- Joined
- Feb 25, 2020
- Messages
- 6
I have seen while playing Starbase that a beam's strength is dependent upon its length: shorter beams are not as strong as longer beams in the game. This doesn't make sense to me. In real life, a beam's linear compression/extension strength is proportional to it's cross-sectional area, and its flexing/torsional strength is proportional to its overall thickness (though its cross-sectional area could in theory approach zero for this purpose - that's why we have H-beams and box girders in real life... it's unnecessary to have their interiors filled with metal). In real life, problems arise when a beam of a given cross-section is very long, not when it is short. All the beams in Starbase, having the same cross-section, should have the same strength regardless of their length. Beams welded end-to-end - unless the welds are of different strength to the beams they join - should behave as a single longer beam.
The problem I have is that when I use short beams - even if I duplicate them horizontally or join them end-to-end - I get durability errors that I don't get when I use fewer, longer beams. This just goes against everything that I understand about engineering... a structure with many short beams joined into a framework ought to be immensely strong, and applying large forces to that framework of short beams and then transmitting those forces to a longer beam should cause a failure in the longer beam, not the shorter beams... but the durability tool tells me otherwise.
https://discord.com/channels/423790999052222464/635742331315945472/850210353103241216 In real life, this design ought to fail in the single beams connecting the engine pods to the rest of the frame, but because the beams are long, in Starbase, the failure will occur elsewhere if the engine forces are too large. Additionally, in a head-on collision, these single long beams ought to bend or break.
To give you a real-world example, take a couple of disposable chopsticks. Put one between the back of two chairs, with the chairs as far apart as they will go and still support the chopstick. Cut the other in half, and put it between another two chair backs. Put a strong string around the middle of each of the supported chopsticks, and load the strings with weights, and see how much weight is required to break each chopstick. The shorter chopstick should break at the same or higher load than the longer chopstick.
The problem I have is that when I use short beams - even if I duplicate them horizontally or join them end-to-end - I get durability errors that I don't get when I use fewer, longer beams. This just goes against everything that I understand about engineering... a structure with many short beams joined into a framework ought to be immensely strong, and applying large forces to that framework of short beams and then transmitting those forces to a longer beam should cause a failure in the longer beam, not the shorter beams... but the durability tool tells me otherwise.
https://discord.com/channels/423790999052222464/635742331315945472/850210353103241216 In real life, this design ought to fail in the single beams connecting the engine pods to the rest of the frame, but because the beams are long, in Starbase, the failure will occur elsewhere if the engine forces are too large. Additionally, in a head-on collision, these single long beams ought to bend or break.
To give you a real-world example, take a couple of disposable chopsticks. Put one between the back of two chairs, with the chairs as far apart as they will go and still support the chopstick. Cut the other in half, and put it between another two chair backs. Put a strong string around the middle of each of the supported chopsticks, and load the strings with weights, and see how much weight is required to break each chopstick. The shorter chopstick should break at the same or higher load than the longer chopstick.
