More than 1000 years in the future - why do we have a canopy?

It may be that military ships are configured the way OP stated but for private buyers? It may be that sometime within the 1000+ years such ships did exist but didn't sell very well. Humans are funny like that.
 
Also, no matter the quality of the video, it will never portray the same amount of depth when it comes to your eyes.

Which means that things that you'd normally notice might not be as noticeable in a screen, even with 16200p. The difference might be just a second of reaction time, but that's what makes a difference in tight situations.
 

Snakebite

Banned
But the new Enterprise in JJ A universe has a canopy / windshield too, unlike the old viewscreen.....

Don't even get me started on how JJ Abrams ruined star trek, he's the reason why I (a massive SW fan) won't be going to watch the new Star Wars. I just can't bear to put myself through that kind of disappointment again.
 
Probably going a few light years off topic here but I didn't say stopping religion would stop war. That's part of humanity and that will take a LONG time to winkle out. No, what I am saying is the number one cause of rigid thinking, stagnation and outright ignorance (and the celebration of ignorance) is religion. Religion thrives on ignorance.
 
Also, no matter the quality of the video, it will never portray the same amount of depth when it comes to your eyes.

Which means that things that you'd normally notice might not be as noticeable in a screen, even with 16200p. The difference might be just a second of reaction time, but that's what makes a difference in tight situations.

Nonsense....

A canopy is structural weakness... And if we are talking about realism any battle will be long, loooong over by the time visual identification or least visual identification by human eye is possible... Most likely ships will open fire on each other immediately when they are inside a solar system...

Just a few thoughts not organized in any way on this matter:

At this moment drones seems to be the ultimate weapon of the future. Independently acting drones... Unless we discover something like an energy shield. Then the stronger generator will always prevail... This means no fighters just massive cruisers... Fuel is also a problem, due to mass... Not to mention relativistic speeds... The target that you see now was there 6 minutes ago (Earth Mars distance in light minutes). Where are you going to aim... So no more human gunners only computers going against computers and a gunnery operation will become a guessing game of probability calculations...

This is all a rather pointless but a fascinating subject...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIuSAsg9YmM

This sort of cockpit would make more sense.

But then, Elite's whole setting is rather archaic and contradictory. Given how far into the future the game is set, and given how far mankind has spread, along with the presence of FTL technology... it's ridiculous to suggest that 99% of space traffic would be tiny, one-man ships with machineguns and conventional cockpits. Now, if the Elite universe was one of almost post-apocalyptic decay, the odd technological limitations would make more sense; that mankind had forgotten things, like in Warhammer 40k. But that isn't the case. This is supposed to be mankind at a time of great wealth and power.

In the end though, we just have to accept; Elite's lore was never going to be its strength, and the details of its world were always going to succumb to the gameplay.

Agreed. That's exactly sort of thing I would expect to see on combat spaceships: you are sitting well protected inside the hull behind the thick armour plates, picture is being projected to your HUD or something similar to Oculus rift, you can zoom or change display informations at your will, etc.

Your point about the Elite's relatively weak lore also holds true, btw.
 
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Why is the Orca covered in transparent materials? Because it's nice to look out of. (Although it's not a combat ship.)

I do agree that the canopy is a structural weakness, and in my opinion should be target-able (unless that's what targeting life support does?).

If it was replaced with monitors, imagine the devastation of an EMP type weapon, or even just the kinetic impact unplugging the HDMI v471.4894c cable from the back!

If you can remote hack into a cargo bay door, you could probably hack into monitors and disable then. Electronics break - eyes don't. (Quote from somewhere that I forgot)


- Maybe you could have a module that does add in additional monitors in the cockpit for extended views? Would benefit the VR users.
 
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If it was replaced with monitors, imagine the devastation of an EMP type weapon, or even just the kinetic impact unplugging the HDMI v471.4894c cable from the back!

Well, same can be said about pretty much everything on our ships. Which tank would you choose to go to to battle with - foremost, or some of those behind it? :)

040g.jpg
 
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Yeah but that's glass.

We don't know that elite cockpits are made from glass. It might be transparent aluminium or some other exotic transparent material that happens to be very strong. If so the true weakness of the cockpit isn't that you can see through it, but that it's on the outside.

As for earth ships. Yes they are vulnerable to emp and system failures. Naval captains are trained in how to navigate and operate the ship with all systems down and to look out the window when necessary.

Edit:

Royal Navy that is - I learned that from watching one of the Telly programs a while back when they showed captains being trained. One exercise was how to cope with total electronic systems failure.
 
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I like you. Have some rep.

Direct visual will always be the preferred method due to that not needing a backup.


Cuz.... technology can fail. Your camera could be jammed. If you were encased in a ball of steel with camera images projected, you'd suddenly be staring at steel walls and not "around you".

Canopies and windows you can always look out of :)

Well, guys, that's true... until your canopy violently explodes in your face and glass shards fly into your eyes. :D Really though I'm glad the devs went with traditional glass canopies. IRL, no way. In a game, perfectly fine (for me).


