NationStates Jolt Archive

The recent thread concerning massive ships has brought up a question that I had been pondering: What is the space tech like? What are the acceptable mass and dimensions for a ship? How much does a ship cost?

The trouble is that there's no real standard to judge by. That is the purpose of this thread, to establish a standard that at least some of us will play by. This way we avoid both the person building the impossible ship and being eternally angry at the fact that he couldn't use it and people seeing the impossible ship and having to deal with it.

Size really isnt limited, provided you dont have a fleet of hundred mile long ships made of guns.
I have a 20.5mi long ship, fifteen of them, and only because 1. Im a corporate country 2. I havent been in any wars and 3. There is no three.
But yeah, as long as it isnt godmoddly (above mentioned 100 mile long ships), its generaly OK.
That said, ONE hundred mile long ship made of guns would be possible for a 2bil nation, possibly :P

I'm not saying that such mass is altogether impossible. But the acceleration drops to almost nil as mass increases. And it's not the dimensions that really matter, but the mass. In essence, it is godmoddly to say that a nation of less than two billion would be able to so much as keep up with the maintenance on some of the ships people are building. That and the cost of building ships with mass in the millions of metric tons (what you are proposing) is a huge commitment. In other words, what many are talking about would bankrupt nations and their corporations and have them working for years. So it's not impossible, just not reasonable.

I agree with you, but it's kinda hopeless. Basically, you get what you can get away with in your RPs.

In my world, (and I've got tons of numbers that point to this), vastly huge ships are not needed, and far too costly to ever be effective. But, I also accept reactionless "magic tech" drives. Within reason, anyway. It's all relative to the RP and who you RP with.

As soon as we can set up some core guidelines, we should sticky this.

There is also gravity to consider in this: at a certain size and mass, an object will not retain any other shape than that of a sphere. Consider that, and the acceleration ratio, and super huge ships begin leaving the realm of possiblilty (or usefulness)

Too, size doesn't matter-much. You could have a 20 kilometer ship armed to the teeth with superlasers, and some smart-aleck could come along and annihalate it with singularity weapons or something. Big ships are good for scaring civilian polulations, but don't have much the same affect, from what I've seen, in InIn.

I can appreciate what you guys are trying to do here…regulate the technology a bit to keep small countries from instantly claiming technological superiority over the long time players. Avoid “superweapons” and what-not…But I think this is going to be near impossible to do, and here’s why.

Let’s take my region “Planet Mongo” for example.

While on Earth, mankind developed the technology to speak to others over long distances…a similar technology evolved on Mongo as well. On Earth it was the telephone (later the cel phone) on Mongo it was the telepathy set. Instead of holding the device in your hand and amplifying your voice…you put a device on your head and it amplifies your thoughts. On Mongo this technology has been around forever as has the telephone on Earth. You earth guys don’t have to sit on your duffs and wait for the celphone to be invented do you? It’s basic tech on your homeworld.

Another example…On earth, men discovered ways to use lasers to cut flesh and sever bones for medical purposes…meanwhile on Mongo, a very similar technology was discovered and used for a more gruesome end. Amplified rays that could destroy flesh and bone…or vaporize a man, even steel, on contact. On Mongo they’re called “Death Rays”, on Earth, “Lasers”. Men on Mongo have never even seen a standard projectile weapon like a machine gun…that technology never evolved there.

So, I think what it’s going to have to come down to is how you Role Play it. Do some advanced planning with your fellow Rpers to feel out what they have in mind and what tech they wield or plan on wielding. If you come across some newbie with his own fleet of “Death Stars”…just let then know that you don’t think they could possess that sort of Tech yet and move along to the more mature players who don’t have unlimited resources and inexhaustible fleets of ships and troops at their disposal.

My rule of thumb is this: In RPing between two or more consenting adults…ANYTHING goes. May the better writer win!

-Ming

Sorry bout the double post...Mongo technology at work.

Well, the goal of this thread, I would think, is just to set the "Galactic Standard" if you will, for decent RPers, so that such long and convuluted RP set-ups are not so complicated. n00bs with invincible fleets can just be ignored, but what about misunderstandings between veteran RPers concerning ship size or cost? Would all concur to at least use the laws of physics as the groundwork? I'll ask my physics teacher about large space structures sometime, just to clear that issue up.

Another issue would be to set a standard for ship prices, as in CoreWorld's Sovereign class whatsit thread, a tussle began over price. We should find out what, in USD, a Super Star Destroyer and a Tie Fighter would cost, and then extrapolate from there on what our own ships would cost. And yes, set up another set for Star Trek RPers, and whatnot.

.:Double Post:. I hope to God these aren't the "new improved" servers. If so we're still in trouble.

AND, another issue, is cross-genre ships and weapons tolerated? Such as Star Destroyers that can glass planets, or are equipped with phasers and photon torpedoes? This one maybe best left up to the RPers, though it would be good to see everone's thoughts on it.

I don't think cross-genre things need to be a big deal (though discussion would be interesting, just as long as we don't get SW vs. ST fans flaming :wink: ). I was thinking more along the lines of cost vs. mass and things like that, general costs of doing things in space. This generally comes about because the CoreWorld's thread and similar thinking.

