Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

How do we make smaller ships more useful in the long run.

I have come to the firm conclusion that the only noticible differance between and Escort and a Baseship is the amount of supplies and weapons it can hold and how many engines it can carry. Oh ya the mounts too. The bigger they are the more powerful.

Am I wrong in believing that there should be more here? I have looked at a most of the mods before posting this in the slim hope that this may have already been addressed. But I have not found a mod that does address this.

What I want is a reason to keep building Escorts, Frates, Destroyers, and Light Cruisers later in the game. A purpose for having them. As we all know that once you get the Dreadnought design, the rest of your designs are almost worthless.

So I asked myself the simple question, why does the military still use Escorts, Cutters, Gunboats, Frigates, Destroyers, and Cruisers as opposed to Battleships and Dreadnoughts. The answers are obvious, cost and practicality. Why build a Dreadnought when it would cost so very much to use and maintain.

Well in a game such as SEIV, you NEED these larger ships therefore you build them. But what I want to do is make the smaller ships more valueale in the long term by giving them bonuses or special weapons that only work with a specific class of ship size.

As you gain the ability to build say Battle Cruisers, you gain an extra engine mount for Escort giving them two more engines. This will make them faster.

As you gain shipyard III or IV, depending upon what mod you play, you gain new mounts and weapons for your Frigate and Destoryer Class.

Things like this.

One thing that does seperate a Battleship and dreadnought apart from their smaller counterparts is the amount of armor they have. The amount of energy that is required to run them, the amount of supplies they consume, etc.

What I am thinking is that supplies are actually fule, and the Q-Reactor is actually a nuclear reacter. That the big guns such as the Wavemotion Gun are the 16" so to speak guns of the navy. That the PPB's are the current standard guns that are on most ships. PDF are of course the Vulcans and Phalnix (sp) systems that are on most vessles now too.

What I want to do is say make the Light Cruiser a Guided missle cruiser. That would mean that I would have to design new missels specifically for it, and or revamp current ones to be more effective than they currently are. Not all missels fired at a ship are shot down.

Using Drones as Cruise Missles is an obvious choice as they self guiding and can be launched a system or two away from the target. I love drones now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I have been considering this subject for a while, and really want to make the Hull sizes of SEIV more involved and true to nature than they currently are. I realize that this will entail a lot of work, and I know that others have already made a few advancments in game play that might work well here. I was hoping that there are a few of you out there that will actually read this long post and agree. Ideas are very important here and I would seriously welcome any.

Ideas on how to make smaller ships more useful in the long run.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I do build small ships in late Proportions game: they are faster and have substantial combat bonuses. Combine it with to-hit penalties on large mounts in Proportions and it is not uncommon to have a situation where smaller ships are actually better ! For example, it is VERY hard to hit Proportions fighters and the best anti-fighter ship is a destroyer with special point-defence mount ! (unless you have talisman of course)

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

The key to balancing ship sizes to keep the ratio of weapons and defence to hull size the same for all ships.

In the Star Trek mod, each ship has approximately the same proportion of space needed for engines, weapons, etc. Any gain that larger ships might have with weapon mounts should be balanced by defense modifiers for smaller ships. Of course, this system has been tested in game, but I think it works toward keeping all ship sizes useful.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

P&N's QNP goes a long way towards that.

Since the engines scale up directly with ship size, the large ships only get economies of scale (Less % devoted to one-shot items like B/LS/CQ, and ECM/CS, and and special equipment such as scanners)

Large ships:
+ economies of scale as above
+ larger mounts
+ more damage must be done before you take hull damage. (A battleship has about the same shielding as two LCs, but a pair of LC's can be taken out one at a time)
- Defense penalties due to large sizes
- Really large ships can't move as fast.
- Easily crippled by penetration weapons, such as null space.
- larger ships are much easier to detect with grav sensors (ES and FG are the only ones that can be totally undetectable, DS & LC require very expensive grav sensors to find, and so on)

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Giving the smaller class of ships a speed boost would be the biggest reason to keep using them. This could make the Patrolling option in the game more worthwhile to use (at the very least I don't use it myself).

