Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, increasing hull costs for larger ships is a good way to help balance the game. Also giving smaller ships a movement bonus and defensive bonuses in combat. Or even giving larger ships defensive penalties.

I think 'QNP' (Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion) is a good way to help make ship size classes reflect real-world limitations. The other obvious way, with turn rates and weapon arcs, is not available in SE IV. Hopefully this will be available in SE V.

[Slick]

I agree with statements here and I rarely use small ships and would also like to see them more useful in late game.

Contrary to some, and using real life examples, larger ships are generally faster than smaller ones, but less maneuverable. An aircraft carrier is usually the fastest ship in the battle group.

I totally agree that larger ships should cost more. Again in real life, the cost is more like exponential than like linear with respect to ship size (displacement).

I would recommend expanding the idea of larger hulls costing more and smaller hulls getting combat bonuses (to represent maneuverability advantages).

I would also modify the larger ship mounts to be longer range, but less accurate. It makes sense that you could mount a larger Version of a weapon on a larger ship, but larger weapons would be harder to train on small targets. Larger weapons in real life are used against larger targets. This change would also make the mount choice less of a no-brainer. It would still make sense to use smaller (or no) mounts on larger ships.

One caveat, though. Again from real life: Larger ships ARE better, so they should BE better in SE4. If the end result is to make all ships somewhat equal, this goes against real life. The main difference should end up being cost.

Just my $0.02

Slick.

[PvK]

As Oleg said, this is one of the things Proportions mod does. QNP, Scale Mounts, the armor system, and changes to mount effects, as well as the changes to fighters and drones, tend to make all sizes of ships, and fighters and drones, valuable in their own way throughout the game. Large ships are the most powerful but also most expensive, and the weapons that are best against large targets are not good against small nimble targets, and vice versa in most cases.

PvK

[Atrocities]

I really like the P-Mod, but it has a lot of extra tech that can be a tad over kill when first playing the game. Too many selection for things.

I want to take the best of all the ship hull mods, add some things, and keep it all simple.

[Nodachi]

Atrocities, here's what I've done with the mod I'm working on. I've got eight ships ranging from 150 tons to 500 tons. These are Small Craft. The next level of hull sizes are Capital Ships; 1000, 1500, 2000, and 3000 tons. For the small craft I've given each one an extra 100% to defense and offense and left the description blank to make it transparent. I'm using a QNP system so the smaller ships are naturally faster. Capital ships are slower but tougher and a whole lot more expensive to build and maintain.

Using this set-up small craft fight each other normally and are almost guaranteed to hit capital ships. With mounts capital ships outrange the smaller ships but have a hard time targeting them. When they do score a hit, however, it can be catastophic for the smaller ship.

[Chris Woods]

I think the real disparity is all about the mounts. Without any mounts at all, larger ships are more advantageous because they use a smaller percentage of their space to control facilities and propulsion. (Escorst spend 65% each while a dreadnaught only uses 10%. this means 6 escorts only have 360 kt to mount weapons/shields and armor while the dread still has 900kt lieing around.)

The small ships gain the advantage that they can be in 6 places at once while the dreadnaught, obviously, can't.

Mounts totally blow this out of the water, however, as one "Massive Mount" is worth 6 escorts easy. Mounts are a cool thing to play with, but without balancing (any any direct balancing of the mounts themselves leads to the AI being unable to use them correctly) they are far to overpowered.

Chris Woods

[Foreman]

And another way to make the balance - ship size does not grow with the technology. Ex:
Ship Construction 1 : 150kt
Ship Construction 2 : 400kt
Ship Construction 3 : 800kt
Ship Construction 4 : 250kt with mounts, combat speed bonus and reduced maintaince
Ship Construction 5 : 600kt with mounts, combat speed bonus and reduced maintaince
and so on...