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The Disproportion of Sins

The Disproportion of Sins

Not a Complaint, Just an Observation

Well...  One day I got bored after completely destroying an AI, so I started measuring things.

Now, first off, I knew that the diameter of the earth and other like-sized planets was about 12700 kilometers.  I then proceeded to observe that a planet was just over four tactical squares in diameter.  This made me realize that each individual square must be about 3000 kilometers across.

Next, I looked at the size of an Egg, the largest of the capitals.  By estimating its size, it appears to be around 1500 kilometers in length and 500 in width.  Now, it is the largest of the caps, so you normally wouldn't think anything of it except that if you look very closely at the top of it, you can see skyscrapers jutting out from it.  Each of these has strip lights, suggesting windows.  Now, since the Vasari are of a comparable size to humans, you can estimate the size of it to be about 200 kilometers in length and 75 in width.  Now a population of about 10,000 would work on the smaller version, but the to-scale version would have to have a crew in the hundreds of thousands.

[Relatively] Moderate Difference.

Next I measured an Akkan and again looked at the strip lights.  It too is about 1500 kilometers in length via the grid system, though only about 200 in width.  Then I looked at the strip lights.  On the akkan, they were even larger!  You could see individual windows on its port side in multiple rows representing individual decks.  That is all well and good except that to be 1500 kilometers in length, each window would have to be a few kilometers long.  By estimating the length of the Akkan via the strip lights, I came up with only three kilometers.  This is the size of ship that would hold 5-6000 crewmen.  Not to mention that it is a comparable size to the Egg when the texture in fact suggests that it is a fraction of the size.

Big Difference.

I then proceeded to look at the fighters of the Akkan against itself.  This confirmed my earlier belief that each small window was an individual 5-6 foot window as I looked at the size of the cockpits.  I then proceeded to fly a fighter up to a planet and using a bug, flew it "through" it (technically, just inside the white circle so it was halfway in the planet) and discovered another problem.  Each fighter could comfortably cover a small state like Vermont, or Massachusetts.  This means a hundred kilometers in length as opposed to about 10-15 meters.

Huge Difference.

Then I looked at the size difference between the stars, gas giants, and planets.  Once again, completely disproportionate.  Gas giants are twice the size of planets when in reality they are 12 times larger.  Stars appear to only be four times the size of planets when they are really more than a thousand times larger.

Gigantic Difference.

 

Now, I'm not saying that this is a discussion of a particular problem or complaint as this is just an observation.  I'm not saying it should be fixed as I'm sure this system works best with gameplay.  I just figured I'd say what I found when I got bored...

69,535 views 55 replies
Reply #51 Top

Yeah, I went off to some navy and navy oriented websites and looked up the crew components the other day... It's insane. I had no idea that an aircraft carrier was basically (almost) a self-sustained military base on the water. I never really thought about all the support personel that would have to accomodated before.

As for the robot bits, that's probably why the crew numbers are less than you'd expect - automation. Also about the Jarasul, I would assume the 15,000 crewmen they list are really just for the ship, somehow I don't expect that to include strikecraft pilots, soldiers, and any civilian passengers on board.

 

Reply #52 Top

I guess...  Still though, with a ship that large, that would almost be a skeleton crew...  But of course, seeing as how it is an Evacuator, it would have to be able to hold far more than that...

Reply #53 Top

think of the Jarasul as a Cruise ship, you wouldnt count the passangers onboard as crew, only those who are assigned duties onboard. So the Jarasul would be accurate with its crew numbers. And with nanites and robots the majority of backbreaking duties onboard would be assigned to the nanites and robots. While Vasari Overlords would observe and command them to ensure nothing went wrong.

Reply #54 Top

As for the TEC and Advent I would believe they do have robotics working but only to an extent. Like giant robotic arms that lift heavy ordinance into the cannons and railguns. i doubt a human would be able to lock and load ordiance that big without the help of something robotic. More likely the Crew would man the areas of the ship that would need a human to actually make decisions that go beyond a robots abilities. Things that would need emotions and guttfeelings to accomplish.

Reply #55 Top

Yeah, I'm sure the TEC Fleets have a few of those Hoshinko tinkerers around... I bet they have crazy harnesses like the Techmarines from WH40K, the ones w/ all the servo-arms and what not.

The Advent have use of telekinesis (one of their techs actually has crew who focus on strengthening their hulls by telekinesis, so I'm sure they can move a few objects around too).

Also with the Vasari, we can't entirely discount the possibility of using slaves (who knows what races of 'valued citizens' they might have brought with them as servants) within their ships.

When I see a Jarasul Evacuator, for some reason (probably due to the "Drain Planet" ability of the Jarasul) I always think that it's around the same length (3.2km) as the Silencer-7 from Star Wars (the biggest World Devastator), but egg shaped and probably around 1.5 kilometers or so tall at the highest point to boot. I always figured the Radiance was roughly on par w/ a regular Star Destroyer length wise and the Kol just a bit shy of that (maybe 1.2km instead of 1.6km).

I don't know why my brain jumps to Star Wars for the comparisons... it just does.

-Itharus

PS: Does anyone else think that the Advent kinetic projectiles for orbital bombardment look almost exactly the same as the spatial torpedoes from Star Trek: Enterprise?