Warship Design Philosophy (RP Perspective)

[Shadow2Lead]

Roughly halfway down this article it discusses the "Broadway" and identifies it as an image that looks like the same corridor. Though, the article could be misidentifying the corridor pictured, wouldn't shock me. Turns out this sort of wide artery isn't as rare/new in naval architecture as I thought since it was used in WW2 battleships (and I assume earlier ones.) Perhaps it fell out of favor due to the prevalence of VLS or changes to armor scheming?

So in Starmade, even if we were being generous, the corridor space width would be represented by 1.5 blocks at the most.View attachment 35607

Regardless of what the deal is with that specific corridor, this hits on a good point regarding the limits of trying to do a literal imitation of life dimensions in StarMade. In real life those 1.2m are described as "a very large main-deck passageway" and "big enough for forklifts to drive through". In StarMade it's one of the narrowest spaces we can make and still walk through. So perhaps a bit more of a rule of cool is reasonable for designing warship corridors, than is my natural inclination. So... if it feels narrow in astronaut mode, then it is narrow, even if the actual dimensions are quite wide for real life purposes.

I think I've ended up pulling us a bit off topic here. Sorry about that. So try to help get the thread back on warship design philosophy:
I've been laying out for my ships like an onion, with the weapons (obviously) and living space RP areas around the perimeter of the ship. Shields/capacitors/thrusters next inside. With finally Aux Reactors* and bridge + CIC type RP areas in the core (which I'll give an extra layer of advanced armor. From a combat perspective putting all RP stages around the edge is straight up superior since it'll act as spaced armor as Panpiper has described, but putting some of those spaces anywhere but in the armored heart of the ship just bothers me when it's not like anyone is going to look out a window while fighting the ship. (The exception is Star Trek ships, there the bridge goes in the easiest place to get blown up, because reasons. A beneficial side effect is that the "viewscreen" can just be glass and if you put a camera at the back of the bridge it can be a very cool if inefficient way to fight easy battles.)

*I'd like there to be a reason to put aux reactors on turret bases for magazine explosive fun, but there really isn't a good reason to other than pure RP, and given the inherent flaws in the basic design of the ships I'm making (tv/movie/book designs) I am reluctant to do that.

Sidenote: super impressed with your sleuth skills figuring out measurements in that photo.

 

[Jojomo]

Sidenote: super impressed with your sleuth skills figuring out measurements in that photo.

Ta
I'll quote it/myself here, seeing as it's now hidden on the previous page:

I think your impression of that photo is a bit inaccurate.
Also don't forget the distortion you get at the edges of the photo: things become stretched there.

We can do a couple of rough checks:

I drew a red box from the guy's head to his heel, and laid a copy sideways across the bottom. If we assume he's 6 feet tall, we can say that that the width of the grey area, of the corridor and alcove together, is approximately a bit over (a couple of shoe widths) 6 feet (1.8m)

I did a second check with the fire extinguisher in the foreground. I copy/pasted it across the corridor. The grey area is about 6.5 times the width of the extinguisher. I did a quick search for the dimensions of a 9kg (20lb) extinguisher (that's a large one) and used the first one I got. The diameter of the cylinder is 180mm. Multiplied by 6.5 that's 1.17m (3.8 feet).

Not enough for two people to pass each other without some maneuvering around each other.

So in Starmade, even if we were being generous, the corridor space width would be represented by 1.5 blocks at the most.

Regardless of what the deal is with that specific corridor, this hits on a good point regarding the limits of trying to do a literal imitation of life dimensions in StarMade. In real life those 1.2m are described as "a very large main-deck passageway" and "big enough for forklifts to drive through".

Yes, I think it's probably not uncommon for people to not realise/notice that a completely different definition of "wide/large/spacious" applies when you go from talking about terrestrial stuff to onboard ships.

In StarMade it's one of the narrowest spaces we can make and still walk through. So perhaps a bit more of a rule of cool is reasonable for designing warship corridors, than is my natural inclination. So... if it feels narrow in astronaut mode, then it is narrow, even if the actual dimensions are quite wide for real life purposes.

I totally agree - people should feel happy building absolutely anything they want, in any way they want. I think it's a little unreasonable for anyone to claim that 2 or 3 metre wide corridors are realistic on (RL) naval ships though.

 

[KiloZulu]

Oh yeah, OP topic...you might want to check out a game in development called "The Mandate" . The game centers around tactical space combat with a strong emphasis on crew. So, your ship is modeled on both the interior and exterior, and you'll get to control where your crew goes inside the ship. This leads to boarding actions, and who lives or dies depending on where the ship is damaged. Anyway, they've done a great job of identifying the types of rooms you need to have on a ship, and their placement - engine rooms, labs, comms, etc., and how they might be laid out on the ship.

It's a game I'd be excited about if their updates weren't so far apart it's hard to tell sometimes if they're still working on it.