Ship Hull Sizes and Space Yard Component

To be Immortal

Name := Space Yard
.......
Number Of Requirements := 2
Requirements Evaluation Availability := 1
Requirements Evaluation Allows Placement := 2
Requirements Evaluation Allows Usage := TRUE
Requirement 1 Description := Empire must have at least tech level 10 in Space Yards.
Requirement 1 Formula := Get_Empire_Tech_Level("Space Yards") >= (10 + ([%Level%] - 1))
Requirement 2 Description := There is a limit of one Space Yard per vehicle.
Requirement 2 Formula := Get_Design_Specific_Component_Count("Space Yard")

I tend to stop researching each smaller size as soon as the next becomes available.

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"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

Depends on which mod. BM, stock, or something else?

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

given they said hull level 10 it's not BM

I play stock (with a few personel tweaks), and I tend to max out ship techs when I can, but if I am in a 'rush' to get the bigger size ships, I will get them all unlocked before I start to max the other ones out.

I do like the Frigate because it gets both a nice defense bonus, and also because it can get large enough to use large weapon mounts.

As for what ship sizes I like to use, it depends on the role, and how far in the game I am.

Frigates:
I use them for all sorts of roles, offense, defense, recon/scouting, sentry duty, mobile sensor/scanner platforms, etc.

Destroyer:
Later game, I use them to make slightly better equipped/sturdier versions of Frigates, such as ships that can pack lots of sensors/scanners and have a little better offense/defense.

Light Cruiser:
I don't seem to use many unless for some reason I am stuck with them before I get access to cruisers.

Cruisers:
Overall well reounded ship size, a lot of my ships are cruisers size.
Also basic choice for space yard ships, and a ship to support space yard ships.

Battleship:
I use a few, but not may.

Dreadnought:
One of my more favorite 'big ships'.
Used for main offense or defense roles.
Also used as a 'mobile base', space yard, maybe a repair bay, and also drone/fighter/mine/sat bays/launchers.

Baseship:
Make handy mobile bases.
I use them for a 'larger' version of the 'mobile base'.
I also have made basic 'air bases' out of them, lots of fighter bays and a space yard, plus a few drone/mine/sat bays/launchers for good measure, maybe also a massive mount gun to smack around anything that wants to dance with it.

Freighters:
Use a little of each.
I use them for colony ships later on. Handy when a 'colony' ship has enough space to carry troops, fighters, weapon platforms and even sats, so a new colony can defend itself, and launch any sats also.
Later in the game, I use a large freighter to mount one of each colony component, to create a 'multi-purpose' colony ship. Then I can build a few ahead of time, pack them with 'basics' (few enough stuff to 'fill' a tiny domed colony), and park them until needed.

Carrier:
I sometimes use them, but not often.
Borrowing inspiration from WWII carriers, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, etc, I usually prefer to use other ships to have fighter bays, so they can have fighters and still have the speed/offense/defense to not be as vulnerable in battle.

I tend to use the cruisers for most of my ships, maybe a light depending on what I need.

I use frigates in early game and max it out the tech cause they are cheep and in late game use them as spy ships, ie max cloak, best sensors, scanner jammer and solar cells cause the quantum reactor wont work when cloaked in bm add a solar sail for kicks and its about fully loaded, you can put maybe a small weapon to pick off unarmed enemy ships but when you do that you run into tonnage issues when you add shields, shield regenerator and ecm and combat sensor and all that...

Hmmm, I'll use Frigates and Destroyers throughout the game, in many varied roles.

the Light Cruiser? that tends to be my general duty ship. I've used them for everything, like Utility carriers, mini-carriers, heavy gunships, spy ships, armed Cargo ships. Even as heavily armed troop transports a few times.

Cruisers? I don't actually use them much, unless I don't have Battleship tech. I really use them as ultra heavy patrol ships when I do use them, or as a fleet command ship.

The Battleship. Well, duh, this gets used as a base-killer (though some early game destroyers can do the same) an independent raider, hell, even as a mobile Shipyard.

The Dreadnought and Baseship. I end up using these as up-scaled versions of the Battleships, with the exception of the Base-ship never being a fleet-command ship. Too slow in combat.

