Originally by: Iria Ahrens

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Edited by: Iria Ahrens on 13/08/2009 04:08:39

Originally by: Irida Mershkov

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The thing that bugs me the most, is that frigates, which are well, frigates, and are pretty big, a Rifter is about the size of a 747 if I remember correctly. Yet, they maneuver like fighters.

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I think this entire thread is funny, but this one really made me lol. In Honor Harrington, a penance, which is essentially a parasite landing boat that fits inside a frigate's boat bay and has no warp capability is described specifically as being about the size as 747.

Scale for spaceships is based on the innards of a ship not seagoing equivalents. Since this technology doesn't exist for real, authors have to make assumption about how "big" each essential subsystem is.

Warp Systems
Thrust Systems
Comms
Particle shielding
Inertial control.
Antigravity.

In "Sci-fantasy" like Star Trek and especially Star Wars, where the Authors barely even pay lip service to such things, you end up with really small ships. But lots of other authors come up with even bigger ships. Babylon 5 had an explorer ship docked for a time that was bigger than the space system itself, it was described as just ONE HUGE ENGINE.

Inertial dampeners don't just let your ship accelerate faster as they do in EVE, they are there so you don't turn to a goey paste when your ship goes from zero to over 10km/sec in just a few seconds. In good sci-fi ships are eliminated not always by blowing them up, but sometimes a glancing hit will hit the inertial dampener and suddenly accelerate the occupants into the nearest wall. The ship just continues off into space. But how big are these dampeners? A lot of writers don't even consider it and "magic it up." other writers at least set aside a certain amount of ships mass for it.

Comms. We all know how big a radio is, but how about a faster than light com that can communicate anywhere in known space? In Mutiner's Moon the Ship Dahak, which was the size of the Earth's moon, in fact it was disguised as the earth's moon, said that the majority of its mass was dedicated to the Hypercom and Enchnach drive, the Enchnach drive was a type of warp drive that teleported the ship short distances.

Thrust systems - I don't know why but apparently EVE still uses rocket engines, whether solid or liquid fueled, rocket engines are big. There's no getting around it. Unless it's Sci-magic like star wars where the author again didn't put any thought at all to how big rocket powered ships would be. Star Trek at least uses "impulse" engines not rockets, so they can be forgiven for not having monstrous engines, but the engines still take up about 1/4-1/3 the mass of some ships. But when known technology is used in sci-fi, then we can make educated guesses about size, and any engine that propels itself by ejecting mass is going to be HUGE. If an author decides to invent a new technology, like impulse engines, then the size of the engine is entirely up to that writer.

Shielding, the Shields presumadely take up mass too, but how big does a shield have to be cover a specific area, and how quickly does that change? Again, many authors don't even think about it and just magic it in. But another thing making ships big is attempting to create shields that have a given number of HP and can extend to a given distance.

Antigravity: how big does an anti-gravity engine have to be and how does it scale with ship size? Something again, lots of author's will barely pay lip service to, Star Trek has "anti-grav" plating that is essentially the size of floor tiles. How convenient, Not so in other books.

Don't compare EVE ship sizes to ships in Books/movies where the author didn't even consider these things, compare them to ships of author's that did. And you'll have a whole different perspective about ship sizes.

If anything, I think a lot of ships should be made bigger, especially carriers.

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