Hull Size Research

if i've understood your question....

personally I like the branching off research. It puts you in a position where you have to choose what tech your going to go after to counter what your current opponent has.

with all the tech in one branch, all you do is just keep plugging away and eventualy you'll have it all to fight with.

SEV, more than a feeling.

What do you mean "affects more other research"? Like in Dark Nova, where you have the main Ship Construction tech which provides basic hulls, but each level unlocks a new hull tech which improves an individual hull? Or maybe Ship Construction could also improve your space yards, like in SE3 but perhaps more sophisticated? (In SE3, if I recall correctly, there was no "Space Yards" tech - you just got a new space yard at each level of Ship Construction - but maybe you could have a cultural advancement which improves all SY's and appears with research into Ship Construction, or require a level X SY to have not only level X in SY tech but also in Ship Construction?)

edit: oh, one of the few things I liked about MOO3 was the spaceyard system there - when you researched a new hull size, you also got a new type of space yard facility which was required to build that hull size! So for instance you couldn't build Cruisers unless you had the first five or so space yards on your planet, but if you had only one of them you could at least build Lancers (or whatever the smallest ship was). I wonder how we could replicate that in SE5, if it's even possible... I suppose you could make each ship size cost, say, 5x the rads of the last, and have special space yard expansions unlocked by Ship Construction which construct only in rads, and remove rads cost from everything but ship hulls...

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The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

well to my mind bigger ship is exactly the same as a small ship, just bigger...
so why would an empire not be able to build larger hulls right from the beginning or not thnk of doing so.
you mearly need a reason to make it impracticle to do so in large amounts to balance it.
also bigger ships could be a LOT more expensive but have more bunuses to make them more usefull or people will jus research up to cruiser level and stop.

Here's my interprutation of the current system, It's similar to building a large house. In ancient times, they used mud brick, sod, or wattle and daub, and if they were lucky they might get two stories out of it. Stone was better it could handle more structural stresses 3-4 stories no problem. The romans actually stumbled upon a couple of key things, Arches to support higher stresses and concrete (yep that's a Roman invention we had to rediscover) They were getting apartment complexes up to 7 stories high and the coluseum is friggin HUGE). Now we have sky scrapers supported by steel and concrete and as we make improvements we're building them bigger and bigger.

Translating that into SE:V terms I look at it this way each hull level is an leap forward in building materials and techniques that can handle higher stresses (say from the gravitational forces of Warp Points and other stellar phenomenon, or heck having a friggin Nuke explode right next to your hull). I could try and use my techniques from frigates to build a destroyer but if I took it into combat the added stress from increased size means it'd rip apart like trying to build a three level wattle and daub house, too much stress. Of course Freighters are larger because they don't have to deal with the increased stresses of the combat ships, when missiles and lasers fly, freighters bug out, but even they have limitations and thus we get medium and heavy freighters.

Now then why have a split where you unlock destroyer size but still have room for improvement on frigates. Lets go back to the Romans (and Greeks) To this day they've done things with their materials that we aren't even sure we can duplicate. It's like they went on to perfect frigate size hull building materials and techniques where we said F-that let's build destroyers (and then Light Crusiers, and then Cruisers, you get the point I hope).

Of course that's just my view of things, if you want to change it feel free. I just thought I might share the rational behind the current system.

"Trying to teach me to be politically correct is like trying to teach a dead dog to play fetch.... futile."

yeees but with the improved materials you would also then be able to build stronger or faster frigates as well...
so then ud be saying rather than researching hulls you should be researching materials or constuction tech, which also have backwards benefits on all smaller hulls

Alright, You've spotted the hole in my logic, I could argue with it but that'd just be my stubborness refusing to let me be wrong.... and I know it.

Side note this does present an interesting idea, not sure how one would go about implementing it though (or even if it could be) If you turn Ship Size into a single tree have frigates max out on size at level three, but have them become more structuarally sound as level increases representing improvements in alloys.

"Trying to teach me to be politically correct is like trying to teach a dead dog to play fetch.... futile."