SEV Questions?

[RonGianti]

Suicide Junkie said:
All of which will be useful, even in the end game.

Well that would be a nice change, if the smaller ships still have a role to play in the end game. What is different in SEv that makes smaller ships more useful?

But when I see a Dreadnaught, I want to think, "my GOD, look at the size of that thing!", not, "oh look, a Battleship with 2 extra guns, ho hum."

Remember in The Empires Strikes Back, when you're looking at 2 Star Destroyers close to each other, then a shadow drifts over them, and you realize the shadow is MOVING!!?? Hello Super Star Destroyer Maybe not That big a scale difference, but more than just 20% bigger...

[Suicide Junkie]

Nothing in SE5 makes them more useful.

It is the mod.
The general idea is that maintenance costs are fairly flat rate, but build costs go up proportional to the square of the ship size.

You can build 30 frigates in the time it takes to build one dread, but those frigates have most of their space devoted to a single 60mm Laser...
A battleship big enough to carry a 100mm gun and still be well armored is scary. Mmm. Those Yamato class Battleships in the FTP game with Sivran were sweet and scary. Ripped destroyers in half with its main gun (100mm Laser), and chewed up the remains with its secondary batteries of 80mm DUC.

(Weapon size/damage is proportional to the square of the bore diameter)

[Ed Kolis]

SJ, why are you making 20kT fighters in SE5? I thought the units were adjustable so you could have 20 *ton* fighters and also ships in the kiloton range! Even if not that, why not just set the units to tons and have the fighters 20 tons and the scouts 10,000 tons?

[Xrati]

Instead of making 20kt fighters, why not make a 'fighter mount' to put whatever you need on a fighter. I've played with fighter mounts and found that they increase the usefulness of a fighter, but still present you with the fact that they are supplemental firpower and not a fully functional ship. This way you can limit what weapons and system you can put on them by mount specifications.

[RonGianti]

I would LOVE to find out that an all fighter strategy is valid in SEV, instead of the limited usefulness in SEIV. You could use them in 4, but only in the very early game, then point defense V chewed threw them like "a hot knife through butta'"

[Baron Munchausen]

The simple fact that fighters don't exist in 'stacks' but as discreet objects makes things very different. Each fighter has to be individually targetted and hit. Damage doesn't 'bleed' through to the next fighter. So overkill is wasted instead of carried over to the next. Beyond that it's simply a matter of balancing the armor and shield strength vs. the PD weapons.

[Phoenix-D]

Speaking of hit, I hope the collision problems from Starfury have been resolved..