if romans were to make a space game, they would use oarsmen and catapults in their designs. Their ships would be like wooden galleys floating in space. When turning, they'd shout and shift oars, whip the slaves or whatever. Thier ship would probably have a similar amount of crew as real galleys. Maybe they'll have some high-tech weapon like a mirror death beam.

Likewise, if a modern person makes a game, and make the ship dogfighters, they're probably not something else just because they can be. Occam's Razor.

If you make the ship smaller, they fit into common standards quite well, IMO. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. I guess we just have a different perception of ducks.



I've been arguing a bit for larger ships and smaller motorboats too, just to explore the arguments, I don't think the Scout is like a small motorboat, or that the vindy can shoot moons to bits.
For the record, My smallest selfsustaining ship is 10-15, largest is perhaps 75, except the vindy which is 140. Most ships are around 40. My ships are not really fighter, although I'd like them to be. Theyre just barely small enough suit the dogfight style gameplay. If it wasn't for the crew numbers, I'd make them smaller, like fighters, but now it is as it is.
I'll make both larger and smaller versions of the ships though, because it seems reasonable. Since I'm not doing a dogfight game primarely, I can slap on turrets on the larger ship classes.

remember that turrets would knock ships off course in space.

There are a few things to note about that.

1. You're thinking about bullets. If you take a 2-ton piece of metal, and lob it 20KM on earth, you'll get one hell of a kickback. But many weapons in URM are either energy/plasma weapons, or self-propelled. Energy/plasma weapons fire with a much lighter mass, as most of their killing power comes in the form of high level energy and heat. You can fire them at very high speeds without worrying about kickback. Self-propelled weapons carry their own engine, so the ship itself only has to give a tiny push for it to leave the weapon launcher. The rest of the speed comes after the weapon is put into space.

2. Who cares? Space is big enough for a tiny course diversion, in any direction. If a ship with a turret doesn't come with maneuvering thrusters, then it has bigger problems to worry about. If a ship gets thrown off course by its own turret, then it's a pretty crappy ship. Who knows, maybe the kickback can be used for extra maneuverability, like on a Druuge ship.

3. Range and power. A turret can never be as powerful or as long range as a weapon that runs the length of the ship. The Ur-Quan fusion blaster is a weapon that runs from the fusion engines, all the way out the front. Many other weapons are depicted as taking up a very large part of the ship, both the gun and ammo source. If you wanted to take a main weapon, and turn it into a turret, you'd need a ship at least 3 times as large as the original to use it effectively, and by then it would pale in comparison to making a bigger main cannon. Not to mention, turrets require a huge amount of mass for the turning motors and the turret plating, which would seriously hinder a ship's maneuverability. Or, you could go without the armor, and have the turret destroyed first thing. Range and speed are king in space, if you can shoot them, but they can't shoot you, you win.

4. Because of the high-paced arcade style of combat, no ship has any real problems with mobility. Going from the longest range combat to weapons range, most ships are able to turn about so they can fire. Turrets are made to turn fast when the ship itself can't. I suppose the Vindie would have the most notable mobility problems, so if it was considered to be a massive ship it could be outfitted with turrets. But it can be upgraded to be just as maneuverable as every other ship, and then some. I personally think that the Vindie shouldn't be able to get more turning speed than about 3 thrusters would give in combat, but that would make navigating space a pain.

I don't see how an argument starting from the point of view that the original authors were wrong is going to be useful.

"And if romans were to make a space game, they would use oarsmen and catapults in their designs. Their ships would be like wooden galleys floating in space. When turning, they'd shout and shift oars, whip the slaves or whatever. Thier ship would probably have a similar amount of crew as real galleys. Maybe they'll have some high-tech weapon like a mirror death beam. Likewise, if a modern person makes a game, and make the ship dogfighters, they're probably not something else just because they can be. Occam's Razor."

I'm not really sure what this means.


"If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. I guess we just have a different perception of ducks."

Neither of us has ever seen a duck, all we know is we have a duck and a platypus sitting here, and we don't want to get stung.

However, my guess is that there are really more than one breed of duck. I think that some are small ducks (5-20 meter scouts) and some are very big ducks (300 meter dreadnaughts).


