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Another Proposal for Ship Displacement and other Measurements


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So yeah, you can probably guess what this is gonna be about by the title.

But with the Alpha 12 update and the introduction of the new "one ton" increments/steps on the displacement slider and the continued difficulty to hit a specific number exactly on the mark, I can't help but feel that there is a very simple solution to that: add the option to click on the displacement amount and manually enter a number that fits between the specified displacement values for that specific hull. Because as is, most every hull (with the exception of a few) will automatically upsize or downsize depending on whether you go above or below a certain tonnage value. This feature would effectively be unchanged if "manual displacements" were added, as it would work the same way: if the tonnage is above/below X-tons, the ship's hull will be this size. For an example of this point, if you use the US Navy Super Battleship hull and drag the slider above 102,000 tons the hull will automatically upsize to the max, while if you drag it down past a certain value (I don't remember what value specifically) it downsizes to the minimum size for that hull.

Now on to length and beam. I know a while back there was a slight push for the ability to add the ability to edit length and beam for your ships. However, while I can see why that would be nice in some situations and I myself wouldn't mind that ability/freedom, unless you are trying to exactly recreate <insert ship name here> the length and beam isn't really that much of a problem in most cases (your experiences may differ from mine though) thanks to the increased flexibility we have when it comes to positioning and placement of towers, funnels, barbettes and weapons. The ability to manually edit length and beam would also directly influence the turning circle of your ship, as well as the pitch and roll (as narrower hulls with tall superstructures would obviously be very top heavy and have a tendency to roll). And while this may/may not be a problem depending on how you view things...allow me to present the following scenario:

You manually enter a displacement, and then you decide you want long and slender fast battleship look. Would the displacement before adding weapons, towers, etc. be surprisingly low due to your hull being fairly long but not very wide? What about if you had a hull that was relatively wide, but wasn't very long? Would there be pre-set "length to width" ratios, or would there be another slider? If your hull is too short, you won't be able to add many components along the centerline (especially as the towers and guns get bigger and bigger) and if your hull is too narrow you may have trouble mounting towers or secondary guns (again, especially as the towers and guns get bigger and wider). If you hull winds up being stable, what happens if you now have something like 55% or more of your displacement used up in just the hull alone, and haven't messed with any other settings or added any towers? What if you have that 55% or more displacement tied up in your superstructure and everything that isn't the hull--would your ship then be unstable, or would there be ways to balance it? Or, what if you don't wind up using the total displacement (again, that might not be an issue or problem to you, but I'm more of the "I specified X-tons, I'm gonna USE X-tons" type)?

 

TL;DR Being able to manually enter a displacement value rather than trying to get lucky with 1-ton increments would be very nice, and seemingly easy to implement. The ability to manually edit the length and beam of your ship would also be a neat feature/freedom to have, but what all would have to be implemented along with a length/beam editor to ensure your ship is stable, doesn't have excessive pitch/roll, and still allow you to fit what you want on it? *PS-that 55% number I threw around in my last paragraph is just a number I randomly chose, please don't take it as the gospel or roast me because it's not true for a certain hull

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