Creating Engine mounts specifically for smaller hulls that provide greater speed over the standard engine mounts would probably be the easiest way to incorporate this. You could either have these Special engine mounts become available after reasearching Engines up to a certain point, or, you could have a whole new Technologly Tree develop just for smaller hulls (say under 350kt) after you research Battleships or Battlecruisers. The new tree could provide newer engines (call them Parallel Ion Engines, wherby for every 1 boost in speed you used to get with each Ion Engine, you get twice the boost with each of these Parallel Engines (2 for 1 so to speak). As you keep upgrading to Parallel Photon Jacketed, and so forth, the ratio keeps doubling over the original ability. This way you could end up with an Escort or Frigate that can move in 20 or more spaces! If you wanted to, you could even triple the ratio to make them even more valuable.

The Technology Tree could also open up smaller missle pods (a cross between the stantdard mounts and fighter mounts) and Solar Collectors, to name a couple.

Some of the stuff above has already been built into Proportions, but without any major penalties, other than space.

Out of curiosity, is it possible to specifiy a "squares filled" limit for ship design as opposed to a "kt" limit? If possible, this may be another way to provide new mounts.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

With high propulsion tech, you can get an escort flying at 20 MP, while still having 20-40 kt (depending on what kind of C&C you use) of space left over for miscellaneous components.

Most excellent as a scout or medical relief ship.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

in standard game there are several reasons not to use the small ship hulls.

1. a small ship is NOT that much cheaper in construction and maintenance, but it is much more vulnerable. Solution: increase cost of big pots dramatically. (so they are only for big empires)

2. Mounts - they should be graded down. They are a bonus for big ships and ruin the usage of small ships. In standard game they cost in about 1.5 the tonnage but are x2 times so good. (the samll mount) This is odd. If we assume that the "normal" weapon is the standard weapon, then every change to x2 damage of this standard weapon should be x3 or more cost expensive. (in size and production) This is IMO a big problem in standard game. There is no need to use the standard sizes of a weapon, because with a mount they are better and cheaper if built in a big ship. MOO2 does this better.

In todays real naval combat there are high tech missiles which can destroy whole battleships with a single hit. And they can be fired even by an airplane. So there is not much need for big ships anymore, as long such an imparity in weapon efficiency and armor value exists.

Of course all the above mentioned deficiencies could be modded if anybody has time.

tschüss
KlausD

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Yes, increasing hull costs for larger ships is a good way to help balance the game. Also giving smaller ships a movement bonus and defensive bonuses in combat. Or even giving larger ships defensive penalties.

I think 'QNP' (Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion) is a good way to help make ship size classes reflect real-world limitations. The other obvious way, with turn rates and weapon arcs, is not available in SE IV. Hopefully this will be available in SE V.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I agree with statements here and I rarely use small ships and would also like to see them more useful in late game.

Contrary to some, and using real life examples, larger ships are generally faster than smaller ones, but less maneuverable. An aircraft carrier is usually the fastest ship in the battle group.

I totally agree that larger ships should cost more. Again in real life, the cost is more like exponential than like linear with respect to ship size (displacement).

I would recommend expanding the idea of larger hulls costing more and smaller hulls getting combat bonuses (to represent maneuverability advantages).

I would also modify the larger ship mounts to be longer range, but less accurate. It makes sense that you could mount a larger Version of a weapon on a larger ship, but larger weapons would be harder to train on small targets. Larger weapons in real life are used against larger targets. This change would also make the mount choice less of a no-brainer. It would still make sense to use smaller (or no) mounts on larger ships.

One caveat, though. Again from real life: Larger ships ARE better, so they should BE better in SE4. If the end result is to make all ships somewhat equal, this goes against real life. The main difference should end up being cost.

