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Where are the Descent Freespace and Wing Commander ships?
The GTVA Colossus is ~6km long
The TCS Midway is only 1.8km long, but sports one shot fleet vaporizer weapons
Other TCS, Kilrathi, and Nephilim ships carry ship destroyer cannons, and some bombers carry nuclear weapons effectively capable of one shotting entire space stations.
Not HUGE, but two of the most influential/biggest space combat simulator games.
Was just going to mention this. The ships are too small to even see on this chart. Even a podnought is under 1500m.
That said, an impeller wedge is 200-300 km across. So technically they'd be a star destroyer sized speck surrounded by a white square the size of the rest of the picture.
Yay for realistic ranges in space.
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BrianDavion wrote: Between the two of us... I think GW is assuming we the players are not complete idiots.
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Prettty typical of anime. Ridiculous proportions and no concept of scale is a trademark of the vapid Japanese genre...
That pretty much fits to most descriptions of 40K ships too...
I think think those numbers come from FFG material, and ship stats in their books are just all over the place. And BL is obviously even worse. I've heard that original design sizes for Battlefeet Gothic ships were about half the length of those FFG numbers, though that's obscure and unreliable background information.
SoloFalcon1138 wrote: Prettty typical of anime. Ridiculous proportions and no concept of scale is a trademark of the vapid Japanese genre...
Ah, the true sign of someone who needs to watch more anime... and get a clue.
Try Planetes. The whole point of that anime is the realistic depiction of an orbital society.
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Crimson wrote:That pretty much fits to most descriptions of 40K ships too...
I think think those numbers come from FFG material, and ship stats in their books are just all over the place. And BL is obviously even worse. I've heard that original design sizes for Battlefeet Gothic ships were about half the length of those FFG numbers, though that's obscure and unreliable background information.
Grey Templar wrote: The real question is how are over a thousand people living and working on a Galaxy class Federation ship when its only 642 meters long, and yet the interior shots show it being quite spacious.
A nimitz aircraft carrier is only 350m long and 75m wide and it has 6000 people on it.
If you think that the sauce of the Galaxy class is roughly a disk 350m across it could easily fit 1000 people in style.
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Compare those crew numbers to what FFG wrote in their books - huge difference.
Yeah, and both those crew numbers are still really low for the size these ships are supposed to be. People seriously do not realize the volume that few miles long starship would have.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/26 20:58:47
Crimson wrote:Yeah, and both those crew numbers are still really low for the size these ships are supposed to be. People seriously do not realize the volume that few miles long starship would have.
Hmm. But are they really "a few miles" long?
I've seen like a dozen different lengths for a Mars class cruiser so far, but never a GW source for them. And that's before we delve into the possibilities of automation, or keep in mind how unnecessarily huge the buildings in 40k are. An Imperial cathedral, heightwise, could probably offer room for thousands of people, but that doesn't mean it actually has as many benches on the floor, if you get my meaning.
Then again, I must admit I think I actually prefer the idea of non-automation. It feels more "gothic" if you have gun crews load their macro-cannons by power of muscle.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/26 21:31:31
Lynata wrote: Hmm. But are they really "a few miles" long?
I've seen like a dozen different lengths for a Mars class cruiser so far, but never a GW source for them.
Who knows. I prefer this size chart:
FFG scales seem to be directly taken from Merzo website, that just totally made up sizes for 40K ships based on absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell.
And that's before we delve into the possibilities of automation, or keep in mind how unnecessarily huge the buildings in 40k are. An Imperial cathedral, heightwise, could probably offer room for thousands of people, but that doesn't mean it actually has as many benches on the floor, if you get my meaning.
Then again, I must admit I think I actually prefer the idea of non-automation. It feels more "gothic" if you have gun crews load their macro-cannons by power of muscle.
Yeah, crowded decks with thousands of serfs and sevitors is my vision of 40K ships.
Crimson wrote:totally made up sizes for 40K ships based on absolutely nothing
But doesn't the same go for your preferred chart? It's just that I've seen the exact same chart posted alongside a similar one with different numbers. It all just sounds very ... "made up", with the usual inflation we sometimes see when it comes to Astartes heights.
Crimson wrote:Yeah, crowded decks with thousands of serfs and sevitors is my vision of 40K ships.
I think I'm in the same boat (hah!) - though I will say that the "wasted space" in terms of height would surely affect crew numbers considerably. ~16.000 crew for a Mars-class cruiser sounds quite alright to me, at least to evoke that effect of crowded hulls (where the crew actually works - for I also like that idea that lots of ships have "dark" areas where nobody dares to venture).
Hmm, now I'm in the mood for reading "Ancient History" again ... that was a cool story. If you haven't read it so far - quite recommendable! And iirc it's where that excerpt from Andy Chambers' article is from.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/26 22:14:55
You know the values on the chart you posted are almost exactly the same as the FFG lengths except they were incorrectly labeled as km when they should be miles.
The Dictator class is shown as around 3.1km (the lance length not included). FFG lists the length of the Dictator as 5 km. But if it was a mistake and the chart was in miles, it'd be 3.1 MILES which converts approximately to 5km.
The Firestorm class (even though it's mislabeled as Dauntless) is shown as around 1.1km. FFG lists the Firestorm as 1.8km. Convert to 1.1 miles and you have approximately 1.8km.
