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Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: January 26, 2021, 02:57:56 AM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on January 25, 2021, 07:32:28 PM
Quote from: Squigles on January 25, 2021, 06:11:36 PM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on January 25, 2021, 04:10:57 PM
I remember seeing this in a thread (or maybe on Reddit?) a while ago (originally it was suggested to be gaseous hydrogen which made no sense when we ran the numbers). However I've not seen a source linking this back to official lore and I personally dislike it - not on any scientific grounds, I'm just attached to my WWII-analogue ship classes and tonnages.  ;)

Here ya go.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aurora4x/comments/7y9la5/whats_a_ton/dui2wwc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Excellent, thanks.

Thinking about it, 14 m3 being one "ton" seems in the ballpark of tons being literal mass. Aluminum for example has a density of roughly 2.7 tons/m3, so for 14 m3 of volume to contain one ton of mass would imply about a 3% volume fraction of an aluminum alloy. My recollection from some investigation I did a while ago was that most ships had average mass densities in the range of 1% to 10% of the theoretical density of the primary structural material (obviously there is space for crew, component access, actuating mechanisms, wiring/cabling, etc.).

Does this mean anything important? No. Am I pleased that my personal headcanon can be mathematically justified? Of course!  ;D

I think that we have to assume that Duranium is some form of metal like compound that can be combined with other TN materials to form into many different types of materials with different properties. Duranium is what most stuff is actually made of in Aurora in terms of physical properties and especially ship hulls and many times armour.

In terms of crew I certainly assume that automation is a bit better in Aurora than in most equally sized ships of today.   ;)

Also... Mass is not important for Aurora in terms of ship movement, ships probably don't have much of any thrusts other than for very fine adjustments for docking. Travelling the stars in Aurora is purely based on ships volume, ships actually can weigh any amount of actual mass.

When I envision ships in Aurora they don't look much like most sci fi ships of most lore, certainly not with an engine at the back. I envision ships looking more like if they use and Alcubiere (https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/172699/the-effect-of-multiple-alcubierre-rings) drive or something similar where the "fuel" is not the actual driving force but the stuff that sinks the ships into the Eather. This makes the ships sort of fall through the Eather or surf it by displacing it in real space by micro displacement in space. Ships sort of blink in and out of existence in our universe and that is how the can instantly travel from one point to another without incurring any actual thrust or G force on either the ship or the crew inside it.
We also need to assume that a ship automatically adjust its relative speed to any gravity object it is close to, this is also why a ship don't have to alter thrust in order to match it's relative speed as it get's closer and closer to another object that exerts a large enough gravity force, the larger the object and the closer you are too it the ship will match the relative speed to that object without effecting either the ship or the crews energy "Magic". This is also one reason why objects larger than 500t can land on planets and other bodies as gravity somehow interfere with the drive systems.
Posted by: serger
« on: January 26, 2021, 01:52:19 AM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on January 25, 2021, 07:32:28 PM
My recollection from some investigation I did a while ago was that most ships had average mass densities in the range of 1% to 10% of the theoretical density of the primary structural material (obviously there is space for crew, component access, actuating mechanisms, wiring/cabling, etc.).

Does this mean anything important? No.

Well, TNE materials are very good in the sense of strength/mass, I think we must agree on it.  :)

And I think liquid hydrogen displacement means Aether is filled with this stuff.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: January 25, 2021, 07:32:28 PM »

Quote from: Squigles on January 25, 2021, 06:11:36 PM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on January 25, 2021, 04:10:57 PM
I remember seeing this in a thread (or maybe on Reddit?) a while ago (originally it was suggested to be gaseous hydrogen which made no sense when we ran the numbers). However I've not seen a source linking this back to official lore and I personally dislike it - not on any scientific grounds, I'm just attached to my WWII-analogue ship classes and tonnages.  ;)

Here ya go.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aurora4x/comments/7y9la5/whats_a_ton/dui2wwc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Excellent, thanks.

Thinking about it, 14 m3 being one "ton" seems in the ballpark of tons being literal mass. Aluminum for example has a density of roughly 2.7 tons/m3, so for 14 m3 of volume to contain one ton of mass would imply about a 3% volume fraction of an aluminum alloy. My recollection from some investigation I did a while ago was that most ships had average mass densities in the range of 1% to 10% of the theoretical density of the primary structural material (obviously there is space for crew, component access, actuating mechanisms, wiring/cabling, etc.).

