Is there any reason to build small ships?

[NeonSturm]

Funny how 20 point-defence turrets lag the server and then someone suggests 200 to 300 drone entities.

From my experience you need quite a lot of drones to make a difference in giant ship battles. Enough to at least make the server not melting a concern.

Depends on the size of drones. "Drones" itself just means "unmanned expendables".
In my post I mean "drones to defend a ship from having it's weak spots exploited", not "drone-spam to overwhelm a bigger target".

 

[Gasboy]

The biggest ship I have built is about 3-3.5 k mass, but most of my ships are in the 150-300 mass in size.

In the small amount of testing I've done, a fleet will always smash a single ship of equivalent mass. Losing a gun on a large ship is much more damaging than losing a few small ships out of many. Losing shields is the large ship's death knell.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Funny how 20 point-defence turrets lag the server and then someone suggests 200 to 300 drone entities.
Depends on the size of drones. "Drones" itself just means "unmanned expendables".
In my post I mean "drones to defend a ship from having it's weak spots exploited", not "drone-spam to overwhelm a bigger target".

That's a fair point. Can't say I know how good the AI is for that, but maybe eventually?

 

[NeonSturm]

The biggest ship I have built is about 3-3.5 k mass, but most of my ships are in the 150-300 mass in size.

In the small amount of testing I've done, a fleet will always smash a single ship of equivalent mass. Losing a gun on a large ship is much more damaging than losing a few small ships out of many. Losing shields is the large ship's death knell.

Yes, but flying many small ships doesn't give you the feel of owning something as valuable as the ship you can easily blow up.

Maybe with the advent of teleporters it changed. You may use them to connect your ships to a single interior. Nobody has done it jet (and it would cause a lack of something if some of your ships blew up).

 

[jontyfreack]

Spoiler: i have done some testing

35 termogons vs that ship (I forgot the name of it, however it is awesome and I would consider it medium sized) nids won in 15 minutes. I conducted a similar experiment with 5000 termogons against a very large capital (1 hour of 1fps later) still termogons won...might be because I just went on cost not mass for that one, but hey the termogon is a small ship made mostly out of terrain. what I am currently doing is testing out a mixed fleet of 100 termogons and homogons against another capital sized ship. so far it is even. will update as it goes on

 

[Lecic]

Soon, there might be a limit on how fast you can expand (miners can only be built/purchased for resources you obtain via missions or with play-time). You may have to protect this expansion with other blocks to not lose "miners gained with play-time".

I'm almost 100% sure the devs have no plans to massively limit players ability to mine by doing something as moronic as this.

Tiny : Everything smaller than a manned craft with RP-cockpit at least.
Small : A fighter/interceptor/shuttle for 1-4 players/NPCs with 2 small OR 1 a bit larger turret and minimal + uncomfortable interior space.
Medium : A ship that can at max take 1 small craft and has 3-8 crew members.
Large : A ship with multiple docking bays : 1 medium 2 small and 4 tiny, or twice as much. Crew = 3 + crew for dock-able entities.
Huge : Warships which only show up when 3-5 Large are already involved. Serial-Eaters of asteroids. Ships that drain the stock of a trading station. Warp-Gate deployers.
Extra : The biggest unclassified ships your faction possesses, space-whales and stations.

In my classification, a ship possesses all abilities of ships a class below them - even those of different categories. The mass difference is about 8x to 16x to lower class, so this shouldn't be much of a problem.

Light versions use only the minimal specification. Medium versions beat light ones, Heavy versions can beat a next-class ship if 2-3 work together.

This classification system doesn't really say anything about the actual size of a craft, which is the most important part of a size-based classification system.

 

[Keptick]

Funny how 20 point-defence turrets lag the server and then someone suggests 200 to 300 drone entities.
Depends on the size of drones. "Drones" itself just means "unmanned expendables".
In my post I mean "drones to defend a ship from having it's weak spots exploited", not "drone-spam to overwhelm a bigger target".

The drones don't all collide with each other. As such, 200-300 drones generally lags less than 20pd turrets.

 

[NeonSturm]

This classification system doesn't really say anything about the actual size of a craft, which is the most important part of a size-based classification system.

