I always pictured the docking computer being enlarged, a Raspberry Pi that Hope van Dyne shot with Pym particles like that salt shaker and Pez dispenser. Why else would it take up so much room?
Bigger On The Inside
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
There are ways to achieve higher densities of Hydrogen storage than those compared to the gaseous and liquid hydrogen storage systems. Sci-Fi, blah blah, 36th century technology, mkay?
at least in the sidewinder is posible to fit 2 more modules according to the marvelous work of Nebohtes in the modularity series.. it would be a tight fit but it is still doable in the naceles... look for yourself
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjApqmIALd8
It's easy if you take the toilets out.
Dude, unless I see 4 cargo canisters strapped to wall in that "plenty of space behind me" after this update, then your point falls flat.
And if a Sidewinder has had all this free, empty space in a logical place all this time, then why limit my modules all these years? You people are really stretching things (literally and figuratively). Let's say next year Frontier needs to give us two more module slots for something else, when does it end?
It's all "blah blah blah" until I see a 3D internal render that shows how everything I've addressed in this thread (cough SRV cough) can actually fit logically in our Sidewinders.
They have to be, to have the densities they have, unless they are manufactured from aero gels, cotton candy, whipped cream, and balsa wood veneer.
The volume of all but the smallest ships are positively enormous compared to their mass (the mass of air at sea level pressure would account for a significant fraction of the total mass of a stripped down Anaconda) and even accounting for everything you mention, even a Sidewinder would be quite spacious with twice as many modules as it will have at the end of April.
If even 20% of the gross internal volume of a Sidewinder could be devoted to canisters, it would have a cargo capacity of about 150-200 tons. A lot more than 20% of the internal volume of quite a few real vehicles can be devoted to cargo.
I'm not saying internal capacities should be increased, as the limiting factor is clearly mass, due to both thruster performance and probably structural integrity, but ships are huge, have a lot of space, and if you can justify the mass, the volume is a total non-issue.
cough You obivously don't have a VR set, because you'd be able to see that your SRV is stored folded. cough
Regarding the 3D internal render, see above.
How about this? You fit a cargo rack in that slot and then find you can no longer roll to the right. So you look down and see a big cardboard carton strapped in there against your elbow.
Except for the cockpits, no it's not. But if legs shows up, the problem won't be "where do we fit all this stuff", it will be "what the hell do we put in this giant blimp to justify it's outward size".
I know that ages ago, somebody calculated the volume of an Anaconda. I don't have the thread and numbers at hand any more. But i remember that the conclusion of that calculation was that if an Anaconda would ever enter Earths atmosphere, it would effectively be a balloon Zeppelin and would have to use thrust to push itself down to sea level.
Sorry that i can't back that up right now, i'm too lazy to dig through years of the forum to find -that- thing again.
Sorry that i can't back that up right now, i'm too lazy to dig through years of the forum to find -that- thing again.
ED was designed with walking around ideas from the start. See the concept paintings. ED ships have always been bigger than they seem from the cockpit pov, which further supports the idea of plenty of internal space. And the two extra module slots are type 1, not type 2 or larger. Granted it may get stuffy in the sidewinder, but the idea works fine with the viper and bigger. This was to address long posted concerns about perceived lack of individual module space or ships that lacked type 1 optional slots. That FD made a compromise for those who want or need advanced docking computer assist vs those who don't need it is a fairly clever solution imo. I would even bet that extra type 1 slots were not in place from the start as another placeholder mechanism for future plans and function somewhere along the ten-year planning.
I'm just not SEEING* this. As Sylow points out, mass numbers make no sense to begin with, so trying to use those to imagine volume is a fool's folly (not calling you a fool, just using an idiom). I mean, look at massless AMFUs and fuel scoops - mass is meaningless in this game.
I served and lived on a submarine, and it's not just about "filling a volume". You need to be able to get those heavy torpedoes from the service hatch to the torpedo racks, which requires hallways and hatches and rails and equipment. You can't just arbitrarily say, "I'm going to swap out the sonar room so I can store more torpedoes". Nor will putting anything in the middle of a submarine strengthen the hull (HRPs).
Also, we're not talking about a cubical Type-7 here. The Sidewinder, like grandma's attic, has some very tight, slanted spaces (which ironically might work great for reenforcing the hull but are rubbish for efficiently storing stacked containers).
Anyway, you are talking numbers, I am talking layout and visual design. That said, until I can watch that video, I'll take a break, but unless this video addresses all aspects of a functioning ship (including machinery, where SRVs are stored while scooping cargo, how scooped cargo is moved to the "wing tips", etc.), I'll not be convinced that modules are anything other than old-fashioned Dungeons and Dragons stats on a sheet of paper.
* I can't access that video from my current location, I'll have to look later.
Last edited:
There are ways to achieve higher densities of Hydrogen storage than those compared to the gaseous and liquid hydrogen storage systems. Sci-Fi, blah blah, 36th century technology, mkay?
While there are ways to achieve slightly higher densities, such as the intermetallics and via adsorption onto substrates, they still can't account for a 13x increase in density. Most of those methods, even at a theoretical level, can barely reach double the density of liquid/solid hydrogen.
As far as I know, only the theorised metallic hydrogen can just about reach 12x-13x the density of frozen hydrogen depending on theoretical model used, but that stuff requires hundreds of gigapascals of pressure to maintain, and judging by how fuel tanks neither explode the moment something scratches them nor cost millions of credits for the high purity diamonds and carbon nanotubes necessary to maintain the pressure, it's unlikely that they use metallic hydrogen in our fuel tanks.
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
Yeah...
This rather discourages me. Until now I felt it was reasonable to assume they had done some sort of internal mapping - this blanket change tends to suggest they haven't and I feel like it diminishes rather things.
Certainly puts a bit of a crimp on my space legs walking around inside my ship dream.
Nah.
The sidey has an internal volume of roughly 750m³.
Of that volume, internal slots currently take up around 12m³.
With the update, that'll change to around 16m³.
In gameplay terms, it'll create a heap of new possibilities, though.
Looking forward to rebuilding my Exploration Sidey as a properly viable exploration ship, rebuilding my speedy Viper to do more stuff and adding functionality to my DBXs etc.
I'm sure they did some internal mapping in those early days. There's a picture of a mapped Anaconda out there somewhere. Sometime during development, however, they tabled this and made modules simple statistics. If we ever do get space legs, I expect that we will "transition" to different parts of our ship the way we currently transition from cockpit to SRV. This way Frontier can just use certain predefined models for things like cargo bays and passenger lounges without having to worry about the many THOUSANDS of possible module combinations in larger ships.
Either that or they will completely rework the module system so that we "build" ship interiors like houses in The Sims, graphically placing cargo bays and what not in logical places and connecting them with hallways. This would be epic, and doable, and maybe even plausible in light of their Planet Coaster franchise.
But now, right now, modules are D&D stats, nothing more.
Last edited:
So when you say, "Nah", that's the prelude to the nonsensical rubbish that follows? I truly mean it, if you think engines and thrusters and frameshift and sensors and pipes connecting lateral thrusters to engines (some of which apparently run right by my seat) and the SRV bay (which is separate from the cargo scoop void) and everything else that makes a working ship a ship ony takes up 12 cubic meters, then you are smoking some really good weed.Nah.
The sidey has an internal volume of roughly 750m³.
Of that volume, internal slots currently take up around 12m³.
With the update, that'll change to around 16m³.
In gameplay terms, it'll create a heap of new possibilities, though.
Looking forward to rebuilding my Exploration Sidey as a properly viable exploration ship, rebuilding my speedy Viper to do more stuff and adding functionality to my DBXs etc.