Ship Scale Problem

[[VR] scipio_77]

Agree that heavy ships (in fact all ships) are far too manoeuvrable for us fragile humans, but for a reason, it is a game. The game models g force (extreme blackouts and readout tolerances) crew and passengers internal organs would be reduced to liquid after most basic boost maneuvers. However, keep in mind that a very common statement on this forum is 'The T9 and Cutter handle like bricks' So we have a fairly large difference between a laden T9 and a GU97.

Also understand the devs stance on all of this, we are locked into a gameplay style that is focused on combat, so it needs to be more Star Wars than space engine.

What I struggle to wrap my head around is this talk of realism. We are talking about thousands of years of tech advancement (remember 200 years ago a turbofan would be considered magical technology beyond human comprehension) Roll/Pitch rates between large & small aircraft are handled by flight control laws these days, you can ask any pilot transitioning from from an A320 '70 tonnes', and a A340 '360/ tonnes' ask them what handling is like, they will say pretty much identical. Larger control surfaces on the A340 gives greater roll authority, in ED larger thrusters give greater roll authority..

If we want to talk about realism based on the current progress of mankind, we sit in automated ships with gradual acceleration and extremely limited roll/pitch/yaw authority, not much fun for most.

Obisdian Ant knows the answer to his question, you either buy VR and experience everything in correct scale, or stick with monitors and use your imagination to fill in the gaps, or play games like Freespace that exaggerate scales by extreme amounts to fool the brain.

We could flip the analogy on its head: Imagine taking a Phonecian round ship, launching it into the air at 1100 km/h and see what happens? It would just crash into the ground and leave a wooden wreck, so obviously an Airbus 380 is unrealistic since it can maintain flight.

The ships in Elite at least follows some basic Newtonian physics in how they behave as objects, how they behave as machines and structurally is obviously idealized and arcadey, but honestly none of us here knows what machines will look like in one millennia anyway.

 

[Melanthes]

Stop trying to inject reality into my video game. Just let me flip my Corvette around like it weighs nothing at all in peace.

From a contemporary perspective the corvette actually weights nearly nothing for a ship of that size. I think we have to take in consideration the amount of time that is a thousand years of nearly unrestricted research.

The physical laws of nature are unlikely to change in the next 1000 years, even if our understanding of them grows.

The laws themselves might not change, but the change in understanding can amount to the same thing. Consider the ptolemaic concept of astronomy, which was, with good reasons, the most sensible perspective around the year 1000. We already know at this point a whole amount of stuff which would be considered witchcraft by a highly learned individual from the year 1000 (don't get me wrong, I'm not calling them primitive, Thomas Aquinas would shame many contemporary scientists with the amount of knowledge he learned). Take quantum entanglement, which disrupts the whole concept of causality or simply the number zero, which wasn't a thing around the year 1000.

 

[Nutter]

From a redit post I made...

 

[refreshfr]

I take it you have never flown a conda? "people who think that things the size of aircraft carriers and 747's should be able to dogfight like WWII airplanes" literally no one thinks that, because its not so...

Condescending much?

The point is that the big ships are way too maneuverable for their size. The most agile ones should be similar to a type-9 in order to be safe for humans.

To go back to the boat comparison, let's say a small boat (like this:

https://imgur.com/a9GH8pq

Source: https://i.imgur.com/a9GH8pq.png
) can make a u-turn in 6 seconds. Now imagine if a large cruise ship (like this:

https://imgur.com/jS1JE8p

Source: https://i.imgur.com/jS1JE8p.png
) did the same. Imagine the amount of g-force if you were in that ship, especially at each end of it. And assuming there's no G-force, if you were on the bridge of that ship, it wouldn't feel like you were controlling a ship that is thousands of tons heavy.

And that's one of the reason why big ships don't feel like they're big: they're way too agile for their size.

That's the point Turd Ferguson tried to make but you kept getting stuck on whatever and apparently couldn't understand it.

 

[Melanthes]

Imagine the amount of g-force if you were in that ship, especially at each end of it.

