ship size comparison

[trebmal_ca]

I got to thinking about the HW ships, and how they would match up in other sci-fi worlds. So I got the .peo files and compared them to other stuff. Now when the peo files are measured they come out in units, and if you take the mothership and measure it its 7000 units and in the game the mothership is 7000 metres tall, and everything else in the game is in metres so I based my models on that.
Ok heres a intercepter compared to a locomotive.(intercepter being 56 metres in length, thats around 183' for folks still using imperial)
http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-scale-1.txt

So next I compared this to DS9 which is 1700 metres in diameter, to ship classes from HW.
http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-scale.txt

I was also going to compare a Imp star destroyer, but its 1600 metres so its pretty much the same size as DS9.
Heres some Imperial figures for ship sizes (Iv rounded them of)
Intercepter-183'
Hvy corvette-321'
assult frigate-906'
destroyer-2526'
Hvy cruiser-4564'

[ÜberJumper]

OMG, they're not human sized, they're zentradi sized!

[trebmal_ca]

well I was thinking the samething uber, but these are supposed to be spacecraft, the intecepter seems to be around the same size as a ST runabout, so the size does seem to make sense, when you take into account all the internal equipment needed, and armor.

[Mr-e-Man]

There's room for at least three humans in that interceptor cockpit. Pilot, gunner and engineer?

[trebmal_ca]

hard to say, think of a b-52 bomber, there is a pilot and co-pilot, weapons officer, communicatons officer, engineer. I think people see the word intercepter and think jet fighter. I just realized I forgot to measure the scout.

[Artoo]

Treb!!! How about comparing HW battleships like the HVC to Star Trek battleships (I know they're usually not specificly made for battle, at least not in the Federation) like the Galaxy, Sovereign, Defiant classes and the Borg Cube... Some of them might turn out tiny next to HW ships.

[SvK]

The Sovereign is 650 meters, or thereabouts, but is very flat. It's got about as muxh volume as the 'head' of a Kushan Heavy Cruiser.

[Artoo]

How big is a Sovereign's crew?? And knowing that, how many would it take to man a HVC asuming it's not all automatics and stuff??

[reki]

wow thats cool trembal - thanks!

[yasotay]

Well I suppose that if your gonna zip around in space for extended periods then a "small" ship might be, big. Although I must admit that my first thought was like der Uber's.

Thanks trembal, that IS cool.

[SvK]

THis is cool. I'll make some comparison shots myself.

[trebmal_ca]

I do have the scale blue prints for most of the ST ships, I will download some models and compare. from the prints I do have, the closest thing to a HVY CR is a Romulan warbird. I will re-post once I get my results.

[Ash]

do you have scale blueprints for something like an X-15, F-15 or an Su-27 so we could see a real life comparison? iirc the F-15 is something like 19 meters long, a couple more for the Su-27. No clue for the X15

[trebmal_ca]

not a problem Asheshi, I just need to find the model or at least a 2D print with the correct dimensions.

Correction I do have the dimensions for the SU-27 and the X-15

SU-27 wingspan 14.7 m
length 21.9 m

XV-15/V-22 wingspan 15.52 m
length 17.47 m

I have a very large book call Encyclopedia of military aircraft

[Artoo]

cool Treb... enlight us plz;) this thread is very interesting so far...

[trebmal_ca]

Ok for the Star Trek fans

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-ships-comp.txt

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-ships-comp-side.txt

I will track down some fighter models

[Seeker]

Looking good.

[SvK]

Here are some smaller craft:
Kushan Heavy Interceptor and Heavy Corvette
Federation Tac Fighter and Runabout
Jem'Hadar Bug
Rebel X-Wing and Medium Transport
Imperial TIE fighter
[edit] Oh yeah, the Falcon is there too. :)
[more edit]Thanks to SOA for the Trek models, and SW:NR for the Star Wars models.
http://www.tgu.org.uk/users/svk/comp.jpeg

[trebmal_ca]

very cool!!! SvK we need to compare HW ships with real world things to compare, Im looking for jet fighters, maybe a aircraft carrier, cars/trucks and I will find a 2 story house to use for comparision

I sent you a PM, I think we should colaborate on this

[Tombo1]

how many times has it been debated 'who would win hvc or the enterprise?' rofl. this just reminds me of all those threads

[Paladrache]

This is startling to tell the truth. HW stuff is so much bigger than I had ever really imagined. Do you suppose the model sizes were exaggerated when designed so as to ease scaling/viewing problems? These scales sure as hell don't match all of the art in the HW cut scenes. One of the forum's avatars is a color pic of a Taiidan corvette parked on Hiigara with normal sized people standing all around it.

[trebmal_ca]

its hard to say Tombo, Fed ships are very manuverable compared to a HVY CR, but I think in fire power, the cruiser wins hands down. a few good ion shots to take down the sheilds, and some mass driver shots into the bridge and wrap core could take down a galaxy class ship very quick, just a matter of catching them.

[Artoo]

lol just look at the Defiant... It's considered a dedicated warship and one of the most powerful Federation ships and next to the HVC it looks as if a mosquito was trying to take down a condor...

hehe I just imagined Wolf 359 (got the sector number right??) with a mom ship instead of the Borg Cube:D

[Vaarok]

Just out of curiosity, how about trying the HW scale, but change HW meters into standard english feet?

Anyway, all this is fairly moot. The game is designed to scale so you can see your fighters and Cruisers at the same time. Imagine hunting a scout next to a to-scale 6k Mothership...

[Beast]

I somehow think that the fighters in hw are not to scale O-o

[Dan Van Crone]

Interesting stuff.

gg Trebmal. A worthy undertaking. :up:

[littlegreencube]

nice.

[Mr-e-Man]

They're to scale. Taiidanis and Hiigarans just like big, roomy cockpits.

Or maybe, *gasp* they're not the same size and shape as humans.

-edit-

And the only scale problems that crop up if we assume that the hiigarans are the same size as humans occur with fighters. The heavy corvette appears to be the right scale. It seems about the size of a correlian corvette relative to the YT-1300.

[Beast]

Roomy? as in space for a minibar and a hot tub?

[ÜberJumper]

The fighter scale looks off.

Here's a shot with the true scale mod added in (removes the Nlips scaling of HW ships).

http://members.shaw.ca/uberjumper/images/homeworld/shota080.jpg

Note the scale of the Destroyers to the HVC, and the Destroyers to the Frigates. I don't have a shot handy showing the scale of the corvs and fighters to the other ships, but will try to find one.

[edit] found one http://members.shaw.ca/uberjumper/images/homeworld/jal18-truescale.jpg

[SvK]

Originally posted by Vaarok
Just out of curiosity, how about trying the HW scale, but change HW meters into standard english feet?

Anyway, all this is fairly moot. The game is designed to scale so you can see your fighters and Cruisers at the same time. Imagine hunting a scout next to a to-scale 6k Mothership...

Well, HW units aren't feet, because they're labelled as meters in the game. N-LIPs is used to make the fighters bigger, so they didn't need to inflate the fighters' meshes.

-SvK, scale Nazi

[Mikk]

I think the HW units are about 3 meters.
Because a interceptor a bit under 19 meters is more realistic.
Or they are feet so the interceptor would be 17 meters.
When concidering this the scale seems to be more... not wrong.

[MrNonchalant]

There is this thing, called life support. There is this other thing, called a plasma storage container. There is yet another thing, called ammunition. Believe me, it's realisticly sized.

[Silver Scorpion]

dam thats big

[molo]

With that scale each shell the interceptor fires would be approximately the size of a TIE fighter.

I'd say that's a bit off, especially when in the cutscenes the beings appear humanoid.

[Mikk]

Fighters more than 25 meters in lenght are not realistic.
corvettes are ~50m so the interceptor has to be smaller.

[Ammon Ra]

errr.....the milenium falcon seems VERY small compared to that scout..X-wing is the size of a bomber's blasma bomb.....STARWARS vs HW would be unfaire....talking about microunits :D
but more realistic.....

i wonder how big would the nomad moon compare to the deathstar???

anyway: take a look at the size of the HC turrets and then take a look at the other ships.....now THAT is overkill :D

[Vaarok]

I wasn't suggesting the scale was actually feet, labelled as meters. I was suggesting that if they were one-third their present dimensions, they would seem much closer to a realistic-seeming scale.

[SvK]

Their Cruisers are about the same size. The Nomad Moon is 5km in diameter, while the Death Star is at least 100km wide, possibly much bigger.

On a completely unrelated note, the l33t Krew from CS is 5'8"

[trebmal_ca]

according to the geometry files I extracted, and measured in CAD software, the intercepter is 56 units/metres in length. If the true scale mod only effects the apperance settings and not the models, then these measurments should be correct.
Iv download some real world objects for comparisions.

[Zeenith]

the nomad moon be nothing more then a moon to the death star.

[trebmal_ca]

here, I will post the raw geometry and the dimensions.

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/mothership.txt

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/intercepter.txt

[SvK]

http://www.tgu.org.uk/users/svk/leet1.jpg
You could have a picnic on the bow of an Interceptor!

[Ash]

that had better not be richard simmons

[JargonFilter]

i think the manual in hw says that the mom ship is 26 km long. maybe it was the scaffold, but either way it has to be bigger than that. Man, in these shots, its very evident on how low the poly count really is in hw.

--pimpster

[Artoo]

Looking at SvK's pic.... those figthers are so big it's crazy. Ok so I agree that there's ammo, life support, fuel and stuff but why the hell is it all that big huh?? X-Wing's got only one difference - energy weapons, so it doesn't need ammo (exept warheads) However it still's got all it needs in a much, much smaller package and it still seems realistic. At least to me. It's not gonna change my unconditional addiction to HW, but seems odd anyway:)

[Starfisher]

X-wings are the most unrealistic looking deep - space fighter I have ever seen. Take into account several factors:

Life Support
-probably a small system, as only the bridge/cockpit area has to be pressurized

Armor
-probably not very thick, but there has to be some hull.