That's about it, save mod-specific ships, and I haven't really used those.
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I'll make one later.

Why do people insist small ships are better? in SEV ships are used predominantly to attack or defend. and a base ship will always beat a light cruiser in combat. I'll get a base ship with a master computer missiles and anti-protons and stately move towards my opponents home system
they then have two choices:

attack me with their tiny ships and get swatted or
run away like a little girl

I don't like baseships. They're slow and easier to hit and cost too much to build. Smaller ships, especially DNs, can take them easily (at least in my experience).

I think it the old single vs. multi player issue

Everytime I read from people who like the smaller ships more,
talk more about the built in def boni and such .. I also read
from them in after battle reports and multiplayer topics.

Most people who like big ships play single player against AI,
I don't have to repeat all this about the AI ,
they have time to build up, deploy large fleets and do the micromanagers jig.

Smaller ships are faster and more flexible then big ones .. easier deployed, cheaper even in large numbers .. and so on.

I normally research shipsizes until I can deploy a decent space yard ship to properly camp my warppoints.

And from this one I go farther because I want baseships to build my ring- and sphere worlds

As combat ships I use the biggest sizes most of the time, for I research engines and hull sizes equally, thus making up for the speed loss with better engines.

But I noticed I really don't have a special layout for my ships, in my current game I tend to fill up the new available space with more armor than weapons, making my ships sturdier and more likely to survive a battle.

But I will always keep fighters and fast ships around to kill stray runaway ships with all weapons destroyed but all engines working ..

After all this said .. I still can't think of any good reason why big ships should be much slower than small ones.

Slower turn rates and slower acceleration because of the bigger mass I can understand .. but being slower in general I don't get, as long as the mass-thrust-acceleration equation checks out .. the should not be slower in general.

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

I write again,

to be first to comment on your second question

Shipyard research ..

as stated above again and again, depends on the gametype.

If space yards are available from the beginning I normally don't research into shipyards until early midgame ( when the new battle ships take more then 4 or 5 turns to build )

after I read up in the forums and tried for myself I am quite content with the answer : quantity over quality

I put nearly all my ship production in space, with a bunch of space yard bases in my home-system, and a mix of repair bases and space yards in frontier systems, and repair bases following the captured resupply planets around ( that would be a good use for baseships too .. make that whole thing mobile )

also I got a space yard on nearly every undomed planet, normally when a planet can support more then ten facilities I bless it with a space yard to make the update cycle shorter.

The only time I research space yards early on is in games I go with the Temporal trait. When I research temporal tech I get the temporal yards as a nice bonus.

Also I don't like to break my production cycle to retrofit the space yard bases .. so usually I build a batch of new ones at some time that take over the work of the old ones and scrap them then .. or retrofit ..

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

Using small ships vs. big ships, no seekers, if using max range strategy, smaller faster ships will kick a baseships butt, because of the huge accuracy difference.
Frigates (lvl 10) getting +39% defense bonus, max speed of 12.
Dreadnought has no defense bonus, max speed of 8.

With long range weapons, accuracy is often very poor.
Dreadnought will have an harder time hitting the small ships because they can stay at max range and have a good defense bonus, even if it has good combat sensors.
Frigates will have an easier time hitting the Dreadnought since it has no defense bonus.
Dreadnoughts can have an advantage in hitting power with heavy and massive weapon mounts.

It would come down to seeing who took out what first.

Things that could tip the balance or close the gap.
Dreadnought has good defense bonuses from ECM, stealth armor, etc, whil the frigates have little or no items that give defense bonuses.
Dreadnought has better combat sensors, or the one religious item that gives a big boost to accuracy, to close the accuracy gap or even end up with a better accuracy than the frigates do.
One side has many seeker weapons and the other has minimal or no PD weapons.
The Frigates have superior range weapons, it goes to their favor because they could stay out of range of the Dreadnought weapons, but to much range and their own accuracy ruined.
The Dreadnouht has superior range weapons, it basically gets 'first blood' and a slim chance to get a minor advantage at the beginning of the battle if a heavy or massive mount weapon smacks down or badly damages a frigate before they can even fire.
The Frigates have Organic Weapons (at least lvl 20 tech), they get a range advantage, the Lightning Ray and the Seeking Parasite can out range most other comparable weapons, which is a minor factor.
If one side has weapons that can ignore shields, armor, or both, will have an advantage.
The Frigates have temporal weapons, they could have the one that does modest damage, but which does x4 damage to shields, allowing them to take down the Dreadnought's shields faster.