Also remember that if you have a general guideline it becomes MUCH easier to get things making sense on other scales. If you decide to RP in a situation with 1000km ships then you can still use the guidelines to take your fleet and bring it into this environment. You just have to scale everything, multiply everything by an amount that makes sense.

In other words, it'll make things easier no matter what setting you play in. Especially for people like me designing a fleet and people making storefronts.

!#%$ double post!! :twisted: :evil: :!: :x

Well, the goal of this thread, I would think, is just to set the "Galactic Standard" if you will, for decent RPers, so that such long and convuluted RP set-ups are not so complicated. n00bs with invincible fleets can just be ignored, but what about misunderstandings between veteran RPers concerning ship size or cost? Would all concur to at least use the laws of physics as the groundwork? I'll ask my physics teacher about large space structures sometime, just to clear that issue up.

Another issue would be to set a standard for ship prices, as in CoreWorld's Sovereign class whatsit thread, a tussle began over price. We should find out what, in USD, a Super Star Destroyer and a Tie Fighter would cost, and then extrapolate from there on what our own ships would cost. And yes, set up another set for Star Trek RPers, and whatnot.

Actually, I was thinking of another system. We could find out what the cost is to produce a metric ton of a naval vessel on the average. From that we would have a general idea, then extrapolate from that the cost of doing a metric ton of spacecraft. We'd have to look over some statistics and compare the mass of the average naval vessel to that of an analagous spacecraft, but in the end it would give us a very good idea of exactly what's right.

And I'm pretty sure that we need to go by mass since this, not the length, determines the acceleration and the cost (since the cost would be based on the natural and human resources that go into it, more closely associated with mass than length).

I've asked Doujin and Clan Smoke Jaguar to get me some information on naval vessels that we can compare to. Please tell me what you think of this plan, and if anyone wants to feel free to contribute.

Arizona Nova's plan may be another good one, just compare it to previous sci-fi material. The only real problems here are that we'd have to look at a lot of different stuff to get a good feel as to what there is.

Actually, I was thinking of another system. We could find out what the cost is to produce a metric ton of a naval vessel on the average. From that we would have a general idea, then extrapolate from that the cost of doing a metric ton of spacecraft. We'd have to look over some statistics and compare the mass of the average naval vessel to that of an analagous spacecraft, but in the end it would give us a very good idea of exactly what's right.

And I'm pretty sure that we need to go by mass since this, not the length, determines the acceleration and the cost (since the cost would be based on the natural and human resources that go into it, more closely associated with mass than length).

About $90 per ton of US naval vessels. Not sure if that's metric tonnes.

For spaceship costs, it generally works out to much much more than that. High technology does not mean cheaper, quite the contrary. Of course things don't need to be ridiculously expensive like my ships, but you do get what you pay for...

Actually, I was thinking of another system. We could find out what the cost is to produce a metric ton of a naval vessel on the average. From that we would have a general idea, then extrapolate from that the cost of doing a metric ton of spacecraft. We'd have to look over some statistics and compare the mass of the average naval vessel to that of an analagous spacecraft, but in the end it would give us a very good idea of exactly what's right.

And I'm pretty sure that we need to go by mass since this, not the length, determines the acceleration and the cost (since the cost would be based on the natural and human resources that go into it, more closely associated with mass than length).

About $90 per ton of US naval vessels. Not sure if that's metric tonnes.

For spaceship costs, it generally works out to much much more than that. High technology does not mean cheaper, quite the contrary. Of course things don't need to be ridiculously expensive like my ships, but you do get what you pay for...

For spaceship costs, it generally works out to much much more than that. High technology does not mean cheaper, quite the contrary. Of course things don't need to be ridiculously expensive like my ships, but you do get what you pay for...

High technology generally means more efficient materials and faster, cheaper construction methods, so yes, it could work out cheaper.

Of course, unless you're in the upper realms of uber-tech, making a death star is always going to be expensive.

About $90 per ton of US naval vessels. Not sure if that's metric tonnes.


$90!? Steel alone costs more than that per ton, and that doesn't include the labor that goes into the hull. And that doesn't even account for most of the cost.

I've gotten a link from Clan Smoke Jaguar that should help me figure it out, and while he points out that most of the cost comes from the level of technological development, not the displacement, if a fairly consistent ratio within the most modern ships comes out it'll give us a very good idea of how to scale things to the average.

bump for comments

Alright, I've done some more investigation and run across a new problem (I'm still invesitgating the cost issue, but I really can't handle that one alone, please post any thoughts on that subject). The problem is one of acceleration and speed. Recently I saw someone cover distances of hundreds of AUs in under a minute without an FTL drive. The problem is that light takes about 8 and a half minutes to reach the earth from the sun (a distance of one AU). I'd like to see people get a realistic idea of what the speed of light is really like.

About $90 per ton of US naval vessels. Not sure if that's metric tonnes.


$90!? Steel alone costs more than that per ton, and that doesn't include the labor that goes into the hull. And that doesn't even account for most of the cost.

Hrmm. Could be pound.