Engines
- These have to be powerful enough to accelerate the ship quickly, as well as manuever the thing.
- and a LOT of fuel.
- and if its a nuclear or plasma reactor, it has to be big.

Weapons
- Keep in mind now, that these have to be large enough projectiles to do damage to a carrier (~1.5km) which undoubtably has VERY think armor. The mechanism to fire them has to be large so as to shoot them fast enough to cause damage.
- and ammo.

Sensors
- not too big, but probably heavily shielded.

Now. SVK's pic with the CS terrorist on the nose is a perfect pcture for my point. 'Fighters' in homeworld are not analagous to modern day F-15s. They probably have a crew of two or three, who have a huge array of systems to watch. The cockpit probably looks like that of a modern day bomber.

An X-Wing is small. It has four lasers, which for some unknown reason can move up and down about 15 degrees. It apparently can last for a long period of time on its own, despite the fact that it has about 3meters room for life support and energy generation.

Perhaps the X-Wing is much more advanced than an HW fighter, which would make sense. In HW, the technology is that of a race just going into space. In Star Wars, it is that of a galaxy which has been in space for thousands of years. New technology tends to be big and bulky.

Conclusion: Big fighters = yay!

[trebmal_ca]

I think the ships would be different sizes, because of the techknowledgy thats being used for them. More advanced tech would have smaller systems. Look at the ion frigate, almost 50% of the ship, is the weapon system, or a carrier about 25% of the large cap ships, are the drive systems. Iv been working on the ship to real world comparisions, I have some office towers, the titanic, apollo rocket, and I downloaded a aircraft carrier, but the compressed file is a .rar file, what is that?

[Seeker]

It is a type of compression. More or less like ZIP. You can download a program that runs RAR files here http://www.tucows.com/system/preview/194310.html

[Artoo]

@ Starfisher:

Sth about X-Wing:

Life support - well from the books I read I learned that some sort of life support is integrated into the pilots suite or seat itself... that would make it really small and definately based on reusing air and stuff (cleaning it out of CO2) I guess this might be only for emergencies (ie ejection) and there's a bigger system in the craft itself for sure.

Fuel - not sure about that anyway it isn't unlimited or anything...

Armor - well it matters little cause the main defence are the shields.

Sensors - I don't know much, but they seem very efective.

However you made a huge point about the level in technology...
I agree that the X-Wing might be simply a lot more advanced ship.
It didn't come to my mind that the Kushan are relativly unexperienced in space in comparison to the Star Wars universum races.

I also agree with Treb... even when you take a look at the ICF and the later MBF. Significant improvement in size has definately been made.

Treb... here you should be able to find the program to extract it... http://www.rarlab.com/

hehe.... I've been writing this post to long. Seeker beat me to the link:P

[trebmal_ca]

thanx for the rar info, I just have to find the dimensions for the USS Nimitz, then I will post the results

[trebmal_ca]

Ok its done.

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-ships-real-comp.txt

[SvK]

http://members.fortunecity.com/zardalu/

bones_of_the_many found this site and alerted TGU. I'm not sure how accurate it is.

[Zeenith]

My goodness those ships are huge.!

Also that website has some very interesting calculations and size lenths

[trebmal_ca]

excellent site SvK, I bookmarked that so fast, the mouse is still smoking.

[JAL-18]

Originally posted by Starfisher

Now. SVK's pic with the CS terrorist on the nose is a perfect pcture for my point. 'Fighters' in homeworld are not analagous to modern day F-15s. They probably have a crew of two or three, who have a huge array of systems to watch. The cockpit probably looks like that of a modern day bomber.



Excuse me, but if we took the rough crew size estimates mentioned here for solid fact (which for the sake of arguement we will) than our entire perception of how HW ships work and how they are manned has to be completly changed. If we assume that a Blade has a crew of 3, than it can be safely assumed that a Hammer has a base crew of 6 (the 3 origanel ones, plus one for the extra systems, plus 2 for gunners.) What is the relevence of this you may wonder? Simple: the 150 crew Heavy Cruiser theory doesn't make sense. There is no way, that a supposedly inferior species, with very primitive knowledge of space warfare, can have a ship that is about the size of an Imperator-class Star Destoryer yet has a crew 33 times smaller than the "superior" ship. It is sheer idocy to think this. Massive automotion can't account for this. If an Avatar can do it, an Imperator surely can. It is impossible to keep the 150 man crew size. Either the SW-to-HW ratio must be corrected, or the crew size for the Avatar has to be corrected. As it stands now, everything that people hold as "true" about HW crew size is, to put it bluntly, impossible according to the laws governing SW/HW crew comparsions. I have not set these "laws." I am merely using them to prove a point: despite what might be said, percieved HW crew sizes are too small. Until Relic releases more info, the 150 man Avatar cannot stand. It is simply too undercrewed.

[SvK]

It works if the Kushan are huge. :)

[molo]

i agree with JAL.

[Tombo1]

mothership is like 2km... wtf

[trebmal_ca]

Ok Im going to get the SW models and check the scales, I have a book with SW ship sizes, and the website SvK gave will also help.
the Mill Falcon is about 30 m long, so its just shy the size of the intercepter. the only other solution to this is the HW races are 20' tall, and who says they cant be.

[Paladrache]

They aren't, says me. ;P
Besides, who's to say that the HW developer's weren't like, "Let's make the MS 7000 units/meters long, but exxagerate all the other ship models times 3 for ease of viewing purposes!"

[trebmal_ca]

well this is what I got, from the information on Star Wars ships, oh the jet is a F-15

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-ships-sw-comp.txt

I think SvK's models might be a little small.

these dimensions are for length

Falcon-26.7 m
Tie-6.5m
Xwing-12.5 m
Shuttle-20 m
F-15-19.43 m

[Artoo]

Treb... you already did a lot, but would it be possible to add some Babylon 5 ships in there?? Just to make the picture that more complete (If it's a problem then nevermind:) ) Heh, just came to my mind that one of those Independence Day city killers would be interesting too.

Edit...
So far this thread has shattered my perception of HW ships... I'm relaying it to every HW freak I know:)

Edit again...
How big would an Acolyte be?? I think there's no doubt that it's got only one person on board (judging by the art shown in Cata ending credits)

[Starfisher]

Finally. All those arguments about crew size can be solved here.

JAL, that's exactly my point. We assume that HW ships are much more advanced than they are - SW is a few thousand years ahead of HW, so it cannot be used for an accurate comparison. It makes more sense to have a two or three person crew for a 'deep space fighter' that is only, say fifty or a hundred years ahead of our own space technology.

[trebmal_ca]

sure, I can compare some B5, the station of course, what other B5 ships would you like to see? Oh I started extracting some CATA ships, I will continue today.

[Artoo]

some fighters (Fury - the correct name??) for sure and maybe a Whitestar... thx:) I don't know much about B5. Only what I've seen on local TV which really isn't much... there were few episodes and at odd times:( So those mentioned above are one of the few ships I remember. Perhaps someone else could suplement my choice.

[SvK]

Originally posted by Paladrache
They aren't, says me. ;P
Besides, who's to say that the HW developer's weren't like, "Let's make the MS 7000 units/meters long, but exxagerate all the other ship models times 3 for ease of viewing purposes!"
I'm to say they didn't! There is already a scale-exaggerating system in place, called NLIPS. It would be silly to rescale the fighter meshes when the game does that by itself. Besides, without NLIPS, the fighter meshes are unnoticable against the Mothership, because it's still a million times bigger than a Scout. So I'm quite sure Relic didn't do that, because it would duplicate effort and it wouldn't work anyways.

[trebmal_ca]

I did round the sizes to 2 decimal points, if I didnt the intercepter dimensions would have been 55.765749...... it went on for about 12 decimal points, which usually means who ever made the model was just eyeballing the size, and not using accruate dimensions.

[The5thElephant]

Holy shit a single shot from a scout would snap the Milennium Falcon in half. That site is really cool. Good job everyone, the sizes of some of these ships are ridiculous.

[Zeenith]

Son of a b***h there that big?

[trebmal_ca]

Im currently working on a B5 comparison, it should be interesting.

[Paladrache]

That's be neat, trebmal, if you could find some Dilgar or Drakh ships from B5 to compare. Those are some of the largest ships in the series.
Drakh Carrier - 14 kilometers
Drakh Cruiser - 3 kilometers

[SvK]

I'm not sure about the size of the Falcon I posted earlier. The cockpit should easily seat four, but I've got it looking smaller than the ball of a TIE fighter.

[Artoo]

hmm It might be a bit small actually... I'll try to find a good pic with both Falcon and a Tie... If I find sth I'll post it later today.

[trebmal_ca]

I can just post a top view of the Falcon and tie, I posted above.
dont forget the Falcons cockpit isnt very roomy

[trebmal_ca]

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/tie.txt

both of these models are in proper scale to each other. I have a plastic model of a tie, (comes with a pilot) and there is alot of room in the ball, could easily carry 4 or 5 people.

[Weavern]

The ball on the TIE i have ever seen one person inside, in movies, games etc. I dont think its roomy enough for 4 or 5. What is the other ship in that design? A starfury? If the starfury is to scale i'd think one of them is off :D

[deadguy]

Keep in mind a few points:

The X-Wing is not only from a culture that has had space travel for thousands of years, but that it is the first ship of its size that is capable of a hypersapce jump. TIE fighters and others require that they be docked for a jump.

The Enterprise aircraft carrier at 342 meters has a full crew compliment of 6,900. Germany's largest battleships were the Bismark and the Tirpitz, each 247.8 meters, held a crew of 2,650. Now, I realize displacement is not mass, but it makes you realize how gigantic these things really are. I think that the Homeworld Assault Frigate is going to be smaller than the Bismark and the Nimitz. Even pulling up the Space Shuttle with all of its life support, and equipment is 37.24 meters - it crews seven, and most of that size is cargo space. Think how empty a heavy cruiser is going to be with only 150 people in it, assuming your scale is correct.

(Shadowbird, I think that's a low-poly person seen from top down.)