I keep hearing that flight is the safest form of travel. But I also keep hearing about planes that crash, or going missing. When's the last time you heard about a train going missing? I also don't as often hear about commercial passenger ships sinking. I wonder why that is.


ON TOPIC, I was thinking about this just the other day. And about why our ships aren't just rectangular solids with turrets at the verticies. No matter where you are around the ship you would have at least 4 barrels in your face. Would that be boring as hell? Sure. But it'd be fantastically practical.

Furthermore, we're already learning how to project 3D images on a 2D screen, in fact I've got a small example on my desk right now in sleep mode because I hate Victory Road. I imagine that a guarded internal cockpit would either have the pilot wearing an Oculus Rift style headset, or be sitting in a sphere of video projection that gives him view of everything surrounding the ship, far surpassing the view we have even in the Asp with its incredibly open cockpit.

1000 years is over ten human life times, the truth of the matter is (assuming we don't end ourselves, or the universe doesn't end us), we can't even begin to accurately imagine how far technology will have progressed in that time. Even over my lifetime things have changed so very much. Stuff that was far-future science fiction when I was young is stuff I can hold in my hands now!

EDIT: I crit that wall of text for over 9000 damage... or a couple line breaks. Either way.

The thing that makes plane crashes so newsworthy and generally scary is the fact that in the instances a plane does crash there are likely to be few, if any, survivors. You have the lowest odds of being involved in an accident in an airplane than in a car, train, or ship, but a plane crash is almost guaranteed death. Trains wrecks I imagine are just as fatal, but occur less often than plane crashes. Ship wrecks are often gradual, not as suddenly fatal (though there are instances). Car wrecks are the most common, but on average yield less fatalities (particularly if safety rules are followed, like staying under speed limit, buckling up, having working airbags, and performing other preventative maintenance). Currently, space travel is safe (in terms of successful trips vs disastrous, fatal ones), but like an airplane, if something goes horribly wrong you're probably not going to survive. I imagine in 3301 that space travel will be as safe and casual as driving.


Probably going a few light years off topic here but I didn't say stopping religion would stop war. That's part of humanity and that will take a LONG time to winkle out. No, what I am saying is the number one cause of rigid thinking, stagnation and outright ignorance (and the celebration of ignorance) is religion. Religion thrives on ignorance.

While I certainly can see why you would believe that, given the countless examples throughout history and even today, I disagree that religion and ignorance always goes hand-in-hand. Religion has been used as a tool and inspiration to stifle science and the very nature of reason, but religion has also served science and reason at times. While I wouldn't hold the Catholic Church up as the shining example of religion and knowledge working together, the church did preserve much knowledge and history during the dark ages, and early scientists were often priests themselves. The Big Bang Theory was even proposed by a priest, Georges Lemaître, and Einstein and many in the scientific community derided the theory as too closely resembling Christian dogma. But to the credit of Einstein, he made an apology once it was discovered that the theory actually held weight. And let's not forget that even science has been twisted to hurt, misinform, and manipulate people, via eugenics, weapons that kill ever increasing numbers of people, and governments who have done unethical things to their people in order to accelerate the progress of certain sciences (N@zis and Soviets more specifically).

And on a personal note, my life has been enriched by both science and my spiritual beliefs. Just to be clear, though, I'm not taking your comments personally- I'm not mad or anything, nor should I be. I'm just sharing my perspective and experiences as examples that religion isn't always/only the enemy of reason and knowledge. Religion and science can actually benefit from each other and co-exist, only if adherents would embrace each other and be willing to talk and think beyond their own perspectives. Balance I believe is key, because anything can be taken to tragic extremes and used to keep people ignorant or make them brainwashed.
 
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To you silly folk having unintelligent religious debates.
28sq4ic.jpg

Now for the canopy vs. closed cockpit debate.

Why do we have to have one or the other?

Lets take a look at one of my favorite Sci-fi franchises, Star Gate! For anyone who has watched the shows you know that the earth ships like the Prometheus had windows all over that damn ship, including the bridge. It was a bad ass ship designed to fight the Goa'uld who had ships that didn't have open cockpit, bridge, canopies. Later they faced the threat of the Ori who also had ships that weren't open bridge design. For the majority of the battles with the Ori, both Goa'uld and earth ships were no match for the Ori.

Point being, why can't we have ships of both designs? Certain ships might be designed to be better against certain threats. As a general rule all ships will have some sort of energy shield as they do now. Also as a general rule (regardless of physical ship size) ships designed with an open canopy system will focus more on tanking kinetic damage and worry less about energy damage. Maybe something inherent in the design of the canopy makes it more resistant to energy based weapons. The natural reflective qualities of the material the canopy is made out of absorbs or reflects a certain amount of energy, however, this will leave it more vulnerable to kinetic damage.

Now, as for ships with closed cockpit designs you will naturally have more sensitive sensors and cameras close or on the outer hull of your ship. These sensors will obviously be easily knocked out by electromagnetics of any kind, such as those in an EMP device or those inherent in energy weapons. These ships will want to focus more on shield tanking the energy damage more than the kinetic damage.

