BMM keeping its Cargo space!

[FZD]

No one doubts that it has the volume for it. The problem is interior space and how SC uses them. By your calculation, the Caterpillar could hold about 1.7k SCU, but we all know SC didn't do that to the Caterpillar. Half the wings and nose can't be used, we have hallways, flight deck, crew quarters, and the ship exterior walls have a lot of thickness.

The Hull series can have a lot more SCU because it's exterior.

Edit:
Just take a look at the Carrack, that thing has almost the same volume as the BMM (wings & nose don't count). And CIG only found .5k SCU for it. The interior space is a lot smaller than the volume of the ship.

Just eyeballing it, carrack has roughly half the volume of BMM, if we exclude the wings. And even though it's not any sort of freight ship, it still has 0.5k SCU. Now Carrack has the same issue as Caterpillar, the cargo bays sacrifice a lot of space for modularity. Caterpillar could hold like 250 or so more SCU if you got rid of the sectioning, those walls in between with two doors are just ridiculously thick. If you then also got rid of the internal walkways, you'd be approaching 1kSCU territory. I'm not quite sure where you got that extra 700 SCU capacity for the caterpillar for though, surely you're not thinking of sacrificing the engines?

Likewise, Carrack could, if it was specifically designed to do so, hold a whole lot of more cargo. Like, get rid of that hangar, medical bay, drones, the modularity, you could get a few thousand SCU to fit in. But then again, it's not a freight ship, it's an exploration ship. So instead of cargo space, it has all these other amenities.

we have hallways, flight deck, crew quarters, and the ship exterior walls have a lot of thickness.

Yes, and these things indeed are what cost Caterpillar a good chunk of it's cargo capacity. However, while your ship gets bigger, your crew doesn't, so those hallways and crew quarters take proportionally a whole lot less space on BMM than they do on Caterpillar. Same goes for the wall thickness, twice as big ship doesn't necessarily sacrifice similar proportion of it's space to walls. Besides, some concept pictures have part of the cargo outside:

In this picture, for example, we have 72 of the large 16 SCU containers visible. That's already 1152 SCU right there. Now, there is like 5-6 times that amount of space inside the ship, that's excluding the nose and wings, though most it will be taken by other stuff. Still, easily space for internal cargo bay to hold additional 2350 SCU or so.
Of course, that's just an old artistic rendition, but if anything, it's gotten bigger.

Anyhow, the point is, if they're saying it's 3500 SCU, there's really no reason to doubt it at this time. For a dedicated trading vessel of that size, it's perfectly reasonable. And yes, 3500 SCU is a lot, but it's not like it'd be out of the line when you compare it to other heavy freighters.

 

[atpbx]

My guess is they'll make the arms sweep forward more or actuate similar to the Defender, and fatten the fuselage.
I'm very glad they've decided to keep the cargo capacity, but with all the other things they implied they're going try to keep for the latest re-concept of the BMM, it is a little scary what downsides they may decide to implement to balance it out.



The BMM doesn't have landing pads and the Kraken has a lot more firepower.

As for what has changed, they probably realized that far more people are interested in the cargo capacity than people interested in a full suite of vendor kiosks.

The shops will never out earn the potential returns from cargo hauling, so the pads are irrelevant.

The Kraken itself, great ship, the Privateer, pointless while the BMM exists.

 

[Esctasy]

Yeah no point speculating. Just pointing out it's not likely to retain it's original concept SCU because we know many released ships do not keep their original concept SCU.

Reclaimer: from 288 to 180
Carrack: from 1k to .45k
Andromeda: 134 to 96
Starfarer: 4k to 295

 

[FZD]

Yeah no point speculating. Just pointing out it's not likely to retain it's original concept SCU because we know many released ships do not keep their original concept SCU.

Reclaimer: from 288 to 180
Carrack: from 1k to .45k
Andromeda: 134 to 96
Starfarer: 4k to 295

Well, starfarer still doesn't have those huge tanks enabled, so we don't know what the SCU will end up being. Probably not 4k though. And reclaimers SCU doesn't account for the salvage.
Anyhow, reclaimer, carrack, andromeda, starfarer, none of these are focused on cargo hauling, large part of the change is likely to do with wanting these ships to fit the role they're designed for, rather than to be used as cargo haulers.
Meanwhile, of other dedicated heavy freighters that we know of, the hull series is still going to retain their current cargo capacity. And they're saying BMM is going to retain it as well, so I really see no reason to speculate otherwise.

Besides, if we look that far into the past, I'd like to point out that BMM has already gone from 6k FU to 5k SCU to 3.5k SCU.

 

[Esctasy]

Well, starfarer still doesn't have those huge tanks enabled, so we don't know what the SCU will end up being. Probably not 4k though. And reclaimers SCU doesn't account for the salvage.

I never included the 6.5k Salvage of the Reclaimer. Those numbers are cargo SCU.

Anyhow, reclaimer, carrack, andromeda, starfarer, none of these are focused on cargo hauling, large part of the change is likely to do with wanting these ships to fit the role they're designed for, rather than to be used as cargo haulers.

This statement is meaning less. If originally the Carrack was a cargo hauler then it changed to an explorer then yes. But the Carrack was always an explorer with 1k SCU.

Meanwhile, of other dedicated heavy freighters that we know of, the hull series is still going to retain it's cargo capacity. And they're saying BMM is going to retain it as well, so I really see no reason to speculate otherwise.

As I said earlier, the Hulls are exterior. The BMM is not.

 

[FZD]

I never included the 6.5k Salvage of the Reclaimer. Those numbers are cargo SCU.