[Artoo]

Shadowbird... where do you see a Starfury, huh?? If you thought those were the little things in front than no, these are just human figures as deadguy said:)

And the Tie's ball actually seems big enough to hold more poeple. The Tie bombers don't have much bigger (if at all) cockpits don't they?? And they are manned by two people.

Treb.... you should have placed a Wookie next to the Falcon:D

[Weavern]

My mistake :D i was seeing starfuries out of people.

[Zeenith]

My god there huge!

[SvK]

Some medium-size ships. The Correlian Corvette is 150m.
http://www.tgu.org.uk/users/svk/medium.jpg

[Zeenith]

One question, How big would a normal borg cube be to that gaint space ele thing from starwars?

[JAL-18]

Another thing to keep in mind:

By neccesity, HW ships are necessarily blocky and big. The Interceptor you see above the Falcon is obviuosly a way lower-poly model. Even if you look at the excellent SW mod, you'll see that most of the ships are WAY lower-poly than in the movies. IF you wer to make a high poly model of HW ships, (actualy, Reilc would need to make them. Only they know what the ships are really supposed to look like.) than I bet that a lot of things would be scaled down or rounded off. As every mod-maker knows, when it comes to models, KISS.

(Also, it may be that our understanding of the .peo measuring system my be wrong. One unit might not equal one meter. One unit might equalt 1/2 a meter, or 3/4 of a meter. The fact is, as I've said many times, we won't know the size and crews of HW ships until Relic decides they want to give us the measurements and crew sizes. We can make estimates, but that's all they really are: estimates.)

PS: JAL no spell right when JAL just wake up.

[trebmal_ca]

1 unit seems to equal 1 meter, take a scout, put it at one end of a ship, do a move you will see the move in meters, they match the peo files. Im still looking for measuments for the borg cube, some info says 5 km x 5km others say 10 . I had the same problem with the tie fighter some info said 6.3 m others said 6.8 m so I rounded mine to 6.5 m this is a 200 cm ( 6'-6") difference.
I will re-size the tie fighter to 6.3 m and see how big the ball is compared to the falcon cockpit.

Can one of the mods get hold of someone at relic and settle the measurement issue. I think the models were just eyeballed originally, (and not realizing how big the things would be to scale)and meters was picked after as a form of measurement.

[Artoo]

You might get differences in the Cubes size Treb, beacause I think there's more than one kind of Borg Cube. There are Tactical cubes and stuff... I'm only not sure if the difference is in size or power alone.

[deadguy]

This is my answer. I adjusted the Homeworld ships until the Interceptor looked about the right size for a two man crew against the Star Wars ships. Then I adjusted the Star Trek ships to match what seemed right to me. Screw what the literature says. The scales don't jive if you follow the measurements that people have created.

I know there's going to be moaning and complaining, but it's my estimate, feel free to make your favorite universe grossly larger to prove its superiority.

My estimates are something like this:
The X-Wing and the Interceptor are now roughly the same size. The Defiant is roughly the same size as the Assault Frigate - and when you compare how large it is to the Millenium Falcon, you can see how many more people it can hold. This scale is such that a large craft like the Imperial Shuttle or the Falcon can't fit inside the Enterprise's shuttle bay, but the X-wing probably could.

Babylon 5 has 250,000 people - 8300 m
An Imperial Star Destroyer has a crew of 37,000 - 1600 m
DS9 has a crew of 300 (2000 inhabitants?) - 1400 m
NCC-1701-D has a population of roughly 1200 - 600 m
USS Enterprise carrier has a crew of 6000+ - 330 m
etc...

That just makes me think that the Star Trek sizes needed to be revised downward a tad, not to take away from their grandeur, but because the sizes just don't seem to quite fit. Neither does a 56 meter two-person Interceptor. If you think of a vessel that's roughly 5 times the length of the carrier in the picture, then you're in the neighborhood of how large an Imperial Star Destroyer is. Remember that the Falcon was an insignificant fleck on the bridge tower of such an ISD, and drifted off with its garbage. Now, think of how large the mothership is compared to the Heavy Cruiser. I'd guess about a third larger than an ISD, (curiously close to what Tombo said - 2100 meters), and then think how miniscule an interceptor is in comparison. Here, look for yourselves.


Here's some smaller craft.
Image removed

Here's a link to a much bigger (2156 x 968 - 530k) comparison.
Image removed

[deadguy]

R2, BTW, the TIE bomber didn't have a spherical cockpit, so there's quite a lot more room for additional crew.

[Starfisher]

So, in other words, you just scaled them however you felt like without any justification other than they felt right. Did you read the various posts about how the SW - HW comparison doesn't work?

Relic obviously wasn't thinking about crew sizes and such. However, once they put it out there, its out there. Those are the sizes, and now we have the fun job of explaining why within the game universe.

[trebmal_ca]

dont go by the # of crew or their size. I just went by the numbers.
I have scale blueprints for the Star Trek ships, and the models are scaled to that. Same as the Star Wars models, I have a book with the sizes of most the ships, and again I scaled the models to that. The Falcon isnt that big (I have the blue prints for that) what you see in the movie was pretty much it for interior space the only thing that wasnt shown was the head (bathroom) and the galley. Just for the record all the models in the pics I have all live in the same 3D drawing all 1:1 to each other, I havent scaled anything up or down to suit how I think it should look.

[trebmal_ca]

Ok I didnt want to post this as it was hard as hell to find, but I will so were all on the same playing field.

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/mainfleetside.txt

each square in the grid is 20m x 20m

[Unmei no Chibi]

W00T! I'm gonna save that one, maybe even use it as a desktop wallpaper :) Where did you find that? (DS9 is smaller than I thought lol)

[Artoo]

While thinking about the sizes of cockpits (Tie/Tie Bomber) I somehow focused on it's width... I don't think there's much difference there. And the crew in the Tie bombers sit side by side I think, dont't they?? From what I remeber the Ties cokpit is kinda roomy, anyway for sure in comparison to Rebel craft cockpits.

LoL This chart roX... I gotta print out!!!!!! OMG no ink in the printer agrrhhhhh!!!!!!

[trebmal_ca]

ok as per popular request. after alot of research I found the dimensions for the first borg cube encountered. About 95% of the sites I checked say it is 3000m x 3000m. and the borg sphere (classified as a scout) is 300 m in diameter.

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-borg.txt

[Starfisher]

For a mobile structure, that is quite large. 3000 x 3000 x 3000 = 27 x 10 ^ 9. Thats a lot of volume. Just what the heck are they storing in there?

But of course. Its the spare sneaker emporium of the universe.

[trebmal_ca]

actually I think the borg need all the space for the missing dryer socks they steal.

[Ammon Ra]

Erm......the borg cube is THAT big?!?!

well, i gues thats about the size of the nomad moon...

but that thing IS huge, what they got in there??????

BUT the Super Star Destroyer is ....impressive...17 friggin Km.....i pet it could take out a cube in no time at all :D

[Unmei no Chibi]

Wow, if a normal cube is 3kmX3kmX3km... fuck, that's big. And they have even larger cubes :/
But basicly all they store in there are borg drones ^^

[trebmal_ca]

well if ya look at the TNG episodes, alot of the borg ship is just empty space. Same as 1701-D, only 30% of the enterprise was occupied.

[deadguy]

and the SSD smashed into a section of the Death Star so large that it looked flat.

Of course I read all the posts, Starfisher. I posted an alternate view just as Uber did when he said "They're Zentradi-sized!" My explanation is much as has been floating around here: one HW unit may indeed equal one meter, but for the sake of convenience have assumed that their meter is the same as our meter. It's like saying a modern-day foot is the same as a 12th century foot. So I decided that as the Star Wars ruler (as shown against the earth-ruler) was pretty proportional, I adjusted the other universes' meters until I thought they made sense. You'll notice I didn't resize individual ships, but universes.

Using the other metric of crew/cargo capacity, I tried to keep them within reason. Just because you don't see a lot of the interior of the Falcon doesn't mean that's all she has - going by that alone, the Enterprise would easily fit in the Death Star hangar alongside the Falcon. But the perceived size is much larger. Perceived size. That's all I'm adjusting. No-one ever complains that shows haves different rates of time flow. One hour of "24" is one hour of real time, and yet one hour of "Harry Potter" is half his school year. One universe's ruler need not equal another.

The reason I used population as a ruler was so the supposed sizes didn't seem rediculously empty.

[trebmal_ca]

if your last image, I think you should ditch the real world objects, as you have the USS Nimitz about 3000' long. (compared to DS9)

[SvK]

Hmm. The chart I found (http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/fleet-chart-1060.jpg) links to the chart trebmal_ca is using (http://www.gilsostartrekschematics.co.uk/fleetchart/mainfleet/mainfleetside.jpg), which links back. Yet there are significant differences in sizes between various ships. Further proof that Star Trek is messed up.

[trebmal_ca]

The question is, which one is right? Startrek.com is useless for technical information. Some dimensions are the same, and some are different by 40 m (131') I will try to find something official.

[trebmal_ca]

Ok everything on the web says "official" Then I realized I had a official resource, and thats the book that comes with the game Klingom Academy (and it says at the begining of the book thats is all Paramount approved and copywritten etc etc.) So between the 2 charts some are right and some are off by hundreds of feet.

[Artoo]

lol 40m's a lot... I honestly doubt if some 100% reliable information can be found. I ran a check through some polish Star Trek sites... some of them are really good, however no info useful for this thread is present. Ships specs vary and the pictures are usually not to scale:/


lol your last post popped up suddenly Treb:) Are you going to base on the book you found??

[Starfisher]

deadguy: Fair enough.

I was rooting for the large ship sizes because the Kushan appear to have been researching and developing space at a high pace from the time the guidestone was found till when Kharak burned. Currently, our "mass driver" weapons require space equaling that of an average house to accelerate their foot long projectile to about 1.5 miles/second. Assume that the Kushan reduced the size requirements- you still have to add in engines and fuel, bringing the size back up to that of an average or large house. Thus, assuming that the Kushan had our level of technology when they found the guidstone, which is pretty apparent from the various early cutscenes, the ship sizes trembal_ca posted earlier make sense.

