I do see the similarity. Fortunately, even without knowing of such likeness, I changed the design of the mega-freighter "hoover ship" about a year ago. Though it has the same basic frame (sweeping wing design with raised control tower from the center of the craft), it's become heavily detailed and "mega-greebled": a process in which I change components with the addition of entire large chunks. For instance, what was once a smooth top surface of an engine block may become outfitted with a three-deck superstructure. It's actually this process that resulted in the beauty of the Alexander. Trust me, when it's finished, the "hoover" ship will look very different, and very cool.

These are, after all, going to be the primary mobile battlestations of the NDC, except when a Dominant-sized ship can be used. In fact the opening screens of the game, telling the story to the player, will feature a wide-angle scene in which at least 20 of these are in formation above Earth, with an entire military fleet undergoing refit and refueling. At 12 km in wingspan, they're the biggest ships in the entire game, save for the NCS Chrenari, at 72 km long. Yes, you read both of those sizes right.

I'm still not sure on what I'll call them, though. I've been thinking of calling them the Atlas Class, because of their immense carrying capacity. Either way, they're being categorized as "Arks". While Hunter Killers hunt and kill, and Dominants command the battlefield, Arks carry supplies and troops in immeasurable quantity from world to world.

72 km long?! Are you insane?! Though I doubt any are among us, that's 72,000 meters for those of you who can't do metric calculations. If you're still not sure how long that is, it comes out to almost 45 miles. If you still can't imagine that, go to a map. None of the cities of the world currently come close to that in area size , not to mention the distance from one side to the other. A 12 km wingspan isn't so bad, that's about as wide as San Francisco from the Pacific to the Bay. I can imagine us building a starship that size, but those Dominant Class ships are gonna cost an 'ark'-load of credits to make, let alone buy.

Of course, this is my opinion. I could just be thinking too small. After all, the biggest ship I've coded so far into my TC is just under 3 km long, and it's supposed to be one of the biggest ships in the game. See, I figured a city-sized ship was big enough. But you, Delphi... I got to hand it to you, to be able to imagine ships that could literally block out the sun from low orbit single-handed... you've got quite the magnificent mind. Good job, sir!

** Edit:** Whoops, I made a miss on the calculations of my ship, 3 km is not quite city-sized, more like park-sized. Still, Delphi's ships are outrageously big.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 26 March 2010 - 08:53 AM

"That's no moon..."

Well, they're constructed in space, travel via FTL transportation, and are designed to invade a planet, so yah, they'd be big. Personally, I say "cool."

Our moon is about 3500 km in diameter, so these things are still small fry compared to the Death Star.

This post has been edited by n64mon : 26 March 2010 - 02:46 PM

Yes, the NCS Chrenari is tremendously long. It's also completely one-of-a-kind. It's the NDC death star, if you want to look at it that way. I won't give away specifics on the story elements in play at the time, but it is a massive project across more than 40 worlds to create a final defense of humanity against a nearly indefatigable foe. The whole ship is a weapon; a gigantic nuclear furnace with the sole purpose of depopulating planets with a concentrated stream of nuclear fire. No, it doesn't cut planets in half or cause death star styled explosions. That's more illogical than the Chrenari's size. The super weapon it carries is designed to heat up the crust of a planet to the point of melting and eventual implosion, liquifying the surface and reducing the world to a smoldering ball of exposed mantle.

It is undeniable though: the Chrenari is a near-impossible feat of engineering, draining the resources of an empire to a depleted state.

I'll remind you though, that even a ship that size pales in comparison to the sum total of materials in a planet's mass. The earth is more than 12,000 km in diameter, meaning that you would still need at least 166 copies of the Chrenari just to span the mantle. We live on a very big world, and there are plenty bigger yet.

I couldn't resist doing more research:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ds/index.html

This site uses a number of techniques to figure out the death star's diameter, and produces numbers from 120 km to 900 km.

QUOTE (Delphi @ Mar 26 2010, 01:47 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It is undeniable though: the Chrenari is a near-impossible feat of engineering, draining the resources of an empire to a depleted state.

And it'd better have a sprite worthy of its size as well.

The comment about earlier about why there aren't any refineries being built is much mistaken. The oil companies are forever trying to get approval for new ones. But the EPA refuses. Despite the fact that technology has advanced to the point that a new refinery, with pollution controls and safety features built in are far more effective and far more cost effective than retrofitting the features onto old refineries, the EPA has it stuck in its head that "Oil Refinery" == "disgusting polluting unsafe thing, application denied".

