Is "BattleCruiser" a relative size? -- discussion

[Soulfisher]

The default game defines "BattleCruiser" as 600 kt. Suppose that war ships were extended, in a mod, beyond the size of Baseships .... let's say to about 10,000 kt. Should the term "BattleCruiser" (or any other ship size "name") describe a relative size of ship instead of strictly a 600 kt size?

For example: If this mod had three small ship sizes of Escourt (200kt, tech level 1), BattleCruiser (600kt, tech level 2), and Baseship (1500kt, tech level 4), is it a desireable thing to also create a 700kt Escourt (just as fast and manueverable as the earlier Escourt, but at tech level 3), a 1700kt BattleCruiser (same speed and manueverability as the earlier BattleCruiser, but at tech level 5), and a 2000kt Baseship (also with the same speed and maneuverability as the earlier Baseship, but at tech level 6).

[trooper]

Mmm... your 700kt would make the battleship useless, if it's as fast (and cheap ?) as a small ship.
Theoricaly, you can make an Escort I hull size, an Escort II hull size and an Escort III hull size (need to use different names), no matter their weight.

[Fyron]

The sizes are completely relative. Check out Adamant Mod, which resized all the ships (and added a lot of new ones). Also, look for the Ultimate Vehicle Sizes mod (by Andres Lescano IIRC). It has huge ship sizes in it.

I doubt that you will find many (if any) on the other side of the argument (unless they play devil's advocate just to spite me ).

[ June 18, 2003, 08:06: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Rojero]

Speaking of battlecruiser, I found it interesting but the documentation a bit overwhelming or confusing, Do any of you guys have similiar views of the game?

[Growltigger]

Completely random post (kind of) but..... keeping in mind that battlecruisers (certainly in the British navy) were generally meant to be the definitive combination of firepower, armour and speed (and were generally more expensive than battleships)... I always thought that larger vessels in SEIV should be weighted so that they take much much much longer to build than smaller ships and also consume a dissproportionate amount of resources.

Modern fleets tend to have lots of small vessels with a few large battlewagons/carriers whatever. In SEIV, you generally go for the largest hull size you can build, and build as many as your empire will support....

Is there anyway to tweak things so that you are forced to go for a mix of smaller ships and then some big boys?

[Erax]

Sure. Every hull size has its own cost, which in standard SEIV is directly proportional to its size. You can tweak this to be proportional to the size squared or some such progression to make big ships reaaaaallllly expensive.

You can also tweak maintenance costs for specific hull sizes if you wish.

But remember, 'wet' navies are not a perfect analogy. Spacegoing vessels (especially the SEIV kind that never land on a planet) do not have to worry about drag and gravity as much as seagoing vessels.