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Why do human federation characters have a height cap of 6'4"?

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  • evilmark444evilmark444 Member Posts: 6,951 Arc User
    nixboox wrote: »
    If you set the limit at 6'11" then Star Fleet would be populated by everyone being ridiculously tall. Average short people always want to be taller
    I gotta disagree with you there, I'm 5'5" IRL and I prefer to make all my captains and Boffs 5' - 5'7"
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  • angarus1angarus1 Member Posts: 684 Arc User
    nixboox wrote: »
    If you set the limit at 6'11" then Star Fleet would be populated by everyone being ridiculously tall. Average short people always want to be taller, like how most guys have girl characters with enormous...attributes. Now, the fact that nearly all of our ships look like they ought to be populated by legions of Yao Ming's, under 2 meters is considered average.

    Most of mine tend to be around my own height, joke characters aside.

    And assets-wise, I rarely go over the second line on the slider. :)
  • xyquarzexyquarze Member Posts: 2,120 Arc User
    nixboox wrote: »
    the fact that nearly all of our ships look like they ought to be populated by legions of Yao Ming's, under 2 meters is considered average.

    Well, even Yao Ming would have trouble reaching the ceiling with arms stretched, I think Starfleet hoped that Godzilla would sign up one day ...

    But while I do have most toons and boffs of mostly average height, perhaps a bit more because I myself am a bit on the taller side, for one captain I (partially) modeled on a friend of mine who is 7'2", I had to resort to aliengen. Which actually wasn't that huge of a deal, you can recreate humans properly in that.

    What I found interesting though, one of my toons has two "joke boffs" of aliengen, both maxed height, one leg slider to the max, torso to the min, the other vice versa. Short Leg guy is actually not much taller than my other boffs, while Long Leg Lady towers.

    And yeah, crooked hips - the "seductive" and "cute" stances look indeed very unnatural and people standing like that for any extended period of time will probably get serious issues. Also, the extended boobage isn't good for the ladies' backs. But what I find worst in the character builder is that it is impossible - at least to me - to get a realistic looking heavyset person with no well defined V shaped torso (like many people working manual labor in real life have) because the stomach slider could just as well be named "are you pregnant?".
    My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
  • trennantrennan Member Posts: 2,839 Arc User
    xyquarze wrote: »
    nixboox wrote: »
    the fact that nearly all of our ships look like they ought to be populated by legions of Yao Ming's, under 2 meters is considered average.

    Well, even Yao Ming would have trouble reaching the ceiling with arms stretched, I think Starfleet hoped that Godzilla would sign up one day ...

    But while I do have most toons and boffs of mostly average height, perhaps a bit more because I myself am a bit on the taller side, for one captain I (partially) modeled on a friend of mine who is 7'2", I had to resort to aliengen. Which actually wasn't that huge of a deal, you can recreate humans properly in that.

    What I found interesting though, one of my toons has two "joke boffs" of aliengen, both maxed height, one leg slider to the max, torso to the min, the other vice versa. Short Leg guy is actually not much taller than my other boffs, while Long Leg Lady towers.

    And yeah, crooked hips - the "seductive" and "cute" stances look indeed very unnatural and people standing like that for any extended period of time will probably get serious issues. Also, the extended boobage isn't good for the ladies' backs. But what I find worst in the character builder is that it is impossible - at least to me - to get a realistic looking heavyset person with no well defined V shaped torso (like many people working manual labor in real life have) because the stomach slider could just as well be named "are you pregnant?".

    Yeah the model could use some work. Especially the male model, where this is your standard appearance.
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    Which always makes me want to scream. "REAL CAPTAINS DON'T SKIP LEG DAY!"
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  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    xyquarze wrote: »
    But what I find worst in the character builder is that it is impossible - at least to me - to get a realistic looking heavyset person with no well defined V shaped torso (like many people working manual labor in real life have) because the stomach slider could just as well be named "are you pregnant?".
    Nobody's fat in Trek anyway.

    Probably have fake food that won't make you fat just like the fake booze that won't make you drunk. :D
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,572 Arc User
    Well, Mudd wasn't svelt you know. Neither was the Trader (Joseph Mell) from 'The Cage'.