I tried to do some tests in the space simulator (equal ecm, combat sensors, same tech levels for assorted stuff, etc), with mixed results, with 4x lvl 10 frigates (mixed weapons, 840 phased shield, 3275 armor) vs a lvl 10 dreadnought (with 4 massive mount APBs and 8 lg mount meson blasters and 6 quantum torpedoes, and 2 each PD except cannons. 1680 phased shield, 1395 organic armor)

Based on weapons and strategies, outcomes can vary.
For example, one flaw of max range strategy is they WILL ignore anything that is not the longest range weapon, and gleefully pelt away with a single long range weapon even if they happen to be packing a few large mount ripper beams. A good example is with seekers.
The Frigates ignored their guns and ran away firing their single torpedoes and the dreadnought had 8 torpedoes, and the dreadought has a half dozen PD weapons, while the frigates had only one PD each at the time, the frigates eventually got pelted to death without even taking out the Dreadnoughts shields.

Cramming the frigates full of large mount guns and max range strategy, one run (using 3x lg lighting rays) they succeeded with 2 ships crippled, other times (one of which using 2x lg APBs) they only did minor damage (after armor and shields) to the dreadnought before it disabled and eventually destroyed all of them.

Results were slightly better with 5 frigates, especially using frigates without seekers and max range strat and 2 PDs (1 beam, 1 blaster) each, and 2-3 lg guns.

Giving the frigates superior range beam weapons and max range strategy... next to nothing, they just ran away, they managed to shoot down the torpedoes (they were close enough together to support each other with PD weapons), but they rarely hit... they just flew around, barely hitting the dreadnought and shooting its torpedoes down...
Tried with wave motion guns (recently got them on save used) on frigates to see if the extra damage might help, and... well, they never hit, period, with ,max range...

It basically makes me think of WWII, of PT Boats vs. Battleships.
the PT boats don't have trouble hitting the Battleship, but need quite a few hits to do serious damage, while the Battleship does have trouble hitting the PT boats, when it does hit, it hits hard.

So there is no better or worse

It is still all in the fine tuning
And if you add the crew and fleet experience to the soup
it will be the final feather on the scales

And the final lesson : use seekers against small ships ^^

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

oops .. double post.

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

Did you try = cost battle?

like 3 Frigates that cost 30000 minerals to build (10000 minerals per Frigate) vs 1 Dreadnought that cost 30000 minerals to build.

In my games I never use Frigates when I can use Dreadnoughts in battle.

At least in SE IV, I used a lot of battlecruisers because they were the largest ship that had max movement, if memory serves. That speed advantage came in handy...

I'm playing a BM game against several human opponents and haven't reached the higher techs yet (just had first contact, so I'm busily refitting some frigates from survey (extra supplies) to battle (extra ordnance) configuration.

Not sure how BM speed equations work out for ship sizes...

For the equal cost battle, can i note than:
for an equal cost, a fleet of frigate will most of the time carry a lot more engines, bridges, life supports and crew spaces than one dreadnough.

count 4 frigates for one dreadnough, 48 engines for the frigate vs 8 for the bigger ship, frigate will also need to multiply sensors and other ship performances improvment components.

For a given cost =~ similar weight, a dreadnough will always carry less support component, and so, probably more weapons and fight expendable ressources.

I personally always go from small hull to small-medium and on right when I unlock the next level; I dont see much of a reason to stay on the smaller hull, which is both smaller (duh) and more expensive being a level 5+ rather than a 1. And I always keep researching hull (on and off that is) until I get Dreadnaughts; Than I take a break.

As for Space Yard components, I wouldn't go researching them right away, I'd start with things like Physics, Military Science, Industry, Hull Construction, and Engines. When going to battle with an enemy that is more than 2 systems away, then I would research it. But not if you were simply fighting an empire that was your next door neighor.