Re: [FT] Armour (long)(was Re:Armor)

At 2000-10-21 +0100 10:45, you wrote:
>Charles Stanley Taylor wrote:
>
> >>I agree it should be relatively massive--IMHO we'd want to set it up
>to >>be possibly cost effective for large ships, but definitely not for
>small >>ships.
> >
> >Hmm... could use the same trick they use for screens - set a minimum
> >MASS - much harder to justify though!
>
>Not very. Assuming a roughly similar shape for all ships regardless of
>size, the Mass of the armour will realistically be proportional to
>(ship's volume)^(2/3). Plot that function out vs the ship's volume, and
>then figure out how to best approximate that with a straight line...
>and check where that straight line intersects the armour mass axis. It
>won't be in origo unless your approximation is way off :-)
>
>Replacing the volume with TMF isn't entirely accurate since not all
>components have the same density, but it's the best we can do without
>introducing a new variable in the design system :-/
>
>Oerjan Ohlson
>oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

Oerjan,
Where did you get the (ship's volume)^(2/3) figure?
I assume that it is a surface area to volume figure,
but for what shape? A sphere has the least surface
area per volume of any shape. It appears as if you
were using a cube as a modle for your volume to
surface area formula (a cube with edges of length
10 would make a cube with 1000 cubic units and a
surface area of 600 square units. This gives a
ratio of 1-2/3 volume to area). A simple cube is still
too simple for any of the ship designs in FTFB. I
would suggest that the surface area of the average
ship if FTFB has 2-3 times the surface area of a
cube made with the same volume. So a formula of
(ship volume)^(4/3) or (ship volume)^2 would be more
accurate.

---
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net
ICQ: 12848051
AIM: Rlyehable
The Full Thrust Ship Registry:
http://www.ftsr.org
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