Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: sKarpunch on February 03, 2012, 11:50:57 PM
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just out of general intrest how big are the different classes of ships? so how long is your average frigate, cruiser, destroyer, capital-ship. Preferably in metres, i don't understand feet or yards :P
cheers ;)
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If you don't understand yards, you could just google it. Here's how:
"x yards in metres" or "x feet in metres"
That's all there is to it, quite simple really :)
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have you good sir any estimations as to how long frigates, cruisers, destroyers, capital-ships are in starfarer?
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If you want to get a feel of the size of the ships then watch the vid in the homepage or search youtube. There's also a blog post that has a pic of all the ships for quick visual comparison too.
If you are asking for the dimensions of a sci-fi ship in actual meters then I recommend consulting your own imagination. :-\
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i may make a scale of all the ships, from said imagination *cue cranking noises and black smoke from ears*
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This is where the imagination takes control ;D
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i may make a scale of all the ships, from said imagination *cue cranking noises and black smoke from ears*
I like to know rough scale too, my imagination can be crazy inacurate.... for all i know these ships are piloted by ants and its very cramped quarters!
So dont make fun of him for asking its a good question...
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Judging from this picture: http://fractalsoftworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ship_sheet.jpg when I compare the fighters cockpits with modern day fighters; I'm making the assumption that one pixel roughly translates to one meter (~3.3 feet). That would, for example, make the Onslaught 350 meters long and the Hammerhead about 160.
However, I don't think we should think too much about this. It the devs where to make every ship as big as the number of crewmen it contains, the size difference between a one man fighter and a Capital ship with hundreds of men would be ridiculously big. I think Starfarer has taken the RTS approach where big units (like buildings and tanks, or in this case cruisers etc.) are scaled down in comparison the smaller ones to enhance the gaming experience.
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the ships im trying to replicate from the warhammer universe (for a mod) at their biggest can be kilometres long i wanted to know how big the ships in starfarer compared to the ships in warhammer so i could scale them down,
make sense?
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I've decided to just assume the fighters are pretty much to scale in the game, and that the in-fiction explanation is that they simply can't be made smaller and still carry all the systems, weapons, armor, engines, and reactors to power it all that they still need to be useful. I.E. they could be made smaller, but then they couldn't carry weapons big enough to scratch anything, or have enough armor to not just disappear if they get to near any debris/weapons fire/space dust, so fighters being the size of a house ends up being the most efficient way to make 'em.
I know, it's silly, but it's also novel, and I'm going to keep believing it until we get any official word otherwise.
As far as kilometers long goes, I doubt the current capital ships of Starfarer would come close. Maybe a few hundred meters for the big ones? I'd be surprised if any of them broke 500 meters.
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The fighters in the game aren't to-scale. That's been confirmed by Alex, I think - one of the devs, at any rate. I would imagine the scaling isn't spot-on for the other ships either but I can't recall any official word on that one.
The largest ships in the world right now are around 400 metres - I'd expect spacegoing ships to be considerably larger both due to construction concerns (there's considerably less trouble with making them big in space both logistically and there's no "it won't fit in the harbour" constraints) and because I expect most planets to have a single government, more resources can be dedicated to any single one.
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The scale of the ships is determined by how big they're supposed to feel visually, working within the constraints of what we can display on the screen. In other words, they have to work within the game as a piece of (fun!) software foremost. The fiction gets made up after.
This may not be a satisfactory answer in terms of game fiction but it's probably the way to make the best game possible. We spoke of and definitely wanted to avoid the problem seen in Supreme Commander where due to the size of the battle all these beautifully detailed units were modelled and animated but most of the game is optimally played in 'radar mode' which reduces them to simple icons. This is why weapon ranges in SF are best for the game's visuals when kept rather short and ship speeds kept relatively slow -- and (part of) why the role of the warroom has been reduced and the one-colour icons there replaced by resizes of the ship sprites.
If they were being true to a fiction, the ship sprite representations would be on a bit of a logarithmic scale, I imagine, hence why fighters are so big. ('Course the real reason fighters are so big is so you can see them.) I'll admit though that the inspiration for the basic range of ships was an idealized version of WW1/WW2 naval combat with its interplay between battleships & screens, carriers & torpedo bombers, and so on (... including submarines, but we're still getting there ... ).
