Correct - but the as far as I remember, the shipyard eats directly into your cargo capacity.
Let's talk ship size, cargo capacity and how incredibly silly this is in Elite: Dangerous.
- Thread starter Martin Schou
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Earth?
Pedancticism aside, I seem to be in the minority here and actually quite enjoyed your original post. Inexplicably, that's the sort of thing that is fun for me to work out the math. I'm not sure why. I've just always enjoyed statistics and physics and working out the mechanics that back systems. I'm kind of a dork that way (... and others).
I, too, would love it if ships were more "real-world", but they're still pretty cool regardless, and Elite is no less fun for me as-is.
That is a very good point, and one that definitely doesn't fit in the cargo canisters shown in game.
Searching google finds me this 2021 paper talking about 12.4% by mass hydrogen storage in Li-decorated B2N2 nanosheets. That'd need about 8.1 tons of those nanosheets (including the hydrogen), and neither boron, nitrogen or lithium have high atomic weight, so I seriously doubt they'd be particularly dense.
An alternative interpretation of the problem you posed is that the cargo canisters have a fixed mass of 1 ton and the cargo type dictates the cargo mass. So you might have 900 kg of water but 17,370 kg of gold (since it's much denser). 1 cargo canister of slaves will be 1 slave and the required life support etc. It sort of fits with the fuel tank capacity being identical to cargo racks of the same size, but I'd expect a fuel tank to be far more space efficient as it's a dedicated unit rather than something having to hold individual canisters that are NOT boxy.
It still has mass. And when the ship accelerates it weighs multiple tons. What's your point? That mass doesn't matter in space? You're wrong on that one.
^ This is correct.
Mass is the ONLY thing that matters, in space, on the Ever Given or anywhere else. Weight isn't even a real thing, it's the by-product we experience when an object is in a gravitational field -- which is literally indistinguishable from an object influenced by thrust. 1G of thrust would affect the object exactly the same as Earth's 1G, and an observer with no external frame of reference would be incapable of determining which it was.
It would be nice if cargo in ED had 2 different measurements: mass and volume. 1 ton of gold would have a very different volume to 1 ton of clothing.
Maybe the amount of volume a ship can carry could be determined by rack size as it is now, more and larger racks could carry more volume, but the amount of mass could maybe be determined by engine size, specifically the maximum mass your current engines could provide thrust to vs the empty mass of your ship.
I think this would allow a lot more opportunities to provide to better manage commodity prices as well as smuggling or trading. You could smuggle or trade really valuable items that don’t necessarily take up a lot of volume or mass, and you could do that with small ships (like say diamonds today on earth).
Sure it would be a lot more profitable still to trade a 700T cutter full of diamonds but the point is you’d be hard pressed to find that much anywhere, certainly not in one place. Large ships with large volumes would be more used for bulk transport, smaller ships with smaller volumes could be used for trading less bulky things.
Maybe the amount of volume a ship can carry could be determined by rack size as it is now, more and larger racks could carry more volume, but the amount of mass could maybe be determined by engine size, specifically the maximum mass your current engines could provide thrust to vs the empty mass of your ship.
I think this would allow a lot more opportunities to provide to better manage commodity prices as well as smuggling or trading. You could smuggle or trade really valuable items that don’t necessarily take up a lot of volume or mass, and you could do that with small ships (like say diamonds today on earth).
Sure it would be a lot more profitable still to trade a 700T cutter full of diamonds but the point is you’d be hard pressed to find that much anywhere, certainly not in one place. Large ships with large volumes would be more used for bulk transport, smaller ships with smaller volumes could be used for trading less bulky things.
Make it stop. Please, make it stop.
Is the close thread button broken on whatever device you’re reading this thread on?
To be fair - it is the entire cargo canister that has a mass of 1 tonne, not just the contained material!
It's possible that having a cargo canister system with similar-density cargo canisters might make logistics easier, since mass significantly affects frameshift performance...
In that case, maybe some cargo canisters have added ballast, to ensure that they are exactly one tonne loaded. This is all rationalization to make the ingame feature make sense.
Of course the real (meta) reason is that having different cargo canister have different masses would add a bunch of unnecessary complexity.
Historically, cargo ship size has been measured in tonnage which is actually a measure of volume, not weight. The pen & paper RPG Traveller (1977) carried it forward into space and many other games have followed suit. A Traveller ton is based on a volume of hydrogen and works out to be 14 cubic meters. I'm pretty sure Traveller has been cited as a major inspiration for the first version of Elite in 1984, so that's probably where they got it from.
The TEU measure for cargo is fairly new and probably hasn't percolated its way into the zeitgeist yet.
The TEU measure for cargo is fairly new and probably hasn't percolated its way into the zeitgeist yet.
That's an interesting piece of background information, but as we know that every cargo canister affects hyperspace range equally, we know that they have similar mass and not just volume.
