Ekapshi Model?

Ok, let's assume (that means making an ass of u and me) :D

The Galaxy is as big as the free trader, 85m.
Based on that I measured the pixel sizes and came to the following values:
Length: 85m
Width: 61m
Height: 30m

Based on that the big cargo door in the back is 5 meters high and 4 meters wide. Interesting fact: That numbers are not much rounded. Which is quite nice.

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I also assumed based on what we see in the picture I posted earlier that the Galaxy is roughly double the length of the Centurion, that makes the Centurion 40 m long. That's longer than a Raptor or a Broadsword but still somewhere in the heavy fighter category. The rest of the values is based on that:
Length: 40m
Width: 31m
Height: 12m

So the cockpit glass we see is 2.8 meters long. That still sounds plausible I think, although this fighter is now almost as big as a Broadsword.


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The Tarsus: It looks smaller as the Centurion at first glance but I assumed it is as long. So 40 meters.
Based on that here are the sizes:
Length: 40m
Width: 12,5m
Height: 12m (14 with radar dish)

So the main cockpit window is 1.2 meters high and 4.2 meters wide. Doesn't sound that bad IMHO


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The Orion:

The windowed part of its cockpit is roughly as wide as that of the Galaxy in the ship trader picture posted earlier. The one of the Galaxy is 12 meters wide. Now I transferred that to the Orion and got the follwing values:
Length: 63m
Width: 57m
Height: 33m (38m with radar dish)

So the cargo door is 9.55 meters wide and 8.3 meters high.



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Now let's look at the cargo capacity:
Because of its shape and huge reactors for weapons the Centurion carries only 50 units of Cargo although it is as long and as high as the Tarsus. But look at it: The Tarsus is blockier and the height and length of the Centurion originate in the engines and the long front fuselage which isn't very wide. Also the Centurion's long front part contains the radar so no cargo space there. After all I don't wonder why the Tarsus can carry much more cargo.

The Orion is another thing though. It looks quite big. But much of its size is actually the really big engines and that strange part between the cockpit and the rest of the ship. I can't imagine that a lot of cargo can be stored there. Still I wonder why it doesn't have gretar capacity than the Tarsus since it is a bit bigger.
EDIT: And while it is smaller than the Galaxy it has a bigger cargo door. So pilots flying the orion might specialize on bigger single parts that can't be unassembled. while the Galaxy can store much more overall, but not in such large containers :)

The Galaxy is big. It also has big engines but you can see at first glance that the area to store the cargo is much better shaped. I think it is clear why it has so much capacity.


If I ever get my lazy *** into my chair and start modeling with Blender again I will use those values I think. They don't seem completely out of place (a few meters give or take) and the Centurion would still be able to land on a carrier. So everything I would like to have is there. :)
 
capi3101 said:
The Centurion is touted as a heavy fighter; most fighters in all the games cluster around the 25-30 meter mark in length (with noticeable differences in Armada; the Banshee is 43 meters long). That would be the only reason why I would question a sixty meter long fighter.
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You have to remember, it is a civilian ship. It's completely different to a military fighter, and the term "heavy fighter" is just a simplification in this case - we definitely shouldn't make assumptions based on the fact that we see military ships using the same label. What you need to ask yourself is, how many tons of cargo can a Banshee or Broadsword carry? We really don't know, but do we have any reason to assume it's as much as a Centurion? Look at those windows on the side of the Centurion's fuselage - it looks like the ship could be used to comfortably transport a sizeable group of passengers.

Aginor said:
Well, one of the obvious answers is gameplay related:
If the centurion is 45m long its wingspan will be under 35m and its height under 20m. That means it can land on the standard hangars that already exist in bases, carriers and the like. If the ship is bigger the modders would have to try and find solutions how to dock the ships etc.
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Well, who said that the Centurion is capable of landing on a carrier? :) I don't think the average 747 can handle carrier landings... and neither can the average fishing boat (because they're generally bad at landing anywhere). And as for bases, we see hangars in Priv where Paradigm destroyers dock - if a destroyer can (even one as weird as the Paradigm), surely there's enough space for Centurions on most bases?
 
