Scale Issues....

[Loadout]

So I've been perusing the user uploads of late and came across more than a few oddly labeled ships. It seems everyone has the idea that large scale vessels say, 80,000 blocks(and some well even into the millions) are considered Small Frigates. First off let me preface by saying I'm barely able to sit up and read while laughing so hard, I have mountain dew running out of my nose after seeing more than one or two ships labeled as such. It really is ludicrous to call something 7x the size of your local Star a Small vessel.

So I went digging and found a few ways to classify a ship by it's size. Below is a nice easy chart for you all to gander at.

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You may notice a few overlapping areas in the chart, that's cause the role of a ship is what determines it's name.... for instance the difference between cruisers and destroyers is namely the purpose of the ship. Cruisers are long range missile bombardiers, while Destroyers are direct surface attack vessels.

With that in view, this chart is based off real life data. Assuming that one block, which is one meter cubed of whatever, weighs at LEAST a tonne. This is because water of all things weighs one tonne(1000kg) exactly at 1m^3. So it's pretty darn generous to say that all those fancy metals and weapons weigh as much as water does. Let alone less than that.

The actual block values in tons come from the US naval classification grid, plus a few extras considering they don't list drones and bombers and such in their classification. For example, most frigates weigh in at less than 10,000 tons, 14 is pretty generous there me thinks...

Pick apart, discuss, enjoy.

 

[psteiner]

Look at this: http://starmade.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_Classification

And drones should be called light fighters.

One key flaw to this system, its based off of mass alone. So you could just have a huge cube of hull for replicating supplies, and call that a leviathan.... no.

Classes should be based off of a combination of thrust, mass, power, shielding, damage per second, and purpose. Honestly, there is no official class system, players just call their ships whatever they think suits it best, it depends on their way of thinking. If you are thinking realistically, then a 5000 block ship would be the smallest thing that fly's, shoots, and works; but its mostly hull and decor. Unrealistically, a 100-150 block fighter accomplishes the same purpose

 

[Dragleones]

So I've been perusing the user uploads of late and came across more than a few oddly labeled ships. It seems everyone has the idea that large scale vessels say, 80,000 blocks(and some well even into the millions) are considered Small Frigates. First off let me preface by saying I'm barely able to sit up and read while laughing so hard, I have mountain dew running out of my nose after seeing more than one or two ships labeled as such. It really is ludicrous to call something 7x the size of your local Star a Small vessel.

It isn't. You basically can't consider anywhere anything as "too big" since you can only view the size of one object in proportion to the size of another object. If somebody considers a ship with 200 000 mass a frigate he might has a destroyer with 400 000 mass and a battleship with 2 000 000 million mass. Its only a matter of proportion and calling.
(Maybe i will upload someday a 8 million mass ship and call it a fighter... Just to see everybody bitching about its shipclass)

And why would you consider a US naval classification more valid as any other random classification...
Why would you use the weight of ships for a classification of spaceships?
Even in reality the weight in space doesn't matter except for acceleration. There is no gravity resulting in the collapsing of a structure due to its own weight. We could build anything in space.

The starmade scaling of stars/astroids/players/planets/anything is way of reality.
Please do everyone a favour and stop trying to apply pseudo-realism to it.

Btw. You remind me of someone:

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

My ships are relatively small compared to all the titans out there but even one of my smaller combat ships my Longsword Frigate is a battle cruiser by that chart.

 

[Cirdanoth]

Starmade has scale problems. Planets and stars are way too small, not to speak of asteroids and other objects.
Relative to stars, ships might seem big. But, relative to a player, these classifications are pretty small.

People generally attempt to base their ships off other media. A 13km long Avatar titan from Eve Online is a challenge which, by all means, I'd applaud. However, most ships beyond a km in length are unfeasible, if only due to the lag they currently generate. They've been done, though.

A 1,8km long Apocalypse Battleship. Based off Eve Online. Builder unknown. :P

The bigger a ship, the more room for detail. The more leeway to combine both systems which work, and interiors which look good.
There's also the on-going metagame between larger factions which rarely collide in short term skirmishes. Looking at the main factions present, most cruiser classes are around 20k mass. Or 200k blocks. Battlecruisers double that. Frigates about half that.

Between naval and space-faring vessels... There's a tendency to believe that space-faring vessels will be much, much bigger. Requiring more space for more advanced technology and the crew to make that technology work. To be honest.. There simply is no real life data. There are no real combat-specialized space-faring vessels yet. We have shuttles. Which weigh in at 2000 tons. In Starmade, I personally use shuttles which fit within 7x7x7 blocks of space. At its highest that's 343 blocks. My fighters easily sit around 50 to 100 mass. Bombers generally the same. Gunships can easily go up to 1K mass. Corvettes around 3K mass. Frigates around 7,5K mass. Cruisers around 20K mass, and so on and so on...
Though, it's not the only determining factor.