The Cobra class is shown as around 0.9km on that picture. FFG lists the Cobra as 1.5km. Converted to 0.9 miles and you have approximately 1.5km.
The Dauntless doesn't seem to match but I would put that as an error of the chart, and we don't have FFG stats for the Retribution so that one is out. Even still, when 3 of the 5 ships shown convert almost perfectly if they were miles, I'm tempted to call the validity of the chart into question.
Exergy wrote: A nimitz aircraft carrier is only 350m long and 75m wide and it has 6000 people on it.
I's actually a bit shorter (roughly 333m) and wider (approximately 78m). The only time there is 6000 people is when it is fully manned including flight crews. Most of the time there is about 3000 military personnel and 1000 civilians when under way.
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Pretty sure the SSV-Normandy didn't reach more than maybe a hundred and fifty meters in length. Trivia for the Mass Effect series indicates that the interior space of the ship, as modeled in the game engine, is actually larger than what the exterior shots of the hull would permit. So maybe it's part-Tardis.
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Lynata wrote: But doesn't the same go for your preferred chart? It's just that I've seen the exact same chart posted alongside a similar one with different numbers. It all just sounds very ... "made up", with the usual inflation we sometimes see when it comes to Astartes heights.
It's kinda made up, but IIRC it's based on supposed original design sizes of BFG ships (not that those are known for sure.) Also, this is the original version of this chart, linked directly from the artist's Deviant Art page. There have been some versions of this chart where people have edited in bigger numbers. Or do you think these ships are still too large?
I think I'm in the same boat (hah!) - though I will say that the "wasted space" in terms of height would surely affect crew numbers considerably. ~16.000 crew for a Mars-class cruiser sounds quite alright to me, at least to evoke that effect of crowded hulls (where the crew actually works - for I also like that idea that lots of ships have "dark" areas where nobody dares to venture).
Yes, considerably, but let's consider this. About 300 m aircraft carrier has crew of about 5000. Three kilometres long starship has about thousand times the volume of the aircraft carrier. (And FFG's five km cruisers have nearly 5000 times the volume of a carrier!) So even if we assume that due to engines, structures and high ceilings there would be 50 times as much volume per person in starship as there is in the carrier, that 3km ship should still have crew of 100 000. (Unless my math is wrong, I'm tired.)
I wonder how big the Furious Abyss and it's sister ships were, they were supposed to be humungous even compared to the biggest ships in the Imperial fleet.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/09/27 08:54:06
jareddm wrote: You know the values on the chart you posted are almost exactly the same as the FFG lengths except they were incorrectly labeled as km when they should be miles.
That chart is older than FFG's Rogue Trader.
Merzo used pictures by the person who made that chart but upped the sizes for some reason. FFG seem to have taken their sizes from Merzo. It's possible that Merzo accidentally thought the numbers in the chart were miles instead of kilometres and re-converted them into kilometres again, and that's how the upscaling happened.
Horus' Flagship "Vengeful Spirit" - its bigger than all the 40k ships on that pic.
Planet Killer - Bigger than the above.
Craftworld - Hell... Let's say Iyanden, it was the biggest.
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Crimson wrote:It's kinda made up, but IIRC it's based on supposed original design sizes of BFG ships (not that those are known for sure.)
I've never seen any numbers there. The sketches I've seen from Blanche's art book did not use any sort of scale. Even if the ships would correctly scale to each other (which isn't sure at all), how would we able to attach actual dimensions to either one without having at least one "Rosetta Stone", so to say?
I'm not entirely sure which numbers I would prefer, to be honest. I generally like to stick to what the people actually working on the original material are saying, so I'm leaning heavily towards Andy Chambers' crew sizes - which in turn affect my opinion regarding ship sizes.
Crimson wrote:Yes, considerably, but let's consider this. About 300 m aircraft carrier has crew of about 5000. Three kilometres long starship has about thousand times the volume of the aircraft carrier. (And FFG's five km cruisers have nearly 5000 times the volume of a carrier!) So even if we assume that due to engines, structures and high ceilings there would be 50 times as much volume per person in starship as there is in the carrier, that 3km ship should still have crew of 100 000. (Unless my math is wrong, I'm tired.)
I think the x50 volume is still too "normal", actually. Imagine taking that 300m carrier, multiply x10 for the 3km length and the 70m height (=700m). Now you have an Imperial ship with the volume of 100 times that of a contemporary aircraft carrier. However, huge ceiling heights, gigantic engines and weapons batteries or flight decks, not to mention a cargo hold capable of holding consumables for a voyage of years rather than weeks or months will drive this down considerably, and I could even think only 5-10% of this volume are actual "working space" used by the crew. Now multiply the carrier's crew of 5.000 with x5 or x10 and you arrive at 25.000 or 50.000 crew. Voila!
But obviously, that's really just speculation based on little more than wild guesses. Without GW giving us more details to work from, we're - once again - left to our personal preferences and interpretation ...
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/09/27 12:48:18
Width, Lynata, the ship has width too! 3km ship has thousand times the volume of 300m ship, not hundred times. You think 5 to 10% of living space might be reasonable, I already counted with 2%!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/09/27 13:05:08
