Self-Loading/Unloading Container Carriers

[historybuff_69]

ive noticed a few container carrier ships on the workshop. does anyone have any experience with these? are you actually loading and carrying containers? what cranes are you using?

does anyone have any experience using self-loading/unloading container carriers (cranes mounted on ships?) how are you keeping your ships stable??

[GrumpyOldMan]

Ballast tanks are my go to solution for this, also comes with the benefits of not having to tweak the center of mass using weight blocks.

You can control ballast tank level by putting an altimeter on the outliers of the hull, best case scenario you end up with 4 ballast tanks with port/starboard at the bow and port/starboard at the stern. Controlling it can be done by setting a desired altitude, or altitude of the ships waterline. If the desired altitude is higher than the altimeter reading, drain the tank, otherwise fill it.
I can upload my controller unless you want to figure it out on your own.
Just know that in custom tanks fluid weighs 0.2 mass per liter, in premade tanks it's only 0.1 mass for some reason, should help you calculate the dimensions needed for the ballast tanks.
Containers weigh 2499 mass, if your crane is at the stern and the ballast tanks can hold at least twice that mass equivalent in fluid (2 tanks totalling 24.990l) then you should easily be able to counter the weight of a single container. You can also check out the workshop for the wavemaster 1600, which at 16m length can carry 2 containers and is able to load on its own.

[Silencer]

I decided early in my container ship design that I wanted it to be capable of self-loading and have tried various types of crane, the issues I always come up against are:

• Enough range and height to get to every container position on the ship and reaching the containers on the dock.
  
• Keeping the ship stable when dangling a container over the side!

For the first issue I'm currently building a crane that uses sliders to move along the middle of the ship, with rotation 90 degrees in both directions so I can load either side, I have the basics of it working and now need to get the second issue resolved so I can continue testing.

The second issue on paper should be really simple, you just need a counterweight, this can sometimes be achieved with a counterweight directly on the opposite end of the crane, however that isn't going to work for mine.
The other options are either a movable weight in/on the ship which counters the lean as the crane takes up the container (the basics of this can be seen here used as active stabilisation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUr4yN18BxU ) or have ballast tanks as mentioned by GrumpyOldMan above, the issue with ballast tanks is the speed at which you can fill and empty them as pumped liquids in Stormworks transfer VERY slow (I've yet to try parallel pumps which could solve this)!

Of course this is Stormworks and out-of-the-box thinking is always an option, so one thing I have on my list to try is arms that can be extended and pushed down on the dock to stop the ship leaning during loading (like support legs on a land based crane).

I'd love to hear other peoples solutions as well!

[GrumpyOldMan]

Originally posted by Silencer:

arms that can be extended and pushed down on the dock to stop the ship leaning during loading (like support legs on a land based crane).

That might work out extremely well, arms that wrap around the dock corner and pull the ship up might be even better, this way you could raise the ship to the dock ground level height, which can often be a whopping 9m above the waterline (don't ask me who built docks like that).

About the ballast pumps going parallel is the only way, tried H-bridge pumps and other configurations, inlet -> pump -> outlet as high as possible seems to be the best solution.
I also noticed as of the most recent pipe changes that it's now viable to place draining pumps and their inlets as high as possible without flowrate reduction, so you save yourself the trouble from laying pipes all the way to the bottom of the tank to connect to the outlet, which would be best placed above the waterline, since pumps have to fight outside pressure.

Also note that outside pressure increases in a linear manner, at 2m depth the outside pressure is 2 and therefor twice as high as at 1m depth, contrary to reality (which is always a bad idea to compare this game to, unless you want to end up with foam at your mouth) where pressure increases by roughly 1 atm every 10m

[historybuff_69]

Originally posted by Silencer:

I decided early in my container ship design that I wanted it to be capable of self-loading and have tried various types of crane, the issues I always come up against are:

• Enough range and height to get to every container position on the ship and reaching the containers on the dock.
  
• Keeping the ship stable when dangling a container over the side!

For the first issue I'm currently building a crane that uses sliders to move along the middle of the ship, with rotation 90 degrees in both directions so I can load either side, I have the basics of it working and now need to get the second issue resolved so I can continue testing.

The second issue on paper should be really simple, you just need a counterweight, this can sometimes be achieved with a counterweight directly on the opposite end of the crane, however that isn't going to work for mine.
The other options are either a movable weight in/on the ship which counters the lean as the crane takes up the container

My design has a crane mounted in a fixed position about a third of the way back. I dont think a sliding model will work for me, so i need the long boom to be able to reach the dock as you said.

The counterweight idea seems good in theory but will require a massive counterweight. im very intrigued by the ballast tank/pump system.

[historybuff_69]

Originally posted by GrumpyOldMan:

Ballast tanks are my go to solution for this, also comes with the benefits of not having to tweak the center of mass using weight blocks.

I can upload my controller unless you want to figure it out on your own.

sure. would save me a lot of trial and error.

[historybuff_69]

Originally posted by GrumpyOldMan:

You can also check out the workshop for the wavemaster 1600, which at 16m length can carry 2 containers and is able to load on its own.

just checked this out, the crane is very similar to what i currently have, certainly a little more polished.