Weapons, engines and mods, Oh my!

[Andrés]

Mainly, reality is much more complex than SE4, and it seems to me from considering real-world examples, that one of the constants is that bigger is almost universally more expensive per unit measure rather than less - it's up to the larger and more expensive designs to realize their worth through even better performance.

I don't know where you get that impression from.
I think you may be comparing a group of tiny ships that is actually smaller than the massive one. If they are enough for the job, then yes the big ship would be overkill, but that does not make it less efficient.
That logic does not make any sense.
In general bigger designs are more efficient BECAUSE they are bigger.
Buying a large bottle of Coke is cheaper than buying many small cans.
Installing central air conditioning in a building is cheaper than installing an individual unit in every room (specially when it comes to usage and mantenance cost)
The same goes for ship systems.
Building a heavy baseship must be much cheaper than an equivalent tonnage of frigates.
Frigates will have their advantages, harder to hit, can be built faster by using many SYs. When it comes to use they can be much more flexibe being able to operate in many places at once.
Heavy baseships advantage is only being cheaper and more efficient.
Yes there are many technical details such as specialized parts, facilities, and support know how and technologies.
That is what's why you have to research to get larger hull, anyone that can design a certain ship can easily design something twice as big, research means solving all those technical issues involved in the larger design.

[PvK]

I tried looking for cost figures today, but haven't found a great source yet. My impression mainly comes from various books and discussions of naval design, which have often mentioned the great expense and difficulty of producing capital ships, which could only be justified by their ability to deliver ship superiority (usually, for semi-modern navies, by virtue of superior range).

I am entirely certain of it being true for the example of WW2 tank design. Both the Germans and the Americans considered different designs which were either relatively small weak and cheap, or large and powerful but much more difficult to produce and maintain.

Coke bottles and Coke cans are both common and cheap. The six-pack is a little more like the battleship anyway, because it's got slightly more complex and expensive ingredients and manufacturing process.

Knowledge is only part of the challenge of producing something.

Here is a good example of the sorts of problems that appear when building building massive ships, from an excellent web site describing the Japanese Yamato class battleship:

"When the construction of the Yamato class was planned, there was no shipyard in Japan capable of building such ships without expanding it's building facilities.
Since the Japanese Navy intended to build four Yamato class ships in succession, special preparations for their construction had to be made in selected shipyards.
Some of these arrangements consisted of expanding dock capacities, building a special transport ship capable of carrying an 18 inch gun turret and hiding such a vessel behind sisal rope curtains for security reasons.
The depth of the building dock at the Kure naval yard, in which the Yamato was built, was deepened about 3 feet so that the hull could be floated in the dock.
The capacity of the gantry crane straddling the dock was increased to 100 tons in order to lift heavy armor plates. Furthermore, about a quarter of the dock at the landward end was covered with a roof to prevent it from being seen from a prominent hill nearby.
In the Yokosuka district a large dry dock was specially built and the third ship of the Yamato class, later named Shinano and converted into a carrier was built there.
The Nagasaki Yard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. was the only other shipyard capable of building a Yamato class battleship. even with some expansion of it's facilities.
Unlike Kure's building dock a slipway was to be used for the construction there. Needless to say, the launching of a vessel weighing 30,000 tons raised various problems technically. Not only was the slipway strengthened but workshops and piers were also expanded or strengthened. The overall area of the expansion of the workshops reached a total of almost 787,401 square feet. Floating cranes of 350 tons and 150 tons were built and installed to lift heavy armor plates and gun fittings.
At Sasebo, one of the three major naval bases in Japan, a dry dock capable of accommodating a Yamato class battleship was also built.
Some measures taken to safeguard the security of the Musashi were interesting.
The slipway on which she was built was covered by a sisal rope curtain.
The total length of rope used reached 1,683 miles and it's weight totaled 408 tons. This great consumption of sisal rope caused a temporary shortage of this item on the market, and caused complaints among fishermen.
One more thing to be mentioned was the construction of a transport vessel to carry the 18 inch guns and turrets from Kure to either Nagasaki, where the Musashi was being built, or to Yokosuka, where the Shinano was to be built.
These 18 inch guns and turrets were manufactured at the Kure naval yard and they could be transported only by this specially-built vesse
Even in accommodation the Yamato had remarkable features.
She was the first Japanese warship to be equipped with an air conditioning system.
Although this comfort was not afforded to all the living quarters, the Yamato and her sister Musashi had a favorable reputation among sailors as the most comfortable ships in the Japanese Navy."

