[Slick]

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.