[George] Ship dimensions and scale

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
Cirevam
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For a while I and some other people in IRC have been having discussions about the dimensions of some of the ships, specifically the Wolfen. On IRC Day George said that he would post the exponential scale if we reminded him, so here's that reminder!

And if anyone hasn't seen this topic yet, there's a bunch of work-in-progress images in this topic that I have made.
Vachtra
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I just figured the sizes were more place holders and made game play easier. I can't imagine actually trying to use the artificial moon or 10k starship at the pixels listed.

In my mind there should be a cap, probably 1/3 the main screen size (or 1/9 the screen area). I would think a log function would work better for this purpose where you have a limited space to show representations. Images would still get bigger but would have a definite limit and the difference would taper more quickly.

At some point the complexness, or lack thereof, of the ship or base would be what would make it seem bigger. For instance the artificial moon is more or less round. There aren't huge noticeable spires or landing ramps when you view it at a scale were you can see the whole thing, it looks like a moon, more or less smooth.

Dividing the planets, stations and ships is still a good idea, as mentioned they're not on the same plane and it helps create depth.
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Cirevam
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A small gunship is 25 meters long, and my Wolfen is 25.5 meters long. It looks like I was in the right ballpark. The rest of these will be useful too. Thank you George!
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Ttech
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this is pretty awesome, too bad we can't do one of those scale charts! Or maybe we can. :o
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Cirevam
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Scale chart! Just three ships and a station, but it gives you an idea. From left to right, Wolfen (25m), Charon Frigate (100m), Xenophobe Worldship (350m), Armored Commonwealth Station (1km), The Prince (5cm). I'm not sure if the frigate counts as a "large gunship" but it is 128px long so I guess it's in that class.

http://imageshack.us/a/img338/2402/scaletest000.jpg
RPC
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Cirevam: Nice! Mind if I add it to wiki?
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Cirevam
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I'd like to make a nicer one first, at least one with textures, maybe some extra ships and one of the smaller stations. Give me a few days, then you're welcome to add it.
RPC
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Ok, sweet :D
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I don't want any sort of copyright on my Transcendence mods. Feel free to take/modify whatever you want.
Amariithynar
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Thanks George!

Now, I look at small gunship and think Hornet, not Wolfen. Is the Wolfen meant to be a small gunship or a medium gunship, George?
FourFire
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The hornet is a battlepod; basically a gun on a rocket engine.
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Xanthe V
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Alright. I've made a new ship called the Longsword-class frigate. 24 armor segments, plus dual and omni-directional equipment. By the way dont forget D' MAG launcher... :wink: Anyway, I also made a version of it 4 Playership Drones V5 (Warning: Requires PSDV5). If U wanna download pls click on d' link.

http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=1216
Let's get this show on the road.

By the way, my username on Xelerus is Alfael X. heheheh... ;-)

Stats:

-A pilot of a Stalwart-class gunship

-Fleet Lieutenant of the Commonwealth Fleet

-A new Xelerus user
Vachtra
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I always thought of the battle pod as and escape pod with a gun maybe the size of an auton or a little bigger.
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Vachtra
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Ok, I've hit upon a nice little natural log function that pretty well follows the current size chart but that tapers the bigger ships that for the most part haven't come up yet. It gets a little different in places but for game planning of part II should work nicely.

Just to be clear, this is only a suggestion.

This equation is for ships.
Y= pixels
X=meters
Y=3((ln(X))^2.5)

The original formula Y=5(X^0.7) and the proposed one look like fingers crossing on a graph for the most part.
The ship chart would come out as such.

meters - ln function - exponent function
10,000 - 772 px - 3,150 px
5,000 - 635 px - 1,950 px
2,500 - 513 px - 1,200 px
1,000 - 376 px - 640 px
500 - 288 px - 390 px
350 - 249 px - 300 px
250 - 215 px - 240 px
100 - 136 px - 128 px
50 - 91 px - 78 px
20 - 46 px - 48 px
10 - 24 px - 25 px
5 - 10 px - 15 px

You can see right off that the larger ships are a more manageable size where the small ships aren't a lot different. 5, 10 and 20 meter ships probably wouldn't change at all since the size is so similar. I wouldn't suggest a 10 pixel ship. 50 and 100 meter ships might need to be resized up a little and the rest start to resized down. Of course everything was rounded in the first place so it might not be an issue with images at all until you hit small capital ships, 250 meters.
I also looked at making the 3 a 2.8 but the ships were getting a little small at the larger ship end and would not have been big enough.
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Cirevam
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Here's a sample of various ships from Hornet to Phobos:

Image

Stations and more ships will come later.
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