Is "BattleCruiser" a relative size? -- discussion

[narf poit chez BOOM]

i think the player should be able to make any size ship he wants. some sort of slider with a scaling cost. i'm going to post that in the se5 thread.

[Soulfisher]

Wanderer's description of warships from 1805 to 1942 is exactly what I've been thinking. As technology advances allow larger hulls, the size of a "battlecruiser" will change over time. But Fyron has a good point when he mentions ship sizes can not be obsoleted. That could get cumbersome.

Maybe, instead of increasing ship sizes, new Ship Construction levels could add new mounts for each size hull. Since mounts can not be obsoleted either, this would generate a huge pile of obsoleted mounts in the late game. Hmmm...

Preferably, whenever a new ship size is introduced, it should have its own identity from the other sizes (which is what un-modded SEIV does, to some extent). I also like SJ's idea of rapidly increasing cost with only a modderate increase in size.

Ed Kolis brings out a good point with his tentative ship size listing: an ability to build "Battleship" type ships on tech level 1. I like this idea; I'll probably introduce a "Battleship" size much earlier in my mod's tech tree than I was originally planning.

Perhaps a combination of both increasing ship sizes and increasing mounts would serve to keep all that obsolete clutter from accumulating too much. Of course, new mounts could be made to apply to only one ship size, then increase ship sizes slowly. Later, new mounts could revitalize older, smaller ships - if made only for them.

As a side note (as it doesn't really fit here), Ed Kolis and Chief Engineer Erax mention that fighters and Carriers are underpowered. I agree! Most "capital ships" (whatever that may be defined as) should have a very hard time dealing with fighters (except for anti-figher ships). Unfortunately, it would be difficult to get the AI to defend itself properly.

[Erax]

Er, I didn't exactly say that carriers were underpowered. What I said is that, if you want carriers to play the central role in SEIV, you need to create a powerful torpedo-like (or bomb-like) weapon that can be mounted on fighters.

Personally, I could play either way. I think 'Carrier SEIV' would be cool, but so is 'Battleship SEIV'.

[Soulfisher]

Sorry Chief Erax! My personal feeling is that carriers in original SEIV are good only for transporting fighters into a new system (and still have the ability to launch them). I just read too much into what you wrote.

I would think the game would be better if fighters (and therefore Carriers) were stronger than they are against capital ships. Maybe a PDG weapon mount could be devised (limited to Destroyer class vessels or smaller) to make those ships better at destroying fighters than capital ships are. The AIs would then have to updated to create an "anti-fighter destroyer" ship and to not use tonnages greater than XXX for this design.

As for my initial reason for starting this thread, most people seem desirous of some sort of relative ship-size scale.

[Thantis]

I'd also like to see a little more diversity in the AI's ship designs - since we have fleet formations, it would be nice to have true fleet-type units - escorts, missile ships, fleet defense ships, etc.

I recently had to adjust my playing style against an AI that had all long-range, fast missile-equipped cruisers. My baseships couldn't get within range (and my dreadnoughts only with great difficulty), and I was chewed apart piece by piece.

I started building Hunter-Killer BC's (12 speed) with a single large weapon to hunt down these annoying vessels, plus fleet defense ships (equipped with lots of Point Defense). I've yet to truly try this new force mix - as my Last battle against the 20-odd capital missile-equipped cruisers went better; my 6 baseships were able to survive long enough to corner the cruisers and inflict serious losses before being wiped out.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Soulfisher:
...I would think the game would be better if fighters (and therefore Carriers) were stronger than they are against capital ships. Maybe a PDG weapon mount could be devised (limited to Destroyer class vessels or smaller) to make those ships better at destroying fighters than capital ships are. The AIs would then have to updated to create an "anti-fighter destroyer" ship and to not use tonnages greater than XXX for this design.

As for my initial reason for starting this thread, most people seem desirous of some sort of relative ship-size scale.

Proportions does a marveliuos job in balancing fighters and antifighter weapons. Check my proportions AIs for "anti-fighter destroyer"

[Wanderer]

The best way to protect ships from aircraft is with other aircraft. In SE4, a similar maxim would be 'fight fighters with fighters' but that sounds silly. It'd make carriers more powerful if fighters were better at killing fighters and point-defence systems were much weaker (amongst other things).

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
Hmm, we do have "Small Anti-matter Torpedoes", but they're completely useless because the only advantage they have (huge raw damage) is nullified by the fact that fighter damage stacks... did you notice that SAMT's are the ONLY fighter based weapons to do more damage than Emissive Armor III is capable of blocking??? Hmmmmm.....

It'd help if that were fixed and/or fighters were restricted to using seekers/PD weapons.

Plus I'd like to see the armour system revamped...

Originally posted by Thermodyne:
America also had to learn the same lesson the hard way; we built carriers with unarmored flight decks all through the war, as did the Japanese.

American and Japanese carriers could have 50% to 100% larger airGroups because their flight decks weren't armoured and the hangers weren't enclosed (meaning a much larger risk of a fire causing the ship's loss). Also the reduced weight ensured a higher speed. British carriers were much hardier but they didn't have the same punch (having rubbish aircraft for most of the war due to the RAF's intransigence didn't help either).

Out of interest, do people like to build carriers with the largest cargo space/fighter launching capacity possible or do you like to use some space for defences?

Originally posted by Thantis:
I'd also like to see a little more diversity in the AI's ship designs - since we have fleet formations, it would be nice to have true fleet-type units - escorts, missile ships, fleet defense ships, etc.

Would be nice, wouldn't it? Sounds like something SE5 ought to be able to handle.

Thermo again:A few years latter the Hood sank from shell fire that it should have weathered, and its bLast doors were in place! Lots of excuses have been offered, but the hard fact is that deck armor was left out of the design to save money.

The deck armour was thin as the ship was designed and built at a time when bombs dropped from aircraft were miniscule and the main guns of ships didn't have the range to 'plunge' down onto the decks (most WWI ships that fought in WWII had the max elevation of their guns doubled to increase their range). Sadly, the refit that was due to modernise her a more battle-worthy standard was put-off and never happened.

A team actually discovered the wreck recently (they also had to re-discover the Bismarck as Ballard won't tell anyone where he found her) but couldn't offer any clues to her loss other than that both main magazines had exploded, ripping the ship into three pieces. Whether the fatal shell penetrated the belt or deck will probably never be known.