[Pax]

Originally posted by Slick:
One was the idea that the ratio of ship size to planet size seems too large. Indeed some ships can have more firepower and/or storage than small planets. I think this is unrealistic. Limiting the size of ships to Frigate would go a long way to correct this.

Planet cargo capacity can also be increased.

Also, based on most sci-fi, planet defenses should be a more formidable. It should be very hard for a ship to glass a planet - even a tiny planet. Taking on a homeworld would take a huge number of ships and the better course of action might be to attack the economy instead of the large planets.

Oh, I agree, 110% -- though the economy in SE4 is untouchable, as it occurs behind the scenes.

Also, having small ships would somewhat un-nerf minefields, and make defense bases more formidable as they should be. In the unmodded game a Battlecruiser is larger than a Space Station. Under this scheme, the smallest base should be larger than the largest ship.

Well, as you can see, that's not entirely true, but the largest base is around three times the size of the largest warship (and over double the size of a carrier, and nearly double the size of the largest noncombatant ship). Only one ship is bigger than the next-biggest base, and not by much at that ... not to mentionit's not a combat hull.

Another idea was that there would be only 3 available ship sizes (on purpose): Escort, Frigate, and Colony Ship. Colony Ships would be used only as colonizers. That leaves only Escorts and Frigates (rarely used in the unmodded game) for everything else.

That's where your ideas and mine unavoidably part ways. 8)

You would have to make many different configurations of Escorts and Frigates to accomplish all the functions of an empire. They could do all the essentials: attack ships, carriers, troop transports, mine layers, mine sweepers, etc. However, you couldn't build a spaceyard ship - the best you could do is a repair Frigate with very limited movement (2 engines, or 1 engine and 1 solar sail).

Actually, with 15kT to work with, at best you have a satt/minelayer. I would NEVER make a 150kT carrier (one launch bay, MAYBE two ... ? nosir ... gotta be at least 5, thanks!)

Again, these ideas would make more of a challenge out of supply, repair, minesweeping, etc., which come all to easy with large ships. You would have to deal with being unable to put spaceyards and other large components on ships - you could use them only on bases if appropriate.

I consider a SYS to be an essential component of imperial expansion. especially where bases are so key for repair and defense, a big base or two sitting on a warp point provides more defense, when the targets are destroyers or smaller, than they do currently.

Only having 2 real hulls for all ship designs would really create a creative duel against humans.

See, that, I don't see. You'd boil it down to one or two "best" designs, and then it'd be a race to see who could build more of them per turn.

Also, the non-availability of mounts for Escorts and Frigates was intentional. Mounts would only work for WP's and bases to make up for their immobility.

Which IMO also limits creativity. Even given two shisp with identical shield/engine/etc, both using the same tonnage of the same direct-fire gun ... if one goes with an enhanced-targetting mount, whiel the other goes with a Gatling-style mount, both ships could play out very differently. Who's to say which one would win, without trying the two out?

Because of the limited capacity of Frigates, planet capture would not be so easy anymore. It would also involve heavy losses, but the fruits of victory are great.

With only frigates for cargo transport, I'd never even TRY. Consider: it's now much more punishing to try and land troops on a defended planet (read: one with WPlatforms). If each ship then only had 40-60kT dedicated to cargo bays ... planet capture would be functionally impossible, IMO.

Well, we'll see what I can cook up (if anything).