A long time ago, someone (I wish I could find the post to credit them properly) on reddit made a post with the bounding box and actual enclosed volume of each ship. I made a copy of their data and used it for some of my own stuff, and recently I've been wondering why the spaceships in Elite: Dangerous are such terrible transporters.
As an example - the fleet carriers can take 25,000 tons of cargo. That sounds impressive, but it's a ship that's 3.2 km long and 700 meters wide (no idea about its height). The Evergreen ship Ever Given, which recently blocked the Suez Canal is 400 meters long and 60 meters wide and can carry 20,000 twenty-foot container. Those are typically 6.1 x 2.44 x 2.59 meters and all of them have a maximum gross mass of 24 ton with a maximum cargo mass of 21.6 tons. In other words, the Ever Given can carry up to 432,000 tons of cargo. That single cargo ship can carry more than 17 times as much cargo as a single fleet carrier. This is not exactly impressive.
A Type-9 is 117 meters long, 115 meters wide and 33 meters tall. It can carry a maximum of 790 tons of cargo. That's between 36 and 37 twenty-foot containers. A stack of 6x6 such containers would be 37 meters long, 15 meters wide and 2.59 meters tall. Considering the size of this ship that is built to carry cargo, that is a drop in the bucket. And it made me wonder - just how low density are our spaceships?
Well, the highest mass I can manage to make a Type-9 is 2,219 tons by B-rating everything, putting weapons and shield-boosters in all utility slots. The ships volume is 157,616 m^3. Density is mass/volume - 2,219 tons / 157,616 m^3 = 12.8 kg/m^3 . Water is 1,000 kg/m^3. At 101.325 kPa (abs) and 15°C, AIR has a density of approximately 1.225 kg/m^3. Styrofoam has a density of approximately 75 kg/m^3.
The density of the air at the surface of Venus is 67 kg/m^3 - five times that of the highest mass Type-9. None of the thrusters on the Type-9 will allow it to ever get to the surface (if it's airtight and loaded in a normal atmosphere).
A ship like a Type-9, a ship that is built to carry as much cargo as possible, should be able to carry a LOT more cargo than it currently does. The idea that we're 1,300 years in the future but has somehow failed to figure out how to move cargo in an efficient way.
Of course, fixing that kind of problem raises another - making money becomes much, much easier, because we'll be carrying a lot more goods from the start. Don't get me started on income and prices in the game, because that's also horrendibly broken/illogical.
As an example - the fleet carriers can take 25,000 tons of cargo. That sounds impressive, but it's a ship that's 3.2 km long and 700 meters wide (no idea about its height). The Evergreen ship Ever Given, which recently blocked the Suez Canal is 400 meters long and 60 meters wide and can carry 20,000 twenty-foot container. Those are typically 6.1 x 2.44 x 2.59 meters and all of them have a maximum gross mass of 24 ton with a maximum cargo mass of 21.6 tons. In other words, the Ever Given can carry up to 432,000 tons of cargo. That single cargo ship can carry more than 17 times as much cargo as a single fleet carrier. This is not exactly impressive.
A Type-9 is 117 meters long, 115 meters wide and 33 meters tall. It can carry a maximum of 790 tons of cargo. That's between 36 and 37 twenty-foot containers. A stack of 6x6 such containers would be 37 meters long, 15 meters wide and 2.59 meters tall. Considering the size of this ship that is built to carry cargo, that is a drop in the bucket. And it made me wonder - just how low density are our spaceships?
Well, the highest mass I can manage to make a Type-9 is 2,219 tons by B-rating everything, putting weapons and shield-boosters in all utility slots. The ships volume is 157,616 m^3. Density is mass/volume - 2,219 tons / 157,616 m^3 = 12.8 kg/m^3 . Water is 1,000 kg/m^3. At 101.325 kPa (abs) and 15°C, AIR has a density of approximately 1.225 kg/m^3. Styrofoam has a density of approximately 75 kg/m^3.
The density of the air at the surface of Venus is 67 kg/m^3 - five times that of the highest mass Type-9. None of the thrusters on the Type-9 will allow it to ever get to the surface (if it's airtight and loaded in a normal atmosphere).
A ship like a Type-9, a ship that is built to carry as much cargo as possible, should be able to carry a LOT more cargo than it currently does. The idea that we're 1,300 years in the future but has somehow failed to figure out how to move cargo in an efficient way.
Of course, fixing that kind of problem raises another - making money becomes much, much easier, because we'll be carrying a lot more goods from the start. Don't get me started on income and prices in the game, because that's also horrendibly broken/illogical.
