Scout, have you played Sins?

A little. Enough to get some inspiration, but not enough to look at how their system works.

Oh no no no no...

I never said they shouldn't take up space...I'm all for engines being quite large, to help balance things out.  This is simply changing the engines into a module with a limit of one; it doesn't even necessarily need to alter their current size or sizemod.

Willy, you're going to have to pick a side here: First you say that the biggest advantage huge hulls have is speed, and then you say that if that advantage is removed that their advantages will increase.

Freedom of speech.... mmmmm love it.... Its refreshing!  Also I just my opinion... It may not make it in the end... But if a few ideas make it in, makes ya feel good.

In that case, we'd have to micro-manage a visual web of lines sooooo vast & complex... you'd have to turn off all other "routes" to detect a (new) zone of influence which is already pre-colored for us. If there is single additional feature necessary for Influence (IMHO) it's a no-flip Asteroid_Mining facility "component to build" since planets have two PIs and a SP for such situations. Not counting Ethical MCC and other estimation of flip amounts.

What you really want is Control over which regions do what; but, what would be the proper Defense against such mechanism -- as we currently experience with Minors SB networks?

Attack!

Now, would an AI homeworld flip to you IF you'd surround it with a bunch of planets linked by your lines of Influence?

Sure, Invade! But i'm sure it is already engolfed by your race territorial color instead of a connect the dots grid.

Implemented in X-Worlds 06-A! Pub-stunt over.

Okay...let's see.

-115% miniaturization is the "standard"; I'll run numbers for 100%, 115%, and 125% (you can treat this as the Yor or a convenient comparison point).
-BHG is the best on tinies whereas BHE is the best on huges.  (BHG gives you 17% more firepower than BHE on tinies.)

16 --> 32 --> 34 --> 36
32 (2) --> 80 (5) --> 80 (5) --> 96 (6)

150 --> 300 --> 322 --> 337
250 (10) --> 525 (21) --> 575 (23) --> 600 (24)

96*5=480 vs 600, 1.25 to 1.

I can't even begin to address putting 4 hyperwarp 3s on a tiny.  A more accurate comparison with the mechanic I've proposed would be taking up the space of 1 hyperwarp 3, 7 vs 32, while giving you the same speed.  I'm not necessarily opposed to 20+ speed ships, even if I don't like them, but that's a discussion for another day.

This would give us 29 spare space on the tinies so I'm going to fake it and say it's 30.  We're also slightly under on the huge at 305 when we need 308, so I'm going to pretend that works as well.

This gives me 80 (5) attack tinies and 550 (22) attack huges, which gives me 80x5 for 400 vs 550 or a 1.375x advantage.

But I already said I'd want engines to be larger.  A sizemod of 18% is, I feel, far too low.

The problem isn't necessarily that the tinies can't compare in firepower.  Nor should they be restricted from comparing in firepower; if anything, they should be somewhat superior in firepower.  Why?  Because of what the "problem" is: They pop too easily.  Once they're gone, they're gone, and the diminished firepower doesn't stand a chance against the huge.  Note: I like it that way.  That's the way the balance -should- be.  But if it's going to work, the smaller hulls need better firepower.

So now that we've addressed what the problem actually is I can concede that you're not actually wrong; you're just wrong about how bad it is and why.  Still, the idea that removing the largest advantage will create an even larger advantage is mindboggling at best, even if somewhat true.

The bigger the ship the more you should be able to put on it.  Personnally I think all guns and weapons and all other equipment should be the same size no matter the size of the ship.   It still takes the same equipment to make all the stuff work.

It could be done pretty easily, as long as the gun is fixed to fire forward. The only reason the Japanese were able to have 18 inch guns on the Yamato compared to the 16 inch guns on US Iowa class ships was that the Yamato had enough beam to accept the recoil of shooting broadside and not roll (US ships were hindered by needing to pass the Panama Canal. IIRC the Iowas cleared the canal with about 12 inches to spare on each side). Fix the gun forward and you have no roll problem, just aiming problems.

Although if you want to go the historic route, the biggest threat to battleships (and especially carriers) was torpedos, not shells or bombs. Those torpedos were delivered by plane, submarine, PT boats, and destroyers, not other battleships. In fact, the entire destroyer concept was created to screen battleships from enemy PT boats.

From a realism standpoint, all weapons should be the same size. A missile launcher would be about the same size no matter what it's mounted on (ignoring ammunition supply, which this game does anyway). Defenses would have massive sizemods, though - it would take many times more armor to cover a large ship compared to a small one. Point defense wouldn't be quite so bad, and shields would be somewhere in between.