[Vaarok]

Ever notice that in Star Trek both the B'rel and K'vort klingon frigates are identical except for size? It's because of shoddy scale watching during various shows and movies. They had two models, and the size differences were so obvious they had to make an excuse.

Still, the B'rel kicks ass.

[trebmal_ca]

The B'rel (BOP) is actually classed as a escort/scout there is a larger BOP called a B'rel type 2 (QUD) which is classed as a destroyer. I cant find any pics of the frigate (except for the book)
but the frigates are these stubby, D7 looking things with 1 wrap nacelle on the top.

[deadguy]

Treb:

I started with the nimitz and it's complment of fighters on deck. Then I took the pic of the Star Wars ships next to F-15, and scaled it so the F-15 matched one on deck of the Nimitz. Then I took the Homeworld ships and scaled the Interceptor to what I thought was a more fighter-like size. Next was the pic with DS9, I scaled it so the Assault Frigate matched the one I had just scaled. I actually bumped the Star Trek ships up in scale after that, since an X-wing still seemed a tad large to fit in the Enterprise hangar.

Basically, all but the largest spacebound craft can dock properly with the next class up with little incident. So the Star Wars ships are in scale to Earth craft, Homeworld ships are in scale (albeit adjusted) to the above, and Star Trek to Homeworld and back on down.

The Borg cube is still huge, probably a match in volume with an ISD or the Homeworld Mothership, just more compact.

[trebmal_ca]

the HW mothership is 7000 m tall, so the borg cube would be just under half the height, but I think the cube would have more interior space (some one did the calcutaions above) but the cubes interior is 270 cubic kilometers, If I sat down and took the time, I could calculate the HW mothership interior. A rough calculation I got was 26.25 cubic kilometers.

[Artoo]

Afterall the Borg ship is a cube, so it's 3000m each way. Unlike a 7000m space bumerang;)

[Mikk]

Well the HW units are not meters so please dont use the word meter when talking about the HW unts.
The scale of HW is a bit strange:
The fighters should be 2-3 times smaller but the larger ships (MS, HC) are about ok. A 28-18 metre interceptor is about right and fits fine with a 7 km mothership.

Please could you list the sizes of HW ships please. I have no idea how to get the ship measurements from the .big

[trebmal_ca]

??? what the hell are you talking about? movements in the game are done in meters and kilometers, and meters per second.

By the way does anyone know the dimension for the B5 Centauri carrier? I cant find it on the web.

[Mikk]

The sizes were not made in a logical way they were just scaled to look about right.

[trebmal_ca]

well yes the ships were not made to any specific size, but the games universe is in meters so I measured the ships to that.

[Starfisher]

What are you basing your "oks" on Mikk? What looks good to you?

Obviously Relic didn't do techincal drawings of all the ships in autocad with the intent to make them as realistically scaled as possible. However, once they published the game, that became the standard for the universe. Treb took the known size of a 7km mothership, and then compared all the other ship meshes to it. That gives us the large interceptors.

The game's universe sets the standard for the sizes, not what you want them to be. The interceptors are large. Instead of trying to downsize them to correlate to all the other genres of sci-fi, why not try to come up with an explanation for the way they are other than "Oh, relic just did it this way."

[trebmal_ca]

I can see where Mikk is coming from, and yeah relic did build them that way, not thinking that someone would take the time to analyze this on a technical level.

[SvK]

Thank you Starfisher! I think people who agree with me make a lot of sense! :)

[Weavern]

Trebmal, looking for cintauri sizes :)
I've found one site with the Vorcha (http://www.b5tech.com/centauri/centauriships/centauricapships/vorchan.html), i have found another over at hyperspace (http://hyperspace.isnnews.net/cent/index.html), and it has the size a good 300m shorter.

[trebmal_ca]

thanx shadowbird, I have both those sites, but no info on the carrier size. someone posted before about it being 14 km long, can that be confirmed, or was it a guess. Ok since were on B5, here is the fighter comparision. Im working on the cap ship one, (almost done, just missing a few tech things)

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-b5-comp.txt

Mimbar fighter 22 m
Fury 9.6 m

[Seeker]

Just a question. Are you guys scaling them in the normal HW or with the True Scale Mod? That might solve some of your problems.

[trebmal_ca]

this was talked about before, the mod only changes how the game presents the ships, not the actual ship sizes. un-modded games scale up the ships visually. You will see in my next image post with B5 stuff, HW mothership and the other cap ships, you will see they match the true scale.

[Mikk]

Originally posted by Mikk
Please could you list the sizes of HW ships please. I have no idea how to get the ship measurements from the .big

This was the important part of my post.
Thank you for the attention tho.

But now that you look at the picture with the CS person on the interceptor it doesn't look that big. It is just roomy and has a lot of armor.

Actually when the ships where this big and with that thick armor it would make sense that they can take a hit from a metheor like objekt (projectile) that would be devastating for todays technology. ...More smartass talk....

And I dont think the fighters are 2 man craft but the tai bomber is because the manual says so.

[SvK]

Mikk, you can extract the PEOs with WinBig, then examine them with 3dExploration (or Deep Exploration) and see that, for example, the length of a Swarmer is 27.6 That's a pretty number, but rather useless without units. Fortunately, Homeworld uses meters for its units, so now you know that the Swarmer is 27.6 merters long. That's how you get the size of the ships from the BIG.

Alternatively, you could use a MEX viewer and look at the RCT entry. That was two ordered triplets. The first is the co-ordinates for one corner of the collision box. The second is the size of the collision box. The collision boxes are fitted rather closely to the ship, to the second triplet is roughly equal to the dimensions of the ship.

[trebmal_ca]

I could make a excel database with the sizes, but let me figure out the visuals first. I personely think the HW ships are large due to armor, since they lack sheilds they need armor, I would suspect the armor on a fighter is several meters thick. (probable some kinda honeycomb-ceramic material, to distribute the energy from weapons)

[ÜberJumper]

Trebmal:

Your ship sizes seem to be WAY off. Look at this art (specifically the pilot's chair on the front of the scout) and scale from there.

http://www.relicnews.com/images/galleries/7/97.jpg

[trebmal_ca]

I understand Uber, but the world of graphics and the world of CAD, never see eye to eye, the person who made that sketch, probable never saw the dimensions the models were created at.
And that sketch was probable made before the models were made. The game models are computer physical, were a sketch can be anything the artist intends it to be.

[SvK]

Hmm, the pilot's chair is that big on a 50m ship? Maybe the pilot isn't 2m tall!

[molo]

sigh

[trebmal_ca]

anyhoo here s the B5 thing

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-b5-comp.txt

[Artoo]

Treb.... I got the red X of doom here:(

[ÜberJumper]

So treb, now's your chance to scale them correctly. Maybe the Relic designers were working in Feet and not meters.

[ÜberJumper]

Here's something else to help you scale it vs.

http://www.homeworld-das-spiel.de/images/corvette40.jpg

[John Sheridan]

Concept art is nothing to scale by. I mean, if we got together all the concept art for Star Trek, for example, I bet we'd come up with a dozen different sizes at least for any major vessel. The concept art, in fact, makes no sense at all.

A 56m long interceptor makes perfect sense for technology only a few hundred years ahead of us. Look at the size of the shuttle, and then realize that it's not suited for deep space missions, and that in space it's not manuverable at all, nor does it carry its own fuel supply except for thrusters, nor does it carry any weapon system, or have any armor to protect it from attack. Need I continue?

Adding all of these systems (if we even had the technology for them) would inflate the shuttle to grand proportions. The lack of energy shields in particular is probably largely responsible for the size of the smaller vessels, since they have to have quite thick armor.

I also agree with the low-poly, poor-detail problem. If the cockpits are too large from the models used in the game, then it's probably just the cockpit needing to be scaled down, not the whole vessel. So far, Trembal's scale seems to fit perfectly. Especially with the capital ships. Debate all you want about fighter sizes, but Capital vessels are beyond a doubt spot-on. Of course, that does mean that since the fighters are to-scale with the capitals ships, that they must also be spot-on :P

Also, if you are going to re-scale anything to make it seem "right", I'd suggest you leave the scaling inside the HW universe alone. Scale the capital ships to other capital ships, and then scale the HW fighters to match the HW capitals in the exact same ratios as before, because you can't argue about the scale between ships in the game, since they DO exist in the same measurement system for sure.

There, that takes care of my rant for the day :)

[ÜberJumper]

A 56 Meter long fighter is too big by far. That's a vessel that's 150 feet long! You think a one man attack craft should be THAT big? Ridiculous.



A 56m long interceptor makes perfect sense for technology only a few hundred years ahead of us. Look at the size of the shuttle, and then realize that it's not suited for deep space missions, and that in space it's not manuverable at all, nor does it carry its own fuel supply except for thrusters, nor does it carry any weapon system, or have any armor to protect it from attack. Need I continue?


The shuttle supports a crew of 7 already, AND has a massive cargo bay (of which you could put things like fuel or weapons). I would point out that strike craft in HW are not suited to deep space missions either. The Shuttle is only 37 Meters long. That's about the size a corvette would be in HW.

Why would you armour a fighter anyway? Aside from armouring the crew compartment, and key areas to increase pilot survivability, you're not going to put that much armour on a strike craft (hell they don't on modern fighters and bombers), as that adds too much mass. It would be wiser to spend resources on manuevering ability and electronics rather than armour.

History has already shown that as technology levels increase, so does the level of minaturization. I don't expect the HW fighters to be more than 20 M long as it is... that's about the size of an F-14 Tomcat.

In short, it's my impression that the HW designers designed their ships to be like their modern day equivelents, and not some super-deformed version of the same.

[Starfisher]

Well, Uber, as I posted earlier, our current mass driver technology requires a massive amount of space. Since the weapons on the various fighers and 'vettes are 'mass drivers' it would make sense that even assuming they halved the size of the weapons system, it would still be pretty large. I mean the Kushan weren't that far ahead of us technologically - maybe sixty years? And most of that was spent building the mothership, which presented its own engineering problems. I think it says in the manual somewhere that the Kushan had trouble with their early mass drivers, because they were too big and bulky to mount on a fighter chassis. They managed to fit it by the time of the hyperdrive test, which means that though they had scaled it down, it is doubtful that they managed to scale it down to the size that would fit in an F-15.

