Is there any reason to build small ships?

[Master Anubis]

I been playing this game on release since before steam release. The issue has always been, is there any reason you build small ships like at all. Everyone has always build large ships for pvp and pve with massive amounts of turrets. I once even saw a ship that was literally nothing but massive turrets and that was it. Is there ANY point in building a small to medium size ship at all?

 

[Top 4ce]

I been playing this game on release since before steam release. The issue has always been, is there any reason you build small ships like at all. Everyone has always build large ships for pvp and pve with massive amounts of turrets. I once even saw a ship that was literally nothing but massive turrets and that was it. Is there ANY point in building a small to medium size ship at all?

Speed, movement, and scouting and hunting down ships.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Convenience, mainly. Orientating in a 500m+ ship is a hassle, whilst in a smaller ship it's pretty instant. Makes getting from place to place much easier. Smaller ships are also much cheaper to build, so if you have a way of mobilising them they can be cost effective.

 

[Sgtwisky]

My reasons for small ships:
1. You can replace them easy if they get wrecked. In fact, I would say if you can't afford to replace the ship, don't fly it.
2. You can use them to zip around a system and not be bogged down turning or fiddling with thrust.
3. They make good claoker/jammer ships for scouting enemy locations.
4. Sometimes you can have TOO much firepower. For example, if you want to farm pirates. You would not want a cannon that kills the station super fast.
5. Deception? You could use a small - medium craft most of the time. And when that other faction or player decides your a little fish and comes after you, you pull out your battleship.

Lastly and most notorious.... Drones. Did you know we have a 70+ page drone thread? All about small designs and how drones can often take on ships that are 3, 4 and some times 5 or 6 times their combined mass. If you care to look I suggest the first few pages (like 1-5) for the basic concepts for drones. As well as the last page to checkout the epic folding drone..... Unless we gained a page sense I last looked at it.

Drone Thread link: https://starmadedock.net/threads/the-ultimate-drone-r-d-thread.3246/

 

[godmars]

I been playing this game on release since before steam release. The issue has always been, is there any reason you build small ships like at all.

only if you're a masochist

it really depends on how 'small' you're talking, but ships on the lower end of the scale are effectively inferior to basically everything outside of being able to out turn bigger ships

 

[Keptick]

For combat: lolno

Other reasons: Landing on planets, having a sexy yacht, not causing a server to lag to death, shuttles, RP, lack of $$$, etc...

Edit: Almost forgot drones.

 

[J_MASTER]

Small ships vs Big ships has always been a problem from what I've seen.
It's not so important to fix now because the creation of larger ships is partially due to there being no "end game" other than salvaging materials and building stations/ships.

In the future once more gameplay elements have been added, I would expect a kind of "upkeep tax" to be added to ships every so often for them to continue functioning. That way it would be unreasonable to fly a huge ship around everywhere due to the scaling upkeep costs to size; whereas flying and engaging with medium/small ships would be more common due to the risk/cost involved.

Starmade in it's current state is a who has the bigger "ship" competition. I'm sure some servers offer competitions or limits to allow for even play with greater build variability.

 

[jontyfreack]

for me I just build as small as I can whilst looking cool. and if I end up fighting a big ship, usually being small means the big guys main guns cant hit you, so you spend a lot of time avoiding turrets and slowly picking them off until the big guy either surrenders, or manages to hit you.

also if you loose a big ship its gone, for a long time. loose a small ship, you can get it back almost instantly.


also drones

and swarms of small tyranids will wreck anything as it would seem

 

[Blodge]

Any reason to build small ships? What else are you going to protect that small exhaust port with?

 

[Top 4ce]

only if you're a masochist

it really depends on how 'small' you're talking, but ships on the lower end of the scale are effectively inferior to basically everything outside of being able to out turn bigger ships

I disagree. Raw combat ability doesn't tell a whole story. Scouting hunting and just traviling are much more useful on smaller craft. A lot of systems are much more efficient in smaller craft, two big ones being thrust and overdrive. If you can't catch me, you can't kill me.

 

[MrFURB]

Due to smaller profiles, better use of efficiency curves, and better options for re-positioning, a fight between fully player-piloted forces of equal mass will more often than not be in favor of those with smaller but more numerous craft. Though that isn't the point of this discussion.

Exploration, scouting, shuttling, blockade running, and other roles that have the potential to be rewarding to more nimble designs are yet to be the focus of development. The most rewarding activities in the game all hinge on more defenses, more weapons, more salvage beams.
...That and a turret turn rate multiplier based on block count would help a bit as well.

 

[kiraen]

Let's not forget that fleet mechanics and NPC piloted ships are supposed be implemented at some point. The 'upkeep' of a large ship will probably be the salary of all the NPCs you'll need to hire just to make the behemoth functional.
Basically right now, it's just speed, maneuverabilty and cost. But there will be more to this game then just combat/PVP.

 

[jontyfreack]

and don't forget that they are perfect to get from A to B without any threat. because in a large ship you would get into combat if you encountered pirates, but with a small ship you could just fly through the fleet without as much as a pew being fired at you... because they wont be able to hit you.

also for transporting cargo I usually use a small ship because I don't have as much a risk as loosing all of it in one run. instead it will take multiple runs to move my cargo, but at least I wont loose all of it.

