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Topic: The Vindicator (Read 4879 times)
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Wolframm
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Quite possible. They claim that they collect Precursor stuff all over the quadrant. I believe their role in game is very important. Without all those things they know, Zelnick would unlikely be able to blow up the Sa-Matra. I also believe that the Precursors were smart enough to scatter their knowledge around the galaxy so no one could get it in one piece on one place after they're gone.
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Wolframm
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I doubt anyone even actually CAN make anything "more fancy" out of the Precursor thechnology 'cause the Precursors are supposed to be far more advanced and intelligent than anyone else in the Galaxy. Since the Melnorme buy info on rainbow world locations, we can assume that's the where they get Precursor technologies from. Still, I don't get it what do they need biological data for.
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Draxas
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It's certainly also possible, as Luki alluded to, that the Melnorme have other clients that are willing to pay something even more interesting to them in exchange for Rainbow world locations and/or bio data. Since the Melnorme are entirely unwilling to share their long term plans and goals (hence the exorbitant fees for them), it's all just speculation.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Hmm. Possible refinement on the size calculations:
1 cargo bay has a capacity of 500 kilotons of corrosives, which generally have roughly the density of water. The volume of this would then be 500 000 cubic meters.
The module section of the ship is 32 by 8 pixels on the combat screen (on which the ship length is 47 pixels). That means that each module is 2 pixels-on-the-combat-screen thick. Going to the outfit ship screen, modules are 24 pixels thick front-to-back, and the interior parts of the cargo bay modules are 38 pixels tall, which is around 3.2 pixels-on-the-combat-screen tall.
We then have a cargo module aspect ratio of 2 thick by 8 wide by 3.2 tall.
This 'flat modules' picture is well supported by the isometric cutaway views when purchasing modules.
We must also take away the spine, which is a cylinder 24 Outfit-pixels long, and 12 in diameter. Call that 1.5 cubic combat pixels, and take another 1.7 or so away for the walls and such, for a net volume of 48 cubic combat pixels.
With that size, we see that one pixel on the combat screen is 21.8 m. This yields a length of 1026 m
If we instead suppose that the density of stored material is instead the density of iron (7.87 tons/cubic meter), then we get a combat-screen-pixel as 11.0 m, producing a length of merely 516 m.
Which fits best?
We notice that the crew compartments are 4 fat floors tall, with a thin floor between the top two (not counting the dome). With the smaller scaling (and the crew compartment's slightly greater height), 10.7m * 3.5 pixels / 4.5 floors = 8.5 meters per floor. This is way too big for humans, but quite comfortable for double-scale precursors. The larger scaling would make this much too large.
Based on this second line of reasoning, I conclude that the length of the Vindicator is around 515 m long. This is in decent agreement with the earlier 'large' estimate of 470 m, and excludes the old 'small' estimate. I would note that the 470 m figure was actually going to be slightly less than the actual value anyway - the floating pod could easily have been only 91% of the way up to the Vindicator, which would explain the entire discrepancy.
Consistent with assembly image - CHECK (scale = precursor)
Consistent with crew compartment - CHECK (scale = precursor)
Consistent with cargo bay - CHECK (density = iron)
How close are we? The precusor scales are very rough, so we won't rely on them. If we suppose the bulk of the cargo is in base metals, the iron approximation is quite good - many metals have density close to iron; few are much less, a few a bit more, and iron is going to be a very common cargo, so it makes sense to calibrate against that.
If we take pixel dimensions not to be exact, then the largest - by far - source of error is the combat sprite. At 8 pixels wide, that gives us right there a +/- 6.25%. Shuffling the rest into rounding up to +/- 7%, this yields:
515 +/- 36 m
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« Last Edit: October 17, 2011, 05:07:52 am by Death 999 »
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