The shuttle is an unmanueverable hog that could never reach the speeds the HW fighters do. Manuevering with a traditional gas thruster the way the fighters seem to be able to do in the game would require a very strong chassis as well as very powerful lateral thrusters. That means big thrusters, with a lot of fuel. Which means a big ship.

There is an obvious discrepancy between concept art and the actual game models. We can ( and probably will ) argue forever about which shows the 'real' sizes. In any event, why are we comparing the fighters to modern day aircraft? Comparing them to a navy PT boat is probably a much better way of judging size, armor and engines. A mix of fighter jet and naval patrol vessel is probably the best possible combo for a space fighter.

[ÜberJumper]

Even a PT Boat doesn't fit (http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/832516.asp). A PT boat would be a good example of a Corvette.

Anyway... a mass driver is as simple as catapult, a 30mm chain gun (like in the A-10 Thunderbolt), a tank mounted gauss rifle, or a lunar materials launch system. That they don't state that the mass-drivers are rail guns, it's safe to argue they could be as simple as the mass driver on an A-10 Thunderbolt. In fact, I'd argue that the guns on the ships appear to be more like a conventional "gattling" gun than anything else.

Regardless... when you start to say a fighter/strike craft is 150 ft long, you're getting ridiculous. EVERY science fiction novel, artwork, or game that has "fighters" that I've ever seen on screen has fighters the size of our modern day combat aircraft. Why would Relic go against that norm and design something so much bigger? Especially when the game was originally patterned after Battlestar Galactica.

Anyway, we're arguing about a fictional universe, with fictional vessels, compared to other fictional vessels and some real vessels and aircraft.

[molo]

uber has a valid point. mass drivers are simply machines that drive mass. technically, a locomotive is a mass driver.

[Dragon Lord]

who says the kushan are just 60 years further in technology? yes maybe they are when they find the Khar-Toba, but they use a lot of the technology from the Khar-Toba to build the mothership. An example is the hyperdrive which they just understand enough to copy and use it a bit but mostly how it works is still a mystery when they leave Kharak. Most of the other crafts are build based on technology from captured enemy vessels (which is a race which has been in space for atleast 3000 years) and bought from the bentusi.

The space shuttle isn't that much an unmanueverable hog, it accelerates at 3G (more than your normal sports car and about the same a a jet fighter). Also the space shuttle is built to carry cargo, not to fight in dogfights, a craft solely build for fighting in zero-g would be far smaller than a space shuttle , just like a f22 joint strike fighter is a lot smaller than a boeing 747.

[Mokona]

:anime:

AFAIK, the meshes in the game without NLIPS enabled are the "as is" in terms of scaling. I don't think there was a "standard" scale that was used, just approximations. That being said and assuming the Taiidan and the Kushan are roughly human sized (judging from various sketches), I would go out on a limb to say that a fighter would be the size of a "fighter" as we would know it as such (ie. like an F-16 or whatever) and so on.

Simply put, just use common sense... :angel:


Mokona

[John Sheridan]

Hmm, I just checked something that suddenly causes me to side with Uber. The Kushan Interceptor has a mass of only 60 tons. I can't see a vessel that's 56 m long weighing in at only 60 tons. Might be wrong though.

Anyone know what the average mass of a modern jet aircraft is?

Okay, I checked. using the F-14 Tomcat as an example.

Maximum Mass on takeoff: 74, 349 lbs. (fuel and weapons incl.)
or
33.72 metric tons
and it is about 19m long.

Now, since Relic is Canadian, and everything else in the game is metric, I'm going to assume that that's 60 metric tons, making the Interceptor weigh in at just under twice the F-14, and I'm fairly certain there are lighter airfcraft out there.

So maybe 56m isn't so inaccurate. 40 would probably be a little better, assuming the same level of miniaturization and efficiency as we had when we designed the F-14.

[ÜberJumper]

John:

Size wise, an M1 Abrams Main Battle is only 9M long, but weighs in at 57 Tons.

Something doesn't have to be 40M long to weigh 60 Tons.

Length <> Weight.

[molo]

The British A39 Tortoise heavy assault tank (WWII era, cancelled) was 10m long and weighed 77 tons. :D


I'm also unsure why you assume the same level of miniaturization. Why not a greater level? It's the future, right? They're using highly efficient and powerful ion drives. They're actually fighting in space. Why assume that they won't have any advances in miniaturization? That's just bad logic.

[Artoo]

Damn, I must admit I'm torn in between the two options. I believe in Trebs calculations and stuff. On the other hand fighters that big seem really exagerated. They're far bigger than I've ever expected them to be. I somehow don't believe in the theory that a civilization who ventured of to space would be only 60 years or so in development ahead of ours. How long would it take to develop a space superiority fighter?? Even today making a normal strike craft takes lot's of time...

[Starfisher]

A lot seems to be hung on the name 'fighter'. Its a spaceship. It doesn't compare to a groundbased fighter.

One last stab at the small fighter theory, then I'll give up. Assume for a second that the fighters in HW match treb's original calculations. That would mean the projectiles they fired were pretty damn big. Which makes sense considering that they can take down a carrier, with time.

There was another thread about something similiar in the HW discussion a while back, and someone made a point about how a guy in a rubber boat shooting a 9mm at an aircraft carrier would do nothing to it. If the ships in HW are shooting weapons that are the same size as current aircraft weapons, they would never do anything to a ship the size of an HC. Even if they were depleted uranium like the A-10 fires. Those rounds blow up tanks. When they hit 2m of armor on a carrier, they might penetrate, but by the time they do they would have lost all their energy. A carrier with a thousand pinpricks is just fine.

If the fighters were shooting the projectile I was referring to in my earlier posts, a magnetically accelerated foot long metal spike that traveled at over 2mi/s, the carrier would have a thousand craters. A carrier with a thousand craters is in a lot of trouble. Fighters would have to be big, though, to house and fire such a projectile.

The Kushan were roughly at our level of technology when the guidstone was found. They had rubber wheeled vehicles, various orbital sattelites, and were still burning fossil fuels. It took 30(?) years to design the mothership and 60(?) years to build it. Elsewhere in the manual, it mentions how their mass driver technology was huge, but only recently had begun to be shrunk down. Therefore, they are about 90 years ahead of us, but the almost all of their society was directed toward creating the MS. As evidenced by the first mission, all they had were scouts, and you research the interceptor chassis. They acquired the rest of their technology after observing other alien tech in action.

[Ash]

The Kushan had "technology" which we dont, such as cryogenic freezing (and more importantly, succesful recovery from this)

[Noir]

Originally posted by ÜberJumper
John:

Size wise, an M1 Abrams Main Battle is only 9M long, but weighs in at 57 Tons.



I thought it was 63 tons?

[yasotay]

Actually gents the weight of the M1 tank depends on the type. M1A1 is closer to Uber's number while the M1A2 is closer to UnkID's

[John Sheridan]

I'm quite aware of that Uber, that is true when dealing with Tanks, for example. Space craft, I'd think, at least fighters, would follow similar weight:length ratios, or perhaps weight:volume ratios as fighter aircraft, since they rely on somewhat similar systems, and keeping the weight to a minimum is so important in both circumstances. That is why I used weight to draw a comparison. Comparing a tank to a space craft is about as useful as comparing a tank to an aircraft. They are built to different standards.

I think you can assume that in both circumstances, they have done everything possible to keep the weight down, and unless they are actually using much heavier materials than we already have available at our technology level, then I believe the size comparison holds. at the very least, it must be 30m long (accounting for the additional height it has over a jet fighter, being blocky rather than aerodynamic)

[molo]

When they hit 2m of armor on a carrier, they might penetrate, but by the time they do they would have lost all their energy

Where the hell did you get that number? Six feet is a shitload of armor. I don't think carriers even have a half meter of armor, let alone two.

[Starfisher]

Sepculation. The carrier is ~1.5 km long. Much of that is launch and repair bays. The carrier is basically a shell for ships to land in.

Given that they don't have shields, putting a crap load of armor on a ship is the only way to increase its chances of survival against attack. The heavy guns of a cruiser are big, heavy, fast projectiles. They would go through .5m of armor easily enough, but would find 2m a bit more difficult. It stands to reason that you would want to protect your fighters and alternate fleet command with a strong shell.

[ÜberJumper]

Starfish:

An A-10 attacking a modern carrier would mess it up, badly. The cannon on the Kushan interceptor is not specified as mass driver (assuming a rail gun), but rather "a heavy rotary cannon". Then again, the unit viewer ship descriptions are out of wack. I'm not sure how much they can be trusted.

Taiidan scout for example "The minimal striking ability afforded by the single nose-mounted mass-driver means that in order to pose a serious threat..." There's two weapons featured on the front of the unit viewer. Even the Kushan interceptor is confused with it's single heavy rotary cannon actually being displayed as two.

Where are folks getting the figures for the size of HW aside from Treb's assumptions of ship size? I know the weights come from the unit viewer. Hmmm maybe Kushan/Taiidan tons are smaller than human tons :-D

The Ship viewer says nothing about the armour of the kushan carrier aside from it being "heavy, layered armor".

Anyway, even Relic thinks they're the size of modern fighters, I'm happy with that.

[SvK]

In the SHP files, both Scout have two smallEnergyCannons.

I get my ship sizes by loading the PEO file into 3d Exploration and double-clicking on it. That brings up statistics, including dimensions on each axis. Since everything in HW is in meters (movement disk, etc.) I figure a length of 58 means 58 meters.

[Vaarok]

God forbid, someone introduced logic and common sense into this thread?

