There SHOULD be disparity between large and small ships, a large ship SHOULD win, (in one on one) because it has MORE weapons and armor and shields, its a fact of life larger better things win,
The disparsity I mean is not in capabilities between ships of different sizes but the ratio of their capabilities to requirements, price and risks involved. Since right now bigger = better, no matter stuff like actual intelligence and utility of design (merely a matter of combining enough blocks) and big is only slightly harder to get than small given blocks availability, we are in the bad situation where size creep is encouraged, rather than depending on the role of a ship.
A fact of life isn't just that 'larger things win' and in real life, if you want to play that card, 'better' also isn't always 'larger'. Size is often dictated by the role and the balance of the use of often expensive, very limited resources and the effectiveness of whatever the resources were spent on affected by limited ability to process said resources. It is not how it is in the game as, due to necessary simplicity, resources are nearly infinite, processing them to create something doesn't require any special skills or industrial base and utility of different spaceships in nearly every case scales with their size no matter their role and equally in every aspect. That is what is a problem.
Plus you, this crew takes up space, you're not getting free buffs or anything, besides that a small ship would run just fine without crew.
But the disparsity of relative improvement of capabilities of big ships and small ones get even bigger. Because extending the hull to even bigger to make even more space for more buffing-up crew isn't hard nor expensive, yet provides additional power to said ship. There's absolutely no fair counterpart of that in case of small ships. Thus, while crew would become a feature increasing strength of bigger ships, with them being merely a buff/useful addition rather than a requirement the problem already officially acknowledged by Schine and big part of community - capability of big ships scaling often unfairly with the size - becomes even worse.
Instead of encouraging range of ships for different tasks, the idea of buffs as so far shown would lead to necessity of making as big ships as possible. That would be rather sad both from the standpoint of balance AND aesthetics. Right now at least division of certain mass among multiple smaller ships makes them powerful as a collective - with the crew being additional buff even that wouldn't be the case.
Plus if you give people advantages for having a crew at least some people are going to want to have a crew, if not just for the role play value than for the advantages a crew brings.
I don't want the crew to be there just for roleplay value. And I am sure you'll notice that if you'll sacrifice some time to read again the posts I've made in this thread, including the one you're quoting. I don't want crew to be a decoration nor I want it to be buff - I want it to be vital, necessary element absolutely required by big ships for them to maintain their default capabilities, adding a degree of complexity and requirement of player to design their ship well, instead of following, again, the aforementioned fashion of 'we want stronger ship? let's just pile up more blocks'.
The best thing in a game, atleast in my mind is to have different ways of doing things, that opens the door for creativity and new ideas, and ways for those ideas to be made.
I already regarded the bit about creativity before. Having alternatives and several ways to go about doing stuff is good, I agree, but in this case I hope for crew to be integral part of the mechanics of creation of bigger vessels because it'd make for a great tool for balance and encouragement of smart ship design. Making it merely an alternative to a bunch of blocks more wouldn't be creative in my opinion, it would be a waste.
Creativity is important but it should never come at the price of gameplay. I'd rather have somewhat limited in certain regards but well-balanced and thought-through game than 'whatever goes' sandbox block combiner. That's why we do have mechanics and we have certain rules. Otherwise we could as well complain that for the sake of creativity, there shouldn't be this or that limitation - vide post above regarding AI ships and divine spaceship of kickass.
Remember, many of the larger ships on this website, available for download, have interiors already and room for a crew, why on earth would they stop making ships like that, if we gave them benefits for doing so.
Why on earth would the stop making ships like that in general, no matter if we give them benefits or not? They don't make those ships for any minmaxing mechanics now, after all. I'd rather think of a way to implement crew as a working, good feature on its own which may require interior rather by-the-way, rather than simple buff used as a bait to encourage people to make interiors to get more power.