@Quarto: Yes, of course that could be the case, the Centurion may not be able to fit into a carrier's hangar.
What is important for me is that if it isn't too far fetched (and I don't think it is) the Centurion would have a size that fits into a carrier hangar so I could actually let it land on the Victory if I want to do that in missions. :) So yes, I would choose that size because it fits for gameplay.
(I don't have a base with such a big hangar yet and no time to model it)

And based on my assumptions those windows would be 60 cm wide and 40 cm high which is the size of windows in some passenger ferries I've travelled on. The passenger compartment of the Centurion (that small part with the windows) would at least be big enough for 40-50 people on two decks.
With 40 meters the Centurion is the size of the MD 87 passenger jet, which isn't exactly small!
I don't think your comparison to the Boeing 747 fits, that one is huge.

But the airplane comparisons are not really suitable anyway I think. It's just that I want to point out that 40 meters is NOT small. That's almost the size of a B52 bomber, and the Galaxy is much larger than a 747 in all dimensions. The thing that doesn't fit is the carrier sizes. The small Yorktown class carrier is twice the size of a modern aircraft carrier and in space the 747 could almost land on it since it can fly reeeeaaaally slow there. The limitation would be the wingspan and you wouldn't need that big wings in space anyway. :)

So I don't see much of a problem with sizes, I think they fit in all aspects that really matter.


EDIT: Do we have any clue how big the cargo units of Privateer could be? The weight doesn't matter in space that much obviously, but the size could.
 
Probably not an issue anymore, but going through my files i just remembered that some awesome dude actually *did* rip the original WC3 model of the Ekapshi. So here it is.
Ekapshi2.jpg
 
It is always amazing to see how well those ships looked. That graphic quality is really great when you take into account ho old that game is.
I think all of the WC3 ships were ripped at some point by one or the other fan in order to work on their own versions.
 
Aginor said:
EDIT: Do we have any clue how big the cargo units of Privateer could be? The weight doesn't matter in space that much obviously, but the size could.
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I always assumed that the units were shipping tonnage (an international standard volume of 100 cubic feet, i.e. about 2.8 cubic meters, approximately equal to the volume of a box that would enclose a "tun"--a barrel that could hold one British long ton of water or alcoholic beverage). Alternatively, it might refer to metric tonnage, in which case it is simply the usable volume of the cargo bay in cubic meters.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_register_tonnage

Calculating from this, the Tarsus' 100 register tons would equal a cargo bay measuring 5x6x9 meters. The 50 register tons of the Centurion could fit in a cargo bay 4 meters wide and tall and 10 meters long.

Also, given the nature of the Privateer craft (especially the idea that pilots will spend days on end in them, flying through several jumps without docking anywhere), I would not be surprised to see something like a small crew quarters on them (like a 3x3x4 meter compartment with bunks for 2 people, or 4 for the Galaxy, and a minimal galley and toilet/shower)
 
Here are some sizes to compare with: The "Poeler Kogge", an old German sailship from the 18th century is just 31 meters long and it has a cargo capacity of over 200 tons. Since it doesn't move in space I think we can assume that in most cases it was the weight that mattered and not the volume.

Anyway, I went back to the pictures of the Centurion and the Tarsus and took a look at what space might be usable inside. That's based on my earlier assumptions about size of course. I put some boxes onto the pictures and measured what space might be available in the fuselage, of course I left some margin for hull thickness, didn't use any space in engine nacelles and left out the cockpit and all parts of the ship where weapons, reactors and/or sensors might be. Additionally I left a bit of space empty where some small crew quarters may be as Ijuin said.

The cargo volume of the Centurion which might be usable for cargo is roughly 250 cubic meters big. (14m x 4.5m x 4m) The Tarsus has at least 500 cubic metres (8m x 4m x 8m + 12m x 3.5m x 6m).

The problem with the other two ships is that the size doesn't really add up. Given the length of the Orion that is plausible based on what we see on the pictures its cargo compartment is much bigger than that of the Tarsus, especially since it is higher and wider. Over 3000 cubic metres if I didn't calculate it wrong. But I might be wrong because I don't know where its reactors are. I assumed the whole rear part of the ship is cargo space, which might be wrong. But I can't imagine its cargo capacity could be smaller than that of a Tarsus. If someone came up with a cool explanation for that I would be very grateful :)

The Galaxy is even bigger. Much bigger. I didn't do the math yet but I expect 10.000+ cubic metres. Which isn't surprising when you consider that it is bigger than a Boeing 747.
I also tried to compare all that numbers to real life aircraft again, but that is useless. We have to compare the Wing Commander space ships to ships, not planes. Then things suddenly become more "realistic". I started to compare cargo riverboat sizes with what we have here, they look much better.
 
