Bigger On The Inside

I think this one was not addressed yet. And while i don't -know- why FD did it like this, i remember when the people from wing commander saga explained why their ships were so unreasonably large. (Not that they feel too large in game. But people who extracted the models realized that they were much bigger than they would be to be expected. ) They first tried to use normal scale, but combat was basically just shooting at pixels, without ever having good visuals on the target. Only when they made ships much larger (up to 16 times larger!), combat turned out the way they wanted it to be.

So while i have no hard evidence to confirm that things happened the same way in ED, I very much think that ED would have the very same problem if ships would be scaled matching to their mass. Also i think if this happened, in terms of gameplay FD did the right thing by scaling them up without adjusting mass. Would the ships have mass according to their size, people would be all the rage about "unrealistically high" mass numbers. People have expectations how heavy a "fighter spaceship" should be and they have expectations on how it should look on the screen. They have no feeling that their expectations can't possibly match up. (At least i don't. Without the maths being done, i would have no chance to tell that something would be odd here. )

Sidewinder is about the same length as F-16 (14.9m vs. 15.09m), that sounds realistic to me.
 
I think this one was not addressed yet. And while i don't -know- why FD did it like this, i remember when the people from wing commander saga explained why their ships were so unreasonably large. (Not that they feel too large in game. But people who extracted the models realized that they were much bigger than they would be to be expected. ) They first tried to use normal scale, but combat was basically just shooting at pixels, without ever having good visuals on the target. Only when they made ships much larger (up to 16 times larger!), combat turned out the way they wanted it to be.

So while i have no hard evidence to confirm that things happened the same way in ED, I very much think that ED would have the very same problem if ships would be scaled matching to their mass. Also i think if this happened, in terms of gameplay FD did the right thing by scaling them up without adjusting mass. Would the ships have mass according to their size, people would be all the rage about "unrealistically high" mass numbers. People have expectations how heavy a "fighter spaceship" should be and they have expectations on how it should look on the screen. They have no feeling that their expectations can't possibly match up. (At least i don't. Without the maths being done, i would have no chance to tell that something would be odd here. )

TBH, I don't really care how sizes and weights and volumes relate to each other as long as they do it consistently.

Sure, it's easy to point (and laugh) at the weight of the Annie but the same problem afflicts a variety of ships in the game and the more closely you look, the more inexplicable inconsistencies become apparent.

As Sylveria and I were moaning about a few months ago, FDev could really do with creating some rules for all this stuff (like, perhaps, deciding on a variety of standardised hull materials for different applications) and then working through all the different ships to ensure that they obey a consistent set of laws - even if that means revising the modules sizes of certain ships (either up or down) to ensure they continue to operate as intended.

Which all ties in rather nicely with the subject of this thread because once you've settled on a variety of standardised hull materials you can actually tweak things like the thickness of the hull and the internal structure of a ship to create the required hardness and armor rating so that, in turn, you can accurately calculate the internal volume of a ship and design interior compartments.
 
Maybe they should not assign or display mass for these modules in class 1 slots, especially optional ones. If you imagine two extra slots are like...backpack sized. To fit few extra computers. It all makes more sense.
 
Maybe they should not assign or display mass for these modules in class 1 slots, especially optional ones. If you imagine two extra slots are like...backpack sized. To fit few extra computers. It all makes more sense.

Except that we know a C1 slot has to be big enough to fit a C1 cargo rack, which is capable of storing 2t of stuff.
Equally, a C1 fuel tank can hold 2t of fuel.

Every C1 slot needs to be physically large enough to fit the largest possible C1 module - theoretically speaking.
 
Except that we know a C1 slot has to be big enough to fit a C1 cargo rack, which is capable of storing 2t of stuff.
Equally, a C1 fuel tank can hold 2t of fuel.