Just my $0.02

Slick.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

As Oleg said, this is one of the things Proportions mod does. QNP, Scale Mounts, the armor system, and changes to mount effects, as well as the changes to fighters and drones, tend to make all sizes of ships, and fighters and drones, valuable in their own way throughout the game. Large ships are the most powerful but also most expensive, and the weapons that are best against large targets are not good against small nimble targets, and vice versa in most cases.

PvK

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I really like the P-Mod, but it has a lot of extra tech that can be a tad over kill when first playing the game. Too many selection for things.

I want to take the best of all the ship hull mods, add some things, and keep it all simple.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Atrocities, here's what I've done with the mod I'm working on. I've got eight ships ranging from 150 tons to 500 tons. These are Small Craft. The next level of hull sizes are Capital Ships; 1000, 1500, 2000, and 3000 tons. For the small craft I've given each one an extra 100% to defense and offense and left the description blank to make it transparent. I'm using a QNP system so the smaller ships are naturally faster. Capital ships are slower but tougher and a whole lot more expensive to build and maintain.

Using this set-up small craft fight each other normally and are almost guaranteed to hit capital ships. With mounts capital ships outrange the smaller ships but have a hard time targeting them. When they do score a hit, however, it can be catastophic for the smaller ship.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I think the real disparity is all about the mounts. Without any mounts at all, larger ships are more advantageous because they use a smaller percentage of their space to control facilities and propulsion. (Escorst spend 65% each while a dreadnaught only uses 10%. this means 6 escorts only have 360 kt to mount weapons/shields and armor while the dread still has 900kt lieing around.)

The small ships gain the advantage that they can be in 6 places at once while the dreadnaught, obviously, can't.

Mounts totally blow this out of the water, however, as one "Massive Mount" is worth 6 escorts easy. Mounts are a cool thing to play with, but without balancing (any any direct balancing of the mounts themselves leads to the AI being unable to use them correctly) they are far to overpowered.

Chris Woods

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

And another way to make the balance - ship size does not grow with the technology. Ex:
Ship Construction 1 : 150kt
Ship Construction 2 : 400kt
Ship Construction 3 : 800kt
Ship Construction 4 : 250kt with mounts, combat speed bonus and reduced maintaince
Ship Construction 5 : 600kt with mounts, combat speed bonus and reduced maintaince
and so on...

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I know this is probably well nigh impossible to mod, but wouldn't dread naughts need more C&C (bridge) stuff as compared to a frigate? Make dread noughts carry 2x the bridge or something.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No problem:
1) Pick a nice scale, that evenly divides all of your ship sizes. 50kt is typically good.
2) For each hull size, set the engines per move to [mass] / [50]
3) Bump up the standard movement points (thrust) of your engines to something around 3 to 7 points per 10kt. Higher tech engines should have more thrust.
4) Remove bonus movement abilities, since they mess up the system. Solar sails can provide lower thrust and use no fuel, to keep them useful.

An escort (150kt /50kt = 3) requires 3 E.P.M. so if you add a single engine with 3 standard movement points, it will have a speed of one.

Note: "Engines per Move" really means "standard movement points per move". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The alternative method is via mounts (mQNP)
1) Scale up all engines to enormous cost and size.
2) Add an engine mount for each hull, which reduces the size (and cost) of the engine appropriately. 1% per 50kt should do nicely.
3) Again remove bonus movement abilities.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Thanks SJ. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

CNC I do remember the game. I find it very interesting how much that game mirrors SEIV. (IIRC I wrote it in September 98.) I may have an old copy of it on my P2 400, but that no longer works. PS or MB went out.

Random might have a copy it too. I will see if I can get one from him, but I have not seen him on line in over two years.

If you have printed copy, send it buy. I would love to read it.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Make the Bridge 1000 kT. Give each ship a mount that can only be used on the Bridge to scale it's size and cost appropriately.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

One thing that I always wanted to see was inherent abilities for the specialized hulls. Like giving the carriers a fighter launch abilitiy of 5/20 or somesuch. It would give a concrete reason to pick the carrier hull when there are larger alternatives available.