Everyone uses their own system, pretty much, and everyone's free to do so.
Don't ridicule them for using their own. Don't make yourself sound like a pretentious asshat by doing so. ^-^'

 

[psteiner]

It isn't. You basically can't consider anywhere anything as "too big" since you can only view the size of one object in proportion to the size of another object. If somebody considers a ship with 200 000 mass a frigate he might has a destroyer with 400 000 mass and a battleship with 2 000 000 million mass. Its only a matter of proportion and calling.
(Maybe i will upload someday a 8 million mass ship and call it a fighter... Just to see everybody bitching about its shipclass)

And why would you consider a US naval classification more valid as any other random classification...
Why would you use the weight of ships for a classification of spaceships?
Even in reality the weight in space doesn't matter except for acceleration. There is no gravity resulting in the collapsing of a structure due to its own weight. We could build anything in space.

The starmade scaling of stars/astroids/players/planets/anything is way of reality.
Please do everyone a favour and stop trying to apply pseudo-realism to it.

We use Weight, because power is relative to how many blocks you put down

 

[Loadout]

Honestly I never really expected so much reply to this post, as it was really meant to be a lighthearted jest. I am aware that player scale is nowhere near planet/star scale(let alone reality). Probably due to rendering difficulties of having numerous 120,000 block wide planets(~earth size).

 

[Keptick]

Some people just call big ships frigates to piss off the person who built it . Big ships just give more opportunity for detail (it's also harder to scale up the detail once you reach a certain size). To be honest, I've seen very few good looking original (self-inspired) ships that were over 500m long. The rest are all copies (and are classed after what they were replicated from). Tbh, people just call their ships what they please and it doesn't matter. Only dakka (and smexy ships) matter.

You may want to reconsider your scaling to include some…. larger ships. The hull of my ship alone is currently sitting at over 1 million blocks, once it's finished it will waaaaaay exceed your "hive ship" category (link to the wip is in my signature, if you don't believe me)

 

[TrainDodger]

The class system I use for naming combat ships is as follows:

Mass - Class

< 100 - Fighter

< 250 - Gunship

< 500 - Bomber

< 2,000 - Light Corvette

< 8,000 - Heavy Corvette

< 20,000 - Destroyer

< 55,000 - Frigate

< 80,000 - Cruiser

< 200,000 - Battlecruiser

< 500,000 - Battleship

< 1,000,000 - Dreadnought

> 1,000,000 - Mobile Fortress

It's vaguely Homeworld/navy-inspired, for an original setting where dedicated carriers aren't very common and anything Battlecruiser-mass and above usually has its own hangar. Note that that's mass, not blocks. I've been working on a 400+ meter ship that's a million blocks with many, many more to go, a 515,000 DPS forward array, 16 D1000s, 60 SD-KBs and multiple 120,000 DPS turrets, and it's still just a Battlecruiser.

Class systems are completely arbitrary, really. There are no rules about how big or how small a "Frigate" can be. One of my older builds, the AMMC Odin, was classed as a Frigate, and that thing was over 300,000 blocks. This is, of course, assuming that 1 mass = 1 metric ton, and that the cubic-meter blocks are, overall, much much less dense than either styrofoam or water, containing extensive voids with reinforcement struts made of exotic lightweight composites and 3D-printed metal foams so each block can be a nigh-miraculous 100-ish kilograms. If they were made up of solid, fully-dense material, the masses of these ships would be insane.

 

[Loadout]

Upon reviewing the original post, I realize that the joke wasn't /joke'd at all. and The actual question I had was never even asked. So i'll repost here and edit the original later. My bad fellas, it was really only meant as a poke at the craziness of it all.

Question as follows, kinda short, hence the joke to fluff it a bit; What is a good scale to build a ship at? Given that I'd like my character to actually spawn inside it when I exit the cursed core block of ship abandoning? That is to say, should hallways be around 4 blocks across openly(for something like 16 blocks externally to cover a 4x4)?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

On small ships sometimes there is nothing you can do about popping out of the ship, the direction the ship is facing has control over this too so even if you build the ship and can get out still inside, this might not be the case drifting in space.

I build all my main ships with 4 meters as the standard for decks, of course more compact ships can be 3 or even 2 high if you want a more submarine feel. A 4x4x4 room can hold 4 "beds" and 4 high hallways can have 3 high arched bulkheads. My core rooms usually can end up being five high with the core in the center and 2-3 meters on every side to ensure I am in the core. Of course 4 high with the core one meter off the floor should work too.

 

[Trafalgar]

I usually embed the core in the floor, and provided there's room above it (3x4x3 seems to work well), you spawn standing on top of it when you get out (if it's stopped anyways).

For example, this is an 11x11x11 cubical fighter with a control room in the center (which is no longer effective because it doesn't have the power to power its AMCs):

(Screenshots from July of last year, has it really been that long?)

Spoiler

 

[Puck]

why all these classifications.. dreadnought battleship frigate battle-assault-dreadcruiser... the ship is either big medium or small {which you can tell by looking at it} doesn't need any further classifications

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

why all these classifications.. dreadnought battleship frigate battle-assault-dreadcruiser... the ship is either big medium or small {which you can tell by looking at it} doesn't need any further classifications

Classifications are great for Shipyards, like mine, and factions who want some consistency to their builds. I build ships imagining what if it was a real space navy and what ships would they need. This allows for a range of ship sizes and purpose built ships outside of the general scope of the game like freighters, medivacs, hospital ships... ships that have no purpose for existing other than looking pretty and filling out my roster.