[terran_emperor]

Well, it depends on how you define crew and thus if you count pilots and marines as crewmembers

[Mars]

Even if there were 1,000 pilots on an Orion, the crew would still just be at 101%

[Vip]

Well, for Colossus, I believe that the superstructure and engines take a helluva lot place, perhaps over 50% if you ask me. Still, I guess that the crew would have quite some luxurious quarters, at least compared to those on, say, an Orion.

Also, the ships have to be big. Lets not forget that a FS- era Interceptor missile has a payload of 18,5 Kt. 18,5 Kilotons. The Fat Man bomb dropped on Hiroshima had 21 Kt. Now, a Harbringer has 5000 Mt payload - whereas Tzar bomba, the single most powerful bomb on the Earth, had 50 Mt. Do I have to say more ?

My 0,02$.

[Mars]

If the Orion was susceptible to high yeild blasts, one harbinger would handily take it out. Remember that at 6 gigatons, would be quite sufficient to take out a whole state sized area. The armor in Freespace seems quite resistant to explosives. Making a bigger ship wouldn't do you a whole lot of good.

[terran_emperor]

I think, realistically, a single Habinger would vapourise almost any ship it hits. Id say anthing below a destroyer would definatelybe vaped. Destroyer, upward could probably survive less than a handful, if not a single warhead...

Also, the meson bomb, would realistically be a near Doomsday-device.

The destructive power of the various bombs was probably toned down for gameplay reasons...or they really do have armour that strong..

[Mars]

If the Orion were made of steel it would take a nuke with less than 1% of the explosive power of the Harbinger to vaporize it.

[terran_emperor]

so what do they use? Tritanium or Naquitah (SG1) or some other miracle metal?

[Mars]

Presumably . . .

 Depleted Uranium and collapsed core molybdenum are the only materials mentioned.  Consider that a M1A2 can be pretty close to a nuclear blast, and due to its heavy armor, the crew could theoretically survive. It's quite a stretch, but they must be doing something right for anything to take a nuke.

My point is, the Orion isn't big so it can take a 1 GT nuke, because size by itself really doesn't help at that point.

[Titan]

guys, guys, i just said, i think FS weps do WAY too much damage, but warships also TAKE way to much damage (scientifically speaking) Maybbe it's just hard for me to comprehend how big a boom a nuke makes, but ships surving KILOTONS of explosives? It just is illogical.


And by the way, if nobody had noticed, in those pics comparing freespace ships to real life ships, look at the one with the ursas on the carrier, and then look at the people standing on the deck, THEN look at the ursa's cockpit.

[Mars]

The cockpits are a bit large . . .

er than an F-18

[AlphaOne]

Did anyone consider the fact that FS era ships can withstand such massive explosions beacause of the colapsed core molybdenum and stuff like that and the masive ships are massive just because they have say 3 or 4 m of armour to them perhaps even more.

[Vip]

The cockpits are a bit large . . .

er than an F-18

Remember that to be honest, the only official cockpit is the Apollo one from the FS1 intro (I'm not really mentioning the FS2 intro, because it's so inconsistent with any other canon material that it should be IMHO treated only as an artistic view). The SCP models with cockpits are NOT canon. Is it possible that while creating the cockpits, somebody just made a mistake and up-scaled them ?

[admiral_wolf]

say what? so that makes fighters... 40 meters long? 

Well the biggest canon fighter/bomber is the GTB Ursa.  They are 45 metres long nose to engine output.

[Kie99]

guys, guys, i just said, i think FS weps do WAY too much damage, but warships also TAKE way to much damage (scientifically speaking) Maybbe it's just hard for me to comprehend how big a boom a nuke makes, but ships surving KILOTONS of explosives? It just is illogical.

Fighters shrug off kilotons of explosives with no trouble.  The Colossus can shrug off over a Teraton.

[Mars]

Remember that a hurricane is a manifestation of thousands of times the energy of every nuclear device in the world, and yet structures can withstand a hurricane. Type of energy is almost as important as scale of energy. Hell, maybe the Orion's made of neutronium

[Titan]

Remember that to be honest, the only official cockpit is the Apollo one from the FS1 intro (I'm not really mentioning the FS2 intro, because it's so inconsistent with any other canon material that it should be IMHO treated only as an artistic view). The SCP models with cockpits are NOT canon. Is it possible that while creating the cockpits, somebody just made a mistake and up-scaled them ?

So we should use the FS1 intro Apollo for scale? If you then compare the stock models, we should get an idea of how big an Ursa really is.

[Colonol Dekker]

That's an ok estimation, but doesn't a table file in fs or fs2 hold craft length? Between the two a realistic size estimate should be able to be gained.

[ShadowGorrath]

The size is written in the tables. You can see the sizes on all player allowed fighters and bombers.