Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?

[PvK]

Rollo said:
One question I often ask myself, though, when discussing this topic. If bigger isn't better, why reserch higher levels of ship construction?

Because bigger is better - for some things, but not for all things.

[Baron Munchausen]

PvK said:

Because bigger is better - for some things, but not for all things.

Yeah, that's the key. The SE IV ship design system doesn't take scale into account so 'bigger' turns out to be better in every way when it shouldn't be.

[IuchiZien]

Surely the balancing is in the technology costs. If I've spent X hundred thousand researching big hulls my opponent will have used the research to get better guns therefore fight is primitive big ship vs advanced small ships?

[Rollo]

exactly, noone is arguing why APB XII is better then APB V.

Now mind you, I am being a bit provocative here and in my earlier statement. Just like to point out that Ship Con is a tech like any else, and higher levels should bring distinctive advantages.
And while I do realize that the stock SE4 mount system does give a huge advantage to larger ships, I'd be careful to overbalance ship hulls.

In fact the DevnullMod Gold version that I am currently working on (1.80, unreleased at the date of this post) adresses this very thing of big ships and gave them all a defense minus. Battleship are now 20% easier to hit, Dreadnoughts 30%. In the future I may even tone down the stock mounts that DNM Gold still uses.

Within reason I think a better balance between ships is good, but I'd prefer just making the gaps smaller, instead of making LC just as viable as BB hulls.

Now, if a mod made all hulls available from start, that'd be a whole different issue.

[Fyron]

What would be a good system is where you start with several sizes of ships, each with strengths and weaknesses, and ship construction improves all of them. Newer ships should be better, but they do not have to be unilaterally bigger.

The problem with the APB comparison is that APBs have alternatives. You can research torpedos, MBs, PPBs, etc. But with ships, there is only a single tech area. It is entirely linear and boring by comparison.

[Dizzy]

Hrmmm. This is getting interesting...

I like the idea of basic hulls up front. FF, DD, CL, CA and BB hulls. Now as a control method to start with, I'd have the hulls themselves spaced far enough apart with cost so it'd be more expensive to build and maintain larger hulls at this point.

Now as you research ship contruction... Advanced hulls become available. You get built in bonuses to hit to defense and to movement as example. They are also cheaper to maintain, and may use mounts.

As ship contruction advances, these advanced hulls get better and better and may use better mounts.

Damn I like this idea!

[Dizzy]

Ok let me break this down a tad...

We want Ship Contructionn to be more interesting and move away from largest hull is always better. Using the below method, the AI, and players for that matter, will have much more control on what will appear at later design stages and not every player or race will end up fielding a DN in the final stages of ship contruction.

Let's start a mod called Dizzy's mod, as an example, and begin with some basic hull types.

Ship Contruction 1
- Escort
- Corvette
- Destroyer
- Cruiser
- Escort Carrier

Ship Contruction 2
- Frigate
- Heavy Destroyer
- Heavy Cruiser
- Light Carrier

Ship Contruction 3
- Light Cruiser
- Battle Cruiser
- Battleship
- Carrier
- Tech Area: Base Ships and Worldships
- Teach Area: Advanced Hulls
- Tech Area: Advanced Carriers

Ship Contruction 4
- Dreadnought
- Hvy Carrier

Ship Contruction 5
- Hvy Dreadnought
- Massive Carrier

Ship Contruction 6
- Juggernaught
- Tech Area: Advanced mounts



At ship contruction lvl 3, the AI will now have the opportunity to be programmed to continue with ship contruction tech toward Juggernought class and advanced mount tech or to branch off at this point into other tech area, Carriers, Base ships and worldships or Advanced hulls.

Let me touch off on the importance of the 3x new tech area branches:


Tech Area: Advanced hulls. New hull classes come out with built in features like bonuses to defense and offense, decreased maintenance and purchasing costs and other abilities. These new advanced hulls would have access to new advanced mounts as well, (adv mounts just increase the range, damage, accuracy and such of weapons a bit over standard mounts). Subsequent Ship Contruction techs will reveal new hull classes in addition to the Advanced types. (modders note idea: use 1 ton increments over standard hulls to create the new advanced hulls for AI and players)

Tech Area: Advanced Carriers
- New hulls of previous carriers, but with advanced features built in. Unique or improved carrier components, and the most important of all, Fighter Bay Mounts. Think of the Battlestar Galactica with its retractable hangar bays. A carrier mount would allow increased storage for fighters, just like Galactica styled hangar bays! This tech if chosen by the AI, then this race wont be like all the rest of the AI you're used to seeing all in the biggest baddest ship hull. A lot of variety possibility here...

Tech Area: Base ships and worldships
- Self explanatory. Players or AI branching off here would go straight from Battleship tech into researching the big boy ships.


At ship contruction lvl 6, Advanced Mounts become avaialbe. These will enable all regular class types to be fitted with advanced mounts, not just Advanced hulls. However, the advanced mounts arnt going to make up for the the advantages advanced hull types have over standard hulls.


As you can see, having these tech areas branch off like the do can setup the AI to research and build in a very unique way from how they usually go about it. The end result will be a much richer play enviornment, one that has more variety, depth and fun. Boring is one thing it wont any longer be.

Thanks for reading my idea. I know it was long, hopefully it was worth it.

[Suicide Junkie]

You might want to thin those out a bit, or at least be very careful with your organization in the vehicletypes.txt

You can't obsolete hull sizes, so it is going to get cluttered very fast.

[Dizzy]

That's easily enouhg fixed.

You can use a space before a regular hull type name and a dash or asterik before an Advanced ship. That'd easily allow you to visually identify the hull types. Or something like that. But agreed, if its not done right, there'd be too long a list.

[Rollo]

I think what SJ means is that the list is going to get very cluttered when design a ship, since hulls cannot be obsoleted.
In your intial layout you already have at least 20 hulls, plus tech that will modify those hulls. Each level of advanced hulls will act as factor to the hull number. So depending on many levels you plan, you can easily come up with 60-100 hulls.
That's a long list to scroll though and find the right one.

Someone wiser then me has said something to this extent once:
When make a mod:
- Plan carefully.
- Start small.
- Keep your focus.

With this in mind, I'd cut down that list somethng like this:
Code:

---

Ship Contruction 1

- Corvette

- Light Cruiser

- Escort Carrier



Ship Contruction 2

- Frigate

- Cruiser

- Light Carrier



Ship Contruction 3

- Destroyer

- Battle Cruiser

- Carrier

- Tech Area: Base Ships and Worldships

- Tech Area: Advanced Hulls

- Tech Area: Advanced Carriers, - Hvy Carrier, - Massive Carrier





Ship Contruction 4

- Heavy Destroyer

- Battleship

- Dreadnought



Ship Contruction 5

- Hvy Dreadnought/Juggernaught

- Tech Area: Advanced mounts

---

Each level of early Ship Con will give you a small and a big hull and a carrier. After level 3 you can branch off. If you continue with Ship Con, you get a 3rd class of hull: Dreadnoughts (huge). I'd also possibly move the better carrier hulls to advanced carriers. And cut level 6 for Ship Con altogether (Hvy Dreadnought=Juggernaught).
There, still pretty big, but much more focussed.
Just my 2c, of course.