Think about all possible 1-man craft. Then add a cockpit + 1 toilet and 2 sleeping bunks you have to share when carrying 4 peoples. Don't add a dining room, use a 1x2x2m for storing and cooking food. This RP-space then takes about 10% of your ship or less - the rest being energy, weapons, jump-drive, … That makes an interceptor.

Spoiler: read more …

For a heavy shuttle it should carry 6-10 crew members with their own bunks and a meeting room designed for 10. It still needs to be able to escape a planet and go efficiently FTL.
From that, 3k blocks in 21x 19y 31z minimum (3/4 being empty). I have built a ship 17x 8y 20z without bunks for 10 and dinner-room.
But I am still figuring out details. 31x 31y 31z should suffice no matter what.

Larger classes are mainly defined by fitting the minimum requirements of carrying 1 of the class below and 2-8 of the class below that one + fitting all requirements of all categories 1 class below (fighter, trader, shuttle).
Class2-light should have 150% firepower of Class1-heavy and Class2-medium 150% of Class1-light if it is a combat ship. For a trader cargo space matters, For a miner, mining beams.

 

[Lecic]

Think about all possible 1-man craft. Then add a cockpit + 1 toilet and 2 sleeping bunks you have to share when carrying 4 peoples. Don't add a dining room, use a 1x2x2m for storing and cooking food. This RP-space then takes about 10% of your ship or less - the rest being energy, weapons, jump-drive, … That makes an interceptor.

Spoiler: read more …

For a heavy shuttle it should carry 6-10 crew members with their own bunks and a meeting room designed for 10. It still needs to be able to escape a planet and go efficiently FTL.
From that, 3k blocks in 21x 19y 31z minimum (3/4 being empty). I have built a ship 17x 8y 20z without bunks for 10 and dinner-room.
But I am still figuring out details. 31x 31y 31z should suffice no matter what.

Larger classes are mainly defined by fitting the minimum requirements of carrying 1 of the class below and 2-8 of the class below that one + fitting all requirements of all categories 1 class below (fighter, trader, shuttle).
Class2-light should have 150% firepower of Class1-heavy and Class2-medium 150% of Class1-light if it is a combat ship. For a trader cargo space matters, For a miner, mining beams.

Crew quarter size can vary massively between ships, though, and this isn't even a real system in the game yet. In order of most to least usefulness of classifying ships... Block count, mass, dimensions, crew capabilities.

 

[NeonSturm]

Block count, mass, dimensions, crew capabilities.

Crew capabilities define block count I want to use - which defines mass.​

In class-1, a light ship (except these for person-transport) should be 1-person only. A medium ship for 1-2, a heavy should require 2 crew members to be fully effective (NPC-crew)
Other classes have to be 3+ what you can dock which is at least 1 of the lower class and 2-8 from the next lower class.​

crew quarter size can vary massively between ships, though, and this isn't even a real system in the game yet.

That is why each class should have 150% firepower from the previous class at least. Docket entities can supply more firepower when used as fighters.

This + adding minimum requirements from all other categories lower-class ships + 15% mass increase because interior space defines the size.​

 

[Gasboy]

Yes, but flying many small ships doesn't give you the feel of owning something as valuable as the ship you can easily blow up.

Sure it does. I would be just as proud of a fleet of small/medium ships as I would be with one titan. Especially if the fleet was of equivalent mass.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Crew capabilities define block count I want to use - which defines mass.
In class-1, a light ship (except these for person-transport) should be 1-person only. A medium ship for 1-2, a heavy should require 2 crew members to be fully effective (NPC-crew)
Other classes have to be 3+ what you can dock which is at least 1 of the lower class and 2-8 from the next lower class.

That is why each class should have 150% firepower from the previous class at least. Docket entities can supply more firepower when used as fighters.

This + adding minimum requirements from all other categories lower-class ships + 15% mass increase because interior space defines the size.​

I don't know dude, mass still might be the way to go. We don't know how essential crew will be and it could also lead to some weird exceptions where someones research frigate is classified as a battleship, or vise versa, a skeleton crew tricks the game into thinking a battleship is a frigate.

Right now I think the best classification of ships is a system used inside of individual factions and not something that applies to the game as a whole.

