small/cheap designs usefull?

[Gizuria]

How about you start with a ship hull size of 600 being your standard. There is neither a bonus nor a malus for hitting a ship of this size. After that, you reduce the chance to hit a ship by 1% for every 10 points less that size and increase it by 1% for every 10 points over that size. Small ships become much harder to hit which means that they'd need less armour and shielding while really big ones are easy, requiring more shields and armour to ensure their survival.

[Timotheus]

Here's a genius idea.


The game already has a solution, a VERY COOL solution on how to implement the ship size differences in game and make small ships effective.

Acceleration.

Small ships should accelerate like a bat out of hell, in later techs instantaneously, while a large capital ship will take its sweet time to accelerate to its full speed. At lower tech a capital ship/cruiser size should be VERY ponderous. Also, thrusters should be MUCH more efficient for smaller ships than for capitals.

This would allow more sophisticated tactics, such as hit and run attacks by smaller ships on larger ones, launch missiles/torpedoes and bugger off... rinse, repeat.

This is EXTREMELY COOL, changes the game for the better, and is EXTREMELY EASY to implement for the dev(s) - simply choose accelerations for various ship sizes.


I would also like to have a separate research branch that will unlock the next size class of ships, and that classes of ships have size limits which are rigid. So in the beginning you have to build escort class ships, as the tech for frigates and beyond is yet to be unlocked.

To continue this idea, there should be MINIATURIZATION for weapons and other ship components, which would be a choice for player/AI to pursue or not. It would distract player from the usual higher tech research, but would be cool to have small ships with some powerful, miniaturized to fit components and weapons. And of course once higher class of ship is unlocked, you could fit quite a bit more of those miniaturized components in there...


Those are two cool, not that hard to implement ideas (OK, the 2nd one would require AI adjustments, but is worth it IMO).

Will they happen?

Of course not - am just pissing on the wind, the devs don't read this, and I will have to make a mod to REALLY enjoy this game.

It has potential, and the engine is already built - what I want to happen are small tweaks which would IMMENSELY improve the game experience.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Spidey

There's no diminishing return on size in terms of speed or turn rate but there is one in terms of acceleration. A size 400 ship with 14 proton thrusters and 4 thrust vectors will be no faster and turn no faster than a size 800 ship with 28 proton thrusters and 8 thrust vectors but I'm quite sure you'll see the smaller ship accelerate faster than the bigger one.

That is exactly right, Spidey. I tested this with the following ship sizes:

400 size, 14 thrusters, 4 vectors
800 size, 28 thrusters, 8 vectors
1200 size, 42 thrusters, 12 vectors
1600 size, 56 thrusters, 16 vectors
2000 size, 70 thrusters, 20 vectors

These ships were escorts with the minimum necessary equipment and the balance of the weight made up with armour.

In every case the impulse and cruise speed stayed the same. In fact, the cruise speed reduced at 2000 size, but this was because of lack of energy. In all cases, the turning rate was the same. In all cases, the acceleration decreased with increasing size, from a maximum (at size 400) of 13 to minimum (at size 2000) of around 4.5.

One point that surprised me was that you could maintain the acceleration by adding reactors. Thus, if you added an extra reactor to the size 800 ship, the acceleration was the same as the size 400 ship. Same results with adding 2, 3 and 4 extra reactors to the size 1200, 1600 and 2000 ships, respectively. Adding even more reactors would further increase the acceleration till you eventually reach a point at which the extra benefit from the reactor is less than the effect of the weight; at this point acceleration decreases with added reactors. I'm not sure I'd ever previously noticed that adding reactors affects acceleration.

Edit: One thing I would say is that with very large ships I don't think you can achieve the very high levels of acceleration that you can achieve with smaller ships, because diminishing returns kicks in. So, for high acceleration ships, it seems smaller would work.

Osito

[Plant]

Osito, are you saying that spending a proportional amount of space on reactors (1 reactor for size 400, 2 reactors for size 800, ... , 5 reactors for size 2000), would have those ship have the same maintained accerleration?