Does this mean anything important? No. Am I pleased that my personal headcanon can be mathematically justified? Of course!  ;D
Posted by: StarshipCactus
« on: January 25, 2021, 06:49:56 PM »

All the kitchen and cleaning staff have been replaced by robots.
Posted by: Squigles
« on: January 25, 2021, 06:11:36 PM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on January 25, 2021, 04:10:57 PM
I remember seeing this in a thread (or maybe on Reddit?) a while ago (originally it was suggested to be gaseous hydrogen which made no sense when we ran the numbers). However I've not seen a source linking this back to official lore and I personally dislike it - not on any scientific grounds, I'm just attached to my WWII-analogue ship classes and tonnages.  ;)

Here ya go.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aurora4x/comments/7y9la5/whats_a_ton/dui2wwc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: January 25, 2021, 04:10:57 PM »

Quote from: TheTalkingMeowth on January 25, 2021, 11:58:33 AM
Latest US supercarrier has a significantly lower crew:displacement ratio (4200/100k, I think this includes aircrew, this was one of the selling points). I.e. continual automation improvements reduce crew requirements. Aurora should expect even smaller numbers.

Makes perfect sense of course.

Quote
From what other people have said, the "larger than a standard ton" thing comes from the "displacement" actually being the volume to displace 1 tonne of liquid hydrogen. Thus, a "50 tonne" ship is actually specifying the VOLUME of the ship, not its mass.

I remember seeing this in a thread (or maybe on Reddit?) a while ago (originally it was suggested to be gaseous hydrogen which made no sense when we ran the numbers). However I've not seen a source linking this back to official lore and I personally dislike it - not on any scientific grounds, I'm just attached to my WWII-analogue ship classes and tonnages.  ;)
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: January 25, 2021, 11:58:33 AM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on January 25, 2021, 12:11:30 AM
Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on January 24, 2021, 09:07:22 AM
I think that the "problem" with Aurora is that is does not actually model things like Star Wars X-Wing and Tie-fighter equivalent space crafts. Even at 50t a ship in Aurora are roughly equal to a coastal corvette in real life. 50t in Aurora is roughly about the size of a 700t wet navy vessel or something like this.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visby-class_corvette.

A ship at about 7500t are roughly equal in size of a Nimitz aircraft carrier.  ;)

We obviously can role-play things all we want, but I think the crew requirement is meant to reflect allot bigger ships than we normally envision.

This is interesting because my experiences would seem to indicate the opposite.

Glancing at an older spreadsheet I used in a previous campaign, WW2-era RN cruisers (most in the 7000-13000 ton range) would have somewhere in the range of 500-900 crew members depending on tonnage and so on. More recently, using the Nimitz as an example again that 100,000-ton ship has a complement of 6,000 including 3,500 ship's crew (the rest being air crew).

By contrast in Aurora a 10,000-15,000 ton warship might have somewhere from 300-500 crew typically just ballpark from experience and a couple quick checks, which is roughly half what you see for those WWII-era cruisers but in a similar proportion to a Nimitz (ship's crew only). If anything I would suggest that based on crew numbers an "Aurora ton" would be a fraction of a "real-life" naval displacement ton - which of course is a view I've yet to see anyone espouse on this forum (I'm certainly not suggesting it to be true!).

Personally I take tons to be literal tons, as they are a unit of mass as well as displacement/weight so there's no reason this can't be the case. I've seen references to things like "void displacement" and "ton of hydrogen" but I've not yet seen how any of those are clearly defined to be larger than a "standard" ton, thus I proceed happily with my own headcanon.

Latest US supercarrier has a significantly lower crew:displacement ratio (4200/100k, I think this includes aircrew, this was one of the selling points). I.e. continual automation improvements reduce crew requirements. Aurora should expect even smaller numbers.

From what other people have said, the "larger than a standard ton" thing comes from the "displacement" actually being the volume to displace 1 tonne of liquid hydrogen. Thus, a "50 tonne" ship is actually specifying the VOLUME of the ship, not its mass.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: January 25, 2021, 12:11:30 AM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on January 24, 2021, 09:07:22 AM
I think that the "problem" with Aurora is that is does not actually model things like Star Wars X-Wing and Tie-fighter equivalent space crafts. Even at 50t a ship in Aurora are roughly equal to a coastal corvette in real life. 50t in Aurora is roughly about the size of a 700t wet navy vessel or something like this.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visby-class_corvette.

A ship at about 7500t are roughly equal in size of a Nimitz aircraft carrier.  ;)

We obviously can role-play things all we want, but I think the crew requirement is meant to reflect allot bigger ships than we normally envision.

This is interesting because my experiences would seem to indicate the opposite.

