The Chieftan is annoying
- Thread starter Cmdr Bolamshea
- Start date
Hey, there are still people who think that Sun is orbiting our flat Earth and McDonalds is an exclusive restaurant. I don't see why they should believe that a landing gear can fold itself into an engine nacelle.
I find it hilarious that people who have never lived in the year 3304 are complaining about "realism" from the year 3304 in a video game.
Well, you know - Beyond looks surprisingly awesome so far. So anything that works...
Perhaps; but look at what I have to work with. Folks assuming landing gear couldn't possibly fold into an engine nacelle, that this isn't realistic and is a design flaw. This seems to be oblivious to actuality, despite using 'realism' as the reason.
As opposed to simply saying "this looks a bit manky, is there some reason for it?"; which stands just fine as personal opinion and doesn't need an entire justification about how unpossible it is, trying to rely on realism, when quite a lot of aircraft collapse landing gear into engine nacelles, making the entire thing a bit silly.
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Yup. It's a game. Let's just enjoy the looks cool factor - besides, maybe the landing gear has "thruster stuffs" running through it internally? Kind of like how some modern machines have the oil pathways as integrated parts of the chassis/frame.
When I look deeply at how stuff works (just look at modern car engine), I often am amazed it works at all. It just seems so.. Dodgy. And yet...
Z...
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To be fair, it is something I noticed right away as well when they showed the landed ship. It does look pretty goofy having the landing gear taking up room where the "engines" would seemingly be.
Maybe just doing something like extending the length of available "engine room" might help sell the look a bit more.
Maybe just doing something like extending the length of available "engine room" might help sell the look a bit more.
Actually we don't really know how much space those engines take to make them work. I also like things logic to a certain agree when it's about Elite, but perhaps the whole engine tech is stuffed into the part behind it with connectors and stuff above the landing gear. And yeah, I would also have prefered it if we wouldn't have to notice things like that.
Anyway, Chieftain is an awesome design. I am not a combat pilot, but I will definitely get one.
Anyway, Chieftain is an awesome design. I am not a combat pilot, but I will definitely get one.
Sure. But you look at some aircraft and it seems inconceivable that landing gear could even fit in the engine nacelle. And yet it does. It doesn’t make sense until you actually look at the inside of a nacelle to see how amazing the engineering is to actually make it fit.
I think people are assuming thrusters have a giant footprint; but we don’t have anything relevant to compare it to. However, we do have examples of gear that retract into engine nacelles, so this isn’t unusual per-se.
I think this is perhaps more “it looks weird” rather than “impossibru!”.
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I just wanna point it out, there are maneuvering thrusters on ship wings like on Beluga, Dolphin and other not so thick parts of other ships.(also on the Chieftain "wings") Those engines clearly does not need big space. The technology is there, I don't think the main engines need much more space. The DBX looks like have big "jet" engines and the Cutter, but the DBX is old technology, the Cutter is a huge,heavy ship, however the Chieftain is completely new design, a medium ship with many small thrusters, not with one big engine. I do not see the problem, nobody said those thrusters need to fill up the whole nacelle.
Thruster stickers might be a bit of fun. Maybe they'll sell those and let us paste them all over our ships like decals or something.
Oh well, just another thing to write off without any real need to do so beyond questionable design choices and inconsistency. It's not like those sort of things matter at all to anyone who plays this games, thank goodness.
Cheers.
Oh well, just another thing to write off without any real need to do so beyond questionable design choices and inconsistency. It's not like those sort of things matter at all to anyone who plays this games, thank goodness.
Cheers.
Achilles7
Banned
This thought exactly crossed my mind when I viewed the deployed landing gear for the first time in the stream vid - the difference is, it didn't 'annoy' me very much...& certainly not enough to create a topic of discussion about it! As I'm sure others in the thread have mentioned, ELITE.IS.A.*******.GAME!
Most Some of you really are a bunch of colossal mega-dorks! [squeeeee]
I also noticed in the stream how there didn't seem to be any room in the rear nacelle for both landing gear and engines.
For me the issue is the lack of consistency within the Chieftan itself, not whether or not it's possible to fit gear and engines in the same space.
The front and rear nacelles are about the same size, yet the front one has just the engine, while the second has a engine *and* landing gear. There are two options:
1. The front nacelle is the size it is because the engine is that big. That means there cannot be enough space in the rear nacelle for landing gear. It doesn't make sense.
