Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

Anybody have data/educated guesses/speculation/whatever about the capacity of FS2 capships? # of fighter and bomber squadrons, # of crew, # of decks even; anything juicy?

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Downton, Diego Garcia, BIOT
Posts: 421

well, if you give me the exact diensions of the ships, i can give you a pretty good educated gues as to the number of decks. as for the numbers of fighters, go through all of your breifings again, it does say in some of the animations how many fighter squadrons the ships carry, thought for the collossus its in the movie.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: good old Scotland
Posts: 120

Okay i know that the Hecate has 120 figther craft and houses 4 squadrens and has a crew of 10,000, we know that from the firts command breifing, the collossus has 60 fighter and bomber wings and a crew of 30,000 i think its thats from one of the movies. A deimos has a crew and i know this for a fact of over a 1000, that is mentioned in the mission where you have to tag shivan fighters in the neb. Now the rest i don't think there is any mention of there crews etc, so i would say it was safe to make up things like that i know i have for my campaign.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

Ok, I was going to ask if anyone felt that the crew numbers given for all those ships were a bit on the high side, but I just looked at the Myrmydion in FRED2. In the FS2 engine, I get the feeling that the Myrm. is around 6-8 meters long - no more. But in FRED2, if you zoom in all the way so that each square is one meter, the Myrm. comes out to be 16-17 meters long! I know that that is comparable in size to a typical F-15, but still...! The Erinyes is a full 20 meters! They sure don't feel that big to me.

Anyway, the Deimos is 700+ meters. I guess I can picture 1000 crew inside a flying block 700m long. But what still doesn't feel right is the scale in the game itself.

Is the speed rating in meters-per-second? I think it is. Therefore, the slow, 50 meters-per-second Ares is going 50x60x60=180,000 meters-per-hour, or 180 kph. 111 miles per hour! Does anyone feel like they're going at those speeds in the Ares while skimming along a capship? And even so, WTH?! Charger can probably give us exact data, but don't the atmosphere-bound fighters of today get to speeds of a couple of thousand miles per hour? In space, where distances are all that much greater, fighters should be able to do at least 5,000 mph... at least!! But nooooo, the Pegasus does 160 meters-per-sec with engines maxed out and afterburners on full... that translates into 576 kph/357 mph!!! Pathetic!

And if anyone thinks that the speed rating in FS2 is not in meters-per-second, think about it this way: The Erinyes is 20 meters long. At FS2 speed of 1, how long does it take for that ship to traverse it's length? Not 2 seconds (which would have an FS2 speed of 1 equalling 10 meters per second...), that's for sure!

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Devonport, Tasmania, Australia
Posts: 369

Just How big is your computer monitor?

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Downton, Diego Garcia, BIOT
Posts: 421

while i do agree with you about the speeds, i want to point out that dog fights at high relativistic speeds are a pain in the ass. how woul you like to go head to head with a combined speed of about .4 to .6 light speed?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
Posts: 1216

quote:

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Originally posted by sandwich:
Ok, I was going to ask if anyone felt that the crew numbers given for all those ships were a bit on the high side - no more. The Myrm. comes out to be 16-17 meters long! I know that that is comparable in size to a typical F-15, but still...! The Erinyes is a full 20 meters! They sure don't feel that big to me.

Anyway, the Deimos is 700+ meters. I guess I can picture 1000 crew inside a flying block 700m long. But what still doesn't feel right is the scale in the game itself.

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I completely agree with you here. The ships do feel big, but they sure don't feel that big to me. I can imagine the crew amounts being accurate - 10,000 people in a [supposedly] 2.1km destroyer seems very resonable when you consider that a Nimitz has something like 8,000 crew and is somewhat longer than a Fenris, or half the size of a Deimos...so yeah, I tend to imagine the ships, when I see them in-game, as having fewer crew than that.

However, the ships never feel that big. Which is annoying. Someone ought to try a 'to-scale' mod where the ships look and feel as big as they should be.

And no, none of the FS ships appear to be capable of breaking the sound barrier, let alone travel faster than light, except when entering subspace. It is rather pathetic but up the speeds a lot with table hacking and you'll see what happens...it's been done from the perspective of making the game fun, not realistic.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

quote:

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Originally posted by Turnsky:
Just How big is your computer monitor?

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It's just a standard 17 incher...

Maybe the size of the average human shrinks drastically in the next few hundred years, so that all the freespace measurements are relative to the human body size. Because current-day humans are larger than their Freespace counterparts (not those counterparts, Snipes!!!), the scale of the game is smaller to us.

...my nonsense theory of the day...

quote:

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Originally posted by Kellan:
And no, none of the FS ships appear to be capable of breaking the sound barrier, let alone travel faster than light, except when entering subspace.

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Come to think of it, do any of the space sims have anything even close to realistic space speeds? I mean, for pete's sake! The Space Shuttle does Mach 22 during re-entry!!

[This message has been edited by sandwich (edited 05-15-2001).]

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: UK
Posts: 179

about decks, we know the Colossus has well over 1000 (!) since when the Repulse tries to ram it, the captain shouts something along the lines of...

quote:

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Evacuate forward decks, something-hundred to something-else-hundred

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: UK
Posts: 179

ok, you try aiming a gun at those speeds...

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[url="http://www.fs2temp-mech.co.uk"]Temporal Mechanics[/url]

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

quote:

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Originally posted by G-UK:
ok, you try aiming a gun at those speeds...