Glancing at an older spreadsheet I used in a previous campaign, WW2-era RN cruisers (most in the 7000-13000 ton range) would have somewhere in the range of 500-900 crew members depending on tonnage and so on. More recently, using the Nimitz as an example again that 100,000-ton ship has a complement of 6,000 including 3,500 ship's crew (the rest being air crew).

By contrast in Aurora a 10,000-15,000 ton warship might have somewhere from 300-500 crew typically just ballpark from experience and a couple quick checks, which is roughly half what you see for those WWII-era cruisers but in a similar proportion to a Nimitz (ship's crew only). If anything I would suggest that based on crew numbers an "Aurora ton" would be a fraction of a "real-life" naval displacement ton - which of course is a view I've yet to see anyone espouse on this forum (I'm certainly not suggesting it to be true!).

Personally I take tons to be literal tons, as they are a unit of mass as well as displacement/weight so there's no reason this can't be the case. I've seen references to things like "void displacement" and "ton of hydrogen" but I've not yet seen how any of those are clearly defined to be larger than a "standard" ton, thus I proceed happily with my own headcanon.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: January 24, 2021, 09:07:22 AM »

Quote from: liveware on January 23, 2021, 10:37:49 PM
Quote from: Squigles on January 23, 2021, 11:13:50 AM
You know, continuing to think on this. If I may offer one additional suggestion.

I understand your desire to work within the constraints you’ve set, however, these ships wil simply be useless unless you turn off all spoilers and have strict control of all opfor designs and ban all ecm tech. My suggestion is you allow yourself a listed crew of 4 or 5, then simply roleplay that the extra crew is support personnel that remains aboard the carrier. If destroyed almost all of your escape pods will only have 1 or 2 survivors anyhow so there would hardly be any suspension of disbelief required. That change alone would give you significantly improved potential in your design parameters.

If you went one further and went to 125 tons on your design limits this would further improve your potential by a significant amount, especially in the fire control area. It also shouldn’t significantly, if at all, hurt your RP as this would still allow your Vipers to fit inside a small boat bay....which is already plenty tiny. They also are a nice easily divisible size for all hangar types for your OCD.

That's a pretty good idea actually. My biggest issue with larger fighter craft isn't so much the overall hull size (I can headcannon myself out of the large tonnage number) but more that the life pods leave too many crew behind for a ship that I really intend to only have a couple of crew members. Another option would be to assume that all listed crew member have some sort psychic/quantum link and while only a couple of crew are present on the actual ship, the destruction of the ship can still cause the death of the entire listed crew. That's a bit more of stretch than I'd like but meh.

I've built 125 ton gauss fighters in a previous campaign with I think either the 10% or 12% accuracy mod. Those were certainly not very effective for any sort of major combat operation but they were useful in couple of roles. For one, they made good scouts/pickets due to their small size and high speed. Second, they allowed a colony with only the most basic of manufacturing capacity (one fighter factory) to produce something with a gun on it that could be used to chase away alien survey ships and/or unescorted troop ships. Often I have found that having any weapon system available at all is enough to keep the aliens from getting too nosy.

I think that the "problem" with Aurora is that is does not actually model things like Star Wars X-Wing and Tie-fighter equivalent space crafts. Even at 50t a ship in Aurora are roughly equal to a coastal corvette in real life. 50t in Aurora is roughly about the size of a 700t wet navy vessel or something like this.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visby-class_corvette.

A ship at about 7500t are roughly equal in size of a Nimitz aircraft carrier.  ;)

We obviously can role-play things all we want, but I think the crew requirement is meant to reflect allot bigger ships than we normally envision.


Posted by: captainwolfer
« on: January 23, 2021, 11:48:10 PM »

Quote from: liveware on January 23, 2021, 10:38:53 PM
Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on January 23, 2021, 05:03:52 AM
The biggest issue with these fighters are ECM.

If they come up against someone with a decent ECM that have such low accuracy from their BFC that they could effectively get below zero to hit chance with their shots. This is why fighters this small need pretty high tech to work at all... and still... if they engage with someone at equal tech who have very good ECM you are still pretty much screwed.

ECM will hurt these fighters really badly as they cant have any ECCM of their own.

I understand that you want to use this from a role-play perspective... I would wait until 1.13 which will make things a bit easier. You can get smaller railguns and smaller fire controls. I also would up the minimum size to at least about 100t for a beam fighter to be a bit more realistic in their capabilities.