I'd quote the earlier poster, but for some reason, IPB won't give me a cursor in the full reply window. I hate this webboard software.

According to a relative that I have that works closely with the EPA very often in the energy industry, it's because the companies seeking to build an oil refinery have not yet submitted a plan that meets safety and pollution standards, especially safety standards, actually. Most of the plant designed submitted for review rely on carbon credits and tax trades for pollution, not actually clean design. The same issues have plagued the so-called "clean coal" plants. Scrubbers and caps have definitely been an upgrade, but to really meet the standards, we still have a long way to go. There is a plan in the works that has been slowly creeping to fruition to build a refinery in North Dakota.

There is, though, a reticence towards building oil refineries. The standards on emissions and safety are an absolute joke on ethanol plants in comparison. If those plants were held to the same standards, we wouldn't have any ethanol plants, either.

I spent about two hours throwing this chunky vessel together.

The Guardian Class heavy cruiser is an artillery platform in truest form. Dual nichron batteries and their power centers comprise the bulk of the ship's hull, sacrificing engine power and maneuverability for raw destructive force. Converse to the diminutive navigational abilities of the Guardian, the vessel possesses an inordinately powerful impeller, allowing both extreme operational range and the ability to accelerate with immense power over a short burst, affording the craft limited utility as a blockade breaker. Few things are more terrifying to a fleet commander than the idea of a Guardian breaking formation and charging the line with artillery guns blazing.

Some Guardian captains have their vessels outfitted with anti-fighter turrets or limited missile reserves for use against smaller assailants, but in normal fleet operations, a cruiser escort is the oft-preferred method of covering the flanks of this behemoth ship.

This really does look like an old-school artillery platform. I would not want to be on the business end of that thing.

QUOTE (darthkev @ Mar 26 2010, 09:16 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

72 km long?! Are you insane?! Though I doubt any are among us, that's 72,000 meters for those of you who can't do metric calculations. If you're still not sure how long that is, it comes out to almost 45 miles. If you still can't imagine that, go to a map. None of the cities of the world currently come close to that in area size , not to mention the distance from one side to the other. A 12 km wingspan isn't so bad, that's about as wide as San Francisco from the Pacific to the Bay. I can imagine us building a starship that size, but those Dominant Class ships are gonna cost an 'ark'-load of credits to make, let alone buy.

Of course, this is my opinion. I could just be thinking too small. After all, the biggest ship I've coded so far into my TC is just under 3 km long, and it's supposed to be one of the biggest ships in the game. See, I figured a city-sized ship was big enough. But you, Delphi... I got to hand it to you, to be able to imagine ships that could literally block out the sun from low orbit single-handed... you've got quite the magnificent mind. Good job, sir!

** Edit:** Whoops, I made a miss on the calculations of my ship, 3 km is not quite city-sized, more like park-sized. Still, Delphi's ships are outrageously big.

Even the biggest ship in EVN:UGF, the Galactic Navy's Jupiter -class command ship (which I haven't actually coded into the game yet), is only 10 km long.

But actually, Los Angeles covers something like 248 square miles.

The way that I justify the size of vessels in the TC is through extrapolation of current engineering principles and proven examples of military escalation. If you build a ten pound shell, your enemy will build a twelve pound shell, and he will win. In regards to spacial requirements on a starship, I looked at the ISS and the space shuttle of today for examples of functioning spacecraft and what's necessary to build one. Remember that for a ship to travel for long distances in space (between systems), it'll need atmosphere, food, water, power, and living space. The space shuttle only orbits the earth and services the ISS, and yet of its 3145 cubic meters of volume, only 71.5 cubic meters are habitable. That's no exaggeration; the shuttle is roughly 37m long, 17m tall, and 5m wide (fuselage). That's less than 2% of the total volume in livable space.

So, imagine building a warship. Now you need armor. Because you have armor, you need more powerful engines to compensate for the extra weight. The Delphi ships have energy-refractive shielding instead of typical sci-fi "deflectors", to save on power, but either way, you'll still need a bigger power center for the shields and the other ship systems, as well. Now you have a flying bunker, but it's unarmed. So, you strap weapons to it. More weight means more thrust necessary. More striking power means more energy required to run the weapons. You'll also need storage space for ammunition, and massive amounts of space for either heat sinks, coolant, or both. Remember that you can only lose thermal energy through conduction, convection, or radiation. With no atmosphere in space, no physical contact with another object, and the fact that regular materials are not radioactive, the ship will retain most of the heat generated by firing its guns. Though this heat can be radiated into space through the conversion of thermal energy into EM waves (using a thermocouple), it's a very slow process.