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the ships im trying to replicate from the warhammer universe (for a mod) at their biggest can be kilometres long i wanted to know how big the ships in starfarer compared to the ships in warhammer so i could scale them down,
make sense?
Ooh! You're doing a 40k mod? I was hoping someone would try that! The issue is your average sci-fi ship is magnitudes smaller than most 40k ships. It might be best to throw scale out the window simply because of the massive spectrum 40k ships can have when it comes to size.
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Future space submarines confirmed.
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Also, how big the ships are depends heavily on how big a zoom you're using ;D On most of my playthroughs they are all miniature models with cute pew pew lasers and tiiiiiiny wiiiinie cannons and projectiles <3 But when I first saw Onslaught or some other big ships, I would definitely imagine monsters about 1 km long.
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would a pixle to meter conversion work?
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At this point I would think not, since Iva stated that the ship sizes in the game aren't actually representative of the ships but are as big as they are solely for gameplay purposes.
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Alex himself said the fighters arn't to scale and are actually far larger than they should be, for gameplay purposes. so using the fighters as a means of finding a base for scale is a bad move.
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I can't tell you how long the ships are, but this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2011/08/12/ship-lore-variants/) may be of interest.
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I can't tell you how long the ships are, but this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2011/08/12/ship-lore-variants/) may be of interest.
I just want to state that those numbers are there purely for flavor purposes and are not to be considered canon in any way, shape, or form :)
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Judging from this picture: http://fractalsoftworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ship_sheet.jpg when I compare the fighters cockpits with modern day fighters; I'm making the assumption that one pixel roughly translates to one meter (~3.3 feet). That would, for example, make the Onslaught 350 meters long and the Hammerhead about 160.
However, I don't think we should think too much about this. It the devs where to make every ship as big as the number of crewmen it contains, the size difference between a one man fighter and a Capital ship with hundreds of men would be ridiculously big. I think Starfarer has taken the RTS approach where big units (like buildings and tanks, or in this case cruisers etc.) are scaled down in comparison the smaller ones to enhance the gaming experience.
I can't check at the moment but I think that in game, when fighters are landing on carriers, they diminish in size as if they were descending toward the carrier (from the top down perspective).
Unless I'm imagining this, that means that the pixel length comparison would not work or should at least be corrected by the smallest size of the fighters just before it disappears. That would boost the size of the capital ships in the kilometer ballpark and raise the question of why they don't carry more fighter wings. :-p
ps: This is not a trivial question. Spaceship size comparison is one of the funniest aspect of discussing space operas. ^^
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I can't tell you how long the ships are, but this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2011/08/12/ship-lore-variants/) may be of interest.
I just want to state that those numbers are there purely for flavor purposes and are not to be considered canon in any way, shape, or form :)
This is a prudent and wise stance.
But that won't stop me from rambling a little. :)
At 200 million tons, an Onslaught battleship, if constructed with steel in the manner of a current naval ship would be around two kilometers in lenghts.
Of course this is wildly inaccurate because we don't know what materials are supposed ot be used to build it and it is insanely armored which would make it far denser than a steel structure.
So its length based on this mass would be anywhere between a few hundred meters and a kilometer.
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I can't tell you how long the ships are, but this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2011/08/12/ship-lore-variants/) may be of interest.
I just want to state that those numbers are there purely for flavor purposes and are not to be considered canon in any way, shape, or form :)
This is a prudent and wise stance.
But that won't stop me from rambling a little. :)
At 200 million tons, an Onslaught battleship, if constructed with steel in the manner of a current naval ship would be around two kilometers in lenghts.
Of course this is wildly inaccurate because we don't know what materials are supposed ot be used to build it and it is insanely armored which would make it far denser than a steel structure.
So its length based on this mass would be anywhere between a few hundred meters and a kilometer.
But you are right we dont know the materials so based on its mass... could be anything and everything as they may have some ultra low density insane strength armor alloy, or ultra dense insane strength armor alloy... meaning who the hell knows.