ORIGINAL: Gerth
And East Inda is a relic of history, replaced by modern merchant fleets that while still facing piracy, do not in fact carry guns. Modern nations do not permit the equivalent of East India ships of the line to operate in their waters.
There are several reasons behind that: First, piracy today is largely a local problem, confined to a single geographical area. The modern sea, as a whole, is not a particularly lawless place filled with heavily armed pirates and warships of hostile powers. Secondly, it's not true. Ships transporting nuclear fuel actually are armed with 30mm autocannons. Thirdly, as recently as WW2, nations on all sides armed merchantmen to protect them from attack by from the other side. Given that the universe of Distant Worlds is a galaxy which is frequently at war, lawless, and filled with rampaging pirates and horrible space monsters that can eat your ship alive, being armed, often quite heavily, is the only sensible move. While in the real world, pirates only frequent certain geographical localities and when you are not in one of those places, you are just hauling around an armed ship and crew for no reason, in DW, space is ugly EVERYWHERE. Hell, I've had my freaking CAPITAL turn into a war zone, and that's in the middle of my empire! You'd better believe people would start arming merchant ships if, say, Chinese naval raids became routine events.
As for whether or not something like this should be permitted, why not make it part of the diplomacy system, and have those ships which are NOT permitted simply NOT GO THERE? I, for one, am perfectly happy not to see my freighters traipsing the space of potentially hostile and unfriendly neighbors, away from where I can keep them safe by arming them heavily.
ORIGINAL: Gerth
Private security contractors with small arms, not cannons. Freighters armed like warships are not sailing into sovereign waters.
That's a simple matter of scale. The freighters are only using small arms because the PIRATES are only using small arms. If you had pirates that started attacking merchant shipping using cannons, I guarantee you someone, probably the Israelis, would start installing their own cannons in short order.
ORIGINAL: Journier
a more loose ship size limit would make me happier.
Through history our ships have grown in size.
Already happens in the game. There is nothing that prevents you from building a 450-size ship and deciding that this is a "Frigate", even though it is now bigger than a capital ship of the beginning the game.
ORIGINAL: Journier
In the 1800's a Battleship was the size of a modern destroyer.
You know, there's a reason why this happens, and it's mostly political. Everyone knows "destroyers" are smaller than "battleships". If you want to build a new ship, you tell them that you're building a new "destroyer", and you are far more likely to get your budget approved than if you tell them that you are building a "battleship", because everyone knows "battleships" are hella-huge and ridiculously expensive, and "destroyers" are small and cheap.