"I'll make both larger and smaller versions of the ships though, because it seems reasonable. Since I'm not doing a dogfight game primarely, I can slap on turrets on the larger ship classes."

Obviously, you're free to do whatever you want with your game. I am mostly talking about the Starcontrol 1+2 ships.


"3. Range and power. A turret can never be as powerful or as long range as a weapon that runs the length of the ship. The Ur-Quan fusion blaster is a weapon that runs from the fusion engines, all the way out the front. Many other weapons are depicted as taking up a very large part of the ship, both the gun and ammo source. If you wanted to take a main weapon, and turn it into a turret, you'd need a ship at least 3 times as large as the original to use it effectively, and by then it would pale in comparison to making a bigger main cannon. Not to mention, turrets require a huge amount of mass for the turning motors and the turret plating, which would seriously hinder a ship's maneuverability. Or, you could go without the armor, and have the turret destroyed first thing. Range and speed are king in space, if you can shoot them, but they can't shoot you, you win."

This is my feeling, too.


"I don't see how an argument starting from the point of view that the original authors were wrong is going to be useful."

I'm not sure which one of us you are talking to. If you mean me, then I think you are mistaken, I am trying to defend the original vision of the authors, or at least, my perception of it.

You know, we had a similar discussion going on in the Starflight forums. In Starflight, the ship on the cover and in the docs was very different from the in-game ship, as seen in the outfit screen. In the end, it was mostly decided that the in-game ship was a product of the old days' poor computing power. The art that came in the documents (which also looked much better by the way) was what the ship really looked like, they just could not fit something that detailed, in-game.

I think the same applies for Starcontrol. The navigation and melee ships were just made to look moderately good, and be functional. The big, close-up, spec art represents what the ships really look like. And since there is nothing new in Starcontrol 2 to overwrite these images, I think they are the most accurate.

Also keep in mind, that TFB created SC2 as something of a spoof. It's not really grounded in fact, and is just supposed to be a fun game. So in a fun universe, a 5-10 meter long motorboat really can defeat a 300 meter long battleship.

5-10 meter motorboats have repeatedly destroyed battleships and large cruisers in real life.

And you can't convince me that the special effects budget precluded drawing the intro slides to proper scale for a bigger ship.

I'm not actually sure what Occam's Razor is, I've heard many definitions. Here's an example:

Larry Hagman: Look Patrick! What a cute little insect!
Patrick Duffy: That's not an insect, it's the planet Zorgoid, cloaked to look like a beetle.
L: But wouldn't a planet that size be a black hole, and like... suck us in?
P: Nah, the Zorgoids got special gravitational flux shields and stuff.
L: *steps on it* Hehe, I just destroyed an entire planet.
P: No, they just warped the planet away, and teleported a regular insect into its place the second you stepped on it.

I believe Occam's Razor states that Larry is correct in his initial observation, because it's fits and is simple.


But like I said, maybe it's a matter of perception. When I see dogfights, decorative design, low crew numbers, fixed weapons, I immidiately think small scale.
I guess I've been indoctrinated by common sci-fi designs and WW2 stuff. Naturally the ships can be anything, like astral projections of GnibGnork -the unholy, but I pick what I think is the simplest theory in this case.


Since TfB are humans (are they?), they're likely to use analogies that the audience and themselves can relate to. However, it's quite possible that scale was completely irrelevant to them, because they concentrated on gameplay. The ships are just decorative icons.
They may also deliberately have been fuzzy with the scale.


The different art, melee/specs/lineart, varies greatly in design. In the case of the scout, the cockpits doesn't match between the pics, and it doesn't seem like there's a clear view behind the seat on the ship pics, as seen in the big tanaka pic (but not so much in the mini cockpit).
So, yes, the authors were sort of wrong here and there, where they are contradicting themselves.


---

In the case of turret mounted energy weapons, I guess they can fit the energy source outside the turret, unlike regular cannon turrets where the energy is kept in the casing/shell.

Range is important, but not that important, because at a larger distance it's more difficult to 'lead', with the enemy being able to dodge easily. At a certain threshold having that extra range won't pay off as much, making a turret a better choice.

