[ZeroCooL]

Why do the beam weapons of the GTVA Terran ships are blue?

Do you have something to do with the use of meson reactors ?

[Asteroth]

Why is the Prometheus cannon green? Why does the Hercules have four engines and not six? Why do a lot of UEF ships a spinny section?

They're all design-related questions that likely had little "scientific" support and were merely chosen for aesthetic effect (I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

[Scotty]

Yes.

[General Battuta]

Blue is both a higher-energy color than green and a colder color, associated with precision and penetration.

[Darius]

It symbolises the yearning of the Colonial Terrans for their home planet with its blue seas and blue skies.

[Qent]

Blame Inferno?

[Jellyfish]

(I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

Gravity?

[Darius]

Blame Inferno?

Pretty much. Inferno already had blue beams tabled up so I stole them and changed their damage.

[swashmebuckle]

Even beams get lonely.

[Colonol Dekker]

Energy saver bulbs

[Droid803]

I'm going to make UV colored beams.
They're going to make your monitor output UV light to give people Vitamin D!
And Skin Cancer.

[Pred the Penguin]

I think you should ponder why beams are even visible first.

[Scotty]

Because beams are plasma, not just photons.

[Destiny]

(I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

Gravity?

"The most noteworthy design concept is the utilisation of a rotating section, creating gravity for those aboard the vessel. This greatly reduces the need for power hungry gravity plating, and serves as a platform for the ships medium range sensor arrays giving them an outstanding field of view. It also acts as a centrifugal power generator that powers most of the secondary subsystems leaving the main reactors free to deliver more power to the engines, weapons and other primary subsystems. - UEFg Karuna

[-Norbert-]

But Inferno didn't have the first blue beams. Those were from volition. Now granted, they only used blue for anti-fighter beams, but they were still blue beams.

Blue beams also go much better with the color scheme of the new GTVA ships.

[Pred the Penguin]

(I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

Gravity?

"The most noteworthy design concept is the utilisation of a rotating section, creating gravity for those aboard the vessel. This greatly reduces the need for power hungry gravity plating, and serves as a platform for the ships medium range sensor arrays giving them an outstanding field of view. It also acts as a centrifugal power generator that powers most of the secondary subsystems leaving the main reactors free to deliver more power to the engines, weapons and other primary subsystems. - UEFg Karuna

I've always wondered how you walked through those sections from the rest of the ship though... they don't turn slowly.

[Destiny]

(I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

Gravity?

"The most noteworthy design concept is the utilisation of a rotating section, creating gravity for those aboard the vessel. This greatly reduces the need for power hungry gravity plating, and serves as a platform for the ships medium range sensor arrays giving them an outstanding field of view. It also acts as a centrifugal power generator that powers most of the secondary subsystems leaving the main reactors free to deliver more power to the engines, weapons and other primary subsystems. - UEFg Karuna

I've always wondered how you walked through those sections from the rest of the ship though... they don't turn slowly.

There should be a central axle connecting from one end to the other end while the centrifuge gets to spin freely or something. Without a counter-torque the Karuna should always be rolling to one side...

[Pred the Penguin]

That still doesn't explain how you get on the centrifuge.

[-Norbert-]

The further towards the center of the gravity section you go, the less speed the block travels at and thus also has less gravity. If you build a tunnel through the very center of that section you can enter and exit it as easily as we go through one of those turning doors often used for shopping mall main entrances.... or rather float, since we talk zero g in the center of the gracity block.

[Luis Dias]

See 2001 for details.


But yeah, I agree that the things spin too fast. Does anyone have any numbers on the size of the things and their Hz? We could do a quick calc at the resulting G force.

EDIT: Ok, I haven't any freespace tool in here, so I'll have to guess based on the wiki page and some videos.

I'd guess that the Hz is about 0.125 rotations per second (8 secs per rotation), and the thing is about a hundred meters radius (well something on that order of magnitude).

For this we have to calculate the perimeter: Pi*radius*2, gives something like 600 meters.

The velocity in the perimeter is thus 75ms-1.

We can now calculate the centrifugal acceleration: a = v^2/r,

a = 75^2 / 100 <=> a = 56,25ms-1.

One G is 9.8ms-1 give or take, so we are somewhere around 5 to 6 times G in the outer parts (given the error margin, this could be between, say, 4G to 10G).


So yeah, it's spinning too fast. The 1G radius in that Hz frequency is about 30 meters, give or take.