Double cargo rack space please.

[Helmut Grokenberger]

For what it's worth, I have a carrier and have not really used it in my colonisation efforts yet. Everything I needed with a few minor exceptions was available one or two jumps away from my construction site.

And I'm against any measures accelerating colonisation. We can already see that it is going pretty quickly, apparently too quickly for Frontier's liking and their maintenance to handle. Heaven forbit something in the game actually takes some time and effort and isn't available at a moment's notice .

 

[Niamhy]

.... and await the complaints about ships no longer being able to jump very far, with poor maneouvrability in normal space and low speeds due to significant increase in total mass....

they only have to jump from carrier to station and back again. I don't actually fly between systems much anymore lol

but yeah, I get everyone's points and agree. i was just spitballing after making 30 steel runs to carrier and 30 steel runs from carrier. there has to be a more efficient way... autoload? if your carrier is in orbit of the thing you are building, have a button on the building site "transfer all (from ship)" or "transfer all (from carrier)".? this isn't about rushing things or whatnot, but i have 80 building slots in my system...

and yes, I'll take a 1000+ tonne Panther Clipper the second it is released.

 

[metatheurgist]

they only have to jump from carrier to station and back again. I don't actually fly between systems much anymore lol

but yeah, I get everyone's points and agree. i was just spitballing after making 30 steel runs to carrier and 30 steel runs from carrier. there has to be a more efficient way... autoload? if your carrier is in orbit of the thing you are building, have a button on the building site "transfer all (from ship)" or "transfer all (from carrier)".? this isn't about rushing things or whatnot, but i have 80 building slots in my system...

and yes, I'll take a 1000+ tonne Panther Clipper the second it is released.

The problem is the game mechanic does not fit the game. In a proper god game/command and control game you don't do stuff like this personally. You send and direct resources and minions around to do your bidding with a click of a mouse and the game you play is the strategic game. Supply, conflict, resource management because that's the fun stuff. The manual schlepping of crap from one end of the universe to another is not something anyone wants to do. But that's what happens when you keep shoehorning the wrong game mechanics into a game about manually flying a spaceship. The game was never designed to do this rubbish, that's why it's clunky as hell.

 

[Lord Baron Von Vaderham]

As someone who...
A) is a solo player
B) Has a carrier
C) Is colonizing a system
...I can say that the process is infuriatingly slow. I was never in favor of colonization for this and other reasons. You can't really balance the needs and abilities of individuals vs. what are essentially coordinated guilds. I understand the desire for the ability to colonize but it was still a bad idea. That said, it's here. I doubt that it's going away. They've teased the Panther for years (maybe we'll finally get it, but don't hold your breath. The existing ship thrusters/FSDs just can't support it as far as I can tell.) On top of that, if that portion of the player base that lives to antagonize the thargoids doesn't start another war with this system, I will be amazed. They will also be the first ones to moan if that war costs them their systems because the people who like to FA never enjoy the FO portion of the itinerary.

 

[Tifu]

autoload? if your carrier is in orbit of the thing you are building, have a button on the building site "transfer all (from ship)" or "transfer all (from carrier)".? this isn't about rushing things or whatnot, but i have 80 building slots in my system...

A module or structure to shift cargo from ship to ship or from ship to carrier would be very useful. For a carrier, this would be a module that takes up space and cargo capacity. For a ship, this could a buildable structure for a colony.

and yes, I'll take a 1000+ tonne Panther Clipper the second it is released.

So say we all!

 

[cybort]

Or let cargo racks can be engineered.

 

[Danieros]

Oh yes, cargo rack engineering please. Power draw could be a drawback. The higher tonnage itself will also slow thrusters/reduce jump range.

 

[Jmanis]

Oh yes, cargo rack engineering please. Power draw could be a drawback. The higher tonnage itself will also slow thrusters/reduce jump range.

I've said this a couple times elsewhere... but I'd take cargo rack engineering that increases capacity for X type of cargo, but you cannot haul other cargo types with that racking. That'd need some non-engineering changes to how cargo works, but nonetheless.

The lore behind that would be that (apparently) every 1t of cargo is the whole canister, and that it's not necessarily 1t of cargo inside the canister. Specialised racking allows disassembly of the cargo canisters in such a way that allows them to compress space and store the contents more effectively. You could have the negative be doubling of the weight for all purposes (e.g jump distance).... but obviously co-storing say fruit and veg with biowaste would be a bad idea.

 

[o2thaZ]

Or let cargo racks can be engineered.

