You've clearly not run into a Blap Titan yet Remscar. It's ... somewhat hilarious, and at the same time terrifying finding out that a Titan can be made to out-track a fitted battleship.

I'm uncertain why a big ship would have a harder time hitting a smaller ship. I understand the basic logic, a smaller ship is a smaller target, it would be more manoeuvrable, but wouldn't a smaller ship also have a harder time hitting it, when compared to a dreadnought?



Then again a dreadnought would also have more computers, which would in turn mean greater computing power, which would come very handy when using predictive algorithms to target the enemy ship.

One could also insert ship squads or even swarms allowing a fleet to include a swarm of maybe 30 really small ships that attack by way of a thousand needles. Sufficiently big swarms could potentially compete with any other shiptype

lyravega wrote:
What I don't understand is, why every hull size is using same modules? Surely, that a Dreadnought would need a much bigger and heavier engine, for example... (or opposite for a small hulls, lighter engines and stuff)



Also, Hissho can get insane Destroyers, by leveling them up and giving them some armor aswell. I had a lvl8 destroyer I think, which had 1100+ HP...

This is a good point. Combined with Eve's a modified version of Eve's "bigger can't hit smaller" system and the combat matches older 4X genera games like Space Empires and even a bit of MOO2 with the "heavy" version of weapons.



Also add defensive support type modules that allow you to pull the "flak defense" destroyers so they can cover the bigger guys. Heck give us shield walls so we can through the little guys in front of our big guys.



Some cool ideas (taken from Honor Harrington books and the Troy Rising series by John Ringo) would be like:



"Missile Defense integration systems" By coordinating the missile defenses of the fleet into one integrated network you would increase the overall defense of missiles approaching the fleet.



"Increased Missile Defense Envelope" Longer duration counter missiles and better predictive software allows the outer envelope of the missile defense "bubble" to be pushed outward. Increasing the number of missiles shot down before they can hit anyone.



"Improved Final Missile Defense Line" using small laser blasters mounted on the hull of ships they are the last line of defense before the missiles impact on the shields and armor of the ships. Increasing the speed, number, and control of these last line weapons increases the number of missiles shot down before impact.



"Shield Ships" These ships would be all Shields and repair systems. They would interpose themselves ahead of the fleet and incoming fire (inside the affore mentioned Missile defense envelope if you have it researched) being damaged FIRST and then rotating to the rear of the fleet upon hitting say 50% damage.



Once shield ships are researched you could get:



"Shield rotation" Increase the rotation algorithm of the shield ships to decrease the individual damage to the shield ships and "dividing up" the incoming fire to increase individual shield ship survive-ability.



Just some ways of increasing the use of smaller ships by making every ship have a bit more meaning.

eviliron wrote:
Why not use Eve's design where bigger isn't always better... The largest ships can't even dare to dream of hitting the smallest ships and the smaller the ship the less damage it will ever cause to the larger... simple, no?

Because it's a nightmare to balance and because even in Eve's system it is not that cut and dried. It's entirely possible, for example, to pop drones or web a frigate and absolutely shred it with a Battleship.



Given the abstracted nature of the combat system it makes much better sense to keep smaller ships relevant by granting them a specialist role - perhaps as a screen against large weapons that target the capital ships.

What I don't understand is, why every hull size is using same modules? Surely, that a Dreadnought would need a much bigger and heavier engine, for example... (or opposite for a small hulls, lighter engines and stuff)



Also, Hissho can get insane Destroyers, by leveling them up and giving them some armor aswell. I had a lvl8 destroyer I think, which had 1100+ HP...

Why not use Eve's design where bigger isn't always better... The largest ships can't even dare to dream of hitting the smallest ships and the smaller the ship the less damage it will ever cause to the larger... simple, no?

Ashbery76 wrote:
Smaller ships should be used in specialist roles like anti missile ships,torpedo ships,escorting when bigger ships appear.This is their role on the real world.

I agree... from what I have observed though is that FLAK only covers the ship launching them, it doesn't support other ships from getting blasted by missiles. I tried this and still watched my capital ships get obliterated.

PyroVortex wrote:


Small ships shine in agility and stealth (this one's a huge deal, though nothing in the ES universe seems to care about stealth, otherwise all ships would at the very least be painted matte black). Assuming all dimensions scale equally, they also have a better surface-area-to-volume ratio, meaning that they can mount more weaponry in the same total mass/displacement (weaponry is limited by the area from which it can be fired more than by your internal space).

Oh dear no! Paint your ship matte-black and then fly it into direct line of sight to the star and watch as your crew are all cooked to death!

Well, the only speed that actually matters in a battle is your speed relative to the other guy. The delta-v with which you emerge from warp is always of concern when you have to maneuver in normal space.



And yes, for the record, I am bothered by the "knife fights in space" that the game involves. If I can make out your ship with the naked eye while on mine, I'm already at least 1-2 orders of magnitude closer than optimal range for a decent piece of artillery, let alone high-tech missiles (we seem to be engaging from a couple kilometers out, which even WWII-era navies didn't engage at). The fact that *any* shots miss at that range should be a total embarrassment to whichever gunner fired the weapons, the developer who wrote the targeting AI, etc.



