Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features

[Slick]

Originally posted by PvK:

Current larger ships may be faster because they have nuclear power plants, while conventional ships don't. When large ships have the same power plant, it takes a proportionally larger amount (for space ships) of thrust to accelerate them. For most or all pre-modern warships of the same age and type of propulsion, smaller ships were faster. At any rate, it should almost always be EASIER to move a small ship at a certain speed, than a larger one.

[/QB]

I agree with everything you said except this (partially). Nuclear power is not necessarily used for speed, nor does it provide power levels far in excess of conventional plants; it is used for endurance (time at high speed and time between refueling); and, for submarines, independence from propulsion use of air to allow being submerged for extended periods. Indeed some of the older nuclear ships were slow. Current large ships are faster simply because they are designed to be faster. They can carry proportionally more fuel so they are also longer ranged, again in general. When we talk about "faster", need to consider sprint (for battle) and strategic speed.

Agreed about the mass & acceleration issue, yes, Newton was right with laws 1, 2 & 3. Also a propeller driven ship obeys a "pump law" which basically says that "speed is proportional to power cubed". So to double a ship's speed, you need 8x power. Now for small and large ships alike, this limits max speed. Space engines are just plain different, but "economy of size" has shown that larger is better and more efficient, at the cost of ...well, cost. Of course, there are limits to everything due to the laws of deminishing returns.

The US only has 2 kinds of ships that are nuclear: aircraft carriers and submarines. All other nuclear surface ships have been decomissioned. You should see one of our carriers ripping thru the water. The rooster tail is extremely impressive.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to speak unkindly toward QNP. I think it is a good idea and a way of making smaller ships more useful. My major point here is that the reason you don't see huge navies from all the countries of the world, more than any other reason is cost. It is relatively cheap to maintain a small costal navy of frigates, but it is tremendously expensive for the US to maintain numerous forward deployed carrier battle Groups.

If the intent of the original post in this thread is to make a mod where smaller ships more useful in the game, I think the way to do it is to make the larger ships very expensive. The accuracy thing was just a side issue. That way you have to really plan your construction by beefing up your economy and support them with a fleet for protection (to protect your investment). Their maintenance alone will limit the numbers. With limited numbers of large ships, you need to fill in the gaps with smaller ships and carefully choose where to deploy your large ships. This is consistent with real life.

Slick.