Realistic view of ship construction

[Wanderer]

Two views on this:

1) Roll out Azimov's Foundation again. In brief, the Galactic Empire is huge but corrupt. Their ships are huge but full of out-dated, inefficient, massive technology. On the other hand The Foundation is technologically superior but mineral-poor and builds very small ships packed with highly efficient equipment.

It's worth pointing out that during their first encounters the Foundation ships can't do much more than shake their fists at the Empire behemoths.

2) To build a huge spaceship on Earth and launch it would require a massive technological leap - we simply don't have the power to get something of such mass (even an SE4 escort is twice the mass of American supercarriers) into orbit. The obvious solution is to build segments on the ground, shuttle them up and build the ship in orbit.

This has its limits - I can imagine small ships being constructed from small components that have been built on the planet and shipped up, but can you imagine trying to assemble a dreadnought's power plant in orbit? It makes sense that these problems can be gradually overcome with better technology (which links back to the miniturisation inherent in point 1).

I guess it depends partly on what level of starting tech you're going to assume.

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Talenn - I like the sound of what you've said. Is your armour mount system anything like this:

I worked out some figures for armour mounts that are based on surface area*, not mass (assuming mass is proportional to volume), so that big ships can have thick armour whilst small ships have to surrender a lot of space just to have weak armour. I've not worked out how to integrate shields (which would surely operate under the same principle) into this scheme yet...

* smaller objects have a higher ratio of surface area to volume, which means any armour is going to take up a higher proportion of the object.

[Suicide Junkie]

My own mod reflected similar concepts. There are larger hull types available at start, but they are 'inefficient'...ie, they have maintenance penalties etc. Researching Ship Construction (and some other prerequisites) allows faster, cheaper, and better defense mod hulls. Also, the sizes of each hull increase slightly as the game progresses (ie, a CA might be 550kt at start, but up to 650 as the tech increases).

In order to cut down on the number of obsolete hulls that players have to pick through in the ship creation screen, why not have a mount or component system?

When you research ship construction, you get a mount to allow better/smaller maintenance reducing components to be placed on the large ships.
Call them "Maintenance-Crew Quarters" or something, and start the component much too big or expensive for practical use. Researching ShipCon 5, for example, would give you a Cruiser-only mount to reduce the cost and size of the maintenance crew.

[dumbluck]

The Art of War mod does something like what SJ was talking about. I liked your ideas about the armor and torpedos, etc. I'd like to take a look at your mod for "insperation" Which mod was it?

Ah, the Foundation series. I haven't read that in a loooooooong time. It might be time for another trip to the local library....

[ March 13, 2003, 12:06: Message edited by: dumbluck ]