 

[NeonSturm]

Right now I think the best classification of ships is a system used inside of individual factions and not something that applies to the game as a whole.

But what if a faction is active on 2 servers and each server has a mandatory classification system? :p
I would be happy if SM would provide a default and let server owners tweak it.

 

[Sgtwisky]

as far as classifications, I think as far as "Size" related, block count is the most accurate. While if your talking "capabilities" Mass Seems to be a much better way to compare. Then you have the third method which is based off of the ships "Role" that its designed to play.

When talking about small ships, I believe we are discussing the size of the vessel. So if you just want to talk in box diminutions it would in theory work. I'm not sure how well mass translates to size now that I'm thinking about it. I have what by mass should be a small ship, but is in fact much bigger then what I would consider small in size.

I think a single ship can be in multiple classes, depending on the system used. and each system has a purpose. For example you could have a ship that is smallish, but heavy due to all the advanced armor its decorated with. It may only have the combat ability of a fighter, the weight of a medium ship, and the role of tanking Isanth shots...

I think its more important to have multiple class systems when talking about diff aspects of a ship. And based off its role, and its abilities, you bestow its class name like Battleship, Destroyer, Carrier, ect.

Just my random thoughts when I noticed the classification discussion here.

 

[Captainredfox]

My idea of small is under 3k mass, medium is 3-10k and anything above is large.

Lock-ons are the easiest way to take out small ships and their perfect long range tracking nature negates one major advantage of small ships: being a smaller target.
It should take longer to lock onto ships that are smaller than you, similarly to eve. That would even make missile turrets good! 90% of my deaths in small ships were from missiles at ranges that a cannon would never hit at.

Heck, if that's too drastic even a lock-on alarm would help a lot.

 

[Lecic]

But what if a faction is active on 2 servers and each server has a mandatory classification system?

Any server with a mandatory class system (that isn't a customized RP server) is a bad server.

 

[jontyfreack]

but then comes in the advantage of a SMALL ship, they can out manoeuvre missiles at range, and generally can outrun them. so if anything missiles and cannons don't work against small ships, unless it is small ship vs small ship....beams on the other hand, if they are set up with explosive effect, they will do some serious damage to small ship systems.

 

[NeonSturm]

Any server with a mandatory class system (that isn't a customized RP server) is a bad server.

The point you note in brackets is a valid point too :p sm40k.enjin.com + some StarTrek server?

but then comes in the advantage of a SMALL ship, they can out manoeuvre missiles at range, and generally can outrun them. so if anything missiles and cannons don't work against small ships, unless it is small ship vs small ship....beams on the other hand, if they are set up with explosive effect, they will do some serious damage to small ship systems.

OK … what is the downside of beams? I bet some ships are larger than their beam's range, or at least cut their range in half by placing them on opposite ship ends.

Also you need at least 2 turrets to cover all sides (except you place them on a ring that can rotate toward the target). But generally, if a ship has turrets, it only has 1/2 strength at some spot.
This has to be taken into consideration at ship sizes beyond a point where turning is lower than going-around-target, which also depends on opponent setups.

 

[Lecic]

The point you note in brackets is a valid point too :p sm40k.enjin.com + some StarTrek server?

Well, you'd generally be using two different fleets on those servers anyway, so I'm not sure why it matters.

OK … what is the downside of beams? I bet some ships are larger than their beam's range, or at least cut their range in half by placing them on opposite ship ends.

Considering how the default beam range is 2.5km (0.5x sector size), I'm going to go out on a limb and say there are VERY FEW ships that are larger than the range of the beams.

 

[jontyfreack]

yep beams have terrible range. and rely on the pilot/ai to be incredibly accurate to hit a small target.

I don't even bother with turrets because they just make the ship too big to be as efficient in combat as possible. for me at least, piloting a small ship with lots of forwards facing guns, that can move like a dark eldar Wych, will out do a group of ships of a similar size that cannot bring their armament to bear so quickly. and also will out do most turrets, because like you said, they have a cone of fire, whereas a small fighter does not have a defined cone of fire as it can simply turn to face a target.

basically it comes to. A. not being hit and can out manoeuvre an opponent, and being in a swarm, or squadron. B. tanking shots, being able to dish out a lot of firepower on your own.

or C. have a carrier