Bigger On The Inside

[Old Duck]

Is it my imagination, or will some ships literally be "bigger on the inside" with the next update that gives us two additional module slots in small ships? If nothing else, this proves my theory that modules in ED are nothing but numerical attributes, not actual volumetric space inside our ships that we'll be able to one day walk around in and see. Think about it, where does one find this extra room (the equivalent of 4 tons of cargo) inside a Sidewinder or an Eagle?

Well at least my Livery is already accurate for the new update

 

[Vedmo]

How many doctors can you fit in that thing?

I don't know how much spatial sense it makes, but I'm looking forward to new opportunities for my small ships with the two extra size one modules.

 

[Iskariot]

Is it my imagination, or will some ships literally be "bigger on the inside" with the next update that gives us two additional module slots in small ships? If nothing else, this proves my theory that modules in ED are nothing but numerical attributes, not actual volumetric space inside our ships that we'll be able to one day walk around in and see. Think about it, where does one find this extra room (the equivalent of 4 tons of cargo) inside a Sidewinder or an Eagle?

Well at least my Livery is already accurate for the new update

View attachment 127348

I think you are right.
That is why I proposed to change piloting modules like these into software upgrades to our ship's computer/AI.
I predicted this slot/module mess long ago and proposed the "software solution".
I now predict that even more small slots will be necessary in the future.
This problem is similar to the limpet creep problem. Both problems are simple to solve.

 

[Old Duck]

How many doctors can you fit in that thing?

I don't know how much spatial sense it makes, but I'm looking forward to new opportunities for my small ships with the two extra size one modules.

If I look at it purely from a spreadsheet / statistic perspective, then yes, it's nice, especially when a docking computer or limpet controller takes up as much room as two tons of cargo.

If I turn my Sidewinder into a Hauler on the other hand, well then the "realism" nerd in me is going to vomit, because there's just no way this makes any sense, especially once you count core modules, "unlisted" modules (sleeping quarters, latrine, etc). Now if someone wants to provide an updated 3D model proving me wrong, I'm all eyes!

 

[Vedmo]

I'm reminded of this video:

Source: https://youtu.be/-nDYYYqrhp4


Realism-wise I agree with you, and it also begs the question why wouldn't every ship manufacturer use that extra space to begin with. As Iskariot pointed out, all for computing modules to boot.

 

[Retropolitan]

Don't get me wrong: my Phantom explorer is going to be happy to get a little lousy AFMU to repair its big, non-lousy AFMU. But my reaction is pretty much the same. Where does all this stuff go?

And although I think that adding the training wheels is a great idea, I'm not sure that extending those training wheels to medium and large ships is also a great idea. You can make things easier to learn without making them easier across the board. Getting into your first medium ship and then having to make some hard choices about what modules you can use? That's a big teaching moment right there.

 

[Crank Larson]

Remember, inside every thin person there's a fat person trying to get out.

I may have that mixed up...

 

[Midian Cabal]

Here you can nicely see the actual size of your Sidewinder. If we know that small ships will get 2 small modules, we can translate that to 2 1E Cargo Racks. Each 1E Cargo Rack holds 1 tonne, which in volume equals to 1 cubic metre. Don't you think that 2 cubic metres can be squeezed into a Sidewinder?

Edit: Its actual dimensions are 14.9m x 21.3m x 5.4m.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Here you can nicely see the actual size of your Sidewinder. If we know that small ships will get 2 small modules, we can translate that to 2 1E Cargo Racks. Each 1E Cargo Rack holds 1 tonne, which in volume equals to 1 cubic metre. Don't you think that 2 cubic metres can be squeezed into a Sidewinder?

Arguably they would be more than 1 cubic metre, as a 1E Fuel Tank also carries 2 tonnes of hydrogen, which even when completely solidified has a density of merely 0.0763 g/cm^3, which is less than 1/13th that of water. A 2 tonne container of frozen hydrogen would occupy a volume of 26.2 cubic metres, not including the walls of the tank itself and the required insulation and cooling apparatus.

It's somewhat trickier to find space for another 52 cubic metres in a small ship, yet somehow for the notoriously space-inefficient medium and large ships they were only able to find space for 26 cubic metres.

 

[Vardaugas]

Just put the hydrogen under pressure and you'll fit two tonnes into one cubic meter.

 

[Old Duck]

Here you can nicely see the actual size of your Sidewinder. If we know that small ships will get 2 small modules, we can translate that to 2 1E Cargo Racks. Each 1E Cargo Rack holds 1 tonne, which in volume equals to 1 cubic metre. Don't you think that 2 cubic metres can be squeezed into a Sidewinder?

Edit: Its actual dimensions are 14.9m x 21.3m x 5.4m.

There is so much wrong with this post that I don't even know where to start....

 

[Morbad]

It would take a lot of module room to credibly use all the space in most ships...they are not at all dense.

