Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Really?
kewlness. See, I learned something new today afterall! thanks Gadrin!
kewlness. See, I learned something new today afterall! thanks Gadrin!
Evolution of a Starport
- Thread starter ravells
- Start date
Sorry! I missed this when it was originally posted (page 9).
The height was 8.3m which is still not far off 3 decks.
The width is 22.6m though I've noticed that the plan shape varies between the deckplans and the GT plan illustration - the 'nose' is much narrower.
Y'know it'd be interesting to see if you could fit 200 dTons worth of gear into a streamlined hull that was exactly 200 dTons displacement. I'm betting not. Again, it's not relevant to gameplay but pfffff.....
Crow
That would be nice. Oh, or ... how about one of those sky-scraper like buildings: "Hemdian Towers". I could have a penthouse, and change my first name to "Donald", and ...Originally posted by ravs:
Oh, not much then, and I suppose you also want a house with 'Hemedian' modelled on the door?
Meanwhile, if you were going to landscape around the pond ("Tranquility Lake"?) where visitors can relax how about a tea room and concessionary (or something culturally equivalent)?
The monorail's starting to bother me a bit. Through the town would be fine but once inside the port it just gets in the way now. How about an all-underground travel system (which you wouldn't actually have to model)? Now that we've been talking about Space:1999 I was remembering the travel tube system they used ... the travel pods look a lot like standard Traveller modular cutter pods. I could see a cutter dropping off a cargo pod that is then whisked away into a warehouse without having to unload it. Could be the basis of a containerised cargo system. And passenger pods would get sent to the Arrivals area of the Concourse building.
Also, as traffic increases you might want separate passenger and cargo entrances to the port. Probably with a road leading to Custom's bonded warehouse (is that the building next to the SPA?).
How big did you want to grow this thing?
Regards PLST
Something's bothering me about 'Startown'. It's too square. I think initially you would have buildings scattered randomly around the X or E class ports and the more rigid lines of streets would come in later. Like a lot of major cities on Earth, the centre tends to be a spider web of streets from a time when it was just a village or hamlet and then order comes in as you move further out and building work becomes more recent.
Crow
Crow
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
'Crow has a point ravs, perhaps something radial, like a spider's web of streets that fills up as services and those who provide them become available--not a true circular spiderweb of streets, but something say, fan-shaped, with tiers of linking streets between them as buildings are provided/ arrive and are assembled?
just some stray cobwebs from my brain...
just some stray cobwebs from my brain...
Crow, Liam: I agree. These were just retangular blocks set in a square I plopped in - initially they were just there for use in the perspective view at about eye level, so the squareness wouldn't show. With a plan view it's too obvious. Las night I looked at a quick way to greeble in the town buildings in locations and heights where I want them. I found a greeble plug-in for blender and tried it, but not being used to the blender interface it's going to take longer than I thought, so I abandoned that idea for the present. What I'm going to have to do is model the city within Bryce terrain editor. This should be fairly simple (but time consuming)as I can use grey values to determine the location and height of buildings (essentially a bump map), draw the plan in psp and then import it into Bryce.
Thanks for the compliments Crow and Andrew - compliments from the masters do wonders for my hat size! None of these pictures has any post production, and many of the models are placeholders. The main aim here is to stimulate discussion about function rather than form. Once we have the function sorted out I can revisit the form. I then plan to do proper renders with human figures, post production, proper composition and use of colour etc.
One of the challenges in this whole project is scale. If you are making a scene and have have in mind exactly how you want to frame it, you can 'cheat' with scale by making things bigger and smaller to simulate size and distance. The problem is that this doesn't work here, particularly in the top down shots.
I was thinking the city proper some distance away with a main road towards the starport and startown developing around the gates, with both growing in tune with the starport. The city would be circular/radial and startown would just be a jumble by the starport gates which slowly begins to self organise.
Hemdian: I was thinking of making a park around the pond with trees and gardens - after all what more would a starship crew want after being in space surrounded by metal for long periods of time.
The whole process of transport of cargo containers to warehousing and out to the city needs more thought. When we play traveller we just talk about using grav pallets to move cargo from A to B. With the smaller ships we normally play with, the cargo gets sold straight out of the berth and it's the buyer who takes it away. Suggestions?
I don't want to make this starport too underground dependant as I wanted to save that for a starport which would have a strong environmental driver to have it underground, e.g. vacuum. This planet has an earthlike atmosphere. For the same reason I've been avoiding the use of domes, also because they're a bit hackneyed.
The monorail will definitely be moved, it just looks odd where it is but I still want to keep it because I think a monorail gives the place a sense of activity on the ground and it's a good indicator of scale. At the scale in which most of the pictures are, trucks and cars would be too small to see.
The idea is to get up to an 'A' Class starport and then the project will be complete.
Beanstalks: Doesn't this suffer from the same problem as the powerplant? Isn't it just downright dangerous having a beanstalk so close to air traffic? Suggestions?
Cheers!
Ravs
Thanks for the compliments Crow and Andrew - compliments from the masters do wonders for my hat size! None of these pictures has any post production, and many of the models are placeholders. The main aim here is to stimulate discussion about function rather than form. Once we have the function sorted out I can revisit the form. I then plan to do proper renders with human figures, post production, proper composition and use of colour etc.
One of the challenges in this whole project is scale. If you are making a scene and have have in mind exactly how you want to frame it, you can 'cheat' with scale by making things bigger and smaller to simulate size and distance. The problem is that this doesn't work here, particularly in the top down shots.
I was thinking the city proper some distance away with a main road towards the starport and startown developing around the gates, with both growing in tune with the starport. The city would be circular/radial and startown would just be a jumble by the starport gates which slowly begins to self organise.
