Small ships vs Big ships

[Yef]

Do you think its worth the buck to invest in a large number of Corvettes and Frigates?
Will they, pound by pound, be more effective than a few but larger ships?

I base my fleet on the Light Cruisers, but I wonder if I should go bigger or if going smaller may be smarter.

Right now I have 12 point-defense Destroyers, 30 attack LC, and 3 BC.

Should I start from this point on to build only the biggest hull or should I keep building the smaller ones? (as attack ships)

[Fyron]

The large increase in damage from using light cruisers with large mounted weapons makes smaller ships unable to compete unless you can pour a lot more resources into producing small ships than your enemy can produce large ships. With the same tonnage used for weaponry, large mounted weapons do 50% more damage than normal weaponry. That is a large gap to overcome, one which the 10-20% extra defense bonus of the small hull does not make up for.

Also, it is not as drastic comparing heavy mounted weapons on battleships compared to large mounted weapons on battle cruisers, but the increase in damage is still quite significant.

[ March 22, 2004, 16:36: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[sachmo]

But wouldn't the increased number of attacks created by a greater number of ships overcome the increase damage done by the large ship's heavy mounts?

[PvK]

Originally posted by sachmo:
But wouldn't the increased number of attacks created by a greater number of ships overcome the increase damage done by the large ship's heavy mounts?

Only if you spend much more time and resources building the smaller ships. The cost of engines and ship control and sensors for the smaller ships is the same, or nearly the same, per ship. This would make larger ships a good idea even without mounts (see Space Empires III).

There are some other minor advantages to smaller ships (e.g. defense modifier, lower build time, number of targets, number of firing sources), but these definitely don't overcome the advantages of larger ships, in most cases, in the unmodded game. Rare exceptions are when the to-hit bonuses temporarily hit the edge so the smaller ships become nearly unhittable, and when the enemy has a weapon you currently can't counter which can take out an entire ship in one attack, like an allegiance subverter or an engine-destroyer when you forgot to include supply storage.

Some mods restore some uses and effectiveness to smaller ships, though. See Proportions mod and AIC mod for example (and probably P&N and Adamant, I would guess - any mod with Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion will help at least somewhat).

PvK

[Wardad]

Special weapons make it hard to defend smaller ships. Defending against boarding parties, ion dispersers, seekers, fighters, shield depleters, all compete for room with the weapons. A well defended small ship will not have enough fire power.


The larger ships have less overhead then an equal tonnage of smaller ships, because of the bridge (or Master Computer), engines.

Typical componants like Combat Sensors, ECM, Stealth Armor (defense bonus), Scattering Armor (defense bonus), fuel storage (engine damage reserve), Shields, Self Destruct, Security Stations, Solar Sail, and PD add important benifits.
The larger ships are more cost effective by spreading these benefits over a larger tonnage of weapons.

The mounts make the larger ships an even better deal by increasing the firepower per ton of weapons. More bang for the buck. More damage resistance for the buck.

[Baron Munchausen]

Like all computer simulations, SE IV has a hard limit on the number of ships you can have in the game. In 'the real world' you could overwhelm any technologial or size advantage with sufficient numbers but in a game the 'ant swarm' strategy is limited by the limits of the computer program you are running. So while there are some advantages to many smaller ships -- such as more flexibility in deployment -- the fleet with larger ships will ultimately almost certainly win due to mounts and some other advantages of scale.

I hope that the use of 'real time' in SE V combat will allow some real advantages for smaller ships to be preserved, such as speed and maneuverability.

[PvK]

Good concepts in general. To be picky, though, in practice neither the ship limit nor the lack of real-time movement are actual reasons for small ships' inefficiency in SE4.

The limit of 20,000 ships per nation is rarely, if ever, reached, and it'd be even more unlikely to become a factor. That only matters in games where players chose a low limit on the number of ships (or perhaps a really enormous game).

The lack of advantages for smaller ships is an issue with the game settings. Mods such as Proportions demonstrate that SE4 can be set to represent advantages of smaller ships. And a real-time game can still easily not include appropriate advantages of small ships in the settings. StarFury gives some advantages to smaller ships (mainly, better turning rates), but still is simplified in several ways that give larger ships advantages that don't seem to have a basis in logic. Fortunately, both games are moddable.

PvK

[Yef]

I guess I forgot to say wich mod I was using. I'm running Proportions 2.5.2

Should I invest on many small or a few large ships?

[ March 22, 2004, 20:40: Message edited by: Yef ]

[PvK]

Heh.

Probably a mix is best for most purposes. For example, ideally, the enemy might be trying and usually failing to swat your smaller ships, while your bigger ships pound them.

Smaller ships are much cheaper to maintain, and can be very difficult to hit, especially if the enemy only has big clumsy ships. The smallest (scout and escort class) ships usually can't hold strong enough weapons to effectively engage larger ships, but they can be used as raiders, nuisance ships, and support ships.

Frigates and destroyers can both be useful in fleets. They still lack the punch of larger ships, but can do meaningful damage, and are good platforms for PD, seekers. They can also serve well with regular weapons, giving the enemy the choice of either trying to hit them, or ignoring them and getting hit by them. They can distract a lot of enemy attention from your bigger ships. Their natural attack bonuses from agility mean they don't need as much ECM/sensor expense.

Bigger ships are still the most powerful, but in Proportions they cost more like what they're worth, or even more. Although they are more expensive, use lots of supplies to move, and are even more expensive if you try to make them fast, having the best and most powerful heavy ships can make the difference between victory and defeat in a large battle. The trick is deciding how big and how expensive you need to go to get an advantage, catching the enemy fleet with your superior ships, and making it all not so expensive you win one fight but lose several others.

There are also decisions to make about what level of components to use, and how much space to devote to protection verus weapons. For example, armor gets better and better at higher levels, but the cost goes up even more steeply. You may want to try large ships with cheap components, or small ships with expensive ones, in some cases. Unlike the unmodded game, armored structure makes a large difference in a ship's ability to absorb damage. A ship with 1/4 to 1/2 its mass in armored structure will tend to be able to take several times the amount of hits of a ship with just weapons.

Another approach is to have cheap and small ships on patrol during peace time, with large and expensive ships mothballed. Or, just keep a large resource reserve, plenty of shipyards, and build a new expensive fleet when a war breaks out. Then win the war before the reserves run out.

PvK

[ March 22, 2004, 21:24: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Suicide Junkie]

I haven't played enough proportions to help, sorry.

Some mods restore some uses and effectiveness to smaller ships, though. See Proportions mod and AIC mod for example (and probably P&N and Adamant, I would guess - any mod with Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion will help at least somewhat).

The new SJmod has a unique system for ship value...
The little ships get you way more bang for your construction buck, but the maintenance costs on all ships are about the same.
The 400kt "Frigates" are pretty good for quickly mustering up some cannon fodder, or 200kt "Escorts" if you have a lot of slower BSY.
With construction time rising proportional to size cubed, 800kt of 1000kt ships are probably the best you can hope for in your main lines.
However, if you have lots of time on your hands, the biggest ships are the best, since every ship costs about 1000 in maintenance (scaled to stock-minerals) no matter what size it is.