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Topic: Scale (Read 39686 times)
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Culture20
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Re: Scale
« Reply #90 on: April 30, 2005, 11:11:29 am » |
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- ... D, would work logically, but with the usual scifi suspension of disbelief of course.
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Deus Siddis
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Re: Scale
« Reply #91 on: May 01, 2005, 05:41:28 am » |
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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.
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Strange_Will
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Re: Scale
« Reply #92 on: May 01, 2005, 06:18:04 am » |
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Lots hawter than Tanya or whatever :p
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« Last Edit: May 01, 2005, 08:55:50 am by Strange_Will »
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Arne
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Re: Scale
« Reply #93 on: May 01, 2005, 08:18:14 am » |
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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:
~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.
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« Last Edit: May 01, 2005, 10:42:51 am by Arne »
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Arne
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Re: Scale
« Reply #94 on: May 01, 2005, 08:36:08 pm » |
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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.
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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.
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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. 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.
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Deus Siddis
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"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.
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Tiberian
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Re: Scale
« Reply #96 on: May 02, 2005, 01:19:44 am » |
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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.
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« Last Edit: May 02, 2005, 01:21:58 am by Tiberian »
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Strange_Will
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Re: Scale
« Reply #97 on: May 02, 2005, 02:08:42 am » |
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The vux intruder is REDLICOUSLY large... see the windows... hmm
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Tiberian
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Re: Scale
« Reply #99 on: May 02, 2005, 02:57:19 am » |
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What is a tug?
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Deus Siddis
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Re: Scale
« Reply #100 on: May 02, 2005, 03:25:03 am » |
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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.
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Culture20
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Re: Scale
« Reply #101 on: May 02, 2005, 05:43:24 am » |
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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.
Notes:
If possible, put a - argument as + in another category! (inverted)
Keep - arguments under - and + ones under +, no 'althoughs'. this seems a little contradictory...
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. 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.
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« Last Edit: May 02, 2005, 05:59:52 am by Culture20 »
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michael
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Re: Scale
« Reply #102 on: May 02, 2005, 09:27:07 am » |
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"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
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Arne
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Re: Scale
« Reply #103 on: May 02, 2005, 10:27:57 am » |
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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.
Then the dreadnaught is 300 meters, the cruiser is 200 meters, and the scout is 65 meters, approximately.
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.
Yamato:
Length 860 feet
Beam 127 feet
Crew 2500
Armament (All Turrets): 9 x 18"/45 cal in three triple turrets 2 forward 1 aft, 12 x 6.1"/60 cal in 4 triple turrets (design) 1 forward, 1 aft, 1 port mid, 1 starboard mid 6 x 6.1"/60 cal (Apr./44 Yamato), 12 x 5"/40 cal in 6 twin mounts (design)24 x 5"/40 cal in 12 twin turrets (Apr./44 Yamato}, 24 x 25mm AA in 8 triple mounts(design)72 x 25mm AA in 24 triple mounts (Apr./44 Yamato) 96 x 25mm AA in 32 triple mounts (Apr./44 Musashi)87 x 25mm AA in 29 triple mounts (Jun./44 Yamato) 146 x 25mm AA in 41 triple & 23 single mounts (May./45 Yamato), 4 x 12.7mm MGs (design)removed Apr./44
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:
No, the Ur-quan fighters are smaller, as is the planetary lander.
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.
Considering the automation that is refered to in the game, I don't think this is a very strong point.
Isn't it just the Vindy that's automated though? Anyways it's still an indicator favouring my position.
But were these modules designed for humans or precursors? How much space must be devoted to life support, hydroponics, waste recycling?
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.
No way. The missiles are small, but there's plenty of them. I still think they should kill 6 crew, though.
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
If possible, put a - argument as + in another category! (inverted)
The arguments for one size catergory speaks against the others. Otherwise I'd have to put a lot under - in many categories.
Keep - arguments under - and + ones under +, no 'althoughs'.
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>
The weapons were then dismantled and their components stored in huge subterranean bunkers that came to be known as "Peace Vaults."
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« Last Edit: May 02, 2005, 10:35:59 am by Arne »
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michael
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Re: Scale
« Reply #104 on: May 02, 2005, 10:41:53 am » |
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yes but if they showed them to the chenjesu they must have rebuilt them.
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