Anyway, most of the cost is in the electronics. Steel and other parts are probably among the cheapest bits to construct.

The way i see it, as long as you take into consideration basic limitations of laws of physics, keep out of the "ridicolous" area and know how to RP your stuff, you can get away with some far future tech ships.

Ok, regarding the actual topic. The way i see it, if all you have is reaction drives then you cant build large ships, period. It simply isnt possible to cram enough fuel aboard a lets say one million ton ship, to accelerate it quickly enough to move relatively quickly, in essence your ships will be slow and small. But this is the starting point. As you Rp more and your nation matures more and you have insane amounts of govermental funds going to space research, you can introduce reactionless drives. The most common form of reactionless drive is a gravity based drive. There are hordes of different ones of Grav drives out there but they all use the same principle of manipulating gravity to produce thrust. The strengths of reactionless drives over reaction drives are numerous. For starters, you only need the energy to run a reactionless drive, as in you dont need to directly fuel those drives but rather just fuel your reactor and there. Secondly, they are a lot more efficient than reaction drives.

Second big problem is propably inertia. You cant accelerate too quickly unless you want your crew turning to paste. This means slow travelling. But, there is a way around this as well, and this way is artificially compensating for the inertial forces, meaning that you can accelerate at 500 G without your crew feeling it. Ofcourse, any sensible RPer makes limits to this, and the easiest limiter is that the more momentum the ship has, the less inertia the compensator can take away from the inside and thus the lower acceleration. As in, the bigger ship, the less acceleration.

Third is ofcourse the economical and industrial issues. But these depend greatly on your tech level. For example, how long would it take from a 19th century shipyard to construct a Nimitz-class CVN (assuming they even could do it by some stretch of imagination) or how long it would take to gather the resources for building it and how much it would cost? Well lets just say that those issues would be astronomical compared to what they are today. So basically, as your nation further develops into space and begins to create a firm knowledge and expertise of constructing space ships and your infrastructure forms up to the level of development paralell to this spacecraft construction capability, constructing spaceships wouldnt be much different from nations today constructing carriers and warships.

So, while i do believe that certain pieces of pseudo-scientific technology such as said gravitic drives and inertia compensating systems can be used without venturing to the area of ridicolous, laws of physics should be accounted for and every one of these pseudo-scientific pieces of tech should have severe limitations in them.

The way i see it, if all you have is reaction drives then you cant build large ships, period. It simply isnt possible to cram enough fuel aboard a lets say one million ton ship, to accelerate it quickly enough to move relatively quickly, in essence your ships will be slow and small.

Sorry but I felt I had to disagree here.

Concerning spaceship size, it's about resources and will. Large rockets are just as possible as small rockets, if you have the resources and the will to build them. Sure, you won't have one million tonnes accelerating at 16,000 Gs, but 'slow' is relative anyway. And it all depends on the type of reaction drive... and other things, like fuel storage techniques.

The way i see it, if all you have is reaction drives then you cant build large ships, period. It simply isnt possible to cram enough fuel aboard a lets say one million ton ship, to accelerate it quickly enough to move relatively quickly, in essence your ships will be slow and small.

Sorry but I felt I had to disagree here.

Concerning spaceship size, it's about resources and will. Large rockets are just as possible as small rockets, if you have the resources and the will to build them. Sure, you won't have one million tonnes accelerating at 16,000 Gs, but 'slow' is relative anyway. And it all depends on the type of reaction drive... and other things, like fuel storage techniques.

I was perhaps being a bit too generalistic. Ofcourse, you CAN have a large ship with reaction drive accelerating relatively quickly, but it will be extremely costly fuelwise, and the power curves will suck. In essence, to accelerate something like a half a megaton massing object at some 100 G's, you will be spending immense amounts of fuel and thats not even accounting possible need to maneuver and the eventual decceleration. And to make such a vessel move efficiently, it would need to devote a very large portion of its internal volume for engine fuel alone, even tough you can fit a lot of fuel in with efficient storage techniques. Also, with the efficiency of maneuverability depending on the type of reaction drive, again true but its just a fact of physics that with a reaction drive, space travel is (in the relative sense of the word) relatively slow and cumbersome.

I was perhaps being a bit too generalistic. Ofcourse, you CAN have a large ship with reaction drive accelerating relatively quickly, but it will be extremely costly fuelwise, and the power curves will suck. In essence, to accelerate something like a half a megaton massing object at some 100 G's, you will be spending immense amounts of fuel and thats not even accounting possible need to maneuver and the eventual decceleration. And to make such a vessel move efficiently, it would need to devote a very large portion of its internal volume for engine fuel alone, even tough you can fit a lot of fuel in with efficient storage techniques. Also, with the efficiency of maneuverability depending on the type of reaction drive, again true but its just a fact of physics that with a reaction drive, space travel is (in the relative sense of the word) relatively slow and cumbersome.

Yeah, and just about any reaction drive powered craft needs to devote large portions of its internal volume to fuel. Even the very efficient ones. As a rough number I'd say generally from 30-90% of the ships mass is fuel, and the lower number is much less maneuverable and fast. Fuel is everything with reaction drives...

That's probably why I'm still partial to them.

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