Panther Clipper with Magical Cargo Racks?

[Stealthie]

It hardly makes them look like fools. Was Ford a fool for his hand cranked car engine? They were designed to hold stuff not be hyper optimized.
There are also many reasons one could justify only fitting in the new ships. For example removing most of the structure between the canisters would make the whole assembly very weak which would require much stronger structure around the outside. Hence the new ship might need reinforced hull in that area to withstand the stresses.

I'm sorry but that's a terrible comparison.
The model T arrived in 1908 and it took exactly 4 years for Cadillac to come up with the electric starter.

A slightly better example might be related to shipping itself, where cargo ships used to take crates and sacks of any size in their holds.
It was only back in the 1950s, after 200 years of industrialised freight transport, that we came up with standardised shipping containers.
Even so, shipping containers didn't really allow ships to carry more stuff.
They just made it easier to load that stuff.

We know what a standard 1t cargo canister looks like in ED and we know that ships like the Anaconda have been around for nearly 500 years.
It seems highly unlikely that a society capable of building spaceships that haven't been rendered obsolete for 500 years somehow overlooked the best way of stacking cargo during all that time.

... unless they're fools.

Above all it's just a game and the devs can do what they wish.

That's the correct answer.

Honestly, I don't think it's a big deal to add enhanced cargo racks but it's best to just accept it rather than trying to justify it in real-world terms.

 

[Rat Catcher]

it makes undermining of systems in Powerplay feasible

Isn't that supposed to be so?
It is still possible with current ships, but, no doubt, is considered "too grindy" to make it attractive.

That was one of the very weak arguments against great capacity rather than mediocre I'd thought of. (along with BGS, which is supposed to be a background to, rather than intended gameplay)

 

[Nidoboros]

Two things super quick!

Design limitations - the Boeing 747 is capable of holding over 63,000 Gallons of fuel (over 238,600 liters). Let's ignore fuel tanks being core components in Elite and not optional for half a second. The majority of this fuel is stored in the wings. It cannot hold an equivalent tonnage of passenger compartments in the wings. They are specially designed to hold fuel, though if you pull out some of the tanks, you could probably squeeze cargo in there (still definitely not passenger space, nor anything physically incapable of occupying the space in the wings). So following this logic, let's say that part of the wings are core fuel tanks, and part of them are optional that could be tanks OR cargo, with the right tinkering.

Comparisons to previous Elite/Panther Clipper having 2100 tons of space - yeah, which your life support, and FSD drive, and your sensors, and your thrusters, and your fuel tanks, and everything you had ate into. And since they didn't make a distinction of weight vs volume, lightweight engineering isn't going to cut into. You can argue miniaturization instead of lightweight, but now your performance with the thrusters and FSD are worse, gotta go bigger with them to compensate...

Third bonus thing: Abstract game mechanics are abstract. I'm sure devs could separate cargo and module volume from cargo and volume mass for maximum simulation accuracy... but now every different type of cargo needs its own weight based on volume, and every ship's maximum shipping tonnage needs to be measured based on cross sections. Sure, you could use standard modules, but you're leaving vital space unused, every shipshould technically have bespoke modules designed to squeeze ever cubic centimeter of space out of it... instead, game designers went with a 'extreme modularity' route. Which is fine, it's their game to do with as thry please.

ANYWAY, I'm not even opposed to the idea of make stuff super realistic, but literally every ship would need to be re-designed because of this, which feels like a fun project. My rates are fair, FDev!

 

[Dillon Fallon]

It cannot hold an equivalent tonnage of passenger compartments in the wings

Don't say these things in public where Ryanair can see and take it as some sort of challenge.

 

[Stealthie]

Third bonus thing: Abstract game mechanics are abstract. I'm sure devs could separate cargo and module volume from cargo and volume mass for maximum simulation accuracy... but now every different type of cargo needs its own weight based on volume, and every ship's maximum shipping tonnage needs to be measured based on cross sections. Sure, you could use standard modules, but you're leaving vital space unused, every shipshould technically have bespoke modules designed to squeeze ever cubic centimeter of space out of it... instead, game designers went with a 'extreme modularity' route. Which is fine, it's their game to do with as thry please.

To give FDev the benefit of the doubt, the system of canisters that exists in the ED universe is kind of sensible... with the caveat that a canister should be large enough to hold 1t of whatever the lowest-density cargo is likely to be.

We have standardised shipping containers with a weight limit of, say, 20t but you don't have to put 20t of stuff inside them.
The benefit comes from standardising the storage medium so every bit of cargo can be loaded easily.

In the ED universe, I can imagine cargo canisters getting fired along some kind of loading-tube, into a receptacle that could store each canister like ammunition in a magazine with, possibly, the ability to cycle through the cargo and select specific canisters to unload again.