I basically agree. Chalk it up to 25,000 tons sounds like a suitably impressive number and call it done. There are lots places where the science breaks down in ED, but the emphasis has always been on what feels good vs. what's accurate.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Indeed.
Which would be significantly more than 1t of mass for 1t of useful payload.
My take on cargo containerisation in the game is that, for standardisation of cargo bay structure, handling systems, portability between ships of different types, connections and strength of the structure required to hold the container, much like for current inter-modal containers, the mass is limited to 1t of payload regardless of cargo density.
That cargo racks are "weightless" might just mean that the mass of cargo racks is the same as the structure that is required to be put in to empty module bays to stop them collapsing due to stresses on the ship's structure in the various modes of flight.
Nope, works fine. Is the fact I can choose to comment on tripe a problem for you? If so, you presumably know where the block button is yeah?
Few points:
Not sure if anyone brought this up, but we have no definitive data on how ship's build from inside and how exactly cargo holds look. When you build ship, you have to take real good care about it's effective mass. That's how FSD operates, if you go below or above certain values, FSD will probably be unable to operate, so I'm pretty sure cargo holds for even biggest ships do have this in mind for the size and capacity. So actual size of the vessel isn't main consideration of capacity.
Another point is that actual piloted ships aren't bulk cargo carriers, they are like small delivery couriers, where all the heavy loading is done by Megaships, and how much Megaship can carry we don't really know, but considering some CGs, a LOT more than several FCs combined. As for Fleet Carriers, they are exactly that, not Cargo Carriers, so it's safe to assume they aren't exactly built to be capable to run same capacity as cargo Megaships.
Now, game talks directly about tons, that is true. But what is the exact measurement - we don't know. A lot of data we inevitably have to suspend to handwavium, since there are barely any scientifical methods can be applied to space travel, mass relation to ships, model efficiency, etc, etc.
Particularly on ship cargo capacity, ignoring my first paragraph, actual main reason would be to limit ships somehow, otherwise trading profits would definitely go overboard. It's not like they aren't already. Personally I would include a lot bigger tariff tax per cargo size to make small/med ships competitive in trading, but that's beyond point.
Honestly I have no gripes with how much cargo thing like T9 can carry, I'm more than content with mine and limits, however, I'd definitely revise small and medium ships to be more capable in that role. Because few dedicated ones actually suck at it, and outclassed by multi-purposes, which is quite hilarious.
Not sure if anyone brought this up, but we have no definitive data on how ship's build from inside and how exactly cargo holds look. When you build ship, you have to take real good care about it's effective mass. That's how FSD operates, if you go below or above certain values, FSD will probably be unable to operate, so I'm pretty sure cargo holds for even biggest ships do have this in mind for the size and capacity. So actual size of the vessel isn't main consideration of capacity.
Another point is that actual piloted ships aren't bulk cargo carriers, they are like small delivery couriers, where all the heavy loading is done by Megaships, and how much Megaship can carry we don't really know, but considering some CGs, a LOT more than several FCs combined. As for Fleet Carriers, they are exactly that, not Cargo Carriers, so it's safe to assume they aren't exactly built to be capable to run same capacity as cargo Megaships.
Now, game talks directly about tons, that is true. But what is the exact measurement - we don't know. A lot of data we inevitably have to suspend to handwavium, since there are barely any scientifical methods can be applied to space travel, mass relation to ships, model efficiency, etc, etc.
Particularly on ship cargo capacity, ignoring my first paragraph, actual main reason would be to limit ships somehow, otherwise trading profits would definitely go overboard. It's not like they aren't already. Personally I would include a lot bigger tariff tax per cargo size to make small/med ships competitive in trading, but that's beyond point.
Honestly I have no gripes with how much cargo thing like T9 can carry, I'm more than content with mine and limits, however, I'd definitely revise small and medium ships to be more capable in that role. Because few dedicated ones actually suck at it, and outclassed by multi-purposes, which is quite hilarious.
Tell me about it mate - this pointless argument/discussion has been going longer than I can remember. And people still argue the same crap.
On the other hand though, 34th century slaves are incredibly fat.
Game also refers to 'units' of cargo as well...
I can imagine - Panther Clipper stuck at the entrance to Jameson Memorial. Cmdr inside are blocked. Cmdr outside can't enter. 
Mini CG - strongest ships from inside must push the beast out (synchronised). and others from outside must move it left-right.
If it's not successfull, who knows, waiting for high gravity tide? Mini black hole happily passing nearby?
When it pops out - Lavian Brandy for all!!!!!
I really miss some humour in this game!
Mini CG - strongest ships from inside must push the beast out (synchronised). and others from outside must move it left-right.
If it's not successfull, who knows, waiting for high gravity tide? Mini black hole happily passing nearby?
When it pops out - Lavian Brandy for all!!!!!
I really miss some humour in this game!