[grumbler]

The ships all move at about the same speeds because this is frictionless space, and speed is limited only by the relationship between mass anbd power (yeah, that _should_ be acceleration, not speed, but we have the model that we have).

Smaller ships are harder to hit, so building smaller ships makes some sense. Larger ships get mounts that disproportionately increase the power of their weapons, so bulding them makes sense as well. Intermediate-sized ships get a balance of the two approaches, so building them can ALSO make sense.

Large ships have much more total armor, but it is leaky armor and thus you could find yourself losing your reactor and going dead in space - large ships are a gamble.

I always build a mix, as playing game with all big ships and all small ships taught me that those approaches had definite limits. Try it yourself.

It is true that many hull types become redundant (why build a destroyer when a heavy destroyer has the same total weight in required components and therefor a smaller percentage taken by required components?) but that is true of the original design as well, and I think it works out well.

If we were to do this from scratch I think I would allow small, medium and large ships from the start and just make them better as technology improved, rather than just larger. Maybe with SE5 that's what we will do.