Every C1 slot needs to be physically large enough to fit the largest possible C1 module - theoretically speaking.
I know. Idea needs some development :) At least they could not assign size to new optional slots for docking computer. Make them something akin to just software updates to your existing systems. Maybe in future other things similar to docking computer can go there, and take up virtually no space.
 
What we needed was a nerf to defense or a buff to dps, what we got was a 10% buff to defense.

Frankly, I'm surprised this happened and I'm expecting a pandora's box of balance issues, UNLESS, they are made NON military only. The opposite to milslots. In other words you can put anything in them that isn't defense related. That would have been a smart way to go. Now the gankers get even more armor (and so does my challenger, something nobody wants, believe me!)
 
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I know. Idea needs some development :) At least they could not assign size to new optional slots for docking computer. Make them something akin to just software updates to your existing systems. Maybe in future other things similar to docking computer can go there, and take up virtually no space.

Uhuh,

Going back to something I suggested earlier, maybe it'd be an idea to add some kind of optional slots to the core slots of each ship - and, of course, take away (or not add extra) optional slots to try and retain some balance?
You'd be able to add things like HRPs, MRPs and scanners to the optional core-module slots instead of adding them to the optional slots.

From a design perspective, this would reflect the idea that the core-modules are the ship, itself - the modules that allow your ship to operate.
Conversely, the optional modules would be the stuff that goes inside the ship - the modules that allow your ship to do whatever job you want it to do.

From a gameplay perspective, it'd mean certain ships would be especially suitable for specific roles (which I'm not completely keen on) but a bit of thought could minimise the issues this might cause.
Basically, you could give most ships 2 or 3 C1 optional core-slots so people could bung in various scanners, maybe add more to ships intended for exploration, along with one or two gigger slots for things like FSD boosters and then add more bigger optional core-slots to ships intended for combat, so people could bung in HRPs and MRPs etc.
This would have the overall effect of limiting the number of MRPs/HRPs/GSBs people could fit to ships.

From the perspective of modelling ship interiors it would mean that a heap of dodgy stuff could be "hidden" sight, so a player wouldn't walk around their ship and expect to see an MRP/HRP sitting on the deck somewhere that, say, a passenger cabin could also fit because things like MRPs and HRPs (along with things like scanners and sensors etc) cwould be built into a ship's superstructure somewhere.
 
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 :D

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You must be real fun at parties... :rolleyes:
 
Spacelegs doesn't imply the ability to walk around your module space though. I think it would be reasonable to limit it to the cockpit, living quarters, and a few other areas that are standard for each ship type (especially for passenger liners like the Beluga), with module space being off-limits. Hopefully unoccupied passenger cabins will be accessible though.
 
What we needed was a nerf to defense or a buff to dps, what we got was a 10% buff to defense.

Frankly, I'm surprised this happened and I'm expecting a pandora's box of balance issues, UNLESS, they are made NON military only. The opposite to milslots. In other words you can put anything in them that isn't defense related. That would have been a smart way to go. Now the gankers get even more armor (and so does my challenger, something nobody wants, believe me!)
Sorry to drift off-topic, but what if Frontier just got rid of all the size 1 HRPs and other related modules from outfitting? Either that or seriously nerf the protection value of small HRPs. I was just thinking the other day, before this announcement, how "powerful" HRPs are. This would be an easy-peasy solution for Frontier to implement, since they just need to tweak some numbers / availability stats.
 
Spacelegs doesn't imply the ability to walk around your module space though. I think it would be reasonable to limit it to the cockpit, living quarters, and a few other areas that are standard for each ship type (especially for passenger liners like the Beluga), with module space being off-limits. Hopefully unoccupied passenger cabins will be accessible though.
Not much of a Mass Effect fan, are you? ;)
 
Sorry to drift off-topic, but what if Frontier just got rid of all the size 1 HRPs and other related modules from outfitting? Either that or seriously nerf the protection value of small HRPs. I was just thinking the other day, before this announcement, how "powerful" HRPs are. This would be an easy-peasy solution for Frontier to implement, since they just need to tweak some numbers / availability stats.

