[WIP] Modular Ships

Talk among developers, and propose and discuss general development planning/tackling/etc... feature in this forum.
travists
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by travists »

riftroamer wrote:
travists wrote:I too would prefer that the ships internal volume be uncategorized, and cargo space is a function of cargo bays loaded.
Intresting thought, but hardly "realistic". Modern day ships or airplane are seldom designed to load cargo bays, powerplant modules, propulsion systems or living space at will, at extremes changing at every port.
Take the venerable 747. It has cargo, passenger, and presidential configurations and likely others as well. It is all the same airframe. What my thinking is is you purchase either a preloaded ship, or an empty space frame and configure it to your needs. Many aircraft can also be requested with specific engines. Is it any more unrealistic to make such alterations as to upgrade your reactor, or shield generator, or add passenger quarters? How many of the current upgrades are "realistic" without the ships being "designed to load cargo bays, powerplant modules, propulsion systems or living space at will"? Perhaps upgrades should be dropped all together? After all, you can only buy stock craft right?
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by greenfreedom10 »

Ideally there would be a full range, from
  • stock-only, no upgrades possible,
  • low priced (designed for value),
  • and somewhat more space efficient.
to
  • fully modular and upgradeable,
  • high priced (designed to be fully modular),
  • and somewhat less volume efficient.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by travists »

I would think that cargo designs would be more apt to be modular as their insides are empty, and thus cargo bay, passenger compartment, or science load-out compliant. While mass produced fighters have few upgrade options.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by greenfreedom10 »

I suppose the range I mentioned might be applied differently to different ship classes. Even low-end fighters would have upgradeable weapons/shields equipment (but probably no place for passenger compartments), and even low-end cargo ships could be fitted to carry anything remotely cargo related, like passengers (but possibly little support for weapons upgrades).
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by travists »

You then have the General Purpose frames. Designed to hold anything from extra missiles to racket ball courts.

Size for size, GP craft are quite cheep. But then they only have hookups, few upgrades or useable space. Though I think upgrading your ship should take time. In single player, this just adds additional time to your clock so the pace stays up. Mounting a gun would not take much time, but start messing around on the inside... And tell me with a straight face that the "tractor capability upgrade" is plug and play when the need for it is enlarging and reenforcing a gun mount. But how is 100 m^3 weighing 1000 kg loaded instantly in your cargo bay?
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by TBeholder »

riftroamer wrote: Intresting thought, but hardly "realistic". Modern day ships or airplane are seldom designed to load cargo bays, powerplant modules, propulsion systems or living space at will, at extremes changing at every port.
Two reasons: in the current... circumstances fast adaptation is rarely required; ships and planes has hard external constrains (aero/hydrodynamics). When streamlining doesn't matter, every big enough system becomes modular - from trains to space stations. Even trucks evolved into tug+trailer pair.
Except very, very optimized and/or plain single-mission items like a missile, comsat, etc. Just like in soft: almost everything got plugins and modules, but "no microkernels, please".
Though sometimes even that's not enough of a reason.
riftroamer wrote: Ships are usually build to specification set by the future owner. Cargo freighters don't need raceboat hulls, and raceboats won't usually be converted to a mobile infantry transport every now and then. There's always room for exceptions but you get the point.
That's why the natural choice for Large Landing Ship project is a cargo freighter! :wink:
While a raceboat may become at least a scout or hit'n'run missile boat. In space, maybe a drone: if it doesn't have any other reserve, the cabin with lifesupport still can be swapped for payload.
Specialized vessels may be optimized for carrying a lot of equipment that isn't supposed to be replaced with something else. Granted, battleships and passenger liners should be built for this task, but beyond that it's stretchable.
Once gravity is out of the way, the difference between a carrier, missile barge and container transport isn't deep. Assisted launch systems instead of dock-cranes, different payload bays, somewhat better defences (relying more on escort or drones than own PD) and electronics, that's all.
In VS, it's the concept of Catfish (transport/carrier) and Scarab (shuttle/missile boat).
riftroamer wrote: Then on the other hand special modules (upgrades) could allow for lab-, passenger- or other modules (think containers here), which convert cargo space for other optional uses (at the cost of each module being lager than those built into the hull). In emergency situations these could be jettisoned too :-)
Cargo space implies certain means of access, fastening, environment control (heat, cold, vibration...), etc. This needs equipment, it has costs, but for any other purpose is either too much or not enough. Unless the vessel was meant as specialized, why bother to fill all the bilges? Conversely, lower base price plus easy customization for any mission within the hull's own capacity expand the potential market a little. "Space open wide" is too big for oligopolies, a shipyard's got to care.
riftroamer wrote:@hicks: if classification has no game influence we should make up a list of classes like shuttle, fighter, corvette, frigate/destroyer, cruiser, carrier, battleship, trampfreighter, freighter/ fleet supply, megafreighter/ tanker, liner, superliner, etc. with a range stating minimum and maximum metric tonnage (=volume in cubic meters) for each. Then divide this range in three or four roughly equal chunks for light, medium and heavy, perhaps super-heavy and youre done.
Sort of, but the fractions may see this differently. Much like in RealLife™. Why not?
greenfreedom10 wrote:Ideally there would be a full range
Well, in the end, of course.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by Hicks »

One of the main features of the hull is the hardpoints to mount weapon systems. A flimsy hull can not support a large heavy weapon or missile launcher, so it makes it rather hard to turn a tanker into a battleship. The hull would also place restrictions on max acceleration. If the engines get done as subsystems, there will be a limit on how many can be installed on a ship/the size of it.