2. The engine in the rear nacelle is tiny (I'm happy to accept that), leaving enough room for landing gear. However, that means the front nacelle should just be a tiny pancake thruster - why is it so big? It doesn't make sense.
That is the problem - neither option makes sense.
A simple solution to the Chieftan would be to make the rear nacelles wider and fit the engine and landing gear side-by-side.
For me the issue is the lack of consistency within the Chieftan itself, not whether or not it's possible to fit gear and engines in the same space.
The front and rear nacelles are about the same size, yet the front one has just the engine, while the second has a engine *and* landing gear. There are two options:
1. The front nacelle is the size it is because the engine is that big. That means there cannot be enough space in the rear nacelle for landing gear. It doesn't make sense.
2. The engine in the rear nacelle is tiny (I'm happy to accept that), leaving enough room for landing gear. However, that means the front nacelle should just be a tiny pancake thruster - why is it so big? It doesn't make sense.
That is the problem - neither option makes sense.
A simple solution to the Chieftan would be to make the rear nacelles wider and fit the engine and landing gear side-by-side.
@OP - Haha, thought I was the only one who got annoyed by this! I will still be getting a Chieftain, but it does look a little daft There are also a lot of mechanisms that would have fit in there quite nicely, especially given a bit of handwavium with 1000 years of developement in material tech
FDev - do you fancy contracting out some design work to a mechanical engineer? Let me know!
There are also a lot of mechanisms that would have fit in there quite nicely, especially given a bit of handwavium with 1000 years of developement in material tech FDev - do you fancy contracting out some design work to a mechanical engineer? Let me know!
It does not seem inconceivable because we see that nacelles are long and we know that radial engines are short. They makes sense.
The problem is that intuitively Chieftain thrusters look more like long jet-engines than radial engines or some futuristic flat panel engines. Chieftain even seems to have air inlets in its nacelles (while no air in space!) which underlines the jet-engine look.
Now if ED had some flat panel thruster lore the nacelles would look plausible. As it is they remind me of Galaxy Quest scene where a weird useless section of a space ship existed just because it would (supposedly) look cool in a TV series episode.
But I accept Chieftain as it is. Other ED ships are also full of handwavium, are mostly empty inside and have some weird parts and and inconsistencies. Yet they all fly and work well enough for the gameplay.
All the arguments about finding gear on aircraft of today is fine but there is still a small flaw in that argument. Aircraft that have this are for the most part, small aircraft that don't actually have much structure holding the wheel in place. There is also The big difference that the whole structure pivots back so it lies vertical inside the engine pod resulting in a very small amount of space actually taken. If you pay attention to the structure of the gear on the chieftain, it's not a skinny strut holding the foot of the gear, it's two large and chunky, solid pieces of metal. They are clearly not folding but being retracted directly into the pod and would be taken up a massive amount of space inside.
If you were to then factor in the mechanism that would do the retracting and extending and locking the gear in place, it would leave very little room left for anything else.
I'd quote the person who mentioned the nozzles on the Harrier jumpjet, but that's easier said than done on a phone!
I honestly didn't think of this, and it is a possible solution but still be a little hard to fit all the pipes in to direct the thrust to those 3 thrusters at the back.
Despite all of this, is still a cool looking ship, but like someone said previously, it causes an annoying itch in my brain that I can't scratch
If you were to then factor in the mechanism that would do the retracting and extending and locking the gear in place, it would leave very little room left for anything else.
I'd quote the person who mentioned the nozzles on the Harrier jumpjet, but that's easier said than done on a phone!
I honestly didn't think of this, and it is a possible solution but still be a little hard to fit all the pipes in to direct the thrust to those 3 thrusters at the back.
Despite all of this, is still a cool looking ship, but like someone said previously, it causes an annoying itch in my brain that I can't scratch
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Why not? Or you are engine engineer in year 3000+?
This whole topic is stupid and pointless.... making assumption of how big engines is and how they work in space game in thousands years from now.
Perfect topic of mirroring stupidity of humanity.
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not in a game that tries to be immersive and soemwhat scientifically correct (their claim). It could still be cool, and a bit more realsitcial. But lately they just slap things somehow together to get something done.
another very weird implemention especially with how quickly these can "flap"
space is still space, they don't magically make it disappear in 3304 AD. Even less when you se in how many areas 3304 Engineering in Elite failed at simple solution the 19th century already solved.
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