Now compare the tonnage of that cruise ship with a corvette and you'll see that the corvette isn't made of steel or even modern high tech materials, but something different altogether. The tonnage of such a cruise ship is between 228.000 and 120.000. My combat corvette is around 2.000 tons.

 

[Nutter]

Scale was the topic - in terms of physics and turning a huge ship, one has to wonder how much force a thruster would need to produce to turn a huge ship quickly and how the frame of the said ship could take the forces involved...
The answer is hadwavium and tech we don't currently have.

 

[Juanxlink]

No.

Erm, I guess you do not know what an alcubierre drive is? Basically a gravity modificator.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

My 2cents on the scale problem:

1. Scale in space is mind blowing. We'll never fully understand it. There's simply no reference and nothing to comapre. Travel at 900 km/h in a jet plane at 40,000ft and it seems you don't move. Drive at 80 km/h on a small country road and you feel like in hyperspace. The only difference is in the first case you have no near references, in the second case you have trees, houses, guard rails, road markings....

2. If we could walk inside our ships we would have a better perception. From the outside you can see maintenance hallways on the Anaconda and Corvette. If you could walk in there you would belive you're in a factory rather than an engine room.

3. What if I told you that an Anaconda can carry 8200 passengers in economy or 2760 tonnes of cargo in freighter configuration? Would you realize that this ship is as big as a football field? These are not random numbers, I scaled them up from a real B747. This is what our brain expects from a ship big like that but the game rules are completely different so the scale is completely lost.

Here are the numbers:
Boeing 747-8 (410 passengers in 3-class configuration or 138 tonnes of cargo in freighter configuration):
Fuselage section is an average circumference of 6.7m diameter and the pressurized cabin is 63m long.
Cabin volume is 2220 cubic meter
Anaconda internal space (here I'm pessimistic): 22m high (70% of total height), 21m wide (33% of the total width), 100m long (66% of total length).
Anaconda cabin volume is 44700 cubic meter
Anaconda cabin is 20 times bigger than a B747-8 but it can carry less passengers (202 in economy, it's 50%!!!) and only 3.4x more in terms of cargo space (470 tonnes).


SOLUTIONS:
1. Add something on the ship model that we know well so we have some reference.

2. Add spacelegs

3. Increase passengers and cargo ships capacity accordingly, and keep the mission rewards unchanged.

 

[Nutter]

SOLUTIONS:
1. Add something on the ship model that we know well so we have some reference.

I agree with your post, in terms of the models - I think they all have access doors?

 

[zimms]

The observation cabin at the front of an Anaconda is a death trap. If you're there enjoying the view and the pilot decides he has to maneuver you're dead.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Not a question, but a thought experiment. Take an aircraft carrier, remove it from the water that's supporting it's weight, and holding it by the back where the thrusters are flip it around as fast as they do in the same with engineered thrusters.

now...count the pieces.

There are manouvering thrusters all around the body of the ships in ED which would help with any stress that is happening, but I agree that the large ships turn far too quickly. They shouldn't be that manouverable in my view.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I agree with your post, in terms of the models - I think they all have access doors?

Yup! The evidence is in fact the access door here gives a good sense of scale of the ship:

 

[Jukelo]

The observation cabin at the front of an Anaconda is a death trap. If you're there enjoying the view and the pilot decides he has to maneuver you're dead.

Our pilots can land and stay on 10 g planets, and a lot of people live in zero-g on outposts or on very low g planets with no ill effects that we know of. And since we have examples of advanced bionics, and progenitor cells allow rich individuals to live significantly longer lives, it's quite probable humanity in 3300 has a good handle on bioengineering to handle, at least on a individual basis, such issues.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

There are manouvering thrusters all around the body of the ships in ED which would help with any stress that is happening, but I agree that the large ships turn far too quickly. They shouldn't be that manouverable in my view.

In combat scenario they should be really bulky (basic Anaconda is only 9x stronger than a Sidewinder) and the player should fight from a turret canpoy

 

[Stealthie]

The point is that the big ships are way too maneuverable for their size. The most agile ones should be similar to a type-9 in order to be safe for humans.