The more detail we put into ships and how they operate, the more restrictions we can put on certain systems. If you add heat production, you could restrict the amount of systems that can be installed in a ship without turning it into a massive furnace. Certain systems might need crew, so as well as space for the system, you need crew quarters, galley etc.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by riftroamer »

What's really cool aboud the modular approach is, that ships could be configured to have fixed modules or a fixed range of available modules (upgrades) to represent the more specialised hulls, somme could be designed with more open "cargo" space to allow for more configurations (like in the 747 example above (though I would possibly tend to make that three different classes (747 Liner, 747 Freighter, 747 Yacht (as that's probably what the presidential aircraft would represent)). But then flexibility is king. I would love to have the full space availabe while designing a class and thus deciding how much space is available for whichever purpose.

So we all basically agree that we need/want to be able to decide on the distribution of the available space when introducing a new ship type (or going over the existing ones). In my book, this would be the specification and thus of the design process. This discussion brings up a lot of cool ideas.

Ship designs could allow for variation because of the design implementation: a 747 with different engines is easy to accomplish as the engines are pods beneath its wings. The Engine of an F16 however sort of needs to fit into the craft, so the opions are more limited. Though it's not impossible to think of booster rocket under it's wings ;-) A cruise liner or Battleship however could not easily be retrofittet into carrier also because of the design implementation.

So basically what could be done or not is part of the design (revision) process and would possibly give one class per design implementation.

Alternatively one could simply say that the available space is equipment space which is automatically configured as cargo space if unused. Clean and simple when thinking of varible wall sections/configurations. After all that's simply a definition.

External fittings would be cool (747 engines = drive pods, cargo pods, whatever).
Last edited by riftroamer on Sun Jan 15, 2012 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by riftroamer »

So, I went through the ship scales first and found a few notable numbers. Is there a reason why the scale for two ships differ, though I would say the hulls are identical? And if there is no entry for Unit_Scale at all, will it be counted as 1 or zero (I assume 1, since multiplying by a factor of zero would leave us with no visible ship in game ;-)?

Code: Select all

Ship              Unit_Scale
Archimedes        1
Archimedes.blank  96
Regret            1
Regret.old        2
Beholder          no_entry
Beholder.blank    no_entry
By the way the file "units_working.sxc" in the "units" directory seems obsolete (sxc being an older file format anyway) or at least out of date. It doesn't list some of the current ships and lists names not present (anymore): Lodur, Idun, Thrud, Vidar, Vark, Vitik, Huldra, Yrilan, Yavok and I probably missed some. I didn't check for info that states that these were renamed on the forums or wiki, though. The file is possibly a left-over from earlier attempts to get units.csv into some better shape ;-)
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by CLoneWolf »

Dunno if the ship renaming list is complete, but this is a start.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by riftroamer »

That looks quite complete - regarding those ship's names I couldn't make any sense of - thanks a lot!

@hicks: worked on the Archimedes. What a mesh. The modding spirits would turn in their graves, if I might mention. Hardly similar to what's recommended in the wiki ;-)
Three intersecting meshes after import with a complete looking needle shaped vessel being the core, enveloped by the main hull section and the drive "shield" rear section.

Had some time, so I reworked the mesh to get correct values. Scale by the way is 1, as the ship is described in the wiki as being 2500m long. Same as the model.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by riftroamer »

riftroamer wrote:Had some time, so I reworked the mesh to get correct values. Scale by the way is 1, as the ship is described in the wiki as being 2500m long. Same as the model.
Well, it seems the models I touched so far seem to be mere collections of partially enclosed mesh sections intersecting at will, with mesh centers scattered throughout 3D space. I am kind of relieved that reality and wiki recommendations differ. This way I really don't have to optimize all of my own 3D craft to be "game ready" for that purely imaginative future vs-mod I have in mind. And I am kind of horrified to encounter more such meshes.

I just finished the Agasicles (aka Vark; which isn't in Hicks googledocs-file, I appended it at the bottom). Then I moved out to tackle the Agesipolis which is quite a behemoth and truly interesting regarding mesh distribution. Well after some dissecting and shuffling around, I could run the script on the individual sub meshes to get a value. It seems consistent.

I just wanted to share that me thinkin' of taking the easy way seems getting back at me now, hitting hard ;-) On the other hand it's cool to see all these cool looking models in detail.

So when I am talking negative about working with the models, that is in no way intended to offend, as most models do look really cool in game and the creators really did a remarkable job.

My current perspective is the calculation of the volumes and surface areas (and dimensions where applicable) in conjunction with a script that has some requirements, which the models don't meet.