The biggest flaw in ED's system is simply the size of the canisters.
Sure, 1t of gold could easily fit into a canister the size of a 45 gallon drum but 1t of coffee? 1t of weapons? Grain?
One of ED's commodities is water and we know 1t of water takes up 1m³ and you can only get around 1/3rd of a tonne of water into a 45 gallon drum.
At worst, another of ED's commodities is slaves and I dread to think how 1t of slaves (12 people @ 80kg each) get packed into a canister the size of a 45 gallon drum!

Clearly, a bit of suspension-of-disbelief is the best thing here.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Isn't that supposed to be so?

I don't know, are we going on what Frontier say or on what they do?

(Either way, going from "no effective undermining methods" to "exactly one effective undermining method which you have to fly one specific ship for" isn't good)

That was one of the very weak arguments against great capacity rather than mediocre I'd thought of. (along with BGS, which is supposed to be a background to, rather than intended gameplay)

BGS has the advantage of very sharp diminishing returns curves and daily caps on movement making it very difficult to break - as it has to be when it needs to react reasonably well in both "1 player a week" and "1000 players a day" systems.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I dread to think how 1t of slaves (12 people @ 80kg each) get packed into a canister the size of a 45 gallon drum!

they are chopped up into manageable lumps, then reconstituted on arrival, hopeing that the technician on duty that day was wearing their spectacles and lighting was good.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I don't know, are we going on what Frontier say or on what they do?

Goodness knows, but if undermining is so ineffective currently, surely it needs something done to change the situation so that the fervernt PP players have a dynamic system, rather than pretty laid-back & staid?

(Either way, going from "no effective undermining methods" to "exactly one effective undermining method which you have to fly one specific ship for" isn't good)

Until very recently there was only one particularly effective combat ship, with a few multirole ships lagging behind, but good. (you can see where I'm going...)

So it isn't as if there wasn't a precedent for one ship excelling at its intended purpose, but, apparently, having an excellent hauler would break things!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Goodness knows, but if undermining is so ineffective currently, surely it needs something done to change the situation so that the fervernt PP players have a dynamic system, rather than pretty laid-back & staid?

That's the "what Frontier say" line.

Since Frontier said that, the "what Frontier do" line has changed the excess of Reinforcement over Undermining from about 10:1 to about 20:1.

(Whether the dedicated PP players want a dynamic system or want an easy life where no-one can threaten the stuff they've spent time building I wouldn't want to speculate; the vocal PP players certainly seem to come down on the "Undermining is bad" side but of course may not be representative)

Until very recently there was only one particularly effective combat ship, with a few multirole ships lagging behind, but good. (you can see where I'm going...)

That's a slightly different thing, though, since that only really mattered for PvP balance, which has no effect on the rest of the game.

For PvE combat any of a whole range of ships are capable of destroying enemy targets faster than they can arrive so the distinction between them is largely irrelevant at the top end. Similarly, if cargo quantities at stations more closely resembled those of the FE2/FFE era, where a really big station might have 2000-3000t of cargo on offer total ... or the Elite era where it might have 500-600t ... then the difference between a 800t hauler and a 5000t hauler would be much less significant.

The problem is that it just gets into an arms race with Frontier selling the arms to both sides, Sirius-style.
- you get a bigger hauler so you can haul twice as fast
- the next hauling-based task has twice the tonnage requirements
- repeat

Combat has less of a problem with that because the combat performance of a ship isn't based so heavily around a single variable.
(Trade shouldn't be based so heavily around a single variable, but there's no hope of changing ED to a game where it isn't at this stage. I've got other games I play if I want hauling cargo back and forth to be interesting)

 

[Rat Catcher]

That's the "what Frontier say" line.

Got it!

Similarly, if cargo quantities at stations more closely resembled those of the FE2/FFE era, where a really big station might have 2000-3000t of cargo on offer total ... or the Elite era where it might have 500-600t ... then the difference between a 800t hauler and a 5000t hauler would be much less significant.

I missed Elite 2 & 3, so have no experience of gameplay in those, nor had any nostalgic attachement to a ship from another game. I'm sure the majority here are going to be very excited with the PCII, heck, even I may buy it for credits, depending on its actual in-game performance.

The problem is that it just gets into an arms race with Frontier selling the arms to both sides, Sirius-style.

That made me chuckle!

I would imagine that the next hauling CG will be dominated by the PCII anyway, whether doing direct deliveries or loading / offloading a FC next to a station at both ends. (With the expected P2W complaints whilst the PCII is still in early access)

 

[Ralph Vargr]

"Break the game" is a bit much. There's not enough finely-tuned game balance in Elite Dangerous to worry about that.

But there are a bunch of implications to having anything much larger than the current Panther Clipper design which Frontier might not have wanted to bother with.