Here are some comments on previous ideas. Increasing the cost of the larger ships? Whether this is done through increasing hull cost or boosting maintainance I say thee nay. Making a fleet of dreadnoughts break your galactic bank isn't realistic and is even less fun to play. I don't think anyone likes being forced to make smaller ships. How about giving a severe maint. reduction on the smaller ships. They may have the lifespan of gnats but you could support a horde. That would be a reason to keep the smaller sizes around.

Mounts can be a problem. If you want to go the MOO2 heavy mount route (2x size, 1.5x damage, additional range) then for the love of god don't give them to-hit penalties. Penalties actually shorten the effective range, and besides, you need something to offset the lowered damage ratio. I think that a +10% to-hit bonus per +1 range is needed to make the range increase usable as opposed to being a cruel taunt. Of course this type of mount is really effective when you can combine it with higher damage ratio weapons to give that long/short range punch.

Another problem is that the AI blindly uses the lowest available mount on the list. How to get around that? Perhaps by limiting certain mounts to certain weapons? Maybe the MOO2 heavy mount would be limited to energy weapons while the high damage/low accuracy would be more appopriate to slug throwers and the like? Then you could have a mix of mounts in a given design.

[ March 23, 2003, 22:06: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Here is a sample of the CompEnhancement.txt file (just ship mounts) from Adamant Mod. What do you think?

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Fyron,
Interesting. Personaly I think that the accuracy mount should weigh the same as the LR mount, similar principles involved just different application.

Concealed mount seems a little Uber. Tonnage 25%, structure 100%, and damage 90%? That is one hell of a damage ratio you're offering, and they can double as internal armour.

I like the idea of the hold fire bays. Let 'em get in close and then see if they can run fast enough. Heh-heh. Wish I had thought of that.

For the pre-fire bays, how are they working? have they tested out all right? I remember the problems with adjusting seeher range through mounts (it doesn't actually affect the characteristics of the seeker) but will the seeker launch even though it will wink out of existence?

Edit: P.S. I noticed that you aren't intending for the AI to use any of the special mounts. Are you planning to keep it that way? If not, how are you planning to balance it?

[ March 23, 2003, 23:03: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

One thing I liked about MOO is the variety of ship sizes. I forget what the sizes were in MOO1, but in MOO2, the smallest ship size is 25 kT and the largest ship is 1200 kT. (OK, it doesn't say kT but I'm assuming each space unit is a kT). That's a factor of 48 between the smallest and largest ships! In MOO3, the jump is even bigger - something like 90 times, because there are 14 hull sizes with each being square root of 2 times the size of the Last. Compare this with SE4, where largest ship (Baseship, 1500 kT) is only 10 times the size of the smallest (Escort 150 kT)... Now I know that in MOO2, at least, small ships were fairly useless, but that's just because they weren't given enough defensive and speed bonuses. (+50 to defense for a frigate might seem like a lot, but then remember that in MOO2 you could have bonuses going up into the 200's!) It might not seem very "realistic" in wet-navy terms to have some ships 100 times the size of others, but this is a space game, it's supposed to be epic and awe-inspiring! (Why else do we have Battlemoons? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ) Of course, this change in scale would also necessitate a change in the scale of construction rates - in unmodded SE4 a top-level planetary spaceyard builds only 50% faster than your basic laser-popgun-age model! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif That certainly won't get anything big done in any reasonable amount of time! (Then again, we don't want a "yawn, popped out 8 more doomstars this turn" like we got in MOO2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif )

Oh well, done ranting for now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I agree with Instar, the larger ships should be required to carry more in the way of C&C (Command & Control) components.

QNP system? Could someone please post the engine requirements for this. I.E. I assume that the larger ships require more engines to go the same speed as a smaller verhicle.

I like the idea of giving smaller ships more advantages as you research through the Construction Technology like what was posted below.

But what advantages do you think smaller ships should have over their larger counterparts? PCP any thoughts on this?