Basically hull tanking vs shield tanking, adding another layer of depth to the game.

P.S. I also saw a post a few pages back mentioning something about us BEING the ship and not the pilot of a ship, AI controlled ships? This is obviously not the case in ED,otherwise you wouldn't be looking around your ship with a helmet on, life support would be irrelevant for a drone craft. Not to mention seconds before your ship explodes the computer blatantly announces "eject, eject, eject!"

Well, guys, that's true... until your canopy violently explodes in your face and glass shards fly into your eyes. :D Really though I'm glad the devs went with traditional glass canopies. IRL, no way. In a game, perfectly fine (for me).

But when your canopy depressurizes the vacuum of space pulls glass away from you does it not? Not to mention you have a helmet on which would deflect glass even if it could be forced towards you.
 
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We are going to mars in 2027... Wish I could join them lucky bosh'tets

No, we won't.

Anyway, with harder-than-steel canopies, they are far better solution than cameras and monitors for a pilot.
There are a lot of things that could go wrong with them.

Why do you think we have canopies in current airlines (or fighters)? We'd arleady have the tecnology to put cameras and monitors there.

About remote control... If we talk about realism, we can't remote control something several light years away. In ED we have istant comunications, but IRL we wouldn't, even if space warp was discovered (and even with some faster thsn light "tachionic" comunications... Wouldn't be istant at such distances), so, human presence would be mandatory
 
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No, we won't.

Anyway, with harder-than-steel canopies, they are far better solution than cameras and monitors for a pilot.
There are a lot of things that could go wrong with them.

Why do you think we have canopies in current airlines (or fighters)? We'd arleady have the tecnology to put cameras and monitors there.

About remote control... If we talk about realism, we can't remote control something several light years away. In ED we have istant comunications, but IRL we wouldn't, even if space warp was discovered (and even with some faster thsn light "tachionic" comunications... Wouldn't be istant at such distances), so, human presence would be mandatory

Last I checked we don't have instant communications in ED either.. Nor do we have remote control of our ships.
 
Since the game features weapons that can easily penetrate ship's hull and hit internal components, once the shields go down, I'd say canopy isn't a structural weakness. It's the poor pilot inside, who needs oxygen to breathe, that's our ships' weak point. :)
 
Since the game features weapons that can easily penetrate ship's hull and hit internal components, once the shields go down, I'd say canopy isn't a structural weakness. It's the poor pilot inside, who needs oxygen to breathe, that's our ships' weak point. :)
They should put some sort of RNG mechanic in the game that once every so many times your shield goes down a stray bullet punctures the back of your head with the canopy completely intact lol.
 
To you silly folk having unintelligent religious debates.
View attachment 35042

Now for the canopy vs. closed cockpit debate.

Why do we have to have one or the other?

Lets take a look at one of my favorite Sci-fi franchises, Star Gate! For anyone who has watched the shows you know that the earth ships like the Prometheus had windows all over that damn ship, including the bridge. It was a bad ass ship designed to fight the Goa'uld who had ships that didn't have open cockpit, bridge, canopies. Later they faced the threat of the Ori who also had ships that weren't open bridge design. For the majority of the battles with the Ori, both Goa'uld and earth ships were no match for the Ori.

Point being, why can't we have ships of both designs? Certain ships might be designed to be better against certain threats. As a general rule all ships will have some sort of energy shield as they do now. Also as a general rule (regardless of physical ship size) ships designed with an open canopy system will focus more on tanking kinetic damage and worry less about energy damage. Maybe something inherent in the design of the canopy makes it more resistant to energy based weapons. The natural reflective qualities of the material the canopy is made out of absorbs or reflects a certain amount of energy, however, this will leave it more vulnerable to kinetic damage.

Now, as for ships with closed cockpit designs you will naturally have more sensitive sensors and cameras close or on the outer hull of your ship. These sensors will obviously be easily knocked out by electromagnetics of any kind, such as those in an EMP device or those inherent in energy weapons. These ships will want to focus more on shield tanking the energy damage more than the kinetic damage.

Basically hull tanking vs shield tanking, adding another layer of depth to the game.

P.S. I also saw a post a few pages back mentioning something about us BEING the ship and not the pilot of a ship, AI controlled ships? This is obviously not the case in ED,otherwise you wouldn't be looking around your ship with a helmet on, life support would be irrelevant for a drone craft. Not to mention seconds before your ship explodes the computer blatantly announces "eject, eject, eject!"



But when your canopy depressurizes the vacuum of space pulls glass away from you does it not? Not to mention you have a helmet on which would deflect glass even if it could be forced towards you.

Greyhawk and I weren't debating the validity of various mythological stories throughout time, so your fiction picture doesn't even apply to what we were discussing. And we were already having an intelligent and peaceful conversation anyway.

And about your idea of the game having 2 types of ships- canopied and not- I agree. It would certainly add another layer to combat.

And concerning the idea of people being the ships, I think Dieson answered that perfectly. Our ships are certainly occupied by a pilot.
 
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