Small ships vs Big ships

[Yef]

Do you think its worth the buck to invest in a large number of Corvettes and Frigates?
Will they, pound by pound, be more effective than a few but larger ships?

I base my fleet on the Light Cruisers, but I wonder if I should go bigger or if going smaller may be smarter.

Right now I have 12 point-defense Destroyers, 30 attack LC, and 3 BC.

Should I start from this point on to build only the biggest hull or should I keep building the smaller ones? (as attack ships)

[Fyron]

The large increase in damage from using light cruisers with large mounted weapons makes smaller ships unable to compete unless you can pour a lot more resources into producing small ships than your enemy can produce large ships. With the same tonnage used for weaponry, large mounted weapons do 50% more damage than normal weaponry. That is a large gap to overcome, one which the 10-20% extra defense bonus of the small hull does not make up for.

Also, it is not as drastic comparing heavy mounted weapons on battleships compared to large mounted weapons on battle cruisers, but the increase in damage is still quite significant.

[ March 22, 2004, 16:36: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[sachmo]

But wouldn't the increased number of attacks created by a greater number of ships overcome the increase damage done by the large ship's heavy mounts?

[PvK]

Originally posted by sachmo:
But wouldn't the increased number of attacks created by a greater number of ships overcome the increase damage done by the large ship's heavy mounts?

Only if you spend much more time and resources building the smaller ships. The cost of engines and ship control and sensors for the smaller ships is the same, or nearly the same, per ship. This would make larger ships a good idea even without mounts (see Space Empires III).

There are some other minor advantages to smaller ships (e.g. defense modifier, lower build time, number of targets, number of firing sources), but these definitely don't overcome the advantages of larger ships, in most cases, in the unmodded game. Rare exceptions are when the to-hit bonuses temporarily hit the edge so the smaller ships become nearly unhittable, and when the enemy has a weapon you currently can't counter which can take out an entire ship in one attack, like an allegiance subverter or an engine-destroyer when you forgot to include supply storage.

Some mods restore some uses and effectiveness to smaller ships, though. See Proportions mod and AIC mod for example (and probably P&N and Adamant, I would guess - any mod with Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion will help at least somewhat).

PvK

[Wardad]

Special weapons make it hard to defend smaller ships. Defending against boarding parties, ion dispersers, seekers, fighters, shield depleters, all compete for room with the weapons. A well defended small ship will not have enough fire power.


The larger ships have less overhead then an equal tonnage of smaller ships, because of the bridge (or Master Computer), engines.

Typical componants like Combat Sensors, ECM, Stealth Armor (defense bonus), Scattering Armor (defense bonus), fuel storage (engine damage reserve), Shields, Self Destruct, Security Stations, Solar Sail, and PD add important benifits.
The larger ships are more cost effective by spreading these benefits over a larger tonnage of weapons.

The mounts make the larger ships an even better deal by increasing the firepower per ton of weapons. More bang for the buck. More damage resistance for the buck.

[Baron Munchausen]

Like all computer simulations, SE IV has a hard limit on the number of ships you can have in the game. In 'the real world' you could overwhelm any technologial or size advantage with sufficient numbers but in a game the 'ant swarm' strategy is limited by the limits of the computer program you are running. So while there are some advantages to many smaller ships -- such as more flexibility in deployment -- the fleet with larger ships will ultimately almost certainly win due to mounts and some other advantages of scale.

I hope that the use of 'real time' in SE V combat will allow some real advantages for smaller ships to be preserved, such as speed and maneuverability.