 

[timethatswasted]

Anything under 5k is essentially just decoration.
Unless it's a drone and you have a lot of them.

Great for travel, cargo hauling, and scouting.
It's kind of hard for small ships to fight each other now due to the recent changes to power and shield recharge.

Recently another player and I decided to have a little conflict over a planet and only wanted to use small ships. We each built a couple different designs over the course of a couple weeks, tested them out and we're ready to go. Then the changes to power and shields came down. Our little ships were no longer able to adequately power their weapons and were not able to overcome the new boosted shield recharge during combat. So we just kind of gave up

I've tried to make configs that boost small ships and nerf the standard Starmade PvP ship, but no one cares :D

 

[AtraUnam]

You can use them as bullets.

 

[Winterhome]

Anything under 5k is essentially just decoration.

Blocks or mass?
Because we've had a lot of success with ships in the 2k-5k mass range.

 

[godmars]

I disagree. Raw combat ability doesn't tell a whole story. Scouting hunting and just traviling are much more useful on smaller craft. A lot of systems are much more efficient in smaller craft, two big ones being thrust and overdrive. If you can't catch me, you can't kill me.

Again, it depends on what people think 'small' is.
I'm not saying all smaller ships are garbage. When I talk small I refer to ships < 2-3k blocks with compact dimensions. In situations like that building bigger is a straight upgrade aside from turn speed.

 

[jontyfreack]

most of the ships I make barely exceed 100m in any dimension. because I don't really see the point in spending so much time making one single large ship and docking turrets to it that take an insubordinate amount of time, when I can make a small ship that I can spend about half an hour on making it look good and be efficient in combat, and then make a swarm of them.

I build small so I can exploit any holes in a big ships hull to attack the systems directly, and a small swarm of small fighters to basically eat away at the shields of just about any large ship. (my idea of a small swarm however is 200....)

basically what I see the argument about big vs small is play style to be honest. basically do you want one massive titan with a hundred turrets, 500m of rp space, guns capable of tearing through entire super stations? or do you want a thousand tiny fighters to swarm anything, and slowly cut down its shields before mercilessly tearing apart the enemies hull and systems? (you will loose about half of your ships though...) or roughly a hundred frigates + destroyers to move as a massive fleet that will destroy most super stations, and will stop a lot of swarms of fighters from destroying all you have?

personally I prefer small, because it shows I don't have to compensate for something, and that I can block out the sun with tiny bugs that will literally eat the enemy. whilst still looking cool.

 

[Winterhome]

most of the ships I make barely exceed 100m in any dimension. because I don't really see the point in spending so much time making one single large ship and docking turrets to it that take an insubordinate amount of time, when I can make a small ship that I can spend about half an hour on making it look good and be efficient in combat, and then make a swarm of them.

I build small so I can exploit any holes in a big ships hull to attack the systems directly, and a small swarm of small fighters to basically eat away at the shields of just about any large ship. (my idea of a small swarm however is 200....)

basically what I see the argument about big vs small is play style to be honest. basically do you want one massive titan with a hundred turrets, 500m of rp space, guns capable of tearing through entire super stations? or do you want a thousand tiny fighters to swarm anything, and slowly cut down its shields before mercilessly tearing apart the enemies hull and systems? (you will loose about half of your ships though...) or roughly a hundred frigates + destroyers to move as a massive fleet that will destroy most super stations, and will stop a lot of swarms of fighters from destroying all you have?

personally I prefer small, because it shows I don't have to compensate for something, and that I can block out the sun with tiny bugs that will literally eat the enemy. whilst still looking cool.

brb firing swarm missiles

 

[jontyfreack]

yeah...swarm missiles do seem to very effective against my swarms. however I just put an AMS on each of them now, and well I think swarm fighters are the next swarm missiles.

tested with a swarmer at 10000dps and fired about 500 (ish, took a screenshot and counted...since lost screenshot because someone decided to move a few folders around and lost my starmade folder again....) without any AMS most of the fighters where taken out. fighters with cannon/cannon survived very well, and precede to destroy the missile battery. with AMS not even a single casualty (was not expecting it to be honest). however they didn't destroy the missile battery.
(the swarm size of fighters was small-ish '300')


so where's your swarm missiles now? ah that's right destroying about half a swarm of fighters, and those fiGHTERS SHALL REIGN SUPREME AND WILL DESTROY YOU WHILST YOU SLEEP...

keep in mind the fighters I am using are my homogon and the termogon. in swarms of around 200 they can destroy most capitals. a mixed swarm numbering around 350 will destroy any immobile capital. a laptop breaking mixed swarm of 1000 will, WILL destroy anything. ANYTHING I TELL YOU!!!!!!

but still, a large capital ships with swarmers did hold up pretty well. and a mixed fleet of frigates and destroyers (medium ships) won almost all the time, apart from the swarm of 1000 fighters.

so yeah, do you want swarm missiles or swarm fighters? a massive wall of explosives that might reach the target? or a wall of cannon fire that will reach the target, but only if the fighter isn't taken out?