These are just some of the sorts of issues that come up when undergoing massive engineering projects, which don't tend to have to be considered at all for building smaller craft. However, except for WW2 tanks, I'm not entirely sure how well the numbers back up these ideas. I'd like to know, so I'm going to try to dig up some good figures.

PvK

[oleg]

Surprisinly, nobody mentioned yet the wonderfull idea of using engine mounts insted of engine numbers to achieve "realistic" ship movement.

I forgot what mod uses this idea, but I really like it !

[Suicide Junkie]

Good point.

There is also the mQNP system, which uses mounts to decrease the size of engines for small ships.
You get almost the same physics, with engine space used <--> speed, etc...
The only differences are:
1) players MUST remember to use a mount when adding engines.
2) damage to engines is not as smooth, but with a 1 engine = 1 MP, the differences will be relatively minor. (Although for large ships, the engines will act like armor)
3) The 255 MP limit is no longer an issue. Instead, you have to worry about the 1%-100% range of possible engine sizes, and the prevention of players from using unmounted engines accidentally...
4) And stuff like supply storage, repair rates, etc...

In addition, there is also the Hybrid-QNP option, which has yet to be developed fully.
1)a) Use the mQNP to make engine classes (Light, Medium, Heavy)
b) Use Engines Per Move to separate ships in each Category, and give them whatever values result in the correct momentum.

2)a) Use mQNP for light to medium ships, and then start cranking up the EPM for larger ships, which can use the unmounted engines.

[ June 17, 2003, 17:49: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[PvK]

Hey, I mentioned scale-mounted engines as an option.

SJ, I don't quite follow all of the details you mention. Seems to me though that one basic way to do it would simply be a scale mount (like Proportions uses for several types of components) which have size/cost/structure proportional to ship mass, and the unmounted Version is so large that it either can't be used, or is really impractical except for large ships.

That's an elegant idea that has several benefits, but it seems like there are a few issues to get around, too.

* One is the size range that can be supported using scale mounts - it's pretty big, but might keep a mod from having really distant extremes.

* Another is that IIRC, mounts can't change supply storage, so if your engines carry supplies, the smallest one will carry the same amount as the largest one using scale mounts.

* Another is the hard-coded repair system, based on number of components repaired per turn. If an escort and a battleship have the same number of engines, then they'll take the same time to repair or retrofit.

PvK

[ June 17, 2003, 16:41: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Geckomlis]

FYI:
The (unpublished) mod I am working on is based around 100 kT/2 MP engines. It uses a mixed system to scale the engines:
The baseline is a 1000 kT ship.
Mounts for ships ranging from 10 – 900 kT.
Engines numbers/Engines Per Move for ships ranging from 2000 - 9000 kT.
I removed the supply storage ability from the engines so that a ship’s supply capacity was smoothly scalable and more under player design control. To compensate, I added more supply storage component options (normal, conformal, and drop supply storage) and in a variety of sizes. I also tweaked the kT/supply storage ratio for supply components. The % of kT and other attributes to move any ship speed = X is constant through all the ship sizes. I also did the same for the vehicle control components.

I am happy with this approach as it meets most desiderata.

Very minor problems with this approach:
Some casual (to me) rounding errors.
The hard-coded repair system does not scale.
You need to scale-up engine damaging weapons w/mounts for them to work against all but the smallest ships.
The ship design process is more challenging and intolerant: you need to remember to use mounts for ships <1000 kT and to add supply storage to all designs. I have done everything I can to minimize this issue, including extensive documentation.

The idea is relatively mature at this point in the mod process, so I would be open to sharing specifics and accepting criticism if anyone is interested.

Gecko

[Fyron]

Originally posted by oleg:
Surprisinly, nobody mentioned yet the wonderfull idea of using engine mounts insted of engine numbers to achieve "realistic" ship movement.

I forgot what mod uses this idea, but I really like it !

PvK mentioned it, actually. It was Pax that came up with M-QNP, and it would have been in Exodus (or it is IIRC...), but he seems to have disappeared for the most part.