ECM is probably an insurmountable problem for 100 ton fighters. I think even the comact ECM tech only gives you a 50 ton ECM module, and adding ECCM as well would be even more prohibitive.
There is Small Craft ECM and ECCM, which is only 25 tons. Small Craft ECM is unlocked when ECM-4 is researched, and is equal to ECM-1, going up to Small Craft ECM 5 when you have ECM-10

But yeah, even that is too large for 100 ton fighters
Posted by: liveware
« on: January 23, 2021, 10:38:53 PM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on January 23, 2021, 05:03:52 AM
The biggest issue with these fighters are ECM.

If they come up against someone with a decent ECM that have such low accuracy from their BFC that they could effectively get below zero to hit chance with their shots. This is why fighters this small need pretty high tech to work at all... and still... if they engage with someone at equal tech who have very good ECM you are still pretty much screwed.

ECM will hurt these fighters really badly as they cant have any ECCM of their own.

I understand that you want to use this from a role-play perspective... I would wait until 1.13 which will make things a bit easier. You can get smaller railguns and smaller fire controls. I also would up the minimum size to at least about 100t for a beam fighter to be a bit more realistic in their capabilities.

ECM is probably an insurmountable problem for 100 ton fighters. I think even the comact ECM tech only gives you a 50 ton ECM module, and adding ECCM as well would be even more prohibitive.
Posted by: liveware
« on: January 23, 2021, 10:37:49 PM »

Quote from: Squigles on January 23, 2021, 11:13:50 AM
You know, continuing to think on this. If I may offer one additional suggestion.

I understand your desire to work within the constraints you’ve set, however, these ships wil simply be useless unless you turn off all spoilers and have strict control of all opfor designs and ban all ecm tech. My suggestion is you allow yourself a listed crew of 4 or 5, then simply roleplay that the extra crew is support personnel that remains aboard the carrier. If destroyed almost all of your escape pods will only have 1 or 2 survivors anyhow so there would hardly be any suspension of disbelief required. That change alone would give you significantly improved potential in your design parameters.

If you went one further and went to 125 tons on your design limits this would further improve your potential by a significant amount, especially in the fire control area. It also shouldn’t significantly, if at all, hurt your RP as this would still allow your Vipers to fit inside a small boat bay....which is already plenty tiny. They also are a nice easily divisible size for all hangar types for your OCD.

That's a pretty good idea actually. My biggest issue with larger fighter craft isn't so much the overall hull size (I can headcannon myself out of the large tonnage number) but more that the life pods leave too many crew behind for a ship that I really intend to only have a couple of crew members. Another option would be to assume that all listed crew member have some sort psychic/quantum link and while only a couple of crew are present on the actual ship, the destruction of the ship can still cause the death of the entire listed crew. That's a bit more of stretch than I'd like but meh.

I've built 125 ton gauss fighters in a previous campaign with I think either the 10% or 12% accuracy mod. Those were certainly not very effective for any sort of major combat operation but they were useful in couple of roles. For one, they made good scouts/pickets due to their small size and high speed. Second, they allowed a colony with only the most basic of manufacturing capacity (one fighter factory) to produce something with a gun on it that could be used to chase away alien survey ships and/or unescorted troop ships. Often I have found that having any weapon system available at all is enough to keep the aliens from getting too nosy.
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: January 23, 2021, 12:21:51 PM »

cant you just RP that a hull space is really 5 tons instead of 50?  or even "the Imperial ton is defined as the volume of the first Emperor, Magnus Robustus the Very Healthy at the moment of his coronation, and is about .2 cubic meters". 

Posted by: Squigles
« on: January 23, 2021, 11:13:50 AM »

You know, continuing to think on this. If I may offer one additional suggestion.

I understand your desire to work within the constraints you’ve set, however, these ships wil simply be useless unless you turn off all spoilers and have strict control of all opfor designs and ban all ecm tech. My suggestion is you allow yourself a listed crew of 4 or 5, then simply roleplay that the extra crew is support personnel that remains aboard the carrier. If destroyed almost all of your escape pods will only have 1 or 2 survivors anyhow so there would hardly be any suspension of disbelief required. That change alone would give you significantly improved potential in your design parameters.

If you went one further and went to 125 tons on your design limits this would further improve your potential by a significant amount, especially in the fire control area. It also shouldn’t significantly, if at all, hurt your RP as this would still allow your Vipers to fit inside a small boat bay....which is already plenty tiny. They also are a nice easily divisible size for all hangar types for your OCD.
Posted by: Droll
« on: January 23, 2021, 11:07:20 AM »

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on January 23, 2021, 05:03:52 AM
#
...they could effectively get below zero to hit chance with their shots.

Does that mean that there's a chance they hit themselves?