Ship design: Big vs small?

[Bloodly]

...When it comes to ships, what do you do? Push it to the size limits, or try to stay small? And with that in mind, what do the classifications mean given you can make an 'escort', or even a 'freighter' as powerful as a 'destroyer'?

I'm having severe troubles because I'm not entirely sure what I should be doing when it comes to design. I'm sure they're ineffective, but I'm not even sure what to change. I tend to put armour, shields and guns on absolutely everything, but I can't help but feel I'm doing something wrong somewhere.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Bloodly

...When it comes to ships, what do you do? Push it to the size limits, or try to stay small? And with that in mind, what do the classifications mean given you can make an 'escort', or even a 'freighter' as powerful as a 'destroyer'?

Both. I like to have both a selection of cheap, easily disposable things, and magnificent flying monuments to my wealth, power, and pomposity, as well as things somewhere more in the middle of the road. The classifications define the role in which the item will be used by the AI, and contain some caveats.

For instance, designs of the Escort, Frigate, Destroyer, and Cruiser classes are, to some degree, "public domain". Any escort, frigate, destroyer, or cruiser you ever design apparently can wind up in the hands of pirates, although this is extremely uncommon with cruisers. So try not to get carried away with building super-ships out of these, as you'll cause an acceleration of the arms race in which you now have to build super-freighters to defend against super-marauders that are killing them.

[TFA_Falcon]

For frigate sized vessels I start off with a maximum size(200) ship, but they usually get smaller as my technology improves. By keeping them small I can also make them extremely fast and maneuverable, while keeping the cost down.

You have to realize that a small fast ship is fairly hard to kill, since it can often get our of enemy ranged and warp when its shields get low.
Meanwhile you can still fit quite a bit of firepower onto a small ship, as long as you can rely on it being able to catch the enemy (short range guns).

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: TFA_Falcon

You have to realize that a small fast ship is fairly hard to kill, since it can often get our of enemy ranged and warp when its shields get low.

There's a few caveats to this trick that makes designing frigates and escorts somewhat of an art. A good frigate must be faster than the typical AI's ships, but NOT faster than YOUR ships, or you'll never be able to kill those things. Remember: Pirates steal and use your frigate designs often.

ORIGINAL: TFA_Falcon

Meanwhile you can still fit quite a bit of firepower onto a small ship, as long as you can rely on it being able to catch the enemy (short range guns).

Sticking short-range guns on small ships is very much NOT playing to their advantages. If you are using short-range weaponry, you need your ships to be fastest things in space, otherwise your weapons are absolutely worthless, which conflicts with the issues above, and also, means your ships must have enough shielding to withstand closing to the range at which their weapons are actually useful, which is not easy to do on a small ship!

[Drusek]

Quality > Quantity in this game
For example ship with 1000 shields and 200 firepower is better than 2 ships with 500 shields and 100 firepower each and also better than 10 ships with 100 shields and 20 firepower each ans so on.
Why? Because that ship can win vs the other and also cost less then the sum of cost of those other ships.

At the begining I build ships with size of 200 (largest I can) and I go higher as research progress. Don't get me wrong - I don't build all "worlds destroyers". I just build ships (or trying to) that are better than any other buildable ship in other empires. So the best firepower and shields, and also good speed - at the beggining speed of close to 40 (30 something) is good for 200 size destroyers and later all my ships (capital type now) have 50+ or even 60+.

Also I build only destroyers at the beggining and I switch to only capitals as soon as I can. On automate they do the same things as escorts, frigates and any other.

[JonathanStrange]

Ship classifications aren't as meaningful in DW as they are in other games where, for example, a large freighter may be as big as a similar-sized warship but have far less hitpoints or structural integrity or whatever term they're using to tell you the freighter's not meant for serious scrapes. In DW, you could build a really tough freighter, if you've a mind to.

As for balancing a warship with weapons, armor, shields? Well, that's one way of not going seriously wrong in any one way but it's not necessarily optimal for every assignment or encounter or in terms of cost or maintenance. However, you're your Empires' El Supremo and if I were in your place, I'd just want serviceable ships. I'd have other bigger concerns than ship design. But if one's into it, I'm sure some players here will chime in with more exact criteria for special warships.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Drusek

Quality > Quantity in this game

Yes and no. The effectiveness of a ship is more than just its firepower and shields, though. A ship with Velocity Shards with a firepower of 150ish and 200 shields will beat the crap out of a ship with 1000 shields and 250 firepower in blasters as long as it is faster, because that other ship will die without ever getting off a shot. And it will cost less. So you can have MORE!

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: JonathanStrange

Ship classifications aren't as meaningful in DW as they are in other games ...

Roles are more meaningful if you let ships be automated.

[JonathanStrange]

Not in terms of ship design, which is what the original post was referring to.

[Krelos]

Currently, I'm going with these sizes:

Escort-145
Frigate-215
Destroyer-330
Cruiser-500
Troop Trans-500
Capitol-850

My TT is basically the vanilla Cruiser and TT combined. Except it has 10 troop components and is tougher and more dangerous than the vanilla Cruiser.