Topic: When is volume important for a vehicle?

[NanoEther]

Should volume be a hard limit when designing vehicles? Are there occasions when it should and others where it should be treated as a guideline?

Marine Vessels: for pure water, 1 cubmet = 1 metric ton, so a marine vessel needs a higher volume to have buoyancy. These also applies to subs, they are built as low riding surface vessels so that you have buoyancy tanks. So for a marine vessel, a higher volume is preferred, but stability issues may require a limit at some level.

Aircraft: Mass is the main limitation: the higher the mass, the greater the cost to get it airborne. Volume is only limited by the needs of streamlining to reduce drag.

In fact, for most vehicles, mass is the primary driver of the design. Volume seems to be most often impacted by external requirements, such as the width of a lane on a road.

[Defendi]

I only worry about volume if I care whether the vehicle sinks.

[markc]

 IMHO volume (V) is as important as mass for the following reasons, things take up different volumes at different tech levels, cargo is mass and volume oriented (people and things) and as Defendi said above flotation plays a roll also.


 I think you might also have to look at density for materials when trying to cut though them or making tables for damage.
MDC

[arakish]

I read this in a book or web page somewhere (too many years ago to remember).  I felt it had its point, but was also hilarious.

"Vessel volume becomes an important issue when you need to make room for the biological infestations to crawl around inside."

rmfr

[NanoEther]

I wasn't wondering about volume for modules and components those are needed to give a size. What I'm looking at is the volume of the end vessel. The only component that I can identify that requires a stable volume are shields, and they actually need surface area and not volume.

The only other consideration is when you have a ships dimensions and are trying to fit components into that known volume.

[markc]

The one that jumps out at me is Armor, life support (IMHO), float ability (As you said above in your post), air resistance (as you said above).


Also if you have Travellers Fire Fusion and Steel you can get an idea on a more complex (and a bit more real life than SM) craft. The rules do have a lot of Surface Area stuff that is derived from the volumes shape, which IMHO would be a great thing to incorporate into any SM construction rules.
MDC