A ship design concept

[GRHayes]

The ships not completed and probably won't be uploading it.
I put it on here to discuss a design idea. The large ball turrets.
The use of them in this case or size ship is ok. It leaves a large amount of space free in the ship and gives pretty good fire power. The balls also can be self powered shielded and more fairly easily.
However the benefits of this design should increase with size.
As most people probably know the Volume of a sphere is 4/3πr^3 while Area is 4πr^2
This means the volume inside the cube increase much faster than the surface area.
What that means is room for everything rail enhances,power, weapons, shields all increases.
It also means the amount of armor needed to cover it doesn't go up near as fast.
It gives a larger firing arch for each weapon, the ability to follow a target from above or below the ship to the opposite.
Ships power doesn't need to account near as much for powering those weapons or shielding them.

 

[NeonSturm]

But the weapons can still be blocked horizontally.

You can build "Satellites". Not only turrets similar to a moon for a planet, but you can also make them wiggle on their flight path to evade pathing prediction.

If they have a huge shield capacity, they can even dive into the fire range to fire pulse-slaved guns and reload behind the ship.

 

[Lecic]

I wouldn't really call ball turrets a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, although people don't usually embed them like that. What is the reason for that? Just looks? People usually make the turrets orbit if they do this.

 

[kulbolen]

I put it on here to discuss a design idea. The large ball turrets.

not a bad idea, but nothing new, and a mediocre implementation of them. your analysis is fairly accurate though

 

[DrTarDIS]

now you just need to move them so they are "floating" off to a side.

 

[JinM]

I agree on all points of the OP, but:

It gives a larger firing arch for each weapon

Can the ship still fire at stuff alligned horizontally to it? Because the benefit of like 15% less armor would negleted by the fact that you allways would have to bend yourself towards the enemy and expose a way bigger impact surface to it.

 

[GRHayes]

I still have other weapons on the ship that face forward.Currently the nose section has a 5 wide row under it that is usable its about 30 blocks longs. There is also the space on the inside of each wing as the wing widens out that has room for weapons. Also the tail fin has loads of room. Then the wings could also have side mounted pods as well or even under carriage mounts.
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now you just need to move them so they are "floating" off to a side.

Yep I offset them in 2015 in this ship called "Yellow Bird" in the community content. I'm sure someone did similar before that before the rail system came in even.
Having large balls that size in comparison to the ship wouldn't look that good. So yeas appearance is a portion of the issue.
That said having a turret that is 2 or more time powerful than the previous one there and can follow the target better without having to hope another turret picks it up is much better. Even notice how turrets tend to just sit and keep watching a target when it goes out of site it simply stops shooting rather than picking up a net target. Couple that with the massive mount of power you can dump into even larger balls.

[doublepost=1490570319][/doublepost]

I wouldn't really call ball turrets a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, although people don't usually embed them like that. What is the reason for that? Just looks? People usually make the turrets orbit if they do this.

Besides looks works out as a better replacement than to general surface mounted turrets.
As I pointed out above the turret is able to follow targets that go out of the normal range of other turrets and pick it back up on the bottom side and keep firing. If the turret AI's were better then it wouldn't make as much of a difference but that isn't the case. I noticed this week the Turrets keep trying to track out of site targets rather than move to ones that move into site.
I sat and watched 4 turrets not firing when there where six ships attacking. The reason was simple the object that the turret was looking for moved out of visual. LOS was blocked. But this also allows for greater fire power rather than the firepower of the two turrets. This means those targets can also be downed faster because they are fired at more often and hit for more damage.

 

[ToddoftheYear]

As most people probably know the Volume of a sphere is 4/3πr^3 while Area is 4πr^2
This means the volume inside the cube increase much faster than the surface area.

That's only true in real life because 3d structures can have an infinite number of surfaces.
In Starmade, you can't build a real sphere. You're just assembling a bunch of six sided blocks to resemble a sphere.

If you're looking to build a structure with the highest volume to surface area, try making an octahedron.

 

[GRHayes]

That's only true in real life because 3d structures can have an infinite number of surfaces.
In Starmade, you can't build a real sphere. You're just assembling a bunch of six sided blocks to resemble a sphere.

If you're looking to build a structure with the highest volume to surface area, try making an octahedron.