[Mokona]

These dimensions are numbers used in whatever 3D modelling software that we use here at Relic to create ships. AFAIK, these "units" are not meant to be based on "real life" units. They are just there to provide references for measurement, etc. :)

Take for example, a cube with a length of 2 units on each edge.. These units can be whatever you want them to be.. be it 2 inches, 2 meters, 2 kilometers. Despite the change in size, the fact remains that the cube contains the same volume and proportion in relation to the units used. In this case, it's just an arbitrary "unit" that can equal whatever you want it to be.. A single "unit" can be equivalent to say, 3cm (an arbitrary number) if you wanted it to be.

In any case, from what I've seen, the priority for any game is to make a a model look good, and then adjust the scale as necessary to make it consistant and nice looking compared with other models used in that game. Note that this usually means that the numbers will change accordingly.. There is no guarantee.

I hope this should clear up the confusion for you... Just remember to have fun with HW. :anime:

Mokona

[Starfisher]

Uber: That's why I said that would be my last argument.. One does not argue lightly with the relic god.

[Artoo]

I still think this thread is on to something:)

I agree that looks should be a priority, but realistic sizes are a nice addition;)

[molo]

I figure a length of 58 means 58 meters.

I figure Relic says you're wrong :D

[Beast]

Why not just take it as a 3:1 ratio for units:metres imo :E

[trebmal_ca]

oopps sorry folks I havent been on-line for a few days I didnt know the image was FOBAR, I will fix it.

[trebmal_ca]

http://www.geocities.com/trebmal_ca/hw-b5-comp.txt

[trebmal_ca]

Ya know when I did this it was for my personel interest, I had no idea this would turn into the debate it has. Thank you Mokona for responding, I had assumed from the begining that Relic just made the models so they looked good, and not to any kinda measurement. Perhaps Relic should hire a modeler with a CAD and scaling background {wink, wink}

[SvK]

Originally posted by molotov
I figure Relic says you're wrong :D
But I'm not disagreeing with Relic.

[Artoo]

The mom ship and the station look similar in size... only in a different axis.

[trebmal_ca]

the measurments I found for B5 was 8454 m (I know the whole station isnt there, blame who ever made the model)

[Vaarok]

Didn't I say 3:1 ratio about ten pages back.... NM, this thread has gone viral.

[Mikk]

Well the point is the units might or might not equal the HW meters but I was trying to say it from the beginning. It doesn't matter anymore.

But a list of the ship sizes would be great. I lack the skills and tools to create it.

[smiley fanatic]

Want my opinion? Well, the Homeworld ships don't have shields. This is a very major point in the 'Technological Drift' camp's favour, and thus is a point in the 'True Scale' camp's favour as well. Why? Because armour would still be highly important for both the Imperial Taiidan and the Exiled Kushan, et al. (noone had shields except the Taiidan Defense Field Frigate -- which i assume was the beginnings of shield tech) The sequel, done by BarkingDog, takes the next step in Cataclysm..a baby step, but still you see what i'm getting at: There's no inherent shield akin to all the sci-fi space sim games you and i have played since time began....besides, we also have the HW manual to fall back on...
...Beneath this ablative layer is a thin, power absorbing layer. Finally, the last layer protecting a ship is a thick crystal polymer composite, interwoven with advanced ceramics...Cockpits are double layered with this kinetic armour...Short of the fantasy of an all-powerful energy shield, this combined kinetic/beam defense gives our shipos the gretest chance of surviving damage while maintaining a manageable mass-to-thrust ratio

Now, this stuff is light. notice they talk about ablatives as the first, a "thin" 2nd layer and a final composed of polymers and ceramics. (ie. this isn't an Abrams, though the idea of "layering" is the same context)
Okay, so we don't have fancy "deflector screens" (ala. StarTrek) to deflect debris and space dust, but since i think that's a little limp, let's point out that NASA doesn't like untracked objects in space. Even the smallest particle can do massive damage on a flimsy Shuttle. Since i know i'm going to get massive semantic rants on this point i would like to point those people to go search on www.google.com plzkthxdrvthru.

The Second point is the weaponry. Why don't strike craft use missiles like IRL current aerospace fighters use the 'Phoenix (http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/missiles/wep-phoe.html)' and other devastating stuff capable of sinking ships and blowing the crap outta bunkers?? Well, apparently the HW manual states the reasons...
Missile technology has been available since the dawning days of space exploration but it has always been irrelevant as a weapon system because of it's slow speed of any kind of non-fusion engine and the lack of a warhead that could effectively harm an armoured starship. The plasma bomb solved the latter problem but it wasn't until the development of the super capital ships, that a platform existed to house and power missiles that were large enough to carry the reaction mass needed to pursue a combat vessel. Using a variant of the stored plasma warhead, the guided missile actually draws superheated plasma into it's internal magnetic containment field. When launched this field is then shaped and vented to simulate a traditional chemical rocket exhaust in order to give the missile high speed and maneuverability necessary to engage a fusion powered vessel.

*Note that the plasma bomb tech says the plasma comes directly from the fusion reactor.*...Kushan/Taiidan Missiles in Homeworld are restricted to Missile Destroyers and that do 100-124dmg per round at 1250speed...compared to a single bomber plasma round that does 50-65dmg per round and other "guns" on strike craft with faster speeds and fire rates...Now, a single missile can blow a scout (110armour) to smithereens, except a scouts real good at dodging these. The point being that this is cutting edge stuff for the era and the miniturization comes later (if you want to rant about turanic missiles they sucked...15-35dmg/200speed) Anyways, this cutting edge technology also applies to the need to invent something useful to counter strike craft. This is a point in the "Tech Drift/True Scale" camp's favour to require oversized energy weapons (remember, the only "laser" weapons were the Taiidan Defense Fighters)...As for the Taiidan tech lvl being the same, let me remind you that Reverse Engineering isn't like McGyver stuff, k? Kushan reverse engineered the tech to pretty much in line with Taiidan's...and i highly doubt a corrupt empire would bother much with innovation because that means intelligence people are using their initiative in important places. (Usually a pretty dumb idea for a dictatorship) As for the speed of the Kushan "Catchup"? Well, just take the Manual that came with the game which shows that the Kushan went from space exploration to Cataclysm present day in just over 200 years...
circa -1700: Fragment taken from Angel Moon
circa 810: gunpowder (http://www.bartleby.com/65/gu/gunpowde.html) applications on Kharak
circa 1024: space (http://www.bartleby.com/65/sp/spaceexp.html) exploration
*pretty decent seeing as it took the West, IRL, ~500 years to do the same. Unfortunately, they don't really show when mass production industry appeared (the key innovation in technology)
circa 1025-1105: slow discovery of hitech gadgets in orbit that gave them ability to build "Viable Hydrogen Fusion PPs" among other things.
circa 1110: The Khar-Toba's powerplant found, and a device which "catapulted technology 500 years forward" (solid state hyperspace induction module)
circa 1159: plans for the Mothership drawn up
circa 1180: infrastructure ready to build merely the scaffolding
circa 1190: work commences on MS which will take 25 years
circa 1216: Cataclysm manual states this is the date of The Return.
circa 1231: present day (AHL.15)My third point is "cockpits" and "crew"...I do not think for one minute that Homeworld was conceived in the "Space Opera" vein of single pilot vessels the size of IRL modern aerospace fighters (which deal with gravity and aerodynamics)...In space there doesn't need to be any cutesy debate about those two issues, add to this the "no shield tech" and "no cbt.laser tech" Technological Drifts that contrast with other Sci-Fi games of the same genre and you'll get the idea that with "nonminiturization" scales this large, why not add more crew to small ships and have smaller ones for larger ships? I hope i don't have to explain that; pretty obvious it's a matter of non-linear scaling.
http://www.mindphyre.com/UMEC/FAQ/HWSmallBridge.jpg
http://www.mindphyre.com/UMEC/FAQ/HWLargeBridge.jpg
Remember that all this technology leapfrogging by the Kushan handicapping their "miniturization" is comparable to the 3000 years the Taiidan had to putter around with their "oversized" clunkers and deal with a corrupt empire that had no need for "rocket scientists" nor innovation. (see earlier rant about evil dictators - ala Saddam Hussein)

[Mikk]

But where is the list?

Please make alist of the sizes of HW ships. Please.

[smiley fanatic]

SvK wrote:
Mikk, you can extract the PEOs with WinBig, then examine them with 3dExploration (or Deep Exploration) and see that, for example, the length of a Swarmer is 27.6 That's a pretty number, but rather useless without units. Fortunately, Homeworld uses meters for its units, so now you know that the Swarmer is 27.6 merters long. That's how you get the size of the ships from the BIG.

Alternatively, you could use a MEX viewer and look at the RCT entry. That was two ordered triplets. The first is the co-ordinates for one corner of the collision box. The second is the size of the collision box. The collision boxes are fitted rather closely to the ship, to the second triplet is roughly equal to the dimensions of the ship.and the other dude said he'd think of posting an excel file, but i really doubt the one liners helped yer quest, dude. Uhm, the saying "if you want something done right, ya gotta do it yerself" applies here...Personally, i was thinking of doing a bit of this cause i'd be fascinated in creating a conceptual view of an Assault Frigate's bridge and deckplans. (being a fan of the PnP rpg MegaTraveller with the shipbuilding skillz to match helps. *g*)

[trebmal_ca]

WHOA!! well I can make a list Mikk, but what should it be the mystery HW units or meters? they both will be the same number just one will have a m after it.

[ionfish]

smiley fanatic, next time you decide to make a post like this please make sure you adhere to the posting guidelines (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5710), specifically the rule concerning excessive quoting.

ion.

[ÜberJumper]

Smilely fanatic:

Did you miss when Mokona indicated that the Fighters are roughly the size of an F-16?

[trebmal_ca]

Mokona tell the Relic Modeling folks I will fix the models to a accurate size for HW2 when there ready. I will do it for free.

[JAL-18]

Smiley fanatic, I find it really hard to believe the you would sit at a computer moniter for 6 hours copying and pasting most of the rest of the thread. And copy and paste are about the only things you did do, because your gigantic post has very little original material in it.

