- Location
- Brazil
Holy shit, what's so über on a longer ship that's worth nearly 12 times more? To say nothing about production.
But I was asking so that we can also offer longer models to them.
Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
But I was asking so that we can also offer longer models to them.
2.5x the size means 6.25x the surface area and 15.625x the volume. The credit and production costs are in between those numbers because some of the parts run on surface area and others on volume.
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- Brazil
So we actually get more bang for our buck, so to speak, going with a bigger ship? Huh.
No.
To put it quite simply there's a point where you can't stuff more things inside a ship no matter how big the ship because you can't dump the heat quickly enough. Heat dumping is surface area dependent, you see.
- Location
- Dual citizen of SV&SB
We've got a way around that, thankfully. It is a tech, so we don't have it yet, but we will.
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- Leeds
Assuming a spherical ship.
On a cylindrical one doubling the length (assuming constant radius) would double the volume and surface area.
Actually assuming a scale ship. From what we know the larger ships tend to look like enlarged copies of the smaller ones so to maintain shape it should scale evenly in all dimensions.
- Location
- Leeds
Well, apart from that Asari Dreadnought in ME1 and the Reapers I'm struggling to think of ships in the universe to test that assumption.
I was assuming that since MAC length is the only important feature of a warship that is really constrained by the ship's shape, it would make more sense for ships to become proportionally more narrow as length increases.
And that's disregarding mass effect core, which should scale exponentially. Actually, it should scale even faster than exponential, but you get my point.
At which point surface area remains a limiting factor due to the simple fact that transfer of resources and structural integrity of the ships are traits largely dependent on surface area. Well, cross section actually, but that's still an area limitation.
What's being talked about here is thermal annihilator - a TIR based tech of my proposal. It's essentially an ellipsoidal space with two heat sinks in the foci that are under oscillating ME fields. It basically destroys energy. Such devices could be placed throughout the ship, so the heat discharge ability would scale... Well, with not volume, but faster than with cross-section.
At some point, I expect Revy can just pronounce the most outrageous bullshit and people would take it at face value because, really, Revy takes reality as a polite suggestion at best.
Which is nice, but doesn't solve the problem I implied before; mass of a ship (and thus the forces involved in handling it) scale with volume, but its structural strength scales with cross section. There will be limits to how much force you can subject a ship to.
Likewise, it doesn't matter if you can maintain a given temperature no matter what due to a thermal annihilator if you can't cycle the coolant fast enough, or move enough electrical power around through the power bus, or enough air through the life support system and ducts. Certainly, these are much smaller issues, but the ship's external surface area will also determine how many guns we can put on there and how much and how quickly it can shift cargo.
A thermal annihilator will make much greater ships operating in close proximity to stars possible. They won't solve all problems inherent in the design of very big ships.
True. For that, you have TIR and high grade FTL fields to operate under - blue and red shift are nice that way.
... I somehow doubt this will solve the problem of 'a flow of matter may erode the contact surface, and the more energetic the flow (that is, the faster it goes) the more likely this is true.'
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- Leeds
Today Rebecca 'Revy' Shepard, CEO of Paragon Industries, Mindoirs largest employer announced that PI would be ceasing all weapons and Arc Reactor production and development in favour of creating Jelly beans. She also announced profits were expected this quarter in excess of ten trillion, the largest to date.
Stocks in rival bean companies crashed as investors assume that existing products will not be able to compete with whatever innovations PI will bring to the table. Brian, our business correspondent has the story.
@Hoyr I have a question. How small can we make Arc Reactors? I know we can make smaller then normal Repulsors for stuff like the Sagitta but is there any lower limit on the size of an Arc Reactor?
I ask because I had an omake idea inspired by this line:
I ask because I had an omake idea inspired by this line:
That's a very good question. Miniaturization is kinda important and might bring some interesting options down the line. I mean, yeah, sure, cellular-sized ones are likely flat-out impossible, but organ sized? Implantable ones perhaps? Those should be doable.
Well yes, trade's the real reason for humanity signing up with the Citadel. What I'm getting at is what the political spin would be for a deal with the Quarians. As Uber said above:
Our so-called allies are ignoring us, so our response should be to give them the finger and find some new allies. Heck, we're already building this narrative, with PI hiring a Krogan and piercing the famous isolationism of the Litinana; courting the Migrant Fleet is just the next logical step in that progression. Maybe this will encourage the Council races to do their jobs and come to our aid, before the Alliance decides that this whole Citadel thing is just a waste of our time.
I actually don't think we can make smaller reactors or Repulsors. Sagittas don't actually have Repulsors in them: they're basically just small rockets with a clever self destruct mechanism.
- Location
- Budapest, Hungary
They do have repulsors, by Word of the 2nd QM.
It still can be retconed back though.
Decim
On again, off again lurker.
- Location
- St. Louis, MO
If they have repulsors, how the hell are they powered? I thought repulsors were so energy intensive that they could really only be run off of arc-reactors.
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- Budapest, Hungary
Space magic batteries. They have short endurance anyways.
It was before, the calcs one power usage of the Repulsor.