The actual surface area being measured is a simple block count. You would be right if I was going by actual surface area. But the game doesn't count actual surface area it counts blocks.
If you need to get a better idea of what that means change all the blocks to actual cubes and place them based on radial distance.
When a sphere is relatively small it doesn't have the great of volume to surface area ration especially when dealing with blocks. That quickly changes as the sphere grows a little and it will out scale the Octahedron
I know all about the difference between this and real life. http://www.grhmedia.com

But you don't need to believe me do the math.
Sphere: V= 4/3πr^3 A= 4πr^2
Octahedron: A=Sqrt(3)*2*a^2 V=a^3/3 *sqrt(2) however (a) is an outer edge and not radius. If you want the radial distance to the vertex that would be sqrt((a^2)/2)
Given both are made of blocks determining surface area both suffer the same initial issue of volume being very small when the object is smaller. The sphere easily passes the octahedron.

If you still have trouble grasping this. Open paint up create a circle in it and realize the circle is drawn using square pixels.

 

[ToddoftheYear]

But you don't need to believe me do the math.
Sphere: V= 4/3πr^3 A= 4πr^2
Octahedron: A=Sqrt(3)*2*a^2 V=a^3/3 *sqrt(2) however (a) is an outer edge and not radius. If you want the radial distance to the vertex that would be sqrt((a^2)/2)
Given both are made of blocks determining surface area both suffer the same initial issue of volume being very small when the object is smaller.

The basis of my argument is that neither of those equations work in voxel so you can't use them to determine volume or surface area.

Consider this; part of a sphere's defining feature is that every point is equidistant from the center.
Now try assembling that in voxel. What do you get? An octahedron.

The sphere easily passes the octahedron.

You can't make real spheres out of blocks, only shapes that resemble them. Go ahead and try, post its volume and surface area. An octahedron with the same surface area will have a greater volume.

 

[GRHayes]

The basis of my argument is that neither of those equations work in voxel so you can't use them to determine volume or surface area.

You can't make real spheres out of blocks. Go ahead and try, post its volume and surface area. An octahedron with the same surface area will have a greater volume.

The equations work perfectly fine in voxels the fact you don't understand how is your issue.
The formula for plotting out a sphere is still x^2+y^2+z^2 = r^2
r being the radius remains constant.
I'm not looking for the number of actual faces that are visible. What I am interested in is the approximation of the minimal number of cubes used to enclose the sphere.

That web link I provided you is where I post tutorials on computer graphics when I am not to busy.

 

[kulbolen]

good thing there are more important variables in effective design than volume to surface area.

 

[ToddoftheYear]

The formula for plotting out a sphere is still x^2+y^2+z^2 = r^2
r being the radius remains constant.

You can't make a perfect sphere in voxel.

That quickly changes as the sphere grows a little and it will out scale the Octahedron

If you still have trouble grasping this.

the fact you don't understand how is your issue.

That web link I provided you is where I post tutorials on computer graphics when I am not to busy.

I get the feeling you're going to argue until you win. I regret bothering you.

 

[GRHayes]

You can't make a perfect sphere in voxel.

You don't need an exact sphere.
This program only took a few minutes to write. You could have done the same thing yourself and seen you are wrong.
I'm assuming you know how to program and know computer graphics or why are you arguing with me?
Output for first 30 radius posted below.

count = surface count
radius 1 count: 6 volume: 1
radius 2 count: 26 volume: 7
radius 3 count: 90 volume: 33
radius 4 count: 134 volume: 123
radius 5 count: 258 volume: 257
radius 6 count: 410 volume: 515
radius 7 count: 494 volume: 925
radius 8 count: 690 volume: 1419
radius 9 count: 962 volume: 2109
radius 10 count: 1098 volume: 3071
radius 11 count: 1406 volume: 4169
radius 12 count: 1578 volume: 5575
radius 13 count: 2018 volume: 7153
radius 14 count: 2342 volume: 9171
radius 15 count: 2634 volume: 11513
radius 16 count: 2930 volume: 14147
radius 17 count: 3402 volume: 17077
radius 18 count: 3926 volume: 20479
radius 19 count: 4266 volume: 24405
radius 20 count: 4730 volume: 28671
radius 21 count: 5510 volume: 33401
radius 22 count: 5562 volume: 38911
radius 23 count: 6410 volume: 44473
radius 24 count: 6894 volume: 50883
radius 25 count: 7490 volume: 57777
radius 26 count: 8258 volume: 65267
radius 27 count: 8994 volume: 73525
radius 28 count: 9446 volume: 82519
radius 29 count: 9978 volume: 91965
radius 30 count: 11138 volume: 101943

 

[ToddoftheYear]

You don't need an exact sphere.
This program only took a few minutes to write. You could have done the same thing yourself and seen you are wrong.
I'm assuming you know how to program and know computer graphics or why are you arguing with me?

radius 30 count: 11138 volume: 101943

Volume for voxel based Octahedron with surface area of ~11k:
Count 10818 Volume 182207

Since you're such a clever person I'm sure you can write the equation yourself.