Mikk: the problem with realeasing a list of HW ship sizes is the controvery it would arouse. People would constantly be flaming each other about what the actual scale is. The only way I can forsee this not happening in the immediat future is if it was labeled "X HWU (Homeworld Units.) Even this would eventually creat a problem, as peopl would start debating what an actual HWU is. (I just realized that what I just siad is basiclly why all the arguements in this thread have come up. lol. )

[molo]

My third point is "cockpits" and "crew"...I do not think for one minute that Homeworld was conceived in the "Space Opera" vein of single pilot vessels the size of IRL modern aerospace fighters (which deal with gravity and aerodynamics)...

Actually, Homeworld was based mostly on Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars; it's been stated many times by the devs. Both can easily be called Space Operas, and both use a similar "aerospace fighter" type scale - the same scale that Mokona (a Relic employee) confirmed in one of the four hundred posts you spent six hours copying and pasting.

[Starfisher]

Smiley's name should be changed to, "The Summarizer", with a little note: 'I don't actually read threads'.

[trebmal_ca]

Jal-18 what Im going to do is just label it units (when I measure them again I will set the enviorment for decimal units) So that way the measurments can be anything people want them to be.
mm, feet, parsecs, cubits, whatever

[smiley fanatic]

hey guys. you know what? That was the most disgusting show of rudeness i've ever seen. IonFish: Thank you ever so for noting that. you know, the cut and paste job was the easy part and if i'd broken some holy writ and offended everyone why didn't you simply delete the quotes like i just did? JAL-18, molotov, starfisher, UberJumper: I believe this entire thread is a barely contained flame war. I apologize for the cut & paste job and wish i'd cut that bit out to avoid upsetting the debate. (or the barely contained flame war where everyone says everyone elses point is moot)

I'll not take offense at all that you folks forgot someone reading 12 pages for the first time from scratch takes one a good hour or two to understand. think i read it twice...I'll also not take offense at the fact you folks thought the cut&paste took any time at all...I'll also not take offense at the very disgusting dismissal of my "Original material"...

Anyways, this is what i took offense at: Calling me a fool for spending (the majority of) my time on creating that "original material" you folks seem to think you have a freakin monopoly on. Next time do so to my face, don't use candy assed "lawyer speak" to beat around the bush. cowards

*sigh* Sorry for the flame, but what did you expect? you people lost it one me over something so unimportant that i deleted it with no regrets. sheeesh. Anyways, i do hope my "original material" contributes some how to this barely contained flame war in a constructive fashion.

P.S. you people really are taking this whole thing too seriously, chill out will you? (now that i've removed the offending portion you all look a bit of the fool. don't you? n00bs)

[Ammon Ra]

*sighs*.....

well, the thread left B4 i could properly read it....a tad big with maybe a bit too much quoting, but it proly would have made a good point...but thats history....litraly...


anyways...if the fighters are[/] the size of an f-16.....then how the hell do they fit all that armour on that smily face showd us are on a fighter???? ok, according to the dev ppl the sive proly IS the size of an f-16, but it just doesn't make sense......

to be able to withstand several direct rail shot hits, without being destroyed, and with the size of an f-16, its just unrealistic.....

but maybe thats the problem: HW ISN't based on realizm...just on how the dev ppl [i]thought the ships would look...

whatever the dev ppl think/say, i still hold to the idea that the fighter is 56 m long.....cuz if it wasn't suposed to be, then y the hell did the dev ppl make the models so differently big????

thye could have made smaller models, (unitwise) and then used the NLIPS to expand them...but they didn't so that means that the dimensions, regardless of uniots have to mean SOMEthing.....

i mean the scout is around 56 units long....the MS is 7k units long ...y the difference? just use the Nlips to change them......it seems unreasonable that the 56 is pointless.......

OR..the intended the ships to have realistic sizes, but the saw that the fighters were almost invissible compared to the MS and frigs ect... so the made the NLIPS so that they can scal e the model so that the fighters are more visible...

there we go, i think that that is the reason......they INTENDED the ships to be realisticly sized, but the gameplay went down, cuz the fighters were as good as invisible, so they put in the NLIPS to increase gameplay......

problem solved....:D

[smiley fanatic]

mmmmmmm...i don't want to be a party pooper and switch sides here, but i'm guessing they might have discovered NLIPS only later on after arguing like crazed animals just like we are doing.

But, until someone official says otherwise i think Ammom Ra just gave the most convincing "units = meters" argument that even blows away Mokona's counterpoint.

[Starfisher]

Smiley, reposting an entire thread is against the forum rules. How is Ionfish rude for pointing that out? That's his job.

You knew that we would attack you for reposting the thread... yet you did it anyway. And we really didn't 'lose it' on you. No one called you a fool. No one called you an idiot.

In fact, I'm the only one who even came close to really flaming you. And all I did was comment on how you apparently did not read RELIC'S statement on the fighter size in a sarcastic way.

Your points were already posted. Some were refuted, such as the 'Homeowlrd isn't based on a space opera', and others shown to be moot by Mokana's statement.

Ammon just said the same thing I and others said. No, an F16 could not withstand a hit from a heavy rail gun. However, the fighters in HW don't follow the rules of physics very well. They perform manuevers that would jellify the pilot and probably reduce the ship to a pancake if the physics were real-world. Once you have a break in logical continuity such as that, anything else may follow.

I like to think of the fighters as big, but I can't argue with the devs of the game telling me - "You're wrong." That's like trying to argue with God. It doesn't work out.

[ÜberJumper]

No offense Muffy, but disregarding one of Relic's modeller's actually informed opinions seems a bit on the flippant side to me.

No it doesn't mean that units=meters. Still waiting to hear if Trebmal's cad software's "Units" are even close to Maya's "Units". That right there could be the whole reason Trebmal's model sizes are wrong. Hell, each of Maya's units could be one half of the size of Trebmal's cad software.

Even then, it doesn't mean that the ships were even modelled on a scale where units = meters.

Some real life ship facts. Canadian City Class frigates are 134m long and can support a crew of 224, for 90 days. Taking an extraordinary leap of logic, why would a one man fighter, that only needs to be in space for tops a couple of hours (and only has fuel for a few minutes of combat) be a little under half the size? I don't think it'd be for Engine and Armour.

This all assumes that HW ships = Starwars Ships = Star Trek Ships = Real Vessels, when we KNOW that the only thing that's REAL is actual real life Vessels. This entire thread is comparing apples to oranges.

[smiley fanatic]

StarFisher: i already apologized. what you're doing is kicking me when i'm on the ground. that's uncool, especially since i deleted the offending passages. (and saying i did it deliberately to flaunt the rules here, let me remind you that some mortal beings tend to get carried away and make human mistakes. so sorry. can we drop this silliness now? plzkthxdrvthru)

UberJumper: you know full well Mokona is simply posting his opinion as a long time member of this community and not as an official voice, especialyl since you know full well Mokona wasn't a relic employee at the time of Homeworld's development. (and since i'm assuming they're redoing HW2 from the ground up i doubt he's even allowed to SAY anything official if it's related to this subject)besides, i think you're just digging for more HW2 dirt, you sly dog youEDIT: actually, i haven't a bloody clue what you just said there, Uber.
:dolt:

[ÜberJumper]

Well Muffy, Mok works at Relic, he's modelling ships in HW2, which are follow ups to ships from HW1. He's using the same software they used to model HW ships (or a subsequent version of Maya). I think his informed opinion is VERY relevant to this topic of discussion, even if he can't comment on HW2 information (which he's not).

[trebmal_ca]

HW units are not related to real world units. but they can be if I get definite confrimation that a ship is equal to a real world object
(Moks example of the f-16) once I hear a yes a intercepter is the same size as a f-16, I can then adjust the ships accordingly and create a HW scale. I will then add the human measurments to my spreadsheet.

[smiley fanatic]

okay, uhm, Great! I suppose that's as "official" a statement we're gonna get on this subject.

Okay, so there was some misundestanding between the artists/modellers whatever that caused this "true scale" to be not true scale? sweet! at least we know that now! cool! (no flame intended)

Is there a way to figure out the REAL true scale so that a MOD can be designed to not only eliminate NLIPS, but to resize the ships to be more in line with how Shade conceptualized them oh so long ago??

IE. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT SHIPS WERE AFFECTED BY THE GOOF?


EDIT: reverse crosslink synchonization (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=108659#post108659)

[trebmal_ca]

yes a real true scale can be made. I can do it quickly with the CAD software I use. its called reference scaling, this is where object A has a dimension of xxx.xx and object B has a known dimension of 100.00
and A=B

[Artoo]

Inty=F-16 in size... now that's something which sounds reasonable to me (it could be a bit bigger;) like an F-15 or F-14) but it's a lot more realistic in my opinion... I can't wait to see the final results if any will eventually come:)


EDIT:
realistic in terms of size and not necesarly armor and firepower...

[smiley fanatic]

you know what's gonna be really ironic? is if Shade's original concept pics of what he thought was the real true scale turned out to be prophetic. hehehe

[trebmal_ca]

you will get results, once I get a confrimation.

[ÜberJumper]

The following post uses extremely rough math.

If you take a object, that's 7KM long, and put a 20M long object next to it, that's roughly equivilant to seeing 4 human hairs, side by side, on a human head viewed from the front.

If the mothership was laid out on screen, lying from top to bottom, and your screen resolution was 1284x1024, the mothership would then be 1024 pixels high. Take a unit 50m in size and it's only 7 pixels long. Zoom out so the mothership is 25% of the size, and your unit is less then 2 pixels across.

This is why they used NLIPS. Because at high resolutions, the ships are dots. Nlips scales the ships up, so you can see what they are, when you're zoomed out.

Now... I'm pretty sure they realized early on, that they'd have to scale the ships in engine to make the game even close to fun. Once you start dealing with making it look good, realism goes out the window.

[smiley fanatic]

ehhhhhhhhhhhh. but but. i still don't understand the use of NLIPS and the divergence of "units" from "meters"

of course, this issue is now moot, but i'd like to know why it diverges just as trivia.