Destroyed as in shooting at them with the regular gun? The regular gun on a WW2 fighter could barely scrape the paint of a battleship. They did most of the damage by dive bombing, torping, suiciding (limited ammo).

I guess that a tankbuster plane could cause some damage with something like a 75mm (3") cannon, atleast against smaller ships, so who knows...


Even with a monster budget there'll be inaccuracies. Sometimes artists only have a few days, and don't have time to put themselves into the project details properly. Although some Art Directors (AD) can be nitpicky, many accept a certain level of discrepancy. Sometimes when I make a batch of pics the AD will accept faulty pics just because the majority of pics are okay.
I'm probably responsible for causing arguments about 'scale' myself... hehe.

Torpedo boats... they would carry 4 to 8 torpedoes, externally (sometimes without a launching tube). Unload them on a cruiser or battleship, and it becomes a new reef.

Hmmm, well I think if I'm allowed to make another WW2 analogy, then I'd have to say if the UrQ dreadnought is a well built battleship, then it's the Cruser that's the 'torpedo boat'.

Anyways, torpedo boats (or PT boats) back then were usually longer than 15 meters, up to 50. The larger ones can be mistaken for destroyers. The smaller ones took a crew of maybe seven, and carried only 2 torpedos.

This italian torpedo boat (http://www.amv-lilliput.org/modelli/Docum/mas/MAS15.JPG) got a battleship kill in WW1 (unique and famous case). I think it was 16 meters long, pretty small

Mostly though, for torpedo boats, think 30 meters. They attacked all sorts of stuff. Smaller versions probably dealt more with destroyers and sitting ducks. They were less effective at the time of WW2 because larger ships had become faster.

A more suitable example of a small ship being able to damage a battleship is probably torpedo planes, but they could only carry one torpedo, and battleships usually required a couple of good hits.

Yamato was with its 256 meters was one of the largest battleships ever, and it took maybe 20 torpedo and bomb hits before sinking. Her sister ship, Musashi , which was as impressive, absorbed an estimated 18 heavy bombs and 20 torpedoes.

Since a torpedo plane is pretty much obsolete in battle after after having launched the torpedo, it's similar to the Shofixti kamikaze. Because of flak and enemy fighters, few planes ever returned. The machineguns were ineffective angainst ships, and probably only used as defence against fighters.

Torpedo planes were 11 meters or so. Crew, maybe 3.


But, hey, you could always put a mini nuke in a rubber boat. Maybe cloak yourself under a greenpeace flag. We ... come ... in ... peace! BOOM!



Edit:
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/scoutsize.jpg)
Size is guesswork of course.
Also, the whole WW2 analogy is sort of silly. Battleships in space can't be sunk, but maybe they got a similar problem with getting depressurized, although that won't destroy the ship, and there's always vac-suits.

You don't know that energy darts are only as powerful as machine guns. Again, you don't know how that technology works, or how much juice is behind it.

The WWII thing is more of an allegory than an actual comparison of firepower. The point is that the energy darts' effectiveness in combat is comparatively similar to the stopping power of a machine gun against a warship.

I'd say the only thing in melee that does comparative damage of a machine gun to a battleship is collisions.  Collisions (ignoring the planet) destroy the UQ fighters, but do no damage to any ship.

Seems unlikely that you'd need a tool intended to blow holes in things at long range for ordinary ship maintenance. If the Vindicator is an all-purpose vessel there's no reason it couldn't have been given the ability to at least defend itself in combat by the Precursors.

Occam's Razor doesn't say anything about correctness. Just preferability of theories.

Well, like I stated earlier, both the Scout and Dreadnought has a single main gun, and despite being more technologically advanced, the UrQ has only managed to muster 1/11667 of the Scout gun efficiency.

This is like having a 7.5mm gun on a small WW1 patrol boat, and a single 50mm cannon in the front of a 250m WW2 battleship. Not only that, but the battleship is so poorly built it can just take 40 hits from the tiny patrol boat gun.

Of course you can always say that the patrol boat has a 1 meter (cal) cannon at the front. This would maybe make it 1/4th as powerful as a weak nuke. But then you still have the Dreadnought being redicilously nerfed. And why would anyone bother to build big ships if they're only 1/11667 times as powerful?

