Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?

[Dizzy]

I've heard peeps complain that once big ships and big mounts are available, little ships are no more. What kinds of things can be done to make little ships competitive and worth while? I have a cpl ideas, but am no modder so I dont know if it's feasable.

Could smaller ship classes be given a vehiclesize ability that allows for lesser maintenance costs?

Perhaps mounts can be revised so as to not allow the big ships so much of a weapon hardware advantage?

Perhaps more of a natural ecm bonus.

Mb make a manuevering thrusters component only for smaller ships that add extra combat movement. Mb smaller ships can be equipped with more engines?

What other ideas are there?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

All those ideas are feasable, unless I'm highly mistaken. Look in the data files - Something like 'abilities.txt'. It's been a while since I've poked around them.

1) Yep, one of the abilities that can be used on ships is a maintanence reduction.

2) Certainly. All data files are text files; you'd just have to change some text files. Can't quite remember the name - 'somethingmounts.txt'.

3) Little ships already have this; you'd just have to increase it. 'vehiclesize.txt', I think.

4a) Yep. Just make it too large to use, then make a mount for the smaller ships by setting the minimum and maximum size of the ship the mount can be used with to the range of smaller ships you want to use it with.

4b) Yep. There's a default setting for number of engines that can be put on a hull.

You could also give them a to-hit bonus.

Hello, and welcome to the forum. Cheese?

[Atrocities]

You would have to mod them to be useful.

[Dizzy]

Hi atrocities. I LUV your shipsets and mods. Big fan here. I've DLed a bunch of your work... Very cool stuff. I've modded for SFC Orion Pirates and I know its TIME consuming... wtg.

narf poit chez BOOM said:You could also give them a to-hit bonus.

Hello, and welcome to the forum. Cheese?

Like what bonus? And thx for the info!

I'm slowly grasping the intricacies of modding this stuff. Rollo gave me some points tonight. Nice guy. Very knowledgeable.

I think I'll throw together some of these ideas and see where they lead. Anyone else have anymore ideas? Any suggestions would be very helpful.

[Atrocities]

Thank you. Glad you are enjoying the sets.


A lot of people have considered adding bonuses to smaller ships such as abilities added to the hull sizes like more manuverablity, built in ECM or armor values. Added movement ability. Added combat movement ability... assuming that it does not interfer with stock engine component.

Lower maintenance costs.. on the flip side make larger ships way more expensive.

Give smaller hulls the ability to hit offense, with the defense hit bonus... Less likely to be hit.

[Suicide Junkie]

I like the system I made for gritecon.

Using required mounts and maintenance modifiers on the hulls, the build cost is made to rise FASTER than the size of the hull. Maintenance is made to rise SLOWER, taking into account the higher cost of the components.

In Gritecon, build cost is equal to size cubed.
So an 800kt ship takes the same amount of time to build as eight 400kt ships.
However, that 800kt ship costs about the same as a single 400kt ship.

Big ships are thusly great to have around, but they're really hard to make.
Overall, you've gotta find a balance. If you are at peace, or winning with relatively few losses, then you build bigger ships so that you can increase your tonnage-in-the field without paying more maintenance. If you start losing, then you can build smaller ships, and get more tonnage per turn to throw into the meat grinder.

[Dizzy]

I think the following things could easily be done in a balanced fashion that would really make keeping around smaller class vessels something you'd really consider doing. Plus is all this stuff can be done relatively quickly and easily all in the VehicleSize.txt making it quick and painless and something the AI wont have trouble taking advantage of.

Atrocities said:Built in ECM. Ships harder to hit/easier to hit enemies.

Found these Abilities:

Combat To Hit Defense Plus
Combat To Hit Offense Plus

Added movement ability.

Found this Ability:

Extra Movement Generation (dont think I'd go here... Maybe allow use of more engines instead so it's an advantage that'd have to be paid for by structure.)

Added combat movement ability... assuming that it does not interfer with stock engine component.

Found this ability:

Combat Movement

Lower maintenance costs.

Found this ability:

Modified Maintenance Cost

Probably the last thing to do... to make it really balanced... would be to sift thru all the mounts in your mod and adjust them so that bigger ships dont get all these glorious percentage mount advantages over the littler hulls. I think that'd complete the package.

I also see what you're saying, Suicide Junkie, but I'd probably not want to go there. I surely wouldnt want to wait that long to get a bigger ship. I dont think there's enouigh payoff in it in the short term... or the long term for that matter. Especially if you do what I'm suggesting to the vehiclesize and mounts.

[PvK]

My Proportions mod is not the only one that addresses all of this well, is it?

I'm quite happy with what I did, although I have a little more left to add (i.e. scale mounts for small ship control components would be good, and the larger mounts may want to be made a little stronger). QNP, scale mounts for some components, combat and maintenance mods based on size, armor adjustments. Does the job nicely. The Proportions 3.x AI is broken, but Proportions 2.x (or AIC mod) has almost as good handling of ship sizes, and the AI DOES build a mix of ship sizes - you just have to make AI designs by type and script it to build a mix of specific sizes. (Well, it's a pain, which is partly why Proportions 3.x AI is still broken, because I haven't bothered, but it is possible to do.)

PvK

[Fyron]

Nah, many other mods address these issues as well. P&N, CB, Adamant, the Art of War mod that was never finished, etc.

[Parasite]

In older times, it was true that bigger ships were better. Frigates could fight other frigates, but when a cruiser or lesser ship of the line came around, they had to run (and hopefully had the speed to do it.) Bigger ships meant first more, then bigger and longer range guns to hit others before you could be hit. Big battles were for ships of the line to fight, frigates were just used to pass messages.

Later improvements in weapons like the torpedo allowed a small ship to destroy large ships, but could not be used on other smaller very maneuverable ships. This lead to the rock, paper, scissors game where a small ship could kill a big ship, a medium sized cruiser could kill small ships but not really hurt bigger ones and a big ship with large slow guns could kill a medium ships easily, but had a hard time with the small darting destroyers. Later still came fighters and carriers, but that is another thread.

Small ships could be made much more useful with the introduction or modification of a small powerful short range weapon restricted to small hull types or even better with mounts to make them hit better on smaller ships. A reload rate of 10-15 turns and damage in the 2-4000 range might be good. A to-hit adjustment of -90% for a base ships and slowly reducing to zero on smaller ships. Using the opposite adjustment as it takes for fire on the ship has symmetries to it.

A torpedo shot at a cruiser whould be wasted if battleships were around, yet a ship's guns would clear the area around it of smaller enemies if given half a chance. I suspect this would be hard for the AI and firing priorities to build and handle correctly, but it might be interesting to try.