Ship dimensions

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Should the ships be remade / rebalanced

Poll ended at Wed, 14. Apr 04, 19:16

yes
19
70%
No
8
30%
 
Total votes: 27

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bryant
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Ship dimensions

Post by bryant »

I was considering making a ship, so I took the lengths worked out width and hight, then calculated square meters for the hold.
I know a unit may not represent a cubic meter.

Lets take the argon express as an example.

70m long.
about lets say 15 meters wide and 10 meters high.
70m X 15m X 10m = 10,500 cubic metersok lets half it just for fun.

thats still over five thousand cubic meters, is there something wrong with my math?
How big is a freight unit?

My goal was to build a paranid nemisis style ship in the aproximate size of the argon express, I wanted a relativily fast ship, with about 1000 freight units and relativly good weapons.

My conclusion if a cubic meter is a unit, I could transport a factory in an argon express. And if the paranid nemisis is 146 meters long, (say 14 houses long if a house is 10m long.), and has a freight room of 300 units I get the feeling that maybe ship design was never though out physically.

I feel the ships are relativily well balanced in what they are, but maybe the sizes should be thought over again, and perhaps some new ships should be included in the game.
MFG.
Doug.
djr114
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Post by djr114 »

No idea how big a freight unit is, but cargo space utilises space compression. If you take a TP class ship, its cargo hold can hold the same amount of small cargo as passengers, so one would assume S class cargo is roughly humanoid in size, and from that you can work out the approximate size for all cargo... but I'm lazy.

Oh, and you haven't taken into account the size of extra cargo, e.g. how thick is the armour, how much space does all the circuitry and wiring take up, the materials needed to seperate levels and rooms etc.
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Challenger_STA
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Post by Challenger_STA »

yes, don't forget that ships aren't hull and engines alone.. you need a lot of electronics extra inside.. who knows, how much space the modular computer system, the gravidar, life support, space compression system, general sensors, comm etc take up..
cya Challenger
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LOOie
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Post by LOOie »

i'm glad someone's finally mentioned this, i thought i was alone here...

the scale of a lot of things in x2 is all wrong. the fighters are too big and capital ships and space stations are too small. e.g. anyone ever noticed that all the space stations seem bigger on the inside than out, like a TARDIS? Is this intentional? i.e. all stations inside are "space compressed"?. erghh..

i guess i'm i sci-fi traditionalist. personally i'd prefer that capital ships implies BIG and fighters implies little gnats buzzing around it. The only game i've seen that does scaling "nicely" is Homeworld2. How fantastic it would be to have a capital ship 1KM long? to have the a repair station the size of the Stardock in the Star Trek movies or Starship Troopers or even a Death Star? imagine taking about a minute or two to do a single fly-by of your capital ship in your fighter.

-LOoie

p.s. i think this space compression thing is such a silly concept. :P it kinda kills the immersion factor for me, just like the mis-matching interior cockpit/external views (not just scale, but the fact that the cockpit bits dont match the exterior models). how that for a new mod project, anyone?.. anyone?.. :D
x2000
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Post by x2000 »

My biggest complaint with the ships has to be the visibility out of the cockpit. Who in their right mind would make a fighter ship and obscure half or more of the view outside the cockpit?

Would love to change this if anyone could point me in the right direction on what image files to customize. I'm pretty good with a paint brush :)

Oh, and yea. The ship scaleing is off, but I think its done on purpose in order to keep the sectors from looking cluttered. If the stations were to scale, it would take forever to fly around one and the gates would have to be moved further out.
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bryant
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Post by bryant »

So a recap.

Cockpits don't match in size or shape the out side of the ship.
The size of the fighters are too big.
The Stations are not big enough.
This freight compression thing, should be thought over.

So Egosoft, time to get out a tape measure and do everything to scale.


There are arguments for why they have done it they way they have, for example it would be even more difficult to hit a fighter if it was smaller.

Hmmn, I think scaling would considerable increase the immersion factor to the point of it being near film.
MFG.
Doug.
VVNZ
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Post by VVNZ »

While we are on the subject of ship design I reckon the TP class ships need a total re-work, they are all an express with a bit tacked on! Perhaps the 3D moddler was getting sick of coming up with new ideas?

I've been thinking more and more about different new ships (once we can add totally new ships) I think it'd be a good idea to give each race it's own specialty ship. eg as the boron are a peaceful non-viloent race wouldn't it be cool to add a ship designed to capture pirates and the like unharmed still in their ships and tow them back to a Boron M2/1 for trial and punishment?

A Teladi weapon platform/storage depot.

A Split ship that can cloak using energy cells as "fuel" for cloaking... etc

Obviously these ships would be very expensive to balance gameplay out but I think they would add a lot to the indivduality of each race. At present every race has one of everything, M5 to M1 and they are only slightly different I'd like to see a few unique vessels to play with :)
Nanook
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Post by Nanook »

It's the apparent size of the stations and ships that are misleading. If you watch an NPC ship dock at a station, most stations are huge in comparison. Unfortunately, the field of view from your cockpit is highly distorted, like looking thru a fish-eye lens, or the opposite-side rearview mirror on an automobile.

As for cockpits having restricted views, you should try a realistc WWII flight sim sometime. Most of those cockpits have lots of view-obstructing struts. In fact, most spacesim fighters have some sort of obstructed view. Very few use the modern jetfighter bubble model.
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.

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NeverSnake
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Post by NeverSnake »

A weapons platform with 0 speed (but with turning ability) and a docking computer and jumpdrive fitted from the start would be cool.

Although you'd need a script to simulate jumpdriving to a position within a sector.
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bryant
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Post by bryant »

well I think the census is generally a yes
MFG.
Doug.
NeverSnake
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Post by NeverSnake »

This would be one of those projects where everyone has their own opinion on what size the ships should be though.
"There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone" — Bjarne Stroustrup
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bryant
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Post by bryant »

I made a few calculations useing metric scale, the size of the cockpit for example the tl transporter is about 14 sq meters, or about 42 cubic meters. This is an actual size.
Using the coockpit as a constant, you can then scale the ship around these proportions.
If you can calulate how big a freight unit is in cubic meters, then you can say, that 1000 units is x cubic meters and then you have a good idea how big the ship has to be in order to fit in in, so there is a formula that would work well.
MFG.
Doug.

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