1) The larger the cargo space a ship has, the greater the gap between its laden and unladen range. So it becomes harder to stop it either being painfully slow with cargo, or faster than the Mandalay without. Piling on additional hull mass helps (and they have done with the PC) but putting too much of that on then has implications for its thruster performance, what happens when it rams another ship, etc.

2) The size 8E thrusters have a mass limit of around 3300T (and same with 8D engineered with dirty drives). So a ship with a total mass higher than that in "normal" configurations (you can exceed it on the Cutter, but only by doing some very bizarre stuff) probably needs size 9 thrusters, and Frontier might not have wanted to introduce an entire new size class of module (with possible knock-on effects elsewhere) for one ship.

3) Game balance is broken, sure, but a 5000t Panther Clipper would allow use of the "bulk flood" undermining method at a rate of around 6000 control points per hour. That's a specific type of breach of game balance - it makes undermining of systems in Powerplay feasible - which would be very unpopular even with people who don't care about hauling at all.

4) The Fleet Carrier doesn't have the same problem (the Fleet Carrier stomped all over a whole bunch of balance issues on its introduction, but not this one, and they weren't generally ones anyone cared about) because the balance issues with large cargo capacities aren't about storage, but about throughput: you still have to load and unload the Fleet Carrier, which means twice as many supercruise trips (though shorter ones) and twice as many dock/undock cycles, which means that it's only marginally faster than flying the cargo in whatever you're using to load/unload the carrier in many cases.
(The FC obviously wins out when it comes to larger distances - nothing can come anywhere near close to competing with it once you get to the 1000 LY+ range, which does mean that Frontier can't easily introduce any long-range hauling tasks)

5) All balance is relative. If there's a ship which can haul 5000t (so maybe 25000t/hour on short hop routes or carrier loading/unloading), guess what the next cargo-hauling-based activity is going to be balanced around CMDRs being able to do in terms of its tonnage requirements. If we'd had a 5000t Panther Clipper released a year ago instead of the Type-8, all colonisation tonnages would be about 5x their current value on the assumption that everyone was going to be using the Panther Clipper to do them. So a much bigger PC makes it a lot quicker to do all the existing hauling (wing trade mission in a single trip? don't mind if I do!) ... but just means that the next hauling task to be introduced will be balanced around its existence, and anyone flying anything else whatsoever can't do a thing about it. Increasing cargo capacities is just a vicious cycle with increasing cargo hauling requirements which we can't as players actually win.

I want to use your entire post as my signature. + Infinity.

Note: My relatives are not balanced.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

That's the "what Frontier say" line.

Since Frontier said that, the "what Frontier do" line has changed the excess of Reinforcement over Undermining from about 10:1 to about 20:1.

(Whether the dedicated PP players want a dynamic system or want an easy life where no-one can threaten the stuff they've spent time building I wouldn't want to speculate; the vocal PP players certainly seem to come down on the "Undermining is bad" side but of course may not be representative)


That's a slightly different thing, though, since that only really mattered for PvP balance, which has no effect on the rest of the game.

For PvE combat any of a whole range of ships are capable of destroying enemy targets faster than they can arrive so the distinction between them is largely irrelevant at the top end. Similarly, if cargo quantities at stations more closely resembled those of the FE2/FFE era, where a really big station might have 2000-3000t of cargo on offer total ... or the Elite era where it might have 500-600t ... then the difference between a 800t hauler and a 5000t hauler would be much less significant.

The problem is that it just gets into an arms race with Frontier selling the arms to both sides, Sirius-style.
- you get a bigger hauler so you can haul twice as fast
- the next hauling-based task has twice the tonnage requirements
- repeat

Combat has less of a problem with that because the combat performance of a ship isn't based so heavily around a single variable.
(Trade shouldn't be based so heavily around a single variable, but there's no hope of changing ED to a game where it isn't at this stage. I've got other games I play if I want hauling cargo back and forth to be interesting)

Frontier is a Killer Dungeon Master.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Don't say these things in public where Ryanair can see and take it as some sort of challenge.

They are already working on carbon freezing.

 

[Nidoboros]

canister should be large enough to hold 1t of whatever the lowest-density cargo is likely to be.

Good News! One shipping ton is 42 cubic feet (1.2 m^3) (or 40 cubic feet (1.1 m^3) if ya nasty if you're American), regardless of weight. See above about ship tonnage needing to separate volume from weight, because until it is, the circular argument is going to keep happening re: weight distribution vs how efficiently something being packed affects how much it can hold.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Good News! One shipping ton is 42 cubic feet (1.2 m^3) (or 40 cubic feet (1.1 m^3) if ya nasty if you're American), regardless of weight. See above about ship tonnage needing to separate volume from weight, because until it is, the circular argument is going to keep happening re: weight distribution vs how efficiently something being packed affects how much it can hold.

Not even in current ships can weight be ignored - as ships require to comply with specific stability and strength criteria. The old fashioned tonnage measurement was for tax purposes - and need not apply to ships in the game.