I have a couple:

Escort/scout/cutter -
Normal starting tech but at ship construction tech 4 bonus given for speed and reduced component size.

Frigate/gunboat/Corvettes -
Normal starting tech at start but at ship construction level 5 tech given for speed and special weapons mounts. (Weapons mounts can be an imporved fire rate or distance bonus to hit ratio to missles or torpedo's)

Destroyer/heavy destroyer
Normal starting tech at start but at ship construction level 6 tech given for armor and special weapons. (Special weapons can be as you said, advanced missiles and torpedo's.)

This kinda spells out what I had in mind.

PCP do you remember that game you authored a few years ago (Q - Experiment?) I still have a print out of it if your interested in reviewing it. Remember all of the detail you went into for each ship class? I hope you still have a copy of it someplace, but it has been four years now.

Also I think it is important to understand that each ship class (Hull size) should have an important role to play in any game/mod. No sense in designing a Destroyer when your going to have Light Cruiser in five turns.

Additionally, here is my list for ship hull sizes:

Ships:
Scouts
Escorts
Cutters
Corvette
Gun Ship
Frigate
Destroyer
Light Cruiser
Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Battle Cruiser
Battleship
Dreadnought
Juggernought
Capital Ship

Small Carrier
Medium Carrier
Large Carrier
Super Carrier
Battle Carrier

Space Stations/OutPosts:
Standard
Centenial
Crown
Outland
Frontier

Battle Stations:
Alpha
Beta
Delta
Epsilon
Gama

Star Bases:
Base Star
Battle Star
Death Star

Fighters:
Interceptor
Short Range Fighter
Fighter
Heavy Fighter
Bomber
Heavy Bomber
Fighter Bomber
Long Range Bomber
Shuttles
Runabouts

Support Ships:
Colony 1
Colony 2
Colony 3

Transport 1
Transport 2
Transport 3

Extras:
Salvage ship
Repair vessel
Construction ship
Cargo ship
Specialized ship

PCP you really could make a sweet mod out of that game idea you had for the old FSN Forums. What did they rename it? Domination?

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Been giving the responses here some thought and have some things to add.

There have been some inaccurate generalizations here if compared to real life. Larger ships are generally faster and longer range than small ones; yes there are exceptions. Larger ships are less maneuverable. Command & control is not appreciably larger on larger ships; roughly 10% of crew represents C&C, and the shipboard space is roughly the same percentage.

Regarding SE4, I would increase the bridge, crew quarters and life support such that they represent the same rough percent of ship space as small ships. I would also give larger mounts an accuracy penalty to represent larger ship maneuverability.

Also, although QNP is a good idea, the end result should not be that all ships will be equal. This conflicts with real life. As I stated below, larger ships ARE better and should BE better in the game. This is due to "economy of size". Larger ships are more efficient, not less efficient.

The reason there aren't large navies from all countries on our oceans is $$$. It is tremendously expensive to operate and maintain a large navy. The US had 600+ navy ships under Reagan and today it has less than 1/2 that number. For SE4 purposes, this should translate into HUGE costs to make larger and larger ships. That will be realistic both in construction time and maintenance and will make smaller ships more useful.

Another concept is in the engines / quantum reactors. There are nuclear powered ships and conventional powered ships in our navy. The main difference is cost (to build and maintain) and time to refueling. Real life conventional ships must be refueled approximately weekly when at sea (give or take) when operating at high speeds and nuclear ships have endurances at 20+ years. The "supplies" issue is hardcoded for fleet sharing, but again you could make expensive components with large supply to represent the future Version of nuclear power vs. conventional power.

Slick.