Again, you have to consider that if applying your assumptions gives results that don't make sense - then you need to rethink your assumptions. We do not actually know how much of the space onboard these ships is usable, how much machinery there may be inside, how much space may be needed for fuel and so on. I mean, comparing to sailing ships is probably the worst possible comparison you could come up with (ok, maybe barges would be worse).

By the way, have you tried comparing to real life space craft? Because the space shuttle, for example, is 56 metres long, has a total mass of 2000 tons, but its usable mass (the crew & cargo) is 24 tons (if flying to low Earth orbit) or 13 tons (if flying into polar orbit)... or even 4 tons, if flying to geostationary transfer orbit. As you can see from that - yes, a 56 metre long spaceship may be limited to a paltry 20 tons of cargo, and yes, it's not just volume but mass as well that matters. Not only do you need to be able to take off from the planet in the first place, but also, in spaceflight your mass affects your inertia. If it takes you fifteen minutes to brake and make a turn, you might not be able to dodge that missile...
 
No, comparing to real life space craft is even worse I think, since the engines available in the Wing Commander universe are able to accelerate ships to earth's escape velocity in a matter of seconds without using any fuel. The space shuttle carries a enormous external tank and two boosters to reach that. The cargo limitation of the space shuttle originates exactly there.
Also you can't compare WC ships to real space ships anyway because none of the ships in WC would be possible without violating several basic rules of physics. The speeds, acceleration values, sizes, masses and so on are completely out of place. In real life it wouldn't even make sense to use weapons like we see in the games.

So no, space ships don't fit. Wing Commander is WW2 in space, so obviously the big space ships in WC should be compared to ships, while fighters should be compared to airplanes.

Also I don't think the sail ship is a bad comparison, since I used it to show that even sail ships could carry big loads of cargo. With modern ships it is even more extreme. A modern freighter with 300 metres of length (a small ship compared to what we see in space in WC) can carry hundreds of thousands of tons. In space it would make even less sense to build such small ships because of the huge distances. The bigger the distance the more sense it makes to built bigger transports. That's why freighters are that big. Because mass doesn't matter on water that much, you have lots of time to accelerate. In space it is the same (better even).
I still think that ships are a much better comparison than airplanes, because of the reasons stated above.

EDIT:
Much more important is that everything fits to each other, which is why I'm searching for the reason why the Orion and Galaxy could have a tenth of their relative cargo capacity compared to the Tarsus and the Centurion. It can't be the engines because those are not in the ship. There must be something else.
 
I feel this thread needs one of my favourite images I put together when trying to make the point not to take relative sizes of things in the Wing Commander universe too seriously:
uIcA5.jpg
 
Yeah, I know. That's why I always aim for what could at least make a bit of sense instead of just using the canonical values in the gme engine.
There are more examples like that. For example if you take this example to show how big the Victory's hangar is and compare that to the model ingame. It doesn't really fit either.
But that doesn't really matter. We have canonical sizes we can use for manuals and stuff, and then we make up ones that aren't too far away from that and build nicely fitting models for use in mods etc. No harm done. :)

EDIT: Also the problem of this thread is that we don't know all that much about the ships we're discussing.
 
Aginor said:
EDIT: Also the problem of this thread is that we don't know all that much about the ships we're discussing.
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True. I hadn't really meant to kick off the level of discussion going on here, but it's been good so far.

Any thoughts on how big the craft in Privateer 2 are supposed to be? My little cargo bay trick isn't going to work for the fighters in that game (since none of them carry any cargo)...
 
One thing I don't understand is why people are so averse to just following directly in Origin's footsteps: make the ships whatever size fits properly in the game engine and then list something else in the manual that fits better with the other incorrect figures.
 
That's what I just said. Or at least what I meant.
With the Privateer ships the interesting thing is where to start with :)

@capi3101:
There's not muc hinformation about these. Cockpit sizes may help. The cargo is no problem here since in many cases the ships are carrying no cargo at all. For that we have those huge freighters in Priv2.
 
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