Originally by: Arthur Frayn

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Edited by: Arthur Frayn on 03/08/2009 17:19:14
In space, there's no drag from air, no measurable effect of gravity away from planets, all directions take equal force to move in. The most practical ship by far would look like a sphere because it allows for the most volume per square meter of surface area.

The closest Eve has to a spherical ship is unfortunately the Dominix, so it's probably the most practical. A real practical ship would be a sphere with a predefined front and back end with the main engines at the back and smaller thrusters to turn it around. There are still many symmetrical ships in eve and they are definitely more practical than the unsymmetrical ones in terms of usable volume and distribution of thrusters to push the ship's mass equally across its volume.

There are only two reasons I can think of right now to make a ship non spherical:

1. If some ship systems needed to be located away from others so that all systems work without interfering with each other.

2. If a specific hull shape allowed for faster warp speeds or maneuvering in a planet's atmosphere.

Otherwise, being closer to a balloon in shape than any other ship, the Dominix is the most practical.

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Originally by: Sniper Wolf18

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Most things are box shaped and have edges, so unless you're going to be storing nothing but liquid in the ship a sphere isn't best. Triangular shapes have the most sturctural integrety iirc and they would deflect weapons blasts better.

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Originally by: Zarro Starkiler

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but remember, ships are build for different purposes. In a combat ship you need armour, secondary systems, screw quarters. This would all affect the shape of ships. What if some of the ships are designed to do low orbit fighting as well.

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Originally by: Mr Sean

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Originally by: Zarro Starkiler

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but remember, ships are build for different purposes. In a combat ship you need armour, secondary systems, screw quarters. This would all affect the shape of ships. What if some of the ships are designed to do low orbit fighting as well.

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lol'ing @ screw quarters. My domi dosn't seem to come with screw quarters by default, how can I get some?

:-)

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Originally by: Arthur Frayn

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Edited by: Arthur Frayn on 03/08/2009 17:27:49

Originally by: Sniper Wolf18

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Most things are box shaped and have edges, so unless you're going to be storing nothing but liquid in the ship a sphere isn't best. Triangular shapes have the most sturctural integrety iirc and they would deflect weapons blasts better.

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A sphere is stronger than a trapezium because it's a continuous arch where the trapezium has weaker flat sides. It's the same reason an arch bridge can bear more weight than a flat one. It's also not hard to put a cube inside a sphere, define that as living space and ships systems, and use the all the extra bits of the sphere for bulk cargo/ammo storage.

And where did you get the idea that exotic future weapons would be deflected better by triangular hull shapes when we can't even define the properties of these weapons?

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Originally by: Sniper Wolf18

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Originally by: Arthur Frayn

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Edited by: Arthur Frayn on 03/08/2009 17:27:49

Originally by: Sniper Wolf18

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Most things are box shaped and have edges, so unless you're going to be storing nothing but liquid in the ship a sphere isn't best. Triangular shapes have the most sturctural integrety iirc and they would deflect weapons blasts better.

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A sphere is stronger than a trapezium because it's a continuous arch where the trapezium has weaker flat sides. It's the same reason an arch bridge can bear more weight than a flat one. It's also not hard to put a cube inside a sphere, define that as living space and ships systems, and use the all the extra bits of the sphere for bulk cargo/ammo storage.

And where did you get the idea that exotic future weapons would be deflected better by triangular hull shapes when we can't even define the properties of these weapons?

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Hybrids and projectiles are similar enough to our weapons right now, they're just hurling matter really fast at whatever you dont like.

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Originally by: Arthur Frayn

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In space, you have to expect that some incoming fire will hit your flat hull plates at perpendicular angles which will ignore the advantage of the triangular shape. With a spherical ship, the energy of the hit is spread around the surface area of the sphere, reducing damage taken at point of impact. Also, oblique shots will bounce off the sphere effectively as if it were a flat surface.

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Originally by: stoicfaux

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Originally by: Arthur Frayn

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In space, you have to expect that some incoming fire will hit your flat hull plates at perpendicular angles which will ignore the advantage of the triangular shape. With a spherical ship, the energy of the hit is spread around the surface area of the sphere, reducing damage taken at point of impact. Also, oblique shots will bounce off the sphere effectively as if it were a flat surface.

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That's a non-starter. In Eve you can ram ships and nothing happens. Plus with nearly instant shot travel times, Eve rounds are traveling at a noticeable fraction of the speed of light, which means that simple solid slugs would make nasty kinetic kill weapons. However, eve guns have ammo types, which implies that slugs are not used and thus direct kinetic strikes are not used to kill ships in eve.

Which all implies that Eve ships are invincible to direct kinetic attacks, so you don't need to worry about deflecting rounds with shaped hulls/armor.

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Originally by: Rhinanna

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Difficult to hit - A sphere is the easiest shape to hit, regardless of it's direction to you, you get a large variance in both the X and Y dimension before you miss. A hurricane or drake however are long and thin, so while you can afford quite a lot of variance on the X axis, a very slight variance on the Y axis will cause a miss results in overall a larger percentage of misses.

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Originally by: stoicfaux

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That's a non-starter. In Eve you can ram ships and nothing happens. Plus with nearly instant shot travel times, Eve rounds are traveling at a noticeable fraction of the speed of light, which means that simple solid slugs would make nasty kinetic kill weapons. However, eve guns have ammo types, which implies that slugs are not used and thus direct kinetic strikes are not used to kill ships in eve.

Which all implies that Eve ships are invincible to direct kinetic attacks, so you don't need to worry about deflecting rounds with shaped hulls/armor.

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Originally by: Rhinanna

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Difficult to hit - A sphere is the easiest shape to hit, regardless of it's direction to you, you get a large variance in both the X and Y dimension before you miss.

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Originally by: Messoroz

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Originally by: stoicfaux

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Which all implies that Eve ships are invincible to direct kinetic attacks, so you don't need to worry about deflecting rounds with shaped hulls/armor.

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Uh, ships have shields, shields are meant to deflect **** and hence are deflecting other ships.

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Originally by: stoicfaux

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The real question is, is there any fluff that explains why eve ships are so randomly/oddly shaped?

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Originally by: stoicfaux

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Originally by: Messoroz

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Originally by: stoicfaux

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Which all implies that Eve ships are invincible to direct kinetic attacks, so you don't need to worry about deflecting rounds with shaped hulls/armor.

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Uh, ships have shields, shields are meant to deflect **** and hence are deflecting other ships.

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