Just curious

Freighters are usually part of a convoy, when you see a convoy of boats you always see them surrounded by military ships. They may be slower but really do they need to be faster? If they have no military maneuverability and limit combat weapons as it is, they would need some protection, maybe not in friendly space, but in foreign regions its best to keep them part of a convoy. Too risky otherwise really. Well, i reckon it would be. You could alter them yourself though by either allowing more engines per ship or by making the engines move 2 spaces rather than one. Or at least i think you can.

Well, the thing you would have to consider also is someone using freighters as carriers. As is, a carrier will (usually) launch fighters and retreat as it has no other offensive weaponry. It doesn't require a lot of maneuvering ability, just a max speed to outrun things while its fighter complement takes care of business. A freighter is only required to have x% of its available space as cargo containers, the rest can be whatever. This is for BM, I'm assuming thats the same for stock. This change would make freighters more desirable than regular carriers, IMO. A vessel that can drop fighters and run faster than a battleship = win.

Why do you complicate things with freighters? I sacrifice some armor space and a weapon or two and build a couple of cargo bays on military ships and a sickbay, Avoiding the need for freighters and medical ships.

It is my ship building style that I place only a few weapons and mount them on largest weapon mounts possible and then a lot of shields with shield regenerators. I sacrifice some armor in exchange for a cargo bay or two.

And if I have to build a cargo only ship, then I use a combat ship design and unify the construction so that it can launch fighters, mines or satellites all by a same design (depending on its cargo).

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It is true that Space empires is a form of space economy simulation; But where would rather spend your resources on: Buying off a tyrant or spending the resources on ships, shoving the demand up his ass?

In stock, there's not a lot of incentives to build freighters.

In some mods, freighters get maintenance reductions and a lot more components count towards cargo space requirements, so it's helpful to use freighter hulls for non-combat designs like Supply Ships or Space Yard Ships.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I only ever use freighters for one thing, pop transporting for when a virus or rioting has killed off the entire population of a planet. They seem quite useless apart from that really.

I've used freighters to shuttle population in my initial expansion phase to maximize pop growth. After that, I use them to shuttle fighters forward as I conquer territory.

The idea has merit, but I don't know how easy it'd be to convince a modder to go to the trouble. While the slow freighter paradigm has nostalgic appeal, in space it needn't apply.

But then restricting the speed of pursuit ships seems somewhat unfair, and I don't see a simple way to balance this.

It'd be nice if accel & turn rate formulas were moddable. One could argue for no engine restrictions at all, so long as turn rates reduced sharply after an 'optimum' amount of thrust for a hull.

The downside is that this could lead to a lot more single ship engagements without damage, and tend to clutter up the game.

You could fasten up these battles by comparing ship speeds and settings .. if the faster ship has no weapons and is set to run for it .. combat resolved ..

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

Economics.... A freighter should haul a massive amount of cargo CHEAPLY. Making it faster eats into the profit margins by drinking fuel faster. (Express freight pays higher rates to overcome this.)

Railroads and ULCC's haul a massive amount of cargo using very few (only one on ULCC's) engines. This is where acceleration and turn radius need to be changable. They are very slow to start but can build up to high rates of speed but don't let anything get in front of them for several miles!

The military gets around this at sea by using a fast fleet replenishment ship. These ships still have a slower top speed than the ships they are servicing but they do move. In the air, the KC-135 tanker flies at less than 380 knots to keep the planes it's refueling from stalling during a refueling operation. But it still flies WAY slower than anything that FIGHTS and maneuvers like a brick on steroids.

So are your freighters military versions and slow or civilian versions and EVEN SLOWER? And don't say "In space it doesn't matter". It's MASS. The more massive a ship is the more engines or more TIME it requires to get up to speed. So if you wanted to get real picky, your acceleration formula should include the mass of the cargo loaded into your freighter.

Personally, this stuff makes my eyes glaze over.

Directive 721: Cover your own a$$ first. Solo

So empty freighters should go really fast ? *eg*

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

Well, assuming you have 200 units of mass that need moving, one 200 unit vessel will beat 2 100-unit vessels or 4 50-unit vessels.

Now the reason transports in space would have a huge advantage is because their counterparts traveling in fluids have to deal with drag, and drag increases exponentially with speed. (Railroads limit their speeds for reasons other than fuel economy, BTW.)

Civilian transports are abstracted in SE5. Military transports might or might not be ultimately concerned with cost. I see no reason this shouldn't be left up to the emperor beyond the troubles of actually implementing it.

In short, "Realism" arguments against fast military transports in SE5 should fail.

Myself, I don't automatically max out speed on all my ships. I'll sac an engine or two for cargo room or weapons or defense if I think I can get by with it. I don't think there's much need to restrict players to "smart" designs either, or even form a consensus on what the properties of these designs must be.

For the stubborn, just build a FF or DD with cargo/supply capacity & without combat components. Label it a transport, and you can at least match anything out there (shipwise).

I have to wonder what the arguments are in favor of any engine restrictions at all, actually. They're not obvious to me.

The one and only thing I could think of for this restriction is hull structure.

The stress on the structure when being accelerated rises with the mass of the ship. The engines push agains the ship from behind, the mass slowly gains momentum and moves .. the same thing goes for slowing down, the engines push against that momentum and all the components between the front of the ship and the engines have to hold up to this pressure ..
its like pushing a rock with a stick .. the bigger the rock, the bigger the stick must be to survive the force needed to push the rock.

Hmm .. actually thats a argument for acceleration restictions
not for overall speed ^^

Now ship momentum would be one hell of a thing to implement

speeding up, breaking, firing broadsides while drifting past each other .. ouch

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

Just implement QNP and let player's decide for themselves; this is already a solved problem. Note that the linked article is for SE4, but the same concept applies. All you have to add is handling the combat acceleration rates in SE5.

On the scale of a 4X game, momentum is entirely detrimental to gameplay. In a flight sim, its great to try to factor it into your play. But when you have fleets of 100+ ships to control, all it does is add several layers of migraine to the system.

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