OR....drum roll...
Allow cargo racks in military optional internals.
Ever so slightly more cargo, but i'll take it.

 

[Tryohazard]

With the vast amount of sanity breaking runs we have to make to build some of this Colony stuff...

well there was a reason they made it so many runs. Its a grueling task for one pilot to handle alone. Its a group activity. It may be a boring one but its a group task meant to be done as a group, but still feasible solo.

If you're ever interested in looking at the 3d models of the ships, (if we are being true to scale and give tight spacing between cansiters. This is my own finding), some of the ships absolutely could fit additional modules which could in turn be used for cargo. But other ships are already dealing with cramped or even borrowed space thanks to them adding SRV bay doors to all the ships (that was a lame move IMO). Anyway my point is we're BARELY in the zone where interiors are realistic, but doubling cargo space would destroy that. Most ships couldnt fit it.

My suggestion would be not for the cargo size to double, but for the ships with the space to be given the module slots. Where going over a certain amount of modules drastically reduces handling and maybe even has an extra power penalty.

 

[Raedawn]

how about... doubling cargo rack space? eg Class 6 would hold 128t instead of 64t, Class 5 would hold 64t instead of 32 etc. Pleeeeease?

with the vast amount of sanity breaking runs we have to make to build some of this Colony stuff, not only would this make Type 9/Clippers more optimal, it would also open out other ships, like the Anaconda, Type 7, and that fancy new Type 8 I bought to be usable for Trailblazers (haven't touched it since Trailblazers launched, it's cargo capacity is so low there is no point. Which is an absolute shame)

so yeah, that's my suggestion. Double the tonnage on each type of cargo rack. Make up some canon "innovative space saving technology found as a co-incidental result of Titan reverse-engineering!" or something if you have to. but we need this lol

If you are doing colonization and wish to do it the most difficult way possible, that is a YOU issue not a game issue.

Save up for a carrier (not even difficult) and get colonization done the right way or don't. It is a choice and you seem to be making the wrong CHOICE!

 

[Niamhy]

was that directed at me? lol. I bought a carrier the week they came out. I have Type 9s and Cutters out the wahoozy. My carrier can lug 20,000 tonnes at a time. that's not the problem. the problem is the time it takes to load and unload the Carrier. it's grindy when it doesn't need to be. this is the 31st century (or whenever), don't' we have drones for that?

 

[Markov Chaney]

If you're ever interested in looking at the 3d models of the ships, (if we are being true to scale and give tight spacing between cansiters. This is my own finding), some of the ships absolutely could fit additional modules which could in turn be used for cargo.

Anyway my point is we're BARELY in the zone where interiors are realistic, but doubling cargo space would destroy that. Most ships couldnt fit it.

The issue here is cargo canisters are all the same size but are sold as the same mass

This is ridiculous. Fruit and veg requires some packaging (which uses space) and is not even twice the density of water in the first place, so it isn't far off the density of water. Water is the density of water.

Steel is SEVEN TIMES HEAVIER.

So - if FDev did want to adjust the Colonisation economy, they could start selling metals in 2t or 4t or 7t canisters and change the price accordingly. Now your T-9 can carry seven times as much steel!

Except oh, oh dear, now it can't get off the pad with those wheezy old thrusters...

My suggestion would be not for the cargo size to double, but for the ships with the space to be given the module slots. Where going over a certain amount of modules drastically reduces handling and maybe even has an extra power penalty.

Another issue here (with the players not the game) is the T-9 intentionally feels like a cargo hauler ought to with these penalties and yet we have a forum full of complaints it's too hard to get a T-9 around the construction cranes onto pad 26.

 

[Robert Maynard]

The issue here is cargo canisters are all the same size but are sold as the same mass

Which, given that the structure of the cargo rack would need to be designed to handle the loads due to ship accelerations, would seem to be not so much an issue as a necessity, e.g. the maximum permissible gross mass of a 20' TEU is 24,000kg while its internal volume is c.33.2m³ - so the structure that holds the container is designed to its permissible gross mass so as not to lose containers or worse at sea (too often, noting that some container ships do lose containers in very bad weather) while the average density of the container's contents cannot exceed 651kg/m³ (less than that of water), allowing for a tare weight of 2,400kg for the container itself. While a 20' TEU could be filled with gold it would likely rip itself apart if lifted or transported as the cargo mass of over 640,000kg would exceed the design limit by c.26x.

Not to mention the internal structure of the ship in way of the cargo racks - which would be designed for a maximum permissible mass and design acceleration limits.

