Ship Scaling

[Warrax]

As much as I appreciatethe use and utility of the Ship Scaling Tool, it has a least one significant shortcoming ...

 

That is, everything scales up in relative terms.  The issue that i have with this, works like this ...

Say you built a very nice, small ship.  If you decide to scale it up (say double size it), well, your armour also doubles in thickness.  The rate at which your armour expand, in terms of weight is NOT matched by your Gyros and Directional Thrusters.

 

Therefore, your maneuverability will be reduced.

 

Solution:  remove all armour before expanding, then re-clad the ship with armour of the same thicknesses as before.

[Kamo]

Making ships smaller with the rescale also causes drastic reduction in hangar (and therefore fighter) size, cargo/torpedo storage, and torpedo shaft size (so the Naru, which is a 0.75 rescale with size-5 torpedo shafts, fires size-3.75 :-\).

The thickness thing is interesting. Maneuvrability should stay the same if thruster strength scaled with volume and therefore mass, so there's significant added inertia: the speed from 1 kN thrust on 1 ton is mistakenly greater than the speed from 10 kN thrust on 10 tons...

It's pretty visible on the Konno, which has almost half her volume as yaw thrusters and gyros, though her yaw is "only" 0.49 rad/s. If I downsized it 0.5x I'm almost certain the yaw would shoot to the 4 rad/s cap.

 

Maybe that inertia has been added to make bigger ships less maneuverable because it "should" be, by gaming/hollywood/whatever standards, while in Avorion it shouldn't be the case, as having a bigger ship increases proportional space for more engines and thrusters (which is one of the reasons big ships tend to go and turn faster than smaller ships) !

[AstroOwl]

Maneuvrability should stay the same if thruster strength scaled with volume and therefore mass, so there's significant added inertia: the speed from 1 kN thrust on 1 ton is mistakenly greater than the speed from 10 kN thrust on 10 tons...

 

No, it should not stay the same (if we are talking about how real physics work). What you say works only for linear acceleration (and it, indeed, stays the same in Avorion after scaling, as it should be IRL).

 

Rotational acceleration is inversely proportional to moment of inertia, which, in turn, is proportional to V*a^2  = a^3*a^5 = a^5 (that is, volume*linear scale^2, or, since volume = scale^3, moment of inertia is proportional to linear scale to the power of 5).

Rotational acceleration is directly proportional to thruster torque, which, in turn, is directly proportional both to thruster volume V and lever, which also scales lineary, so tourque is proportional to V*a = a^3*a^1 = a^4.

 

Since a^4 grows slower than a^5, rotational acceleraton lowers as you upscale the same ship. Everything according to how actual physics work.

[Jester]

I think you are both right (Astro Owl and Kamo).

 

 

I am not a ship builder, so I rely on others for the designs I like, then modify them to the scale I need.

I don't think it's an issue, but the general results I have had, align to what Warrax described.

Again, for me it's a non-issue, I think the Game Coding gets it right enough.

 

Besides, I would rather seen the Devs prioritize getting all they need done for the launch (that I patiently / impatiently wait for).

 

Go Go Devs !!  ;)

[bpleshek]

I wonder if the issue here is related to the square-cube law.  That basically means(according to Wiki):

 

"When an object undergoes a proportional increase in size, its new surface area is proportional to the square of the multiplier and its new volume is proportional to the cube of the multiplier."

 

So it ought to take a lot more engines to get the same thrust.

[TESL4]

Square cube law indeed!  Gets ya everytime

[Warrax]

Insightful observation, bplshek, thank you.

:)