In a fiction-first Star Wars RPG, a Correllian Corvette is a major plot point. It is owned by my PC and his PC wife, and they use it for piracy. Because corvettes are cool.
And because obsession is built in to my brain, I've been trying to figure out the interior space. I've read woookipedia about a million times (seriously, google now says "you have visited this page many times"), and I haven't yet figured out a good answer for the interior space.
And I want one. This isn't important to anything in-system, but my brain wants to know.
I've got a friend who plays both Armada and X-wing. He's about done with Armada, and has three corvettes.
If I know the length and displacement of the model, I can scale up. That should (if i can math, and math pretty hard) give me the displacement of the CC, based on its length.
The naive way to do this sounds impressively wrong: find the ratio between length and displacement in the model, and multiple that by the length of the CC.
That sounds wrong, as displacement scales with the cube of length of the model.
Time to math up the right way to do this. Hooray math!
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I have spreadsheets. Because this is fun for me.
ReplyDeleteDo a little unit conversion, and i think I've got it.
ReplyDeleteYou are worse than I am.
ReplyDeleteThe brain's little obsessions are probably a survival instinct somewhere, "yes, i know it is silly, but i really want to figure how to get these two pieces of wood connected. Mud? No. Leaves? No. Several really thin bits of metal, shoved into both of them at the right angle? EUREKA!"
ReplyDeletehttp://deckplans.00sf.com/Marincic/Marincic.html?_ga=1.228616660.970887268.1445918319
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome
This opens more questions: on the deck plans, what's the scale? is the hammer head missing, or the engines? I think the hammerhead, but why? There's a skill to reading this that i just don't have. I don't understand these at all.
ReplyDeleteHow is there not a deck plan for the Correlian Corvette somewhere? o.O
ReplyDeleteI can only find fan made ones with no scale
ReplyDeleteThere's also this: http://swg.wikia.com/wiki/Guide_to_the_Corellian_Corvette
ReplyDeleteBut, I'd need to pay a book. And this is particularly of Leia's consular ship.
I think if you just want a round number in terms of cubic meters, you simply don't have enough information. Because yes, the square-cube law tells you what the interior spaces would be if you simply scaled up a smaller ship to have a bigger ship ... but that same law tells you precisely why you cannot do that without the larger ship crumpling like a wadded up ball of durasteel tissue paper the first time you redline the drives. Working in the same materials, support structures are going to have to take up a larger and larger percentage of the interior as you scale up.
ReplyDeleteAnd at the point I started wondering "How could the Death Star be anything other than a huge block of support structures, with occasional crew tunnels?" I also came to the conclusion that realistic laws weren't really going to get me very far in Star Wars space-ship construction.
Is there something fundamentally wrong with saying "I want room for X people to live in Y level of crowding?"
Another vote for suspending disbelief: your Corvette is acting as a Carrier ship ... pretty sure if you added up the volume of hangar deck that's required for your squadron of Y-Wing fighters, you'll find it's bigger than even the most optimistic estimate of the ship's interior space.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch You absolutely can ask that question. Originally, that's the one I asked. Now I'm having math fun. So, why grab a scale model replica of a CC and measure determine its size? Because it is fun for me. Sometimes I like to tell the internet about my monkey brain obsessions, hence this post.
ReplyDeleteCool! Sorry to sound like yucking your yum. So you said you had a formula worked out ... how'd you end up doing it?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch It looks like this:
ReplyDelete1. Figure out the in-fiction length (150 meters).
2. Figure out the model length, in mm
3. Figure out the model displacement, in mL
4. Convert to meters and mL to cubic meters.
5. Find the ratio of the model length to the in-fiction length.
6. Cube the ratio.
7. Multiple cubed ratio by length to get in-fiction displacement.
8. round to the right number of significant digits (hopefully 2).
That should do it. There's some unit conversion, and finding the displacement will be obnoxious. I'll probably do it a few different ways and average the answers, knowing there will be some errors. If the model is denser than water, then it'll be easier to find the displacement. If the density is the same as water, then find the mass and convert to volume using that density. If it really floats, then crap. Attach something known and heavy to it, and sink it.
That's the plan; sink an Armada CC to find the displacement of in-fiction CC, while fully embraing the ridiculousness of doing so.
... Especially as the Aramada CC may not be to scale.
I was drawing floor plans for this Friday. We might have brain problems. ;)
ReplyDeleteThat is a dang classy scientific way to approach the problem, William. Hats off to you!
ReplyDeleteWhen I math out, I math out.
ReplyDeleteCompare this to the last draft, where I took the published dimensions and number of decks and multiplied. This probably grossly overstated the interior size, so there may be some revisions.
Anyway, any apparent issues? Just because my brain says something should work doesn't mean it makes sense.
Misha B Yeah, our brains apparently like to obsess on similar issues.
ReplyDeleteI just ordered a CC online (less than $10!), because my friend doesn't want to submerge his models. And then, at the end, I'll have a cool CC. Which I will probably enjoy for all of 2 weeks.
ReplyDeleteI was a civil engineering major when I started college.
ReplyDeleteThat must be what did it; I was never any good at drafting per say, but I remember designing a mansion ala Downton. This gives me a chance to do that in a cooperative way, which I really haven't in decades.
ReplyDelete