 

[Markov Chaney]

I don't see how that changes a discussion about a seven-fold change in density? Unless you are suggesting the designed-in tolerance is 700%. But then there are probably fragile goods I didn't think of which would take the density well under water, and steel might not be the heaviest metal I could have thought of either.

 

[Robert Maynard]

I don't see how that changes a discussion about a seven-fold change in density? Unless you are suggesting the designed-in tolerance is 700%. But then there are probably fragile goods I didn't think of which would take the density well under water, and steel might not be the heaviest metal I could have thought of either.

The 1t limit means that the volume of each cargo in a container varies with density while the mass remains constant - with no suggestion that the ships / cargo racks are designed to exceed this (within their design code based safety margin).

 

[Markov Chaney]

Yes, understand that. We're agreeing on that point. My "realism nerd" question is - why aren't they designed for a higher density for certain goods?

Your point that a TEU has a packed density of less than water is interesting. The limiting factor on a T-8 is already the as-purchased thrusters... you have to uprate those if you fill the whole hull with cargo racks.

And to extend your analogy - FEUs existed on Earth in 2025. (Forty foot, twice the size of a twenty foot.) Why does that not exist in space in 3311? And so do "heavy tested" TEUs... and so do "high cubes" ...

I suppose really my question is - do we not think 13 centuries of development in structural engineering would allow densities of at least twice water, in the right ship with the right cargo racks? "Heavy tested" cargo racks, if we stick to 21st C maritime language.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Yes, understand that. We're agreeing on that point. My "realism nerd" question is - why aren't they designed for a higher density for certain goods?

Probably because of the consequences for the rest of the ship, in terms of mass, mass distribution, "balance", etc. - plus the most common limit: cost.

Your point that a TEU has a packed density of less than water is interesting. The limiting factor on a T-8 is already the as-purchased thrusters... you have to uprate those if you fill the whole hull with cargo racks.

And to extend your analogy - FEUs existed on Earth in 2025. (Forty foot, twice the size of a twenty foot.) Why does that not exist in space in 3311? And so do "heavy tested" TEUs... and so do "high cubes" ...

The FEU's permissible mass is not that much more than the TEU's, i.e. 30,380kg vs 24,000kg - just over a 20% increase in overall mass (22% payload mass) in a bit over double the usable volume (67.6m³ vs 33.2m³) - so it would seem to be designed to accommodate cargo with (even) less average density than the TEU.

I suppose really my question is - do we not think 13 centuries of development in structural engineering would allow densities of at least twice water, in the right ship with the right cargo racks? "Heavy tested" cargo racks, if we stick to 21st C maritime language.

While they could then the question is then "how many different types of cargo container make sense when ship owners don't want to have to reconfigure their ship every time they embark different cargoes, and how few ships would be able to carry any increased mass alternatives?" (noting that while accommodating non-standard canisters might offer a commercial advantage if a ship owner was one of few to be able to do it it would come at an increased cost in terms of cargo rack and hull structure). I suspect that a plausible reason for the "one cargo canister fits all" approach is interoperability, i.e. all cargo racks are guaranteed to accommodate the galactic standard cargo canister.

 

[aRJay]

Yes, understand that. We're agreeing on that point. My "realism nerd" question is - why aren't they designed for a higher density for certain goods?

Your point that a TEU has a packed density of less than water is interesting. The limiting factor on a T-8 is already the as-purchased thrusters... you have to uprate those if you fill the whole hull with cargo racks.

And to extend your analogy - FEUs existed on Earth in 2025. (Forty foot, twice the size of a twenty foot.) Why does that not exist in space in 3311? And so do "heavy tested" TEUs... and so do "high cubes" ...

I suppose really my question is - do we not think 13 centuries of development in structural engineering would allow densities of at least twice water, in the right ship with the right cargo racks? "Heavy tested" cargo racks, if we stick to 21st C maritime language.

They are standardised containers that were set up so that they could be managed by any ship that can fit a cargo rack.
Specialist containers that can only be handled by the right cargo racks that could only be fitted in certain ships could swiftly become a nightmare.

 

[Markov Chaney]

I'm not criticising the existing system, I am suggesting we could have a fun new part of the system. It would indeed get complicated quickly which is why it would be "specialist cargo" for specialist ships and specialist Cmdrs who commit to that bit. And it only needs to be 2t in the space of 1t to help with the original thing about Trailblazer hauling.

Of course I might be laughing myself silly when the new ship drops and it turns out it has an enhanced hull and cargo racks ;-)