The balance issue is where this hangs up. Yes, in reality the weapons wouldn't scale like they do, but defenses, life support, and engines would scale a lot more. It's a game, they can ignore reality aspects to address balance issues. And going the reality route would massively overpower larger ships, even more so than now.

N>Zyxpsilish translator!

Ok this exactly resembles something I've seen in another game before...

If I have 3 smalls approaching 1 huge... And lets say he's using the proper defenses and so am I. Well his defenses are going to be bigger... any of my 3 seperate attacks are likely to do little damage if any at all. while my defense against his weapons is going to get swiss cheesed. If he's not taking any damage and I'm not protected from his shots... he could take on double that amount of fighters... the only logical thing to do is research bigger hulls and fight him on his own ground.

That ship could also go faster then me so I can't run either.

Would make sense to increase the sizemod on engine parts to something huge (IDK how sizemod works exactly so 'something huge' is my recomendation). Or even do this with life support too.

Ok I'm looking at some code right now... it says that a small hull has 24 size and a medium has 48. perfect for this example. You see the problem is that even though my ships should be able to match him in combat (only four less hp, I'll ignore it)... I need two for every one of his frigates. But that means I need to put two engines on my ships and he needs one.

So if we both started with a total of 48... and lets say impulse drive III takes up 10 space... he has 38 space left... and I have 28 space left collectively. This is where the problem with engines resides. not to mention the same applies to life support, sensors etc.

Now lets say we have equal collective firepower and defense... 20 damage for both of us (10 for each of my fighters) and 20 proper defense for both of us (10 for each of my fighters). When I fire at him with both ships he'll most likely block almost all damage even though the total damage is equal to his defense... why? because he got to defend against both shots blocking 20 against both shots of 10, he got to defend twice... 20x2=40. Now when he shoots, my ships only get to defend once with 10 against his damage of 20. I'm dead in a seemingly even battle. And there is where combat problems lye.

Personally I think switch up the costs of some things and the logistics usage of the hulls so I can fit more smalls into a fleet and he can fit less bigs into a fleet and my smalls cost significantly less then his bigs. Sortof like the big power house versus the swarm thing.

AND/OR make the fleet attack and fleet defense modules turn the sequence into collective firepower... so examply, you have a ship with a fleet attack coordinator module in your fleet of 5 fighters vs a battleship. since you have it all your damage is added together to make one big damage blast instead of 5 seperate ones. And do the same with the fleet defense coordinator. (this also would seem to fit well with the tech tree if you ask me by the time he gets good big ships I can get good coordinators)

The cap of one engine on each ship I'm not too sure I agree with though.

I still want carriers as it would help a lot with these things...

or we could just scream at the devs... FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT! lol

-shadow-

a 16 inch gun is bigger or almost as big as a destroyer.  If said gun was mounted on said destroyer the recoil would send the ship skimming across the ocean.  The Iowa class when firing a full broadside went skimming across the ocean too.  Of course they had more than one gun. 

As for super battleships.  The japaneese had 3, the germans had 2,  the usa had a whole class of them called the iowa.  The difference is the japs and germs had big guns.  The usa had armour on everything.  every other battleship had armour to the water line.  which is what doomed the hood.

Ok more ideas... now these ones are just me looking at different parts of the game.

Ship Designer

1. Starbase and mining base designer. Just link it to ship designer.

2. Ability to remove the red dots just by clicking them on or off. Just do get a good view of the ship.

3. Selecting individual parts, click a button to only have those red dots work on that part you selected and the rest of the ship you can't put parts on until you deselect the button and part. Cause its annoying as an example when your wing is on the wrong side of the ship.

4. When putting parts, weapons, etc... it shows the basic values of your ship. Add a button that will display your bonuses add to your ships value. So I put a weapon on that does say 4 damage and i have engine speed of 4. Those are displayed in the box and I click a button that shows weapon of 6 and speed of 6 cause my race are 50%+ weapons and speed. I think ya get the point.

5. Design your own parts ie how they look. IE make a turbolaser cannon from Star Wars. Make the engines from Star Trek... weapons, moduals, and structures(parts that are just for looks). Save them and favorite them.

6. Now when your rotating a part with the little clock. How about right below that too you add a number box 0-360 degrees so we can accurately position are parts. Cause sometimes we get carried away and design some nice looking ships.

7. Now this part maybe going a little far but custom paints jobs (like in some driving games, mech games, etc...)...? If not thats ok.

8. Now when you put a part on the ship add the ability to pan your part left, right, forwards, backwards, up and down. So you don't have floating part or unless you want to have floating parts.