To satiate my mechanical designer tendencies, I have purchased Fire, Fusion, & Steel for T4.
FF&S is precise to an equation about the implications of surface area and volume. I appreciate its commitment to mathematical logic. But, I also want to design ships with interesting shapes.
Specifically, I want to design a ship that looks like a bird.
I could:
A) Fudge it majorly, and pretend a bird is one of the basic shapes - like, a wedge, a cylinder, or, a closed structure. I'm open to debate on what shape y'all think a bird is closest to.
B) Fudge it, assume the body of the bird is a rounded cylinder, and invent my own rules for adding "wings" (i.e. - bumping up the surface area).
C) Do what old-school video game artists do - divide the bird-ship into several simple shapes, calculate their volume and surface areas, then add them together, thus creating a new hull template for "weird bird ship."
D) Something else.
Which of these do you think is the best way to handle this problem? And, if I do make it conform to a basic planar solid, should I modify the dimensions of said solid and calculate my own surface area?
Illogical? Yes...
And, yes, I realize that no sane engineer would aim to make a spaceship shaped like a bird. The only pragmatic use I could think of for huge wings would be as radiators. But, I don't think that traveller designs require huge radiators.