    Well, the BMI has had it numbers drop since the 60s and they keep lowering the Obese Levels. Who knows, by the time we get to 2260, the BMI might declare that only Deela from 'Wink of an Eye' or Mr. & Mrs. Johnson from 'The Deadly Years' are of ideal weight. ;)
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
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  • echattyechatty Member Posts: 5,917 Arc User
    My Captains range in size from around 5' to 6'4". And I never use the Cute or Seductive poses for my females because they're neither cute nor seductive. They seem to me to be "I gotta go pee!" and bored.
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  • wombat140wombat140 Member Posts: 971 Arc User
    edited April 2019
    I have a kind of headcanon that other people DO think Starfleeters are unfairly good-looking and athletic, and mutter that they're a privileged elite, if not actually Augments. Actually it's because they're among the few people on 25th century Earth who actually do much physical work. (Also it's amazing what a tailored jacket, boots with heels and the knowledge that spacemen are cool will do for you.)

    Back on topic, I've heard that the minimum height was introduced to prevent people making child characters in case people made sexy child characters. Although that seems to me a complete waste of time really because they could just use the Aliengen. (There was an aliengen sexy child character in DS9 the other day, and a lot of people were complaining about it. Technically her bio said she was a 29-year-old member of a pigmy species, but she talked like she was about 10 and she looked like she was about 10. Several people reported her and I must say I haven't seen her since.)

    5' 6" as a minimum does seem excessively tall (I'm shorter than that). Far more than is needed just to make females look believably like adults instead of children. But perhaps the idea was that that was the minimum needed to keep them at a plausible adult height no matter what you did with the other sliders. The leg length slider changes everything. Honestly, I never have the least idea how tall or short a new character is really going to turn out, whatever the height slider says. I just get the proportions how I think works, and then exit the tailor and compare their height to the NPCs standing nearby and then go back and adjust accordingly.

    It's a pity they can't just make the height limits different for males and females. (Not for Aliens, though, because you never know which way it might go with an alien. And I think there's an unofficial idea floating around that Gorn females are actually bigger than the males, like spiders.)
  • berginsbergins Member Posts: 3,453 Arc User
    As someone who's 6'7" IRL, I do find the limitation annoying. And no, I don't play basketball. Do you play mini golf?
    "Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD." - Spock
  • thegrandnagus1thegrandnagus1 Member Posts: 5,166 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    Because humans generally average only in the 5' range? 7 is EXTREMELY rare.
    As rattler2 stated, it's based around averages. Aliens on the other hand, could literally be almost any size.

    Um, what? The very fact that there is a slider negates the concept of "average". On average, people are 5 (something). The fact that there is a slider means you do NOT have to be average; you can be short or tall. Average would be in between the 2 limits. The ends of the sliders have nothing to do with average.

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  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    wombat140 wrote: »
    I have a kind of headcanon that other people DO think Starfleeters are unfairly good-looking and athletic, and mutter that they're a privileged elite, if not actually Augments. Actually it's because they're among the few people on 25th century Earth who actually do much physical work.
    Considering their medical technology is such that they casually resort to cosmetic surgery instead of makeup whenever they need to briefly impersonate some rubber-forehead alien of the week, I have no doubt whatsoever the average Federation civilian is just a good-looking and athletic as the protagonists, just because they can.
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,572 Arc User
    edited April 2019
    The real reason for 6'4"? That is 76" and the deep down basic essence of the numerology number 76 is procedural and objective analysis and building a secure foundation upon which the future can rest (The Federation).

    Also, the Little Dumbbell Nebula in the constellation Pegasus is designated as Messier object 76 (M76). The USS Pegasus was an Oberth class vessel. So, the Developers were telling us that they will be working on a T6 Oberth. :)

    Finally, that Nebula was called the Little Dumbbell and here we are. ;)
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • mrspam404mrspam404 Member Posts: 58 Arc User
    I play basketball and minigolf....... Only 5'11 tho....
  • captainkoltarcaptainkoltar Member Posts: 939 Arc User
    I can think of two possible reasons.

    1. So characters can fit through doorways without clipping.

    2. To maintain relative height between species - Gorn are taller than Klingons who are taller than humans for example.
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