If so, how would diminishing returns kick in?

5 Ships of 1 reactor each for size 400
1 Ship of 5 reactor for size 2000
Both costs the same.

ORIGINAL: Fascist Dog

How about you start with a ship hull size of 600 being your standard. There is neither a bonus nor a malus for hitting a ship of this size. After that, you reduce the chance to hit a ship by 1% for every 10 points less that size and increase it by 1% for every 10 points over that size. Small ships become much harder to hit which means that they'd need less armour and shielding while really big ones are easy, requiring more shields and armour to ensure their survival.

Of course the problem with this is how much? Why 1%? Which one does it favour? It could still favour larger ships or that 1% could disproportionally favour smaller ships. Either way, the course of action when designing a ship would be the same, either make it as large as possible or to make it as small as possible.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Plant

Osito, are you saying that spending a proportional amount of space on reactors (1 reactor for size 400, 2 reactors for size 800, ... , 5 reactors for size 2000), would have those ship have the same maintained accerleration?

To be honest, I haven't done enough research to be able to say how generally this applied. All I'm really saying is that:

1. Adding reactors certainly increases acceleration, at least in some ships, even when the ships engines are already fully powered by just one reactor.
2. For the 400, 800, 1200, 1600, 2000 ship sizes I built, it seemed to be proportionate, in that by using 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 reactors (on size 400, 800, 1200, 1600, and 2000 respectively) I got the same acceleration figure for every ship (i.e. 13).

ORIGINAL: Plant

If so, how would diminishing returns kick in?

5 Ships of 1 reactor each for size 400
1 Ship of 5 reactor for size 2000
Both costs the same.

What I was getting at was that if you take a specific ship with one reactor, you will probably see an increase in acceletation if you add further reactors, but as you keep adding reactors the extra acceleration you get from each extra reactor will be smaller, and eventually adding extra reactors will decrease acceleration.

I also speculated that this would make it possible to build smaller ships with higher acceleration than larger ships. However, I can confirm that's not true: you can build larger ships with just as high an acceleration as smaller ships.

[Plant]

I see, the dimionishing returns isn't per proportion but of per reactor. They are the one and the same thing really, since each new reactor added is a smaller proportion of space added. You get the same effect with engines as well. I suspect that thrust to speed formula is similar to that of reactor to acceleration formula.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Plant

I see, the dimionishing returns isn't per proportion but of per reactor. They are the one and the same thing really, since each new reactor added is a smaller proportion of space added. You get the same effect with engines as well. I suspect that thrust to speed formula is similar to that of reactor to acceleration formula.

I did some playing around with that. The thrust to speed formulas are pretty simple:

Cruise Speed = (Total Engine Cruise Thrust)/(Total Ship Mass)

Sprint Speed = (Total Engine Sprint Thrust)/(Total Ship Mass)

Turn Rate (in degrees) = 6 + [(Total Vector Thrust)/(Total Ship Mass)] x (360/pi)

i.e., approximately 6 + [(Total Vector Thrust)/(Total Ship Mass)] x 114.59

Anyone else think it weird that speed = Force/Mass? I think Newton should be told.

I took a look at acceleration, but it depends on at least three variables (i.e. thrust, mass and reactor power), and I'm not sure that the relationship is even linear. I don't think acceleration is important enough to spend the time trying to work it out. I guess the only thing to keep in mind is that if you're trying to increase acceleration, it's worth adding another reactor (even if you have enough power) to see whether it increases acceleration.

Applying this to the original post, I would say that small ships certainly can be useful. If you're looking for a fast ship that can perform a small number of functions, a small ship would be better, because you can have a high proportion of the total mass made up of engines (which will improve speed and acceleration). In principle, you can build larger ships with the same speed, but this is less practicable because (1) there are maximum limits to build size even on large ships; (2) You'll be spending a lot of money on engines and reactors; and (3) you'll have less room for all the other goodies you want to put on large ships.