What does KT really mean??

[Sabre21]

I was just wondering what the abbreviation KT following the ship size is supposed to represent? Is it KiloTon (2.2 standard US tons) or does the K mean 1,000 tons..kinda confusing I know..but think about it. If it means 2.2 US tons, the fighter sizes of 15, 20 , and 25 would be about right...although the heavy might be on the light side...but a 1000KT ship in the game wouldn't be squat in real life, considering todays destroyes go at about 10,000 tons and a Nimitz carrier exceeds 100,000 and supertankers at 250,000.

But if you take the other approach, being that 1000KT ship is actually 1,000,000 tons...sheesh..this is one big ship, with the lightest escort of 150KT being 50% heavier than the Nimitz. My idea of an escort is pretty small...maybe 50 crew or so...not the 6000+ the Nimitz has. Then even the fighters would be at horrendous sizes too...15,000 tons for the light fighter..hehe, as big as a navy cruiser.

So either way you look at it, you either have tiny little ships much smaller than contempory naval vessels, or huge mammoth monsters. Kinda curious what the intention was on this. As for gameplay it works ok.

[Kagetora]

Well I would suppose they are using the same system that nuclear weapons use in which a kiloton is 1000 tons and a megaton is 1 million tons. I would point out that naval vessals on water aren't usually described by their actual weight but by the amount of water they displace which is not even close to being the same. They must displace much more water than they actually weigh in order to float.

[Instar]

Dont forget, metric people have their own tonnes and stuff.

[Jubala]

I always took it to mean 1,000 Tons, ie big brutes. Makes sense really. You need something big to cram all the systems into them the game has. And to withstand the rigors of space travel. A Honor Harrington Superdreadnaught weighs in at about 8,300,000 tons, ie 8300kT, much larger then a baseship. A HH Battlecruiser weighs in at about 850,000 tons, ie 850kT. But then the HH ships gets progressivelly larger the higher up in class they come then the hulls in SE4. Been thinking about putting together a HH techset with shipsizes and componentsizes such that you can design and build ships with similar size and armament as the HH ships. Probably won't though as it would be way to much work. Might just adjust the ship sizes though.

BC crews are about 700 souls and SD crews are about 6000 souls but the RMN could lower that with more automated systems.

My point is the ship sizes makes sense in a sf kind of way.

[Kimball]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kagetora:
They must displace much more water than they actually weigh in order to float.

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Actually, that is not entirely true. A FLOATING body will displace a mass of water equal to the mass of the floating body. That is because the buoyancy force (specific weight of the fluid, water for ship, multiplied by the volume of water displaced by the object) must equal the weight of the floating object. SW * Volume = weight If the two forces did not equal, the object would accelerate in one direction or the other, basically it would sink.

Picture a 10,000 lbf, 1000 ft^3 object float in water. The buoyancy force must equal 10,000 lbf, otherwise it would sink. The object would have to displace approximately 10,000 lbf / 62.4 lbf/ft^3 (specific weight of water) = 160.25 ft^3 water, much less than the volum of the object itself.

Call me a geek.

[Kimball]

I forgot to mention that seawater has a specific weight, requiring even less water to make the same object float.

[Kimball]

Oops, seawater has a specific weight GREATER than water. I need to proof read these a little better.

[Taqwus]

And while you're puzzling over this... figure out how much your people weigh. You can put millions of 'em in a colony pod, after all, along with everything needed to keep 'em alive indefinitely.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Tomgs]

They are probably in suspended animation when in colony ships or cargo pods. They don't seem to reproduce or die in there. That way you can stack them and no food or other requirements are needed.

[Hydraa]

You are forgetting the main point of the weight. The beings that board a transport are dehydrated (or deliquidfied depending on what there main liquid is). This allows for a great sazings of weight and mass.

Just hope that the loadmasters keep the residues separated properly.