As to cargo density, and using current gen containers as an example, the maximum permissible gross mass of a 20' TEU is 24,000kg while its internal volume is c.33.2m³ - so the average density of the container's contents cannot exceed 651kg/m³ (less than that of water), allowing for a tare weight of 2,400kg for the container itself. While a 20' TEU could be filled with gold it would likely rip itself apart if lifted or transported as the cargo mass of over 640,000kg would exceed the design limit by c.26x.

 

[r09u3]

I'm sorry but that's a terrible comparison.
The model T arrived in 1908 and it took exactly 4 years for Cadillac to come up with the electric starter.

A slightly better example might be related to shipping itself, where cargo ships used to take crates and sacks of any size in their holds.
It was only back in the 1950s, after 200 years of industrialised freight transport, that we came up with standardised shipping containers.
Even so, shipping containers didn't really allow ships to carry more stuff.
They just made it easier to load that stuff.

We know what a standard 1t cargo canister looks like in ED and we know that ships like the Anaconda have been around for nearly 500 years.
It seems highly unlikely that a society capable of building spaceships that haven't been rendered obsolete for 500 years somehow overlooked the best way of stacking cargo during all that time.

... unless they're fools.

You missed the point entirely. Henry Ford was no fool. His car was not the best design or optimized. Mass produced products are made to be good enough and easily manufactured at scale for cost until people demand better. The old cargo racks were fine until Cmdrs demanded more cargo for colonization so this new design is something better with reasonable limitations. Thinking no one has questioned how to stack cargo in 500 years is absurd. The majority of cargo is carried by bulk cargo class haulers unavailable to Cmdrs. But if you feel the need to disparage imaginary engineers in a fictional world you do you Cmdr. You are entirely correct, feel better?

 

[metatheurgist]

But that just makes it doubly absurd. The majority of cargo is carried by NPCs but for some reason it's commanders personally schlepping the crap to build coloniezzzz? This is why the game becomes more and more nonsense the further we get from the KS.

 

[psyantologist]

Main thing is, lots of slots means lots of opportunity for people to fill them with GSBs/HRPs/MRPs/SCBs and do things the dev's might not want.

Seems like it would have been a lot simpler to just give the PC2 a couple of C9 slots (with 9E cargo racks having a capacity of 512t) and then give it a selection of slots similar to what something like the T9 or Cutter has (without the C8 slots).

Meh! Whatev's.

Every one of the mentioned modules except SCBs is only available in class 5 and below - whether you put them into a class 7 or class 8 slot makes no difference whatsoever.

Paragraph two: Yeah. A class 9 slot with only a cargo rack available in that size would have been a possibility - I personally would have loved 2048t of cargo space, a decent slot for a shield, scoop and FSD booster, two smol ones for SCA and docking computer because I would no longer shy away from colonisation efforts.

The setup from the live stream doesn't cut it for me. Not worth the hassle (I'm looking at you, Outpost colony yielding 30k cr/tick - that doesn't even cover the amount of fuel I use in a week of playtime let alone the damage to ship integrity from a weeks-worth of drops out of supercruise)

Still, what I am most unhappy with is that the internals do not fit the ship design with the four very obvious compartments (which make so much sense in the design) that are supposed to hold 4 different amounts of cargo - that stark inconsistency is enough to turn a new player away from the entire game and make the ship unappealing to a veteran like me

 

[Stealthie]

Every one of the mentioned modules except SCBs is only available in class 5 and below - whether you put them into a class 7 or class 8 slot makes no difference whatsoever.

Very true but, bottom like is that most existing big ships have roughly 12 slots and about half of them are C5 or larger.
Ships intended for combat (T10, Cutter, Corvette) also have a couple of C5 mil-slots as well.

If that's a paradigm FDev are deliberately adhering to, they probably aren't going to want to give the PC2 a heap of C5, C6, C7 & C8 slots.

I don't make a habit of trying to guess what a new ship's spec's are going to be but when the PC2 was first revealed I speculated that it was going to get a couple of super-big cargo racks and then the rest of it's slot-capacity was going to be fairly normal, for this reason.

 

[Stealthie]

Good News! One shipping ton is 42 cubic feet (1.2 m^3) (or 40 cubic feet (1.1 m^3) if ya nasty if you're American), regardless of weight. See above about ship tonnage needing to separate volume from weight, because until it is, the circular argument is going to keep happening re: weight distribution vs how efficiently something being packed affects how much it can hold.

Anybody know exactly how big the cargo canisters in ED are?

I've compared them to 45 gallon drums but I'm willing to accept they might actually be a bit bigger.
If my math's is correct, if the canisters were 1m wide x 1.5m tall (which they might be) they should have a volume of ~1m³.

Course, even at those dimensions, I think you're going to struggle to get 12 slaves inside one.