Size of the Airships World

[buster5300]

I had an interesting thought. It takes a long while for ships, even ones that are kinda fast, to get anywhere in the world of Airships. So, what is the actual distance between these two points? So I booted up a conquest game on vast size and did the calculations.

Assuming travel and speed are constant. The distance between one edge of the map and another nears 50 times the width of the Earth, or more exactly 49.725x the size at 633,600 Kilometers. A Small map comes in at more than 147,000 Kilometers (measurement not exact). Assuming Vast is the full breadth of the world of Airships that would make it one of the largest game maps.

[Stonehammers]

I would imagine top speed in battle is not the most efficient speed if they are going for range. Which in map mode they would be.

[Runner]

buster5300, would you mind showing your calculations? I've fired up the largest map conquest, checked the distance between my home city (set almost at the northern map edge) and the point due south and approximately at the center of the map, height-wise, and it was 4.0, so we can assume that the total map height is roughly 8 units of distance. My initial ship had max speed of 116 kph and the travel time to cover 1.0 distance was stated to be 2 weeks and 3 days, or 17 days. That gives us the estimate of 118 kph * 24 hours per day * 17 days = 48 144 kilometers per unit of distance, thus 385 152 km for the map size, which is half your estimate.
Still too large, though, if the ACTS physics and cosmology are similar to our universe's, planet volume will be ~900 times that of the Earth. To get the same gravity pull its density should be 900 times lower, to my knowledge there are no natural solids that light (and even the artificial ones would probably collapse into a much smaller sphere under the same pull).

Stonehammers, good point, but this alone won't change the issue much. As far as I remember, economic speed of WW2 warships was around half the maximum speed, cruise speed of aircraft is anywhere from 60% to 80% of the maximum one. Even if we take the lowest estimate (which is not that plausible, since the water has much higher drag coefficient than air, but oh well...), this will shrink the world to 316 800 km, if using buster5300's figure (or to 192 500 if using mine). Still too large.
What can help with the suspension of disbelief, however, is redefining "kph" as something other than "kilometers per hour". I mean, the acronym is not explicitly defined anywhere in the game, right?
I'd say that with the biplane speed being whooping 462 kph (which, if we assume 1:1 conversion is closer to WW2 fighters' speed), we can use any conversion number between 1.5 and 2 (i.e. 1 "kph" is anywhere between a half and a two thirds of 1 kilometer per hour) without stretching it too much. I'd use 1.5, then Biplane will be roughly similar to Bristol Bulldog, while Torpedo Bomber will be a shade faster that Sopwith Cuckoo (which was the slowest rl carrier-based torpedo bomber I know of).
And with that AND assuming airships economic speed is 50% of the maximum AND using my initial figures will make the largest world... ~128 000 kilometers across. Nine times the surface area, 27 times the mass, ... Still not good. However, the medium world will be 4 units of distance across, that'd make it ~64 000 km, so just four times the volume. Ok, THAT can be explained away, I guess.

[Valohmheimr]

Man I always assumed that the map is only a small part of the world and never actually considered that its the whole damn planet lol. Since I like to set the map to continent that would mean the planet is mostly just mountains and forest with no sea.

[Runner]

Originally posted by Valohmheimr:

Man I always assumed that the map is only a small part of the world and never actually considered that its the whole damn planet lol. Since I like to set the map to continent that would mean the planet is mostly just mountains and forest with no sea.

Yeah, we need an urgent injection of handwavium from Zark here...

[thus_boi]

yeah the speed numbers are definitely a little too high for what they represent(e.g. house sized air battleships propelled at 100kph/27mps by a steam-powered propeller). there are still a couple things in the game which can handwave the physics issues here -

first is the mineral element of handwavium in ACTS which is suspendium: supposedly airships in ACTS fly because everything is permeated with the stuff and it scifi-magnetics repels itself, so everything in the ACTS planet has a force repelling it other things, especially the planet itself, which could answer the gravity issue.

another one is that the time itself is different- the times of everything in-game is given in terms of days/weeks/etc, but we know from the in-game calendar that the 'cosmic situation' of the ACTS planet is different from ours, which means that units of time like days might be different from ours, which might make the map distance travelled less weird.

[Runner]

Originally posted by thus_boi:

yeah the speed numbers are definitely a little too high for what they represent(e.g. house sized air battleships propelled at 100kph/27mps by a steam-powered propeller). there are still a couple things in the game which can handwave the physics issues here -

first is the mineral element of handwavium in ACTS which is suspendium: supposedly airships in ACTS fly because everything is permeated with the stuff and it scifi-magnetics repels itself, so everything in the ACTS planet has a force repelling it other things, especially the planet itself, which could answer the gravity issue.

Yeah, about that... sorry, I kinda miscalculated the gravilty pull above - if the size of the ACTS planet is roughly ten times that of the Earth (385 thsd km circumference gives us 61.2 thsd km radius - the Earth's is 6.3 thsd km), that means with 900 times the mass the gravity at the sea level will be 9g, not 900 (ten times the distance means 100 times less the gravitational force). Still too much for human to survive, but much easier to explain away with e.g. your idea of suspendium somewhat compensating for the higher gravity. Or we can theoritize the planet density is lower (the earth and stones on the surface don't look much like aerogel in the game and art, but, hey, for all we know the ACTS planetoid might be hollow inside!).

[thus_boi]

Originally posted by blot_runner:

for all we know the ACTS planetoid might be hollow inside!).

careful, the ACTS world being a planet-sized floating island with an abyssal chasm inside sounds like something zarkonen would actually put in the lore.

[Runner]

Originally posted by thus_boi:

careful, the ACTS world being a planet-sized floating island with an abyssal chasm inside sounds like something zarkonen would actually put in the lore.

Would he? Gosh, now I'm really glad I didn't mention my other idea, that ACTS world is a Dyson sphere with everyone leaving on the inner surface and the "gravity" actually being the centrifugal force. Wait, oh shi-

[Sedrido]

i personally think the airships world is flat

[CaoLex]

Originally posted by Sedrido:

i personally think the airships world is flat

And square. And fits on a table.

[IshiMoss]

zark should just increase the amount of ticks for a day

[Huitzilopochtli]

It could be a whole system of planets patchworked together via seismic overlays and dimensional knitting.

[Runner]

Originally posted by IshiMoss:

zark should just increase the amount of ticks for a day

Would open a whole new can of worms with balancing ships' travel time vs build time.