A canister is 1m*2m (anyone can measure this) and even a Sidewinder has many hundreds of cubic meters of internal volume. Even if cargo racks are several times the volume of the cannisters that fill them to account for canister movement/manipulation/security, the Sidewinder has the volume for a few more c1 modules, easy.

That said, I am not at all for seemingly haphazard changes that will skew balance.

 

[Old Duck]

It would take a lot of module room to credibly use all the space in most ships...they are not at all dense.

A canister is 1m*2m (anyone can measure this) and even a Sidewinder has many hundreds of cubic meters of internal volume. Even if cargo racks are several times the volume of the cannisters that fill them to account for canister movement/manipulation/security, the Sidewinder has the volume for a few more c1 modules, easy.

That said, I am not at all for seemingly haphazard changes that will skew balance.

People seem to think of ships like glass containers being filled with water. They are not. Equip a Sidewinder with an SRV. That SRV isn't just sitting in the space above the cargo hatch, otherwise it would fall out when I scoop up materials. It must be moved to some other internal space. Wherever cargo goes, it has to have some sort of rail system to move it to the hatch, through a corridor or other conduit. We also have physical things like engines, frame shift drives, sleeping quarters (AFAIK even Sidewinders have a place to sleep, eat, and pee, unless our suit handles the latter), etc.

Try thinking of our Sidewinder as a space we will someday walk around using our space legs, with all of the various things like machinery (one example being hydraulics for our cargo hatch), walkways and / or crawl spaces, etc ad nauseam. You can quote numbers to me all day like we're baking a cake, but we're not, we're building a house ship. I'm not buying that Frontier can just keep conjuring up free space whenever it suits them, unless our ships are mostly empty to begin with, and that's not what I see when I look at my own ship up close and personal.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Just put the hydrogen under pressure and you'll fit two tonnes into one cubic meter.

Trying to compact something that has already solidified under pressure is pretty difficult, it's mostly only gases that can be compressed easily. Even with incredibly high pressures (as in, many times the pressure of the bottom of the Mariana Trench) it might be possible to even go as far as doubling the density, but not by a factor of 26.

 

[Retropolitan]

People have been claiming that small ships didn't matter, which is utter tripe, but here we are on the heels of a correction to a problem that didn't really exist.

Sure, it did: the problem they're addressing (on purpose) is the great difficulty many people have when they first get into their Sidewinders and try to fly them. This is maybe a bigger hammer than the problem really needed, but the idea's a good one, as is the starter systems' being walled off.

Small ships really should matter more, especially now that it's so easy to graduate from them. But the only obvious way to make them matter more is to introduce gameplay that's only possible in a small ship.

 

[Schmack]

If other modules can lose mass to compensate, like they can be engineered to be smaller, using perhaps Guardian technology, it might make sense to skeptics.

 

[Lightspeed]

The docking computer has been minitiarised. It is probably the density equivalent of a neutron star.

 

[EUS]

Just a rewrite of history that AFAIK wasn't public info to begin with; the volume of sizes.
If s1 was 1m^3, it's now 0.75m^3 or whatever's required to fit 2 more s1 in the same space..

 

[AlaricVonDrago]

The module system as a whole is kind of silly. It worked when the game released, but I think at this point, they need to revise it.

Nothing says painted in a corner than "Free slots for everyone!"

Computer-type upgrades really shouldn't consume a slot. Nor should a fuel scoop remove tonnes of cargo capacity from my ship.

 

[Midian Cabal]

People seem to think of ships like glass containers being filled with water. They are not. Equip a Sidewinder with an SRV. That SRV isn't just sitting in the space above the cargo hatch, otherwise it would fall out when I scoop up materials. It must be moved to some other internal space. Wherever cargo goes, it has to have some sort of rail system to move it to the hatch, through a corridor or other conduit. We also have physical things like engines, frame shift drives, sleeping quarters (AFAIK even Sidewinders have a place to sleep, eat, and pee, unless our suit handles the latter), etc.

Try thinking of our Sidewinder as a space we will someday walk around using our space legs, with all of the various things like machinery (one example being hydraulics for our cargo hatch), walkways and / or crawl spaces, etc ad nauseam. You can quote numbers to me all day like we're baking a cake, but we're not, we're building a house ship. I'm not buying that Frontier can just keep conjuring up free space whenever it suits them, unless our ships are mostly empty to begin with, and that's not what I see when I look at my own ship up close and personal.

Don't you have a hall in your house? You know, a kind of space that connects other spaces? Isn't its volume small compared to other spaces that you have in your house? Have you ever turned around in your Sidewinder's cockpit? Did you try to stand up, if you have a VR set? Have you tried to deduct 1.5m x 1.5m x 2m (my estimate that I just tried to guess in VR) from the rest of the ship's volume? Dude, there's plenty of space behind me.