To go back to the boat comparison, let's say a small boat (like this:

https://imgur.com/a9GH8pq

Source: https://i.imgur.com/a9GH8pq.png
) can make a u-turn in 6 seconds. Now imagine if a large cruise ship (like this:

https://imgur.com/jS1JE8p

Source: https://i.imgur.com/jS1JE8p.png
) did the same. Imagine the amount of g-force if you were in that ship, especially at each end of it. And assuming there's no G-force, if you were on the bridge of that ship, it wouldn't feel like you were controlling a ship that is thousands of tons heavy.

 

[B1rdy]

I think a major problem with why scale seems off in non-VR is the default point of view.

Try a simple experiment. Sit in a chair, and look straight ahead. Unless you have some vision issues, you should be able see your knees and, depending on how you are sitting, your arms and feet.

In Elite, you can only see these appendages in hard turns, accelerations, or decelerations. Essentially, the default point of view in Elite is our pilot looking slightly up, neck bent back. Not forward.

I often play with mouselook on, and the mouse moved to have my view down just a bit, so I can see the tips of my character's hands and feet (I also have a much wider FoV set). It's a small change, but it makes a big difference in actually feeling "there".

One other issue is the chunkiness of the in-game HUD. All lines in the HUD are extremely thick (especially considering how far from the HUD the pilot sits) and this contributes to the "toy" feel of our ships.

That is only part of the equation. Especially you have to consider the size of you monitor and your viewing distance. If you treat your screen like a window to the virtual world, which you should for simulation games, you will notice that most games at default PoV show far to much of the game world. That makes the game world look smaller.
Regarding your example, in order to be able to see part of the legs of EDs pilot, you had to be sitting really close, like 30cm, to a 45" (or bigger) screen. But, I guess, most people instead sit 1m away from their 24" screen, resulting in a very narrow and limited, probably unplayable, view into the game world, if the FoV was set correctly.

Our CMDRs are not anatomically modern humans, they are heavily augmented transumans from 1200 years

They have to be, otherwise ground bases on planets with 1,8g and more wouldn't be habitable for longer periods of time.

 

[Helvellyn]

Scale was the topic - in terms of physics and turning a huge ship, one has to wonder how much force a thruster would need to produce to turn a huge ship quickly and how the frame of the said ship could take the forces involved...
The answer is hadwavium and tech we don't currently have.

Enough thrusters spread along the ship and it could turn without snapping in half, with just a little reasonable accounting for future materials technology. Push one end one way and the other end the other, plus a lot in between, and you've got significantly less stress (it'll be getting it turning rather than the forces involved when it's just spinning, no power, i.e. what you get with FA off). When comparing with ships and planes, they've also got to deal with the resistance of turning through air or water.

Also note the Anaconda bridge is in the middle, so a bit less stress on the pilot due to that.

I take the overall point though and it might be nice if there was a greater manouevrability advantage to small ships but I find it one of the less jarring things.

 

[Stealthie]

They have to be, otherwise ground bases on planets with 1,8g and more wouldn't be habitable for longer periods of time.

Which is a whole extra can of worms.

FDev have said there's no artificial gravity in ED and people point out that we fly our ships in real-time so, theoretically, most starship pilots probably only spend relatively short periods in zero-g.

Which would be fine if surface outposts and orbital platforms weren't a thing.

Sure, Coriolis stations might simulate a 1g environment centrifugally (I'm surprised nobody's done the maths) but there's no centrifugal gravity on orbital platforms or at surface outposts, either in high or low g environments.
Seems like the people in those places must have a tough time.

Or FDev should just retcon AG into the game - which they're probably going to have to do for space-legs anyhow.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

 

[Arioch]

>big ship doing still-slow manoeuvring<

I've been on plenty of Destroyers and Frigates that hurl themselves around during exercises, they're still sedate compared to the similarly sized craft in this game. I suspect if ED had been a single-player game then the big ships would've been slow and covered in turrets. Looking back to the old promotional videos, Anacondas seemed more static with other ships buzzing round them.