[ March 24, 2003, 16:01: Message edited by: Slick ]

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">And what would you think they should weigh? 125 or 150?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm... I may have reduced the wrong trait. The hit points are supposed to be 25%, not the space taken. The concealed weapon should take normal space.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">They are designed against missile dancers and such. You can fire the seekers when they are out of range. The seekers move in, and hopefully hit them when they come in range to fire at you. If they are out of range when the seeker arrives at its max range (regardless of the mount), the seeker just disappears. No big loss, fire more! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif They would be more useful on Bases, which can't move to combat the missile dancing.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am not entirely sure. I might have them use the Heavy Mount because they can not react dynamically to a player using lots of emmissive or crystalline armor. The Heavy Mount is designed to combat such ships.

[ March 24, 2003, 19:38: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">
Current larger ships may be faster because they have nuclear power plants, while conventional ships don't. When large ships have the same power plant, it takes a proportionally larger amount (for space ships) of thrust to accelerate them. For most or all pre-modern warships of the same age and type of propulsion, smaller ships were faster. At any rate, it should almost always be EASIER to move a small ship at a certain speed, than a larger one.

In Proportions mod, there is a good analogy to the nuclear powered ships, in Gravitic Drives. Unlike other propulsion types, it takes a constant and fairly large amount of space to mount a Gravitic Drive, which directly adds to speed. Thus large ships equipped with them may end up as fast or faster than smaller designs without them, and small ships will tend not to have them because they'll use a larger proportion of space combined to the smaller size of small ships. Note that this was recently complained about by some players feeling that fighters should always be faster than Frigates (which isn't generally the case anyway unless you put a Gravitic Drive on the Frigate, and even then the fighters can usually keep up).

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">
If the ship is less maneuverable, it should be a property of the ship class, not the weapon mount, although larger weapon mounts can also be given less accuracy to balance them and make them more appropriate for capital ship combat than swatting small nimble targets. Proportions mod does this.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">QNP doesn't necessarily make all ships equal. I'd say larger ships should be more powerful, but not better in all ways, or else you get the situation in the unmodded game, where there is seldom a reason to build smaller ships.

PvK

[ March 24, 2003, 21:33: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Fyron:

I'd say 125%. Paying half again the weight of each weapon for what is essentially targeting equipment is a little too steep. 125% hurts, especially with no damage increase, but it's an acceptable sacrifice.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree with everything you said except this (partially). Nuclear power is not necessarily used for speed, nor does it provide power levels far in excess of conventional plants; it is used for endurance (time at high speed and time between refueling); and, for submarines, independence from propulsion use of air to allow being submerged for extended periods. Indeed some of the older nuclear ships were slow. Current large ships are faster simply because they are designed to be faster. They can carry proportionally more fuel so they are also longer ranged, again in general. When we talk about "faster", need to consider sprint (for battle) and strategic speed.

Agreed about the mass & acceleration issue, yes, Newton was right with laws 1, 2 & 3. Also a propeller driven ship obeys a "pump law" which basically says that "speed is proportional to power cubed". So to double a ship's speed, you need 8x power. Now for small and large ships alike, this limits max speed. Space engines are just plain different, but "economy of size" has shown that larger is better and more efficient, at the cost of ...well, cost. Of course, there are limits to everything due to the laws of deminishing returns.

The US only has 2 kinds of ships that are nuclear: aircraft carriers and submarines. All other nuclear surface ships have been decomissioned. You should see one of our carriers ripping thru the water. The rooster tail is extremely impressive.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to speak unkindly toward QNP. I think it is a good idea and a way of making smaller ships more useful. My major point here is that the reason you don't see huge navies from all the countries of the world, more than any other reason is cost. It is relatively cheap to maintain a small costal navy of frigates, but it is tremendously expensive for the US to maintain numerous forward deployed carrier battle Groups.

If the intent of the original post in this thread is to make a mod where smaller ships more useful in the game, I think the way to do it is to make the larger ships very expensive. The accuracy thing was just a side issue. That way you have to really plan your construction by beefing up your economy and support them with a fleet for protection (to protect your investment). Their maintenance alone will limit the numbers. With limited numbers of large ships, you need to fill in the gaps with smaller ships and carefully choose where to deploy your large ships. This is consistent with real life.

Slick.