Realism concerns aside, there's one other important reason for smaller ships. Say your fleet consists of 12 dreadnoughts. What do you do when I attack you in 20 systems at once?

Just be careful small ships aren't given too much of a maneuverability bonus, else two small ships will never be able to hit eachother.



Maybe as you research and build larger ships, the cost to build and maintain smaller ships goes down, due to increased experience and efficiency in ship construction. From a cost perspective, it may be more economic to swarm an enemy with a mass of smaller ships to counter their dreadnought.



Also wanted to comment, during a battle moving at a speed anywhere near c would be impractical due to acceleration concerns over a small space. For inter-system travel, don't we use warp technology, which makes consideration of c irrelevant?

Strictly speaking, all spaceships have the same maximum speed (known as "c"), which although not actually attainable in finite time is still the limit.



Where they differ as size changes is maneuverability. Small ships can rotate with higher angular velocity and acceleration because the induced stresses on the structure from the rotation are lower, and velocity changes are cheaper.



Small ships shine in agility and stealth (this one's a huge deal, though nothing in the ES universe seems to care about stealth, otherwise all ships would at the very least be painted matte black). Assuming all dimensions scale equally, they also have a better surface-area-to-volume ratio, meaning that they can mount more weaponry in the same total mass/displacement (weaponry is limited by the area from which it can be fired more than by your internal space).



Larger ships shine in total firepower (a spinal-mount railgun for a frigate is a lot less scary than one built for a dreadnought or super-dreadnought), ammo storage (lots of missiles), range (i.e. fuel capacity), ability to withstand fire, power generation...



If you find a minefield, your smaller ships may be able to navigate it; your capital ships need to somehow get rid of the mines or sustain enormous damage.

From what I've found in my grand 4 hours of Alpha gaming, you can't really assign roles to smaller ships, the system is too abstract for that, you can use a fleet made up of smaller ships, or you can have a fleet of mixed size ships. the real use is that in the time it takes my opponent to build one super dreadnaught, I can build 4,392 fighters... the dreadnaught doesn't stand a chance.

I used to love taking out the guardian in MOO 1 with fighters.

Well, I am new to this board but I will add my 2 cents.^^



What I hate the most in Games are Balancing Issues that make no sense in its own Verse.

I mean, why should the engineers of a space traveling species not add proper targeting devices and armament to a Dreadnought? Do they say: “Hey, lets build a big one, but hey, dont be unfair, give it obvious weaknesses and worse targeting computers than our 0815 Corvetts.”



Make the Dreadnoughts a Hell of a Ship, add large Batteries but also small ordonance. Make them all target individually for the best foe to fight, that includes large cannons vs. Battleships, Drwadnoughts, medium artillery for cruisers and small fire for Fighters and the other ships. Give them Armor that reduces damage, perhaps even negates damage of small cal weapons and make them a target to designated torpedo boats or other capital ships.



But as a Weakness make them slow, make it importat for your enemy to scout where your dreadnoughts are so that he can move his own. Make them rare Flagships with a limited resource like the Crew management in SOASE. Give gem high upkeep costs so it is necessary to build up a mixed fleet.



You dont need Dreadnoughts if you have to less or they are to slow to react to enemy raiding partys that cripple your economy or harass your planets. What is the biggest ship worth if it never arrives the battle in time?



When pirates raided the gold lines of Spain and so on, there were no ships of the line hunting them down. Guess why? To slow, a slow nightmare, but still a nightmare if it arrives battle. And thats why a space-traveling nation should create such a titan of war, as a symbol of power, a tool of intimidation and destruction, the incarnation of war itself, a totem of firepower and armor, an opponent nobody whats to fight of.



If they see “Gosh, this Dreadnought will loose against a swarm of friggs which cost the half of the price, why should we ever build it?” Whats the actual reason for constructing such a vessel? “Dang, the targeting systems suck, the flak cant even shoot fighters with torpedos” What nation that has invented space vessels would waste their resources in war to such a thing?



We cannot compare the current reality to a game that wants to create capital ships. We have mastered the art of instant destruction. A Warship is armored against small caliber. But every controlled rocket will destroy or criple it. There is no armor against such weaponry. Thats why our navy is mostly build of small, fast vessels wich can still maintain maximum firepower. The only expetion for this are carrier cap ships but they carry at least dozens of fighters which theoretical can destroy a cruiser on their own (with the proper armament ofc). And if we take nukes into account, a Fighter can crush a whole flotilla.



The way SOASE balanced small vs large ships was giving them unique roles. There are repair vessels such as long range missile frigates. Siege frigates and heavy conbat cruisers. At least every ship was some kind of useful in the late game, some more, some less, but just 2-3 shipps realy got outdated later on which is realy okay for me when on the other side there are 10-20 other ship types.



So balance those ships on upkeep, available crews and an overall fleet capacity.

These are the major balance tools.

The Minor but atleast most important tool when comparing light vs heavy vessels is speed.

A way to make use of small ships later on would be to specialize them via modules.