This statement is meaning less. If originally the Carrack was a cargo hauler then it changed to an explorer then yes. But the Carrack was always an explorer with 1k SCU.

I'm saying, you have to consider the role of the ship. They probably felt that having multiple times the cargo capacity of a transport ship on an explorer, would just mean people are transporting cargo on an explorer ship instead of getting a dedicated transport ship. Or that having same amount of cargo on a refueling ship as you get on a heavy freighter would just mean that that refueling ship gets used for cargo instead.

As I said earlier, the Hulls are exterior. The BMM is not.

And you could fit Hull C loaded with cargo inside the internal volume of BMM, that includes the crew areas, flight deck, hallways, etc.

 

[Esctasy]

Here is what we have so far. This is a cross section. You tell me how large they have to expand this ship to get it to 3.5k SCU.
The space they have right now looks around 500 SCU (eyeball). This is what I'm saying, internal space is very small compared to the volume of the ship.

They were talking about so many ships on the video and I doubt that guy was specifically assigned to the BMM. He probably heard his co worker say this and that and was high off some good stuff.

 

[FZD]

Here is what we have so far. This is a cross section. You tell me how large they have to expand this ship to get it to 3.5k SCU.
The space they have right now looks around 500 SCU (eyeball). This is what I'm saying, internal space is very small compared to the volume of the ship.

They were talking about so many ships on the video and I doubt that guy was specifically assigned to the BMM. He probably heard his co worker say this and that and was high off some good stuff.


View attachment 19867

That's an exceedingly old design, but it doesn't really need to be expanded, we already know that the bottom external cargo area has around 1152 SCU, so...

See, that's pretty much it already. But we know this is not the design, and we know it's gotten larger.

 

[Gucci]

Here is what we have so far. This is a cross section. You tell me how large they have to expand this ship to get it to 3.5k SCU.
The space they have right now looks around 500 SCU (eyeball). This is what I'm saying, internal space is very small compared to the volume of the ship.

They were talking about so many ships on the video and I doubt that guy was specifically assigned to the BMM. He probably heard his co worker say this and that and was high off some good stuff.


View attachment 19867

Wasnt this pic from when it was 100m and not 160?????
All it would take would be to dedicate the lower belly of the ship to cargo storage and/or modules.
Theres also nothing stopping them from dropping the belly out or widening it a bit.

 

[Esctasy]

That's an exceedingly old design, but it doesn't really need to be expanded, we already know that the bottom external cargo area has around 1152 SCU, so...
View attachment 19868

See, that's pretty much it already. But we know this is not the design, and we know it's gotten larger.

Your numbers are off, look at the size of the red men.
You are going to need hall ways and paths, rails, elevators. You can't just stick a block of cargo in that entire space... How the heck are you going to do something as simple as exiting the ship?
Anyways no point discussing this any further as people are just throwing unknowns everywhere.

 

[Esctasy]

Wasnt this pic from when it was 100m and not 160?????
All it would take would be to dedicate the lower belly of the ship to cargo storage and/or modules.
Theres also nothing stopping them from dropping the belly out or widening it a bit.

Yup, you're correct. My bad.

 

[FZD]

Your numbers are off, look at the size of the red men.
You are going to need hall ways and paths, rails, elevators. You can't just stick a block of cargo in that entire space... How the heck are you going to do something as simple as exiting the ship?
Anyways no point discussing this any further as people are just throwing unknowns everywhere.

As you can see, that design is far from finished. There aren't any hallways, stairs or elevators to begin with. Then again, there are also exceedingly large areas of the ship not shown here, like that entire area in the back, under the engine, which could house several rooms, and there is also quite a bit of space around the engines as well, and then above the engines. Just a reminder, the ship is also quite wide.

And yes, the numbers are off, of course they are, we're looking at concept pictures that are much smaller than what the current design is. The point however stands, that there is easily enough room, even if you don't take into account all of the unknown space left over.

EDIT:
Besides, yeah, let's look at those little red guys.

3x17 red guys (ignore that 18th, I was copying in batches of 3)
Let's say he is 1.8m tall. That gives an area of 5.4x30.6 m for the 1.1kSCU square. 5.4/1.25=4.32, 30.6/1.25=24.48, so as long as the ship is 13m wide on that particular bit, that'd be 1100SCU. Yeah, if anything, I'm underestimating here.

At this time, there is absolutely no reason to speculate that the CIG employee would be wrong about this.

 

[Esctasy]

As you can see, that design is far from finished. There aren't any hallways, stairs or elevators to begin with. Then again, there are also exceedingly large areas of the ship not shown here, like that entire area in the back, under the engine, which could house several rooms, and there is also quite a bit of space around the engines as well, and then above the engines. Just a reminder, the ship is also quite wide.

And yes, the numbers are off, of course they are, we're looking at concept pictures that are much smaller than what the current design is. The point however stands, that there is easily enough room, even if you don't take into account all of the unknown space left over.

EDIT:
Besides, yeah, let's look at those little red guys.
View attachment 19869
3x17 red guys (ignore that 18th, I was copying in batches of 3)
Let's say he is 1.8m tall. That gives an area of 5.4x30.6 m for the 1.1kSCU square. 5.4/1.25=4.32, 30.6/1.25=24.48, so as long as the ship is 13m wide on that particular bit, that'd be 1100SCU. Yeah, if anything, I'm underestimating here.

At this time, there is absolutely no reason to speculate that the CIG employee would be wrong about this.

Good analysis. Nothing more I can say. CIG can make anything possible if they want.
I hope the BMM keeps it's concept SCU. But in the back of my head something is telling me that dev is smoking bad grass, I would take it with a grain of salt.