Kind of brutal.

I like it. :p
 
I'm looking forward to the extra slots. I'm not sweating the logic/reality of it much. For one thing my headcanon reckons 34th century tech gets smaller and lighter over time the same as our 21st century tech does. So if a 3305 Sidewinder has a couple more slots than a 3304 or 3302 one, meh, I'll take the slots thank you. I know that's simplifying things a lot, but hey it's a game.

The whole logic of the slot system in terms of the size/mass of what might go into them never made a lot of sense to me anyway. These new docking and autocruise computers, each of which should be the size of a Raspberry Pi surely, (see what I did there David?) will occupy slots also capable of carrying a total of 4t of cargo, where's the logic in that?
I really enjoy those YouTube videos that show exactly what the inside of a Sidewinder might look like in terms of modules and it would be nice if that was the reality, but it's not and those videos, clever as they are, often still have to allow little cheats with things like weapon & landing gear retraction to get everything to fit. Sure FDev might have once said they design the ships so the internal kit would fit but I don't know that's entirely true ...maybe back in the day.

I like the idea of the small ships getting a bit of a buff anyway. I've thought for a while that the smaller ships are kind of ignored and bordering on irrelevant once people start using the larger ones. I'm also pleased that even the larger ships are getting an extra size 1. So often I've had a size 1 piece of kit that I've had to waste a size 2 or 3 slot on in one of the bigger ships.

In summary, not bovvered. :cool:
 
I'm looking forward to the extra slots. I'm not sweating the logic/reality of it much.
FWIW, so am I. Sometimes two wrongs DO make a right, and the extra slots go a long way to compensate for the controller / computer bloat we currently have. In fact, I'm advocating in another thread that ALL ships get TWO new size-1 slots.

My OP really has more to do with future space legs, but as someone (forget who, sorry) pointed out, if / when space legs come, then we can worry about how all this stuff fits into our small ships. Better yet, Frontier can worry about that!
 
My OP really has more to do with future space legs, but as someone (forget who, sorry) pointed out, if / when space legs come, then we can worry about how all this stuff fits into our small ships. Better yet, Frontier can worry about that!

I figure space legs is going to require so much detailing work on a lot of the game's 3D assets, including new ship interiors alongside just the cockpit, that reworking the exteriors of ships as well where necessary has probably already been factored in.

[edit: assuming space legs will actually be a thing that is, I'm still not convinced]
 
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So, these two C1 slots in a sidewinder how big are they? How do they relate to modules? Where do they fit in the ship? Sure, the C1 slots are intended for the SCA or AdvDC [so 'small' modules] but they could equally take a cargo rack or fuel tank [so, quite big then] and I have seen the arguments over where they actually fit and just magically adding them.

My thought about this is that it's all just numbers in a ship definition in a program/object/class.

If you/we/us are worried about the practicality of it all, I have always wondered how the raw materials and manufactured mats magically stay with us through a rebuy yet our SLF pilots do not if they're sitting in our ship remotely piloting an SLF. I can understand the data mats since they could be in a 'thumb-drive' in our suits but 300 units of Iron?

Me? I don't like the way these new modules slots just keep getting added either, but if the Elitian Gods are going to bend the laws of Physics for one thing why not others. I just hope to continue to enjoy the game, noting that I have always wished that every ship had just one C1 slot.
 
Sorry to drift off-topic, but what if Frontier just got rid of all the size 1 HRPs and other related modules from outfitting? Either that or seriously nerf the protection value of small HRPs. I was just thinking the other day, before this announcement, how "powerful" HRPs are. This would be an easy-peasy solution for Frontier to implement, since they just need to tweak some numbers / availability stats.
The old school here will remember me banging on about hrps and diminishing returns over the years. That's all that's needed. Currently DR on armor is non existant, and DR on resistances isn't enough.
 
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