So, if we know that 2% of total volume will be livable (23 cubic meters of living space for every 1000 cubic meters -- shuttle ratio), and we want to strap guns, armor, and better engines onto it, we'll end up with a massive ship where only perhaps 1% of the total volume is habitable space. Of course, science-fiction suggests we'll find better methods of engineering, so I'm willing to bring that figure up to perhaps 8%, maximum. Either way, we end up with warships several kilometers in length and yet crewed by less than a thousand. Once the ship is large enough to become an inconvenience to navigate on foot, mechanical automation will take the place of some crew members. As such, the NCS Chrenari (72 km in length), is primarily an automated machine, staffed with just over 8000 people. It only takes one person to push a button and set off a nuclear explosive that levels a city.

I gotta hand it to you Delphi; when you think something out, you think something out.

@darthkev
Not an understatement. Delphi, you do a crapload of research. I'm just struck dumb as to where all this stockpile of logical and realistic, yet science-fiction, information comes from.

I should point out that a bit over 50% of the space shuttle is the cargo bay. The shuttle probably could have significantly more living space if it were not primarily a cargo hauler with an uninhabitable cargo bay.

Even still though, let's assume that the space shuttle was designed to carry weaponry. Now, that cargo space becomes missile storage and weapon energy centers. Also, even a warship will require a certain amount of space reserved for cargo. Things like food and water must be carried on long voyages. The space shuttle doesn't have to consider these to such an extent because it is an orbiter only, but for extended campaigns, a warship will have to carry several tons of supplies. Like I said, I'd be willing to bring the living space estimate up to maybe 8%, but even that's pushing it.

Except any weapons on a designated warship of that size would probably not be retractable, and thus take a far lower percentage of total hull volume then the shuttle's cargo bay. If the ship is capable of producing it's own food, via hydroponics, and harvesting it's own water, then you can cut the total required volume down again. 8% is much more reasonable then you'd except.

Mind you, knowing the NDC, they might just strap on more armor.

Miniaturization is also an ongoing debate. There are computers a tenth the size with computing capabilities of magnitudes of order greater than the shuttle, which I believe was upgraded to run on a Pentium 486. My laptop has more computing power and memory space than the Mission Control and Apollo spacecraft combined. Now, some things just can't be miniaturized, like nuclear furnaces and that subsequent shielding, unless we discover some new, ultraheavy, ultradense materials that are non-radioactive. There's a theoretical island of stability just above the current superheavy elements we're able to produce. So, depending on what we're able to miniaturize, it's possible we could get living space up to a good 10-20%. Still not Star Trek, but not half bad.

Speaking of Star Trek, ever notice how thin and flimsy Starfleet's ship hulls are? A minor phaser blast drags across the hull and you start venting atmosphere on three decks. Not to mention the fact they have windows all over the place and you can tell from that how thin it is. I know they're all about exploration, but there comes a point when you need to actually try to keep your ships safe rather than make them look good. Just saying.

Alright, back to the Delphi TC goodness!

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Apr 5 2010, 10:19 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Miniaturization is also an ongoing debate. There are computers a tenth the size with computing capabilities of magnitudes of order greater than the shuttle, which I believe was upgraded to run on a Pentium 486. My laptop has more computing power and memory space than the Mission Control and Apollo spacecraft combined.

Never mind your laptop; my old GameBoy Color had more computing power than the Apollos.

QUOTE (darthkev @ Apr 5 2010, 08:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Speaking of Star Trek, ever notice how thin and flimsy Starfleet's ship hulls are? A minor phaser blast drags across the hull and you start venting atmosphere on three decks. Not to mention the fact they have windows all over the place and you can tell from that how thin it is. I know they're all about exploration, but there comes a point when you need to actually try to keep your ships safe rather than make them look good. Just saying.

Alright, back to the Delphi TC goodness!

Somehow that little point -- take out the bridge, you take out the ship -- seems to be a perennial problem in sci-fi (and in meatspace navies, for that matter). In Halo the Covenant get around the problem by placing their command centers on the deep interior of the hull (refer to the novels).