Unrealistic scale...

[crizh]

Having seen some discussion about telepaths and starship combat it has always been in the back of my mind that the starship combat scale might be a little on the large side.

It dawned on me yesterday that it should be possible to calculate the correct scale for starship combat from the ship designs.

A Starfury has an acceleration of 10 (12 with its afterburners) which means it can go from a standing start to 10 hexes, or 50,000 ft, per combat round in one combat round. That is a velocity of 2540 meters per second which makes the vehicles acceleration 423 meters per second per second.

That's 43 G's. (52 with afterburners)

No gravimetric drive, no inertial dampeners. Just a pressure suit and a seat belt.

That is almost exactly five times more than a human pilot can endure.

I hereby propose that the starship combat scale ought to be reduced to 1000ft per hex.

Comments?

 

[lastbesthope]

[snip]

Edited this one when I realised I got my numbers wrong, nothing to see here, move along

LBH

 

[Barbara]

Internet- improves so many things. Unfortunately, the ability to publically humiliate yourself before a large audience is one of them.

 

[frobisher]

I hereby propose that the starship combat scale ought to be reduced to 1000ft per hex.

You do realise what size that makes the "hexes" compared to the ships..?

 

[crizh]

I hereby propose that the starship combat scale ought to be reduced to 1000ft per hex.

You do realise what size that makes the "hexes" compared to the ships..?

Nope.

On the other hand, what difference does it make?

The current scale is flat wrong.

Everybody in an EA ship capable of more than acceleration 2 gets turned to jam about three seconds into their first combat.

Or passes out and gets blown to bits by the bad guys....

 

[Perturbatio]

The reason he's working in Hexes btw is because I decided to switch to them. It makes life much easier.

 

[frobisher]

I hereby propose that the starship combat scale ought to be reduced to 1000ft per hex.

You do realise what size that makes the "hexes" compared to the ships..?

Nope.

On the other hand, what difference does it make?

This would make most starships 3 hexes long at minimum (the Whitestar is almost exactly a hex long). Basically you're dealing with single occupancy hexes for starters, you'll need some concept of where the centre of mass of the ship is, where the front and back slew around to on a turn etc...

The current scale is flat wrong.

No disagreement there though...

However, I think you've been a little too extreme with your scaling back; Reducing ground scale to 10000 ft per hex would actually keep things in a human tolerable range.

Oh, wait that's about 3km to a hex

 

[crizh]

Looking at the ships and the revised size scale it would seem that you should be able to comfortably fit at least 2 Colossal III spacecraft (Sharlin, Nova etc) into a 1000ft hex.

B5 itself would be 26 hexes long and probably about 8 wide...

 

[frobisher]

Looking at the ships and the revised size scale it would seem that you should be able to comfortably fit at least 2 Colossal III spacecraft (Sharlin, Nova etc) into a 1000ft hex.

B5 itself would be 26 hexes long and probably about 8 wide...

Except of course a Sharlin or Nova aren't that small

The Nova is 1300m(ish), so call that nearly 4 hexes long...

 

[Aramanthus]

And actually even there there are a few things wrong. The Warlock and the Victory being the biggest ones. They are both bigger than the stats listed. THe warlock should be larger than the Omega.

 

[crizh]

Holy Zarquon singing fish man.

Google has revealed that this subject is an explosive keg of bile and disagreement.

Have a look at this.

http://www.sizor.com/cvn65/

Compare that to a Nova Dreadnought which is over four time as long and carries a crew of 250. An Omega is five times as long and has a more reasonable crew of 850. (LOL)

Interestingly, an Omega appears to weigh about 500 times as much as Enterprise. Even at five times the length and five times the radius that is about twenty times too much.


Is it Gold plated or sumfink?

A Warlock is longer than a Star Wars Star Destroyer.!!???!!!

The 'Official' scales for B5 shipping are ENORMOUS....

I mean, you think its a long way down to the end of the road to buy a packet of peanuts.....

 

[frobisher]

Have a look at this.

http://www.sizor.com/cvn65/

Compare that to a Nova Dreadnought which is over four time as long and carries a crew of 250. An Omega is five times as long and has a more reasonable crew of 850. (LOL)

Spaceship design and wet navy design are too entirely different things...

And besides, that little boat isn't in the same league as current day supertankers which mass out at 500,000 tons, amd they only have crews in the low dozens. It does demonstrate that it wouldn't be outrageous to cram 25,000 GROPOS onto a Nova though (well, at least not in terms of volume).

