http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#nuke

This is a really neat website that among other things discusees the efectiveness of a nuclear explosion in space. I've heard a lot of complaints from SC players that the earthling cruiser just doen't do enough damage and have seen considerable debate waged over the actual potency of the cruisers armament. I hope the information here, which seems to be based on solid science is helpfull. Personaly after reading this and some follow up material put out by NASA I think the creators of SC had it prety right, a nuke just isn't that good without an atmosphere to transmit the force of the blast.

Glad to see this post has grown so  I dont think that the melee screen  can be taken as an acurate judge of ship scales simply because that would make most of the star control ships half the size of planets...since the ComSim central breif  descriptions of ships (the ones you are given when initialy selecting a ship to fight with in practice mode) do offer some sense of scale, (for example the Dreadnaught is described as Huge, while the Shofixti scout is considered Tiny) which don't seem to be reflected  on the melee combat screen. I think only the Starship Databank pictures can be considered acurate. I have However wondered about the pictures of the ships in the various SC manuals. They seem to offer a lot more detail than either the Databank or Melee screens.

from our 2006 perspective the Trident II seems the more apropriate choice but as Eth pointed out on the pages of now and forever the Authors probably intended to use the LMG 118-A seeing as in 1991 they had no reason to think it wouldnt survive to the small war of 2015. Using this as our yardstick we get a cruiser that is 221 mtrs. However this in my opinion makes 18 crew a little sparce...even if you include anti nuclear armor..hyperdrives...computer systems...etc....221 mtrs is...quite a fair amount of space. These calculations are always open to all kinds of interpretation. Thus the debate. I don't think we can ever really establish exact specifications unless TFB comes out and says this is how it is. (maybe in the next star control eh?) i think it's safe to say that the Cruiser is somewhere between 130 and 220 mtrs, yes I know, quite a range but it all depends where your coming from I guess.

A few thoughts on the Earthling Cruiser

Working on a Star Control fanfic recently I began wondering about the dimensions and crew capacities of the various Star Control Ships. Someone at the Pages of Now and Forever message board directed me to a wonderful discussion of this very topic here on the UQM forums. After reading the rather extensive thread I decided to do a little calculating of my own focusing on The Earthling Cruiser. So here goes. Let’s start off with a few bedrock assumptions.

Assumption #1 Due to the two dimensional nature of the Star Control games, the limitations of graphics technology at the time of their release and an intention by the authors to create a balanced gaming experience the Star Control Melee screen accurately depicts the combat capabilities of the various vessels involved in the Ur Quan Conflict, but does not accurately represent their dimensions.

Assumption #2 Given that the ComSim central starship databank from SC 1 contains in game terms “technical readouts of  hierarchy and alliance vessels” (even though we know that in reality they are simply awesome drawings done by fantastic artists) we can assume that the vessels depicted in those specifications are in fact properly scaled. So how do we determine the size of an object from a picture of that object?

Well first of all we need a point of reference (an object in the image whose dimensions are known to us) In the case of the Earthling Cruiser there is a very obvious point of reference as the entire picture is orientated on one plane and we don’t have to account for variations in distance. This point of reference is the nuclear missile identified as a “Fire and Forget Nuclear Missile (MX surplus)”

Although we do not know for certain what type of nuclear missile is depicted, the image does give us a few pointers from which we can make a fairly educated guess. Firstly we know that we are dealing with an MX or in other words Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) we also know that the ICBM used for this particular image was “surplus” that according to Star Control history came from the peace vaults established in 2015 after the Small War meaning the missiles were in use until at least 2015 Knowing these facts we can begin looking through various classes of ICBM’s for a suitable candidate. After doing a bit of research on the subject I determined that the Trident II ICMB fits the criteria quite well. Developed in 1990 and slated to be deployed well past 2020 (which fits quite nicely into the Star Control timeline) it is designed to be deployed from mobile platforms and is used in many of today’s nuclear submarines, (and perhaps starships of the 22nd century?)

If we take the missile in the technical specs of the Earthling cruiser to be a Trident II the length of the depicted object would be 13.4 meters (as per the length of a Trident missile)  The missile in the image being 44 pixels long would give us a measurement of 30.45 cm per pixel.
Applying this to the image of the cruiser proper we get a length of 136 meters (from the rear engine nacelles to the tip of the “saucer”) with the main body (minus the engines) being 126 meters long. Similarly we get a height of 26 meters (from the lowest part of the engine to the tip of the blue dome on the saucer) and a beam (width) of 38 meters (from engine to engine).
   

These measurements seem to me to be completely reasonable. The Earthling Cruiser seems roughly equivalent in size to one of today’s midrange nuclear submarines, such as the Benjamin Franklin or Resolution class. Submarines of this type usually carry an armament of between 16 and 20 ICBMs which I think is entirely reasonable for the Earthling Cruiser as well. They also typically carry a crew of well over 100 but in regards to SC ships crew is another discussion entirely. (If the Earthling Cruiser does indeed only have a crew of 18 then this allows plenty of space for accommodation and additional missiles.) I will be making calculations for other SC ships soon but for now this is as good as I can come up with for the Cruiser.