So basically the other races are wasting an awful lot of mass on nothing, making their ships slow, underarmoured and underpowered.

By this logic, we could make a 20 meter Scout (4x len), which would give it much more internal space. Skip the glory device, and you can fit 40 guns on it. That would kill any ship with one shot (making almost 200 damage per second). And that's not the only bunus with this fantastic Shofixti/Yehat technology, the ship would also have over 200 crew, making it a little tough mofo, pretty much owning any battleship, including the gigantic Vindicator with Hellbores and Shiva furnaces. Not too shabby for a 20 meter ship.

It would cost something like 18000 RU though (180 pts). I think it would still be as fast, since its just scaled up. If I were the engineer though, I'll dump half of the guns and squeeze up the juice on the engines, so it could outrun any ship, spin a little faster so it can shoot incoming stuff.

Anyone care to make a hack? (I was thinking it could shoot like a slight spread, so the bullets form a shield, maybe not doable if the number of bullets are limited.)


Meep> You're quite right. I only meant to use the word 'correct' as in the sense we hold the gravitational theory to be correct. It's just a model that fits the obsevations, and it isn't neccesarily correct as in God or the Universe agree with it.

I wouldn't equate "correct" with "fits our observations". Our observations may be incomplete, and what we observe isn't necessarilly what is.

And I didn't, did I?
I just said we treat things (such as gravity pull) as 'correct' (note the ' I used), because it's the best we can do. It might later prove to be false, because the multidimensional pink squibb-squabbs that tug on things goes on a strike in the year 2380. Until then, I dare to trust in the theory enough to call it... corr... ... .. the most accurate? Sufficient? Preferable?

Edit: New page, better quote properly.


Edit. Made sloppy clay figures of the Scout and Dreadnought, sized as in the melee. The masses are pretty close to what's in the code. Scout is 1, and the Deadnought is 8. It's 10 in the code. If they're made of the same material, it means the Scout is built of a material  7150 times as heavy as what's used in the Dreadnought, or that the Dreadnought is just a thin skin of some lightweight and not very durable metal.

I was trying to point out that technology that appears to be one thing could actually be another. Precursor tech is so advanced, that the ion gun seems unnaturally weak. There's no way that the ion cannon would be considered decent during the precursor times. It seems unlikely that the ion gun was intended to be a precursor weapon, and I think it was probably a high powered tool that, if you use it wrong, can be used in combat. After all, if a precursor warship is pretty much impervious to modern tech, and is enormous compared to the Vindie, how big and strong a tool will you need to perform maintenance on it? I think it fits with the "workhorse vehicle" design of the flagship.

I think you're reading too much into it. I think it's designed that way for gameplay's sake. Would you enjoy putting hundreds or thousands of shots into a dreadnought that can one-shot you? Probably not, but killing one with a Shofixi ship is still a feat. Ur-Quan doesn't give a huge range of endurance for vessels. In Ur-Quan, there is no such thing as injured crew, they're either alive or dead, so you can't take a "fraction" of a hit point. There's no such thing as armor factor either, so every ship loses the same amount of crew from a shot. The melee health meter only goes up to 40, and the developers must've decided that is a good amount. The dreadnought fills up the bar completely, and you won't be shooting at the ship wondering why it's not losing any health. I'm sure that you could try adding in things like an armor factor and injured-but-savable crew, and that would give you a much wider range of endurance that ships can have. But if you had a Shofixi ship that couldn't scratch a dreadnought at all, and the flagship was indeed invincible, would you enjoy that?

Haha, Yes, I know it's just a game!

I just prefer to say that the melee gameplay is the game, and not the surrounding pictures.

I dunno, maybe I'm getting too offended by the other pics. It's like seeing the Alien movie, and then noticing a factoid somewhere that states that the Aliens are made of chocolate, and actually only 1 inch tall.

No one would buy that for Alien, but that movie was meant to feel real. Starcontrol might be more of a comedy.

Either way, your artwork is still kick ass. I can't wait to see what you create next.  :)

Thanks! I'm doing a Slylandro ark next. It's basically a big glass bubble that's has a pressurized atmosphere inside. Not sure how big I should make it though ;)