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Originally posted by Slick:
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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. ...
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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).
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I would also give larger mounts an accuracy penalty to represent larger ship maneuverability.
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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.
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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.
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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 ]