Hemdian: I was thinking of making a park around the pond with trees and gardens - after all what more would a starship crew want after being in space surrounded by metal for long periods of time.
The whole process of transport of cargo containers to warehousing and out to the city needs more thought. When we play traveller we just talk about using grav pallets to move cargo from A to B. With the smaller ships we normally play with, the cargo gets sold straight out of the berth and it's the buyer who takes it away. Suggestions?
I don't want to make this starport too underground dependant as I wanted to save that for a starport which would have a strong environmental driver to have it underground, e.g. vacuum. This planet has an earthlike atmosphere. For the same reason I've been avoiding the use of domes, also because they're a bit hackneyed.
The monorail will definitely be moved, it just looks odd where it is but I still want to keep it because I think a monorail gives the place a sense of activity on the ground and it's a good indicator of scale. At the scale in which most of the pictures are, trucks and cars would be too small to see.
The idea is to get up to an 'A' Class starport and then the project will be complete.
Beanstalks: Doesn't this suffer from the same problem as the powerplant? Isn't it just downright dangerous having a beanstalk so close to air traffic? Suggestions?
Cheers!
Ravs
P
Pickles
Guest
Huh. And I was just about to compliment you on your commendable adherence to geomantic town planning principles. That startown looks like it has great feng shui.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Dang the memory. Can't recall the author or title and the book isn't accessible (really need to build those shelves
) but there was a very good story concerning a beanstalk, from early planning through failure. I don't recall or see any particular air-traffic concerns but a no fly zone might be reasonable so it could be some distance from the starport, connected by underground train.I seem to recall something about:
1 - It having to be built quite close to the equator for spin reasons.
2 - Being built on an island or sea coast so that if it did fall it would land (mostly) in the sea.
3 - When it did fall, where it did hit land, the devastation was quite wide, a couple kilometers or so.
But then the whole thing is so unclear in my mind that I'm really not sure it's not bits stolen from a few sources
All in all, the more I think about it putting all your best eggs (Main Starport and Beanstalk) in one basket might not be good planning.
And I'm not too sure a beanstalk makes a lot of sense once you have Traveller's cheap and safe gravitics for space flight. Beanstalks are good for climbing out of gravity cheaply but that only works where the usual way to orbit is our current rocket technology. And even then only IF we somehow manage to make the materials that can actually do it. I think we're theoretically and even experimentally* there, but nowhere near practicality or politically willing.
* Based on a news item a year or so back where they'd managed to make less than a meter of a single strand, and we need several kilometers of seriously multistrand cable.
Looking at the current plan view something's just dawned on me: there is a large customs/warehouse structure directly in line with the end of the runway. Given that occasionally aircraft fail to stop after landing, or conversely fail to gain significant altitude after take-off, this doesn't look safe. Has the potential to turn an accident into a disaster.
Regards PLST
Regards PLST
An earlier post brings up a house rule of mine: even though Naval and Scout Bases tend to be located quite near Civilian ports, they are not strictly part of them because of security concerns - there will always be physical separation between them.
Just a thought, take what you will (hopefully something though).
Edit: Too bad I didn't get in on this from the ground; it's quite cool but longer than I want to look through.
Just a thought, take what you will (hopefully something though).
Edit: Too bad I didn't get in on this from the ground; it's quite cool but longer than I want to look through.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
Now *that* is brilliant! They could hook into the monorail network, too.
I'd lose the beanstalk. Pointless once you've got gravitics. I read recently that travel time to orbit would be several days.
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Hey now,
THAT is genius!
a train/ tube of Slowboat & modular cutter pods...passengers/ freight..and for those pods no longer (due to age/ wear & tear) "spaceworthy", a recyclable end of owneruse by a starport. Definitely makes the 30dt slow boat & 50dt cutter the port workhorse subcraft wouldn't it?
I like this idea!
THAT is genius!
a train/ tube of Slowboat & modular cutter pods...passengers/ freight..and for those pods no longer (due to age/ wear & tear) "spaceworthy", a recyclable end of owneruse by a starport. Definitely makes the 30dt slow boat & 50dt cutter the port workhorse subcraft wouldn't it?
I like this idea!
I've been greebling like a greebler. Here are the offerings - The city in embryonic spiderweb stage (lots more work to be done there) and starport looking like some sort of chaotic chinatown (with spooky corners and dive bars for the unwary traveller (more work to be done there too, it's too chaotic). Also a render of the new scene without the beanstalk. The rest will have to wait until later.
Ravs
Ravs
Last edited:
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Like both views ravs, great work here! <and dinnae forget to let your fingers rest now, hey?>
The hodge-podge, squalor-squatter town of lower skilled workers, shops, dives and the radial planned larger tenemets, businesses leans well to the image of this evolution ravs!
The hodge-podge, squalor-squatter town of lower skilled workers, shops, dives and the radial planned larger tenemets, businesses leans well to the image of this evolution ravs!
This looks like a really good reference for this project: the evolution of the city of Ottawa from 1920 to the present day.
http://ess.nrcan.gc.ca/2002_2006/sdki/visual/ottawa/index_e.php
Ravs
http://ess.nrcan.gc.ca/2002_2006/sdki/visual/ottawa/index_e.php
Ravs
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
An excellent progression model there ravs, good google-fu!
The city is now complete, I just need to build the 'webs' of development coming off it (I think I've got the hang of this greeble thing) so it's not too circular around the edges but falls off rather than stops completely.
My question, given the scale, (it's always scale), how many people do you think live in the city? (assume it's the only habitation on the planet). Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of Thousands?
I can scale the star city to suit but this just seemed 'right' but I really don't know.
Plan view
My question, given the scale, (it's always scale), how many people do you think live in the city? (assume it's the only habitation on the planet). Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of Thousands?
I can scale the star city to suit but this just seemed 'right' but I really don't know.
Plan view