I R LUFF TRIVIA.


disclaimer: this issue is of course separate from the real issue now: getting the UOM scaling so a true true mod can be made

[ÜberJumper]

Muffy:

As mok indicates, Relic modeled the ships to look good, not necesarily to scale. The units in the modelling program are primarily used to scale the model's components with itself, NOT with outside objects. Sure you *could* compare (and people HAVE) modelled ships with each other by putting the models into the same window, but I get the impression that that's not what happened. Relic seems to have put the models in the game, saw how they looked compared to each other, then scaled them using the NLIPS values to make them look good or rather to make them playable.

[smiley fanatic]

okay, that i understand. i also understand that's your interpretation. Having said those two things, i'd like to add i get the opposite impression. (why goto all that trouble to "scale" the AOM at all if you have to do the same darned thing with the NLIP "scale")it just VIOLATES the axiom of "KISS"

[mecha]

Because one gives you the base size and the other lets you see what's going on when you're zoomed out by messing with that base scale?

:tongue:

[trebmal_ca]

whaaa! hehe Mecha that post made sense till I saw the questionmark at the end.

[ÜberJumper]

It was a rhetorical question I think :-D

[Ammon Ra]

oh well....but at least the ships in HW:2 seem to be more realisticly sized....the fighter and the Battle Cruiser.... the turret is as big as a fighter, now [i]thats[i/] what i call realism :D

oh well, still think that the fighters are 56 M long, regardless of what the dev's say...

think im a bit too stuborn :D

[ÜberJumper]

56M long is like 150 feet dude, that's over half a football field.

But I guess that's the good part about Homeworld, it's not specific so people have the ability to make it what they want it.

[trebmal_ca]

well I have been PMing with Mok, and he said to go with the fighter thing which is why I made the poll. I will leave it open for a few days, then rescale the ships to what the majority decides.
SO VOTE!

[SvK]

Originally posted by ÜberJumper
Mok works at Relic, he's modelling ships in HW2,

So that's what he does. That's really cool. I wish I got to build spaceships for a living.

[ÜberJumper]

well... he's not Modelling apparently... just in that area.

[JargonFilter]

I have a question, in the HW manual, it says that the HC's heavy guns are like the size of a frigate, or maybe it was half the size. Now could someone tell me how that works? How in the hell would you turn that massive turrent around, at all?

--pimpster

[mecha]

How in the hell would you turn that massive turrent around, at all? Lots of enslaved gnomes

[SvK]

So that's what gnome's job is.

[yasotay]

Uber,

"Mok works at Relic, he's modelling ships in HW2, which are follow ups to ships from HW1. He's using the same software they used to model HW ships (or a subsequent version of Maya). "

Any other intel for us minion? :)

[ÜberJumper]

He's not modelling ships... just like doing some magic with them or whatever... my mistake.

[JargonFilter]

Then he's doing animation? Anyway, so thats how they turn around those giant-ass thingamabobers.

officer: "sir the enemy forces are too fast , we can't track them."
capatain: "What the hell are you doing, we have at least another 50 gnomes goofing off in the mess hall, USE them!"
officer: "but isn't that unrealistic? I like realism in my battles."
Captain: "stupid, this is a game!"

--pimpster

[Mokona]

I'm helping out with reducing the polys for the ship models to make LOD models for the game.

Mokona

[deadguy]

Was Lightwave used at some point in the modelling process? For some reason, I seem to recall how easy it was to get the geometry or something into LW when I was messing around with some of them.

[molo]

hw was built with lightwave i think 6, and hw2 is being built with maya.

[yasotay]

Mokona,

Would those polys be in metres or feet? :D

Sorry I could not resist.

[Artoo]

har har:) must be great working on models for that game...

[Mokona]

It's great, but it's hard work.

Mokona

[trebmal_ca]

yasotay got a point Mok, give me a heads up on how you are building the models, I might get the HW ones straighten out bt the time HW2 is done. (Im affarid of even dealing with the CAT ones)

[Mokona]

I already did tell you about how ships were made in HW1.. The ships are made, and then scaled. Nothing more, nothing less ^_^;;;; They were scaled against each other, with the criteria that they look good and that it would be easy to pick out ships from one another. As for HW2, I'm not at liberty to discuss how we're making the ships. Sorry :(



Mokona

[yasotay]

OK Mok,

So um how many stones does a hvy corvette weigh?:devil:

[Ammon Ra]

Originally posted by Mokona
I already did tell you about how ships were made in HW1.. The ships are made, and then scaled. Nothing more, nothing less ^_^;;;; They were scaled against each other, with the criteria that they look good and that it would be easy to pick out ships from one another. As for HW2, I'm not at liberty to discuss how we're making the ships. Sorry :(



Mokona

ok, could you guys there @ relic then at least TRY to make the models in HW:2 to scale to reduce sub forums ( and some flameing and other minor stuff...)liike this one???

OR,

u guys made the models knowing that it would spark interest like this one...hm... you guys at relic are veawy cweaver.....;)

[Artoo]

Tricky litlle rascals:D

[trebmal_ca]

as I said before, I offer my services free of charge to Relic to have the ships scaled right (my usual fee is $30 a hour)

[TI_Staffer]

There is no way, that a supposedly inferior species, with very primitive knowledge of space warfare, can have a ship that is about the size of an Imperator-class Star Destoryer yet has a crew 33 times smaller than the "superior" ship. It is sheer idocy to think this. Massive automotion can't account for this. If an Avatar can do it, an Imperator surely can. It is impossible to keep the 150 man crew size. Either the SW-to-HW ratio must be corrected, or the crew size for the Avatar has to be corrected. As it stands now, everything that people hold as "true" about HW crew size is, to put it bluntly, impossible according to the laws governing SW/HW crew comparsions. I have not set these "laws." I am merely using them to prove a point: despite what might be said, percieved HW crew sizes are too small. Until Relic releases more info, the 150 man Avatar cannot stand. It is simply too undercrewed
The whole ISD (Imperial Star Destroyer) vs. Avatar comparison is whacked, IMHO. I believe this for 3 reasons:
1. They have completely different weapons loadouts. An avatar sports under a dozen weapons emplacement, while an ISD has between 6 and 10 DOZEN ion and turbolaser batteries, depending on who you believe. More guns= more gunners & more maintenance (therefore more maintenance personnel also).
2. The ISD is a carrier in addition. It is home to 6 TIE squadrons, plus dozens of shuttles, support craft, and landing barges. These require men to crew and maintain (likely a few thousand men, based on current aircraft/groundcrew numbers)
3. The ISD carries 16,000 ground troops. nuff said.
Now that I've established they are really not comparable crew wise, because of their different armaments and capabilities, I will say I believe it could be entirely possible for a HC to be much more automated then an ISD, simply because of the facts that the Galactic Empire probably never had to give much thought to automation, because they had plenty of people, while the relatively few Kushan could have invested quite alot in AI to augment their small population.

[Artoo]

Keep in mind that AI in the universum of Star Wars is very advanced... take droids for example... or an even better example - The Katana Fleet from the Trawn Trilogy consisting of Dreadnoughts higly automated to reduce crew sizes.

[trebmal_ca]

according to the book I have ISD has 30,000 ground troops, 2500 officers and about 7000 crew. plus a ISD is alot bigger than a HC.

[TI_Staffer]

Another reason that a HC could need more space for less crew is ammo.
Turbolasers and SW ion cannons only need energy. Sure, the ISD needs some stored concussion misssles and other strike craft warheads (although not many, because the only common fighter in the imperial fleet that uses projectiles is the TIE Bomber).
HC mass drivers need lots of BIG projectiles (I'm sure someone here can make a guess on the caliber of heavy mass driver turrets), and some way to move these multi ton projetiles quickly into firing positions. (I will assume for the moment they are in the same size range as US Navy Iowa class cannon caliber wise). Thats some heavy machinery.
I do not believe they use automation extensively in Star Wars. I think that, while they could automate alot on their ships (such as the Alderaanian frigs in The Bacta War), the whole Katana fleet disaster sorta put a shadow over the use of that automation. The Rogues only automated their frigates because they didnt have the personnel to run them with human crews, for example.

[trebmal_ca]

from what I can figure, with the size and comparision, the projectile from the HC heavy guns, is about the size of a greyhound bus.

[Artoo]

lol that's a hell of a projectile:)

The Katana Fleet disaster put automatics of indeed... However it still shows the potential Star Wars technology has... Oh, and if I'm not mistaking it was automated for the same reason those frigs from Bacta War were - lack of crews. The Katana fleet was pretty big and each not automated dread took a lot of people on board.

[JAL-18]

Staffer:

1. Have you seen the size of the HC's guns compared to an ISD's? The main battery turrets on an ISD are what? 50 meters long? Now compare this to the 150 meter long Heavy Guns....what type of manitanece do you think THOSE monsters need?
2. Look at the HW carrier: even with aircrew, it has been said it is maned only by 200 people....200 people out of the crew of in ISD would hardely be missed.
3. HW does not utilize Ship-to-ground combat of any sort. This is a completely irrelevent point.


My arguement still stands. (and note: my roughly 5000 ISD crew size figure referred to before was excluding all the ground troop/aircrew/misc crew....)

As to the ammo arguement:

Granted, ammo could take up alot of space, but 2 things:

1. The HC has ALOT of internal space. It would fit somewhere.
2. IF HW awas realistic (which has already been covered before) you would eventually run out of ammo.

Oh and a battleship could carry roughly 2000 rounds of ammo for the main guns...

(Also note: Ion cannons don't need ammunition ;) )

trebmal: my first arguement was made when it was thought 1 unit=1 meter. And while your ship scaleing is very impressive, I personally believe that it kinda went out the window when you scaled the scout to certain size, than kept the Mom-ship at 7000 but scaled everything else to the scout scale.
According to your scale, how long is the HC now?

[trebmal_ca]

Jal-18, go here (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8442) . I forgot to update the spreadsheet image. the numbers are there.

[JAL-18]

trebmal, while those numbers do point to the HC being smaller, even if those were the excepted Relic figures, I'd still say that the HC has a crew of at least 450.

[frstkor13]

This was a great thread with lots of awesome discussion. Thanks to trembal and SvK for their work and mok for some insight.