That's bad luck for me, but nothing to worry about. Well I made my point so just to state it once more: the vs models are cool stuff the way they are inside the game. :-)


Edit: @Hicks: By the way, surface area currently includes the insides of tubular sections like hangar decks or spinal mounts (dont even know if VS has these ;-), Spinal Mount is the Traveller RPG term for any fixed - ship sized - mega weapon mounted to point toward the bow, used to cripple cap ships or stations or planets...). Same for wings or flaps which add a lot to surface area but not much to volume.

Furthermore I opted to ignore "minor" intersecting parts (the wings of the Anaxidamus for example), though these might total several thousand cubic meters for some the cap ships. The error should be in the range of 0.5 % to 5%. Is that acceptable?
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by Hicks »

5% isn't much, this is mainly to get some realistic values for ship cargo holds and equipment holds, as some ships have holds bigger then the model.

Is there any sort of scaling of the solar systems? i think i read something like that before. I just have trouble seeing the Archimedes as 2.5km long. I think that lack of detail makes it seem smaller, because the textures and mesh look the same no matter how far away you are. hoving above the ship and looking down it, just doesn't look the size it should be, i would guess its size to be about 300m
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by riftroamer »

I thought I read something about a 1:10 scaling of the systems somewhere in the forums. But you're right. It ist difficult to estimate the size of something in space if there is no reference object. So as long as you cannot see something familiar out of your everyday life right next to the object in question it will look smaller (as the surrounding space is so big).

An airlock door, a window, a man in a spacesuit, a haze effect will aid the human eye whether it's realistic or not. A freighter with external 20ft or 40/45ft containers for example will be easy to get right. I posted an example of a freighter I modeled somewhere in this thread, where airlock doors, containers an a person are visible as such reference objects.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by log0 »

The 1:10 scaling is only applied to the orbits of the planets afaik, think of a smaller gravitational constant.

Btw there is another way to guess the size without having references: velocity * time. For the Archimedes it should take about 8 seconds to get from front to the rear at nav speed 300m/s.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by TBeholder »

riftroamer wrote:I thought I read something about a 1:10 scaling of the systems somewhere in the forums. But you're right. It ist difficult to estimate the size of something in space if there is no reference object. [...] An airlock door, a window, a man in a spacesuit, a haze effect will aid the human eye whether it's realistic or not.
Yep. Weaponmodels are used in shooters for a reason, and not only indication. In VS, chasecam view (Cockpit::Behind) sort of helps.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by riftroamer »

Slowly progressing with the measures and volumes.

Bell (com-vessel): unit_scale in-game is 77, the Length given in the wiki however gives unit_scale of 76. Thats not much, but I calculated both values just in case.

Beholder gives no scale on the files, so I went for unit_scale=1 which gives a vessel of about 23m length. Would that be the correct size?

Edit: Derivative: I assumed the round tubes inside the wing structure to be some sort of mega-torpedo and calculated the value for the rest of the mesh. Due to its open structure faces that intersect each other add to the actual surface area and to the actual volume. The error will be slightly more than 5% I would say.

The 15 identical Tubes add a total 14179.961m² to surface area and 18040.970m³ to the volume. but since they are carried inside the hull structure measurements stay the same. Each tube is 52.5m long with 6m diameter, 1151.82m³ of volume and 945.292m² surface area. That would also be the perfect size for a "surface interface sub-craft", say a cargo cutter or fuel skimmer or troop carrier kind of landing craft, wouldn't it?

Edit: Dirge with wings (good for measures and surface area) the volume is slightly above 134m³, without wings it's just short of 122m³ (including the attachment "bulbes" on the wings). Thats 10% off. Scale is listed as 0.1 wich does not feel right (tha craft would only be about 75cm high), i assumed 1:1 ratio instead.

BEsides: Adding up the volumes (of the tubes) you will notice rounding errors, which add up to just under 5% of the total volume. As hinted before that's an error I plan to ignore. ;-)
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by Hicks »

Is the model volume in the spreadsheet the model in game or the model in blender? Also added a density column, so fighters should have a high density, while transports will have a much lower density.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by Hicks »

Added another column for size, which is what size they are listed as when you go to buy them from a station. Could only put them in for the ones listed in the master parts lists.
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Re: [WIP] Modular Ships

Post by riftroamer »

Hicks wrote:Is the model volume in the spreadsheet the model in game or the model in blender?
It's the model volume with the in game scale applied, so that would be in game volume. If I omitted certain parts of the models, that would be mesh elements like canards, antennae and the like unless otherwise noted.

The script will calculate the total volume of any individual enclosed mesh whether its intersecting or not, so I had to use some "modelers license" to account for the intersecting areas on some models, but I think I noted the major hooks in this thread.

Well I have to go over the models at another time to look for values that won't fit as that would mean I overlooked a mesh portion that wasn't enclosed or similar. Progress is slower than expected as RL is also taking it's tribute. I will continue though un less somebody wants me to stop ;-)
Hicks wrote:Also added a density column, so fighters should have a high density, while transports will have a much lower density.
So the idea is to set a density per ship's size and role to go from volume to mass?
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