Interestingly, an Omega appears to weigh about 500 times as much as Enterprise. Even at five times the length and five times the radius that is about twenty times too much.

Nope, only 4 times too much (volume is 125 times that of Enterprise in rough terms).

Is it Gold plated or sumfink?

Also, Enterprise is designed to float (i.e. is mostly air), the Omega doesn't have to However, I'd take mass and crew figures with several pinches of salt. The Omega's operational crew is as low as 300 ("The Path of Sorrows") or as much as 1000 ("Endgame").

A Warlock is longer than a Star Wars Star Destroyer.!!???!!!

The 'Official' scales for B5 shipping are ENORMOUS....

Damn straight But that's also the size they are shown in the series.

B5 is stated to be 5 miles long, and an Omega is about a fifth of the length of it in the comparison shots we were given.

 

[Kizarvexis]

Everybody in an EA ship capable of more than acceleration 2 gets turned to jam about three seconds into their first combat.

Or passes out and gets blown to bits by the bad guys....

I think most Sci-fi series have this problem. According to a Star Trek TM I read in a Barnes and Nobles once, the inertial dampers on ST ships have a very slight delay. At warp speeds, this delay is long enough to to put severe g loading on the crew. In some cases, enough to flatten them into jelly. I would suggest not trying to put real life physics into space combat as otherwise it is very boring. Unless you want boring space battles in your TV show. At least B5 took a passing nod towards physics which many other shows and movies did not.

Kizarvexis

 

[crizh]

Nope, only 4 times too much (volume is 125 times that of Enterprise in rough terms).

Doh!

Must get more sleep....

 

[Aramanthus]

The Warlock should closer to the 2000m mark. And the Victory should be nearly 3km.

 

[frobisher]

A couple of reference sites (the second has considerably more weight with regards B5 though, so Fabio's sizes are the ones to go with...)

Starship Dimensions
http://www.merzo.net/index.html

Fabio's site
http://www.meshweaver.com/Craft_Comparisons/Craft_Comparisons_1.htm

 

[Greg Smith]

I think most Sci-fi series have this problem. According to a Star Trek TM I read in a Barnes and Nobles once, the inertial dampers on ST ships have a very slight delay. At warp speeds, this delay is long enough to to put severe g loading on the crew. In some cases, enough to flatten them into jelly.

Kizarvexis

The TNG TM states that planned maneuvers, ie those programmed into the ship's flight controls, can be countered effectively and immediately by the inertial dampeners; while suprise movement - ie impact by enemy weapons cannot - giving rise to the shaking screen/rocking crew effect.

 

[crizh]

Standard acceleration speeds for a War Cruiser are estimated to be 60 km/s2.

:shock:

That's over 6000G's.

In B5 D20 terms that's Acc:236

 

[frobisher]

Standard acceleration speeds for a War Cruiser are estimated to be 60 km/s2.

:shock:

That's over 6000G's.

In B5 D20 terms that's Acc:236

It should be noted you referenced b5tech.com which has absolutely no canon basis for pretty much most of their stuff. Almost all their "facts and figures" are completely made up, as are the weapon systems, power plants, days of the week... etc.

(A pet gripe I have with the site is regards the Liandra, which they state categorically doesn't have a jump engine, citing that we never saw it use it in "Legends of the Rangers" - despite specific reference to it being damaged by the Hand attack given in dialogue.)

That acceleration figure just doesn't jive with the performance of the Shadow vessels which can be worked out from the episode "Shadow Dancing".

 

[crizh]

It should be noted you referenced b5tech.com which has absolutely no canon basis for pretty much most of their stuff. Almost all their "facts and figures" are completely made up, as are the weapon systems, power plants, days of the week... etc.
.

Babylon 5 Technical Manual
Great technical link for Babylon 5, most of my B5 ship sizes came from here with the exceptions described above.

It all seems kinda circular. I said you said he said she said I said. Boils down to I said.

I agree B5tech is appalling. Virtually nothing appears to be canon, it is pure conjecture stated as fact with no supporting evidence. Particularly bad is their habit of quoting canon sources for the name of some engine or hyperdrive and then immediately supplying some performance figure for it that they have conjured up out of thin air. They attempt to associate the number with the referenced name without even hinting that the number is anything other than canon.

The point being that almost every other source of ship sizes for B5 I can find on the net use B5tech as a primary or secondary source.

If I cannot trust one number on B5tech I cannot trust any of them.