PBW Lg ship vs. Sm. ship

[PvK]

In my Proportions mod, I tried to address the straight "bigger is better" factors with several logical advantages for smaller ships. I think the result is that the biggest ships are still the most powerful, but smaller ships have many other advantages, so that a mix is often best.

1. As the Baron suggests, I made larger mounts less accurate than smaller ones.

2. I increased the defensive modifiers of smaller ships, and gave negative defensive modifiers to larger ships.

3. I gave offensive modifiers to the smaller ships.

4. My quasi-Newtonian propulsion system gives smaller ships a higher maximum speed, and required far fewer engines than larger ships.

5. Ship size also determines maintenance costs, in favor of smaller ships.

6. There are smaller auxiliary components available than in the standard set, and small weapon mounts, which coupled with the lower engine requirements make smaller ships more viable design-wise.

7. The supply and propulsion system changes mean that large capital ships will either be quite slow or quite short-ranged (unless accompanied by tankers), in addition to being slower than small ships in general. This and the reduced rate of colonization tends to lead to small ship operations on the frontiers, with powerful defensive fleets more limited to developed areas.

8. The reduced rate of resource increase from the other changes means that fleet expense and maintenance costs are more important, so keeping smaller more efficient ships makes even more sense, particularly in peacetime. Players may want to mothball many of their larger ships during peacetime.

PvK

[Pax]

I think the trick is, the smaller ships weren't -meant- to be used against the bigger ships, at least not at the MM end.

I'm working on a few ideas for my mod, intended to expand -both- ends of the spectrum ... bigger ships, and more viability for swarms of smaller ships.

For one brief example: a new Racial Trait, giving a racial technology: "Microscalar Construction" is the current working name; the theme is packing more function in, per kT, than anyone else ... and specialising in very small hulls, comparatively speaking. Eventually, I hope for a Microscalar ship to be about as good, in total, as a ship twice it's size (and probably only moderately less expensive than such a ship, as well). Possibly,much of it will be an ussue of Mounts for Microscalar races, if possible to work only on ships at or UNDER certain displacement levels.

Also, hull modifiers (if it's doable) will reflect both to-hit AND to-not-BE-hit modifiers; smallers hips will not only be harder to hit, they will be more able to SCORE hits ... owing to relative maneuverability.

[oleg]

For Crystalline and Organic races the bigger is always better. The reason is the way organic/crystalline armour works.

[Baron Munchausen]

PvK:

I thought of maintenance, too. I've not only increased the basic costs of large hulls, I've added maintenance modifiers to large hulls to increase even the cost of the components. And given some of the smallest hulls a maintenance cut. This makes it possible to have far more tonnage in small ships vs. large. Too bad you cannot teach the AI to use these sorts of advantages.

But as I was saying and forgot to finish in the previous post... if detection were revamped to have range effects and also take the ship size into account then smaller ships would start to have usefulness for 'special' missions where stealth is important.

[ July 17, 2002, 16:19: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Ed Kolis]

Isn't SJ making Gravitic Sensors in the next Version of P&N so they detect ships based on their size? Hmm, wonder when the next Version of P&N will be available...

[Baron Munchausen]

And just how is he gonna do that? By putting inherent gravitic cloaking on ship hulls? That's still going to be system-wide and unconditional once you get the right level of sensors.

[ July 17, 2002, 21:55: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Every ship gets grav cloaking based on their size.
Active and passive cloak require the armor components, while psychic cloak involves not having crew (master computers).
In this case, the cloaking devices overpower sensors at max tech.

In order to get undetectable grav cloak, you need frigate or smaller. When you try to apply the other cloaking devices to a frigate hull, you are left with almost nothing for engines and weapons. Larger ships can be detected by massive, base-mounted grav sensors.

So, tiny ships are the only perfect stealth craft, but can be fended off with mines.
Small to medium ships can't be detected except by a huge base, which makes a great target.
The heavier ships can't fully cloak, but can carry enough firepower and defenses to drive their way through with brute force.