no bigger ships than battleships

[GrafKeks]

This could even be used to carry the phallic ship around nice.

 

[Surimi]

I don't think that this would actually be intended. If corvettes will really be able, to just swarm battleships so much, that battleships and even cruisers won't have a chance, then they have to change the balancing. Keeping smaller ships important in the later stages of the game is nice and well, but don't make them TOO powerful.

Well, the logical solution would be to have an RPS situation. For example:

Corvettes have only small guns, but are evasive and numerous enough to make bigger guns largely ineffective.
Destroyers can have many small guns, making them cost effective at killing corvettes. But they're slower than corvettes and still fragile, so medium guns will be able to target them effectively.
Cruisers have a mix of guns and are especially good at killing destroyers and other cruisers and okay at killing corvettes, but are quite slow and thus extremely vulnerable to the large guns of battleships.
Battleships have big guns which are devastating against cruisers, stations and other battleships, but have trouble hitting smaller ships making them very vulnerable without support.

With the ship designer, ships could be tailored to diversify a bit from these simple roles.. for example you could have a destroyer tailored to kill other destroyers, or a cruiser with battleship sized weaponry (a battlecruiser), but generally what this means is that a well balanced fleet will always need a range of ships, rather than larger ships replacing the functions of smaller ones over time.

No idea if this is what they were going for, but I'm increasingly hopeful it will be something along these lines.

 

[barny]

No idea if this is what they were going for, but I'm increasingly hopeful it will be something along these lines.

That might very well be, what they are going for, but yesterday even DDs and CAs locked rather helpless against corvettes.

 

[ikki]

and with all the spaceport upgrades... i cannot help but wonder if not sentient organic telepathic ships is the way to beat the prethoryn scourge...

 

[Hanekem]

By and large, the issue is that Space is not an ocean and that a smaller ship doesn't necessarily mean a faster ship (or rather a ship with a better acceleration profile)

Of course, we do have the meatball issue, the organic crew can only survive so many Gs of Acceleration, and then there is the problem with missiles.
It is, also, interesting to note that oint defense would be mighty useless against some real ideas for space weapons, like Casaba Howitzers or Nuke Pumped Lasers

 

[13Foxtrot]

This could even be used to carry the phallic ship around nice.

Humans are hilarious....

 

[ikki]

psst.. smaller boats are slower than larger boats
Same goes with spaceships, and its the very same mechanism: more engine/sail per drag.

Commercial builds are of course a breed apart. Their purpose is to minimize expenses (like fuel) per cargo tonnage.

 

[GrafKeks]

Humans are hilarious....

You mean the most intelligent mammal to ever come into existence, those designs are flawless.

 

[ImperiusArch]

I mean, a massive and oversized ship serves a lot of purposes. The main one being the dispelling of conflict. Something large and scary will scare the populous and it's opposition to cower.

 

[Hanekem]

I mean, a massive and oversized ship serves a lot of purposes. The main one being the dispelling of conflict. Something large and scary will scare the populous and it's opposition to cower.

Unless they have the tech to match, it would not only be a white elephant, it might get destroyed by lesser, more optimized, ships

 

[ImperiusArch]

psst.. smaller boats are slower than larger boats
Same goes with spaceships, and its the very same mechanism: more engine/sail per drag.

Commercial builds are of course a breed apart. Their purpose is to minimize expenses (like fuel) per cargo tonnage.

Did this homie just tell me there was drag in space.

 

[REDDQ]

Unless they have the tech to match, it would not only be a white elephant, it might get destroyed by lesser, more optimized, ships

Bada boom!

 

[corny.1234]

Living things, from a spaceflight perspective, are utterly useless. They need to be kept in the right atmosphere or they stop working, so you need to carry an atmosphere. They need to consume bits of matter or they stop working, so you need to carry appropriate bits of matter. They produce other bits of matter (which they can't consume) so you need a way to get rid of that. They need to be able to move around or they decay and ultimately stop working, so you need spaces in which they can move around. Moreover, they contribute nothing to the operation of the spacecraft in combat because their silly meat brains can't crunch numbers as well as a machine, and space combat is all number crunching. All the useless stuff you have to carry to keep them working adds to the mass of a spacecraft, which increases the amount of energy required to change velocity, and when in combat your spacecraft needs to be constantly changing velocity all the time.

So basically, they're an expensive, heavy component which does nothing of value.

You clearly never saw Star Trek.

 

[Smiles_]

You clearly never saw Star Trek.

Agreed.


Smiles

 

[Uhlume]

Culture Starships would be nice. One massive AI, a hull that's 90%+ Force and Gravity fields (and the ability to manipulate them in many ways), about 300 kilometres long and access to all the anti-matter it could ever want either as weaponry or fuel for it's pretty ludicrous engines. Doing ~130 kilo-c, not a problem, disassembling a planet with pin-point anti-matter injections, not a problem either.

 

[KingRolan]

You clearly never saw Star Trek.

Or Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, Deep Space 9, etc. Pretty much all sci-fi worth watching has crew aboard its starships, as far as I know. I think that is reason enough to have crewed starships in the game.

 

[REDDQ]

Or Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, Deep Space 9, etc. Pretty much all sci-fi worth watching has crew aboard its starships, as far as I know. I think that is reason enough to have crewed starships in the game.

Is there any other Deep Space 9 besides Star Trek Deep Space 9?

 

[KingRolan]

Is there any other Deep Space 9 besides Star Trek Deep Space 9?

Eh. I'm tired, and you get the point.

 

[Zorromorph]

That might very well be, what they are going for, but yesterday even DDs and CAs locked rather helpless against corvettes.

That wasn't only because they were corvettes though -- it was also because of the types of weapons that were on both the Blorg ships and the enemy corvettes.

 

[REDDQ]

Eh. I'm tired, and you get the point.

When all is said and done the biggest reason to have crewed spaceships is that lightyears away someone will have to make a call about something. Sure, computer will do the firing (in Lost Fleet series engagement between two fleets lasted a split of a second) but questions like who, when and how are for humans, not machines.