As of now exploration research of better hulls will make smaller ships obsolete. So I suggest having combat research of specialized modules that can only be used in the smaller ship hulls. This way players use small ships normally at first and then they have three choices:



1. Transition to big ships

2. Transition to more specialized small ships

3. Most viable: Have big ships alongside small specialist ships



Moduels can effect many different things:

-Attack vessel: This ship gains significant buffs when its fleet initiated the attack

-Defense vessel: See above but when defending

-Escort module: Small ships tank a percentage of damage for the big ones, extending the expensive vessels staying power. Could be displayed in battle nicely.

-Buff modules: Fleetwide (or for big ship tpyes only) weapon type, defense, speed buff (does not stack with more than one ship)

-De-Buff modules Enemy fleetwide (or for big ship tpyes only) weapon type, defense, speed buff (does not stack with more than one ship)

-Repair ship: Repairs a bit in battle and adds a precentage bonus on regular repair

Big ships having acc penalties vs smaller ships would be good. Also an increase in the fleet command point cap combined with different sized ships counting towards a greater number of command points would allow for balancing between small and large ships (e.g. 5 size 1 ship = 1 size 5 ship CP and damage wise).



And yes EVE handles the whole big vs small very well indeed and indeed made it possible to increase the effectiveness of small ships vs big ships in several ways such as "speed tanking" (which is pretty fun I might add, until the cheating gits deploy drones!). Anyway yes eve is way too overcomplicated for this game but is a good example how big vs small can be implimented in several ways.



Oh! lets not forget stealth bombers in EVE! Variants of the smallest ship types in the game that are capable of destroying whole fleets in the blink of an eye or to take down capitals with a barage of torpedoes. Stealth bomber wolfpacks are amongst the most deadly thing you can possibly come accross in that game (and quite frankly are vastly underused, especially by the larger alliances)

I will take what EVE does as an example here.



In EVE Online they balance the whole "Big vs. Small" thing in a few ways:

-Speed: The most noticeable by far, smaller ships are exponentially faster and more maneuverable, this can help with a number of things

-Sensor Strength and Signature Size: In EVE Online each ship has a signature strength, this is used when calculating how long it will take for a ship to lock onto another ship. The smaller the ship, the small the signature size. Larger ships also have smaller sensor strengths which is also used to calculate how long it takes to target a ship. Therefore, larger ships have trouble targeting smaller ships, while smaller ships can easily target larger ships. Larger ships are primarily meant to fight ships of their size, or within one class of size.

-Specialization: Lots of small (frigate and cruiser) sized vessels have specialized version which are made to excel in a specific field, logistics (healing), electronic warfare, propulsion jamming



EVE almost perfectly (with flaws naturally) balances small vs large ships. It goes off of a "common" sense principal similar to this:

Frigates[SMALL]: Can fight Frigates and Cruisers

Cruisers[MED]: Can fight Frigates, Cruisers, and Battle Cruisers

Battle cruisers[MED-LARGE]: Can fight Frigates(sometimes), Cruisers, Battle cruisers, and Battleships

Battleships[LARGE]: Can fight Battle cruisers, battleships, and in groups carriers and dreadnaughts

Carriers[MASSIVE]: All in one support vessel, also can be used in combat against Battlecruisers+

Dreadnaughts[MASSIVE]: Massive high damage ship that is used for fighting battleships+



As you can see there is lots of overlap between different hull sizing. Lots of the smaller ships have specialized roles while the bigger ships usually are just there to deal damage. Fleets will fail unless they have diversity. For example if i had a fleet of Dreadnaughts then i would get shredded to pieces by small targets. However if i had a pyramid fleet structure (Frigates on the bottom with massive ships on top) then i would be able to withstand any sort of attack.





Forcing this kind of diversity in fleets, specifically a pyramid like structure, i believe would be great.

Xervitus wrote:
The post you quoted was referring more specifically to the people who advocated the "rock paper scissors" approach to ships and used WWII capital ships as an example of why large ships are weak/obsolete/ineffective.

Rather the classical carrier argument. 1 Admiral for the carrier and a lot of small fighters with big weapons but no capability to sustain themselves, that's what WW II showed was effective. You don't need 500 cruiser captains when probably 1 bridge crew + admiral and a thousand fighter pilots + a lot of support crew can do the job.

For efficiency: This just removes the need for putting a star traveling drive in each and every ship, probably frees a lot of administration but of course requires a lot of research and procedural experience.

Sure, I get what you're saying.

Yeah I also agree with that for the most part, my only reservation would be a cost in trained officers "captains" and the strain it would put on a command structure. Fielding 500 competant and experienced cruiser captains is a bit harder than 10 Dreadnought captains, not to mention a lot harder to coordinate and micromanage. Perhaps "battleship" classes or whatnot can be less cost effective in the end than medium and smalls but have advantages to fleet c3 and strategic buffs without handicapping them with artificial and unrealistic weaknesses. There are a lot of ways to go with this issue, I am just trying to steer us away from the worst of them in my opinion, lol.



The post you quoted was referring more specifically to the people who advocated the "rock paper scissors" approach to ships and used WWII capital ships as an example of why large ships are weak/obsolete/ineffective.