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lol... I know, I know...



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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Finland
Posts: 3194

Would it be better if it is km/s instead of m/s? Or even better, mp/s?

Looka looka...

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Tania Austrailis
Posts: 3322

Well, if you want to get technical, the ships would go on forever and never stop when you release the accellerator, cause of the very low friction, and lack of gravity, right?

FS is good, but it's not realistic.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

All true...

I guess the reason for making the velocity so slow is what G-UK mentioned - even in future "reality", space combat would probably never get to the speeds we've talked about, unless all the combat was done with missiles and rockets.

So I can understand the reasoning behind the slow speeds, but I don't understand why V had to make it with such a slow appearent velocity... Oh well...

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Tania Austrailis
Posts: 3322

It really isn't so slow... If you think about it, an Orion has a cruising speed of about 20m/s right? Find me something that is not a bullet that goes 20 meters per second on Earth, there are things, but look at how hella huge an Orion is, it really is a big ship, but small compared to other GTVA vessels.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

quote:

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Originally posted by Snipes:
It really isn't so slow... If you think about it, an Orion has a cruising speed of about 20m/s right? Find me something that is not a bullet that goes 20 meters per second on Earth, there are things, but look at how hella huge an Orion is, it really is a big ship, but small compared to other GTVA vessels.

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Uhhh... Snipes? 20 meters per sec is 72kph, which is around 45mph... I can spit at higher velocities...!

Not a bullet... hmmm... RC cars, birds, horses, racing dogs, numerous tanks, some ocean-going vessels (esp. hydrofoils and hovercraft... )... need I go on?



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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Tania Austrailis
Posts: 3322

Well, sorry, they don't teach metric stuff too much in the states unless your taking chemistry, and that was a few years ago for me

But still... a hella big ship oing 42mph isn't bad

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

That's understandable. Even nowadays when one of my parents says that the weather is going to be such-and-such degrees Fahrenheit, I have them translate that into Celsius. And I grew up in the USA...

For future reference, unless you're doing mathematical calculations or measuring long distances, a meter is the same as a yard. The exact ratio is 1:1.09361 meter:yard.

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Downton, Diego Garcia, BIOT
Posts: 421

ok, lets see, where to start,

first off, its a military ship, military ships do not place the crews comfort above the equipement mounted in the ship. if you want proof of that, follow this link
[url="http://www.navy.mil/homepages/cv64/"]http://www.navy.mil/homepages/cv64/[/url]

this ship is 1049 feet long at the flight deck and about 980 feet long at the waterlone. she carries 75-85 aircraft and can reach speeds in excess of 30 knots (thats a little over 40 MPH for you land lubbers ). she was commisisoned in october 1961 and has a maximum crew compliment of 5500, though with advances in technology this has gone down somewhat. she is powered by several 1600 psi boilers wich power four turbines to four 21 foot five blade propellers.

newer ships, like this one;
[url="http://www.navy.mil/homepages/cvn75/"]http://www.navy.mil/homepages/cvn75/[/url]

she is about 1095, has a crew over 6000 and can also attain 30+ knots. but she can run for about over 14 years before her reacters need refueling.
and thats on ships only 1000 feet long, the orion quite a bit longer. the junior enlisted personel prbably get small relatively spacious 6-10 man berthing compartments up to maybe 2 man rooms for the cheifs with the officers starting at 3 or 2 man rooms and going on up to the captains at sea and inport cabins and the admirals stateroom. selected personel like the XO and department heads would get better rooms. also the command master cheif/senior cheif (senior enlisted person) would also get special accomodations.

as for the thing with the decks in the Collossus, there is an extremally larger number of them, though i think they might start the middle of the ship, perhaps at the hanger bay amidships. i personally think that the ships numbering system is the same one used by the US navy now, though it could generate some rather obsene in the compartment numbers generated, i mean really, would YOU like to try and find compartment 0245-34253-95-L. we use a system similar to coordinates to number compartments. every deck above the main deck gets 0 in front of it that everyone pronounces as "oh". after the deck number comes the frame number. and navy warships there is a fran about ever 5-10 feet, the constellation has about 245 frames, maybe a little less. then, each compartment out from the centerline gets a higher number, with evens on one side and odds on the other, then a letter for what the compartment is for. i think the best way to fix that would be to divide the shipe into 26 sectors with alpha in the bow and zulu in the stern. the frame number would be restarted at the begining of each sector with the real frame numbers only showing up on schematics and builders plans.

as for the speed, well, i have stood on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier hauling ass, and its is amazing to me that they can even move, let alone be the fastest combat warship in the world, with only a couple of exceptions. especially when i remember walking up to my ship while its tied up at teh peir, and then during quiet times at night while we are in port and i can't even feel the ship moving, it feels like we are on land. the only time she moves in port is when a nearby peice of heavy equipement is operated, or when we were loading fuel and the balance shifts slightly. for those of you who know boats, i have felt my carrier begin to try and lift to come up on the plane.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Posts: 928

Hah! I knew it! The main thing that is causing the ships in FS2 to seem small is the poor textures. They simply aren't detailed enough to give that feeling of scale. To prove my point, a picture from [url="http://www.wevil.co.uk/menu.htm"]Wevil.co.uk[/url]:



That is a reskinned Hades. Look at the detail level of the textures; doesn't it look much larger than in-game?

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Psssst! My homepage is up!

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