 

[GRHayes]

good thing there are more important variables in effective design than volume to surface area.

Agreed however still an important variable when you want to consider how much weight you will add with armor to protect what you are building.

 

[kulbolen]

Agreed however still an important variable when you want to consider how much weight you will add with armor to protect what you are building.

im glad you mentioned this. i made a mistake. to clarify my point, there are more important variables in effective design than volume to surface area that are mutually exclusive with maximizing volume to surface area. which is why doomcubes are mediocre in pvp but not amazing.

 

[ToddoftheYear]

im glad you mentioned this. i made a mistake. to clarify my point, there are more important variables in effective design than volume to surface area that are mutually exclusive with maximizing volume to surface area. which is why doomcubes are mediocre in pvp but not amazing.

Cubes have a terrible volume to surface area.

 

[kulbolen]

Cubes have a terrible volume to surface area.

terrible is subjective; they have a very high volume to surface area when put side by side with avg romanticized spaceship designs. i dont debate your statement objectively but diamonds and spheres are still nowhere near the best "generalized pvp shapes."

 

[GRHayes]

Volume for voxel based Octahedron with surface area of ~11k:
Count 10818 Volume 182207

Since you're such a clever person I'm sure you can write the equation yourself.

Funny you didn't bother to even put up a radius on it to compare to.

Layers works out to radius. And not sure where you learned your math but an Octohedron with 10818 surface has only 93756 volume.
Also the radius of that is 52 vs a radius of 30.
The output
Layers:1 Surface: 6 Volume:1
Layers:2 Surface: 18 Volume:6
Layers:3 Surface: 38 Volume:19
Layers:4 Surface: 66 Volume:44
Layers:5 Surface: 102 Volume:85
Layers:6 Surface: 146 Volume:146
Layers:7 Surface: 198 Volume:231
Layers:8 Surface: 258 Volume:344
Layers:9 Surface: 326 Volume:489
Layers:10 Surface: 402 Volume:670
Layers:11 Surface: 486 Volume:891
Layers:12 Surface: 578 Volume:1156
Layers:13 Surface: 678 Volume:1469
Layers:14 Surface: 786 Volume:1834
Layers:15 Surface: 902 Volume:2255
Layers:16 Surface: 1026 Volume:2736
Layers:17 Surface: 1158 Volume:3281
Layers:18 Surface: 1298 Volume:3894
Layers:19 Surface: 1446 Volume:4579
Layers:20 Surface: 1602 Volume:5340
Layers:21 Surface: 1766 Volume:6181
Layers:22 Surface: 1938 Volume:7106
Layers:23 Surface: 2118 Volume:8119
Layers:24 Surface: 2306 Volume:9224
Layers:25 Surface: 2502 Volume:10425
Layers:26 Surface: 2706 Volume:11726
Layers:27 Surface: 2918 Volume:13131
Layers:28 Surface: 3138 Volume:14644
Layers:29 Surface: 3366 Volume:16269
Layers:30 Surface: 3602 Volume:18010
Layers:31 Surface: 3846 Volume:19871
Layers:32 Surface: 4098 Volume:21856
Layers:33 Surface: 4358 Volume:23969
Layers:34 Surface: 4626 Volume:26214
Layers:35 Surface: 4902 Volume:28595
Layers:36 Surface: 5186 Volume:31116
Layers:37 Surface: 5478 Volume:33781
Layers:38 Surface: 5778 Volume:36594
Layers:39 Surface: 6086 Volume:39559
Layers:40 Surface: 6402 Volume:42680
Layers:41 Surface: 6726 Volume:45961
Layers:42 Surface: 7058 Volume:49406
Layers:43 Surface: 7398 Volume:53019
Layers:44 Surface: 7746 Volume:56804
Layers:45 Surface: 8102 Volume:60765
Layers:46 Surface: 8466 Volume:64906
Layers:47 Surface: 8838 Volume:69231
Layers:48 Surface: 9218 Volume:73744
Layers:49 Surface: 9606 Volume:78449
Layers:50 Surface: 10002 Volume:83350
Layers:51 Surface: 10406 Volume:88451
Layers:52 Surface: 10818 Volume:93756
Layers:53 Surface: 11238 Volume:99269
Layers:54 Surface: 11666 Volume:104994
Layers:55 Surface: 12102 Volume:110935
Layers:56 Surface: 12546 Volume:117096
Layers:57 Surface: 12998 Volume:123481
Layers:58 Surface: 13458 Volume:130094
Layers:59 Surface: 13926 Volume:136939
Layers:60 Surface: 14402 Volume:144020