WARNING: This is an opinion/discussion page. This is not fact, just my opinion. If you don't like it that is fine, just don't even try to tell me it is wrong. Cause you won't win.
Having read a lot of complaints about gigantic ships, peoples opinions on their over powered capability, how they need to be balance, and their overall usefulness, I decided to put my on bit of opinion in on the mater.
[First] Aesthetics
Smooth:
One of the biggest early improvement to graphics came with anti-aliasing.
It smoothed out text and rough edges.
Sadly Starmade has no way of Anti-Aliasing your ship so if you want cleaner lines, guess what. You have to make it bigger. If you can fit more blocks in it "smooths" out your edges and angles.
Starmade blocks only support 45 degree angles, so to get good looking smooth odd angles, you will need more space. Something that requires a bigger ship
Details:
Simple, more space = finer details.
Lots of ships have interesting fine details all across them. Armor plates, vents, hatches, groves, pipes, and other small details. You can fit fine details on a "small" ship. This is similar to the effect of focusing a camera. Its impossible due to the size restrictions of voxel based building to make fine details on a small ship. There is a limit to the detail that smaller ships can attain. If you want better looking finer details, it has to be bigger to accommodate them.
Conclusion:
If you want a really nice looking ship in a voxel system, it has to be bigger. You can fit more into the details every time you make it bigger.
[Second] Over All Power
Square Cube Law:
The major misconception about massive ships is the power behind them. If you have a ship that is twice as big as another ship, it has 4x more system power in the ship, not double.
So a ship twice the size of a smaller sized duplicate would take 4 of the smaller ships to equal out the power of the larger ship.
Imposing Restrictions:
Imposing Restrictions of block would cause more power problems. It could either simply make an optimal ship size that would standardize the ship sizing and decrees the overall power of all ships.
It simply is what is should be:
The power of larger ships is (Warning incoming opinion) as it should be. People ask for round planets and more realistic this and that is Starmade. Well this is a realistic law that governs the real world and is exactly how things work. You will never be able to complete and objective bigger then you with out help.
Hull to system ratio:
The Average Ship has a consistent hull thickness of 1 block. When you build larger ships, the ratio of the amount of interior space to exterior covering increases. In a simple 1D explanation
So doubling the ships total size makes the interior space ratio much higher allowing for more systems to be added beyond the normal expected amount from the square cubed law. this is where the power problem gains some traction. because of this. a ship double the size of a smaller one would actual require more then 4 of the normal versions to equal its power. This is because the smaller ones attribute more of the total space to hull the the larger ship has to.
[Third] My Opinion
(Warning major incoming opinion) Larger ships are often show pieces or stat busters. Making very large ships takes time, but does pay out possibly over its intended amount. With more open space on the interiors of slightly larger ship can make enormous difference in the overall power of a ship. The problem is this is how things work it real life, and because of that I think it is EXACTLY as it should be. I am not saying all thing are balance, I am merely saying that the amount of power of larger ships is done correctly.
[Last] Conclusion
There are lots of other problems not considered here. These are simply problems I have not heard about and thought they should be pointed out. If you have any additional concerns for larger ships, or a dispute to one of my claims above, feel free to comment and tell me.
Thanks,
The Wozard
[DOUBLEPOST=1418494600,1418494463][/DOUBLEPOST]Wow. That is embarrassing. The title is miss spelled, and I can't find a way to fix that.
oops
Having read a lot of complaints about gigantic ships, peoples opinions on their over powered capability, how they need to be balance, and their overall usefulness, I decided to put my on bit of opinion in on the mater.
[First] Aesthetics
Smooth:
One of the biggest early improvement to graphics came with anti-aliasing.
It smoothed out text and rough edges.
Sadly Starmade has no way of Anti-Aliasing your ship so if you want cleaner lines, guess what. You have to make it bigger. If you can fit more blocks in it "smooths" out your edges and angles.
Starmade blocks only support 45 degree angles, so to get good looking smooth odd angles, you will need more space. Something that requires a bigger ship
Details:
Simple, more space = finer details.
Lots of ships have interesting fine details all across them. Armor plates, vents, hatches, groves, pipes, and other small details. You can fit fine details on a "small" ship. This is similar to the effect of focusing a camera. Its impossible due to the size restrictions of voxel based building to make fine details on a small ship. There is a limit to the detail that smaller ships can attain. If you want better looking finer details, it has to be bigger to accommodate them.
Conclusion:
If you want a really nice looking ship in a voxel system, it has to be bigger. You can fit more into the details every time you make it bigger.
[Second] Over All Power
Square Cube Law:
The major misconception about massive ships is the power behind them. If you have a ship that is twice as big as another ship, it has 4x more system power in the ship, not double.
So a ship twice the size of a smaller sized duplicate would take 4 of the smaller ships to equal out the power of the larger ship.
Imposing Restrictions:
Imposing Restrictions of block would cause more power problems. It could either simply make an optimal ship size that would standardize the ship sizing and decrees the overall power of all ships.
It simply is what is should be:
The power of larger ships is (Warning incoming opinion) as it should be. People ask for round planets and more realistic this and that is Starmade. Well this is a realistic law that governs the real world and is exactly how things work. You will never be able to complete and objective bigger then you with out help.
Hull to system ratio:
The Average Ship has a consistent hull thickness of 1 block. When you build larger ships, the ratio of the amount of interior space to exterior covering increases. In a simple 1D explanation
So doubling the ships total size makes the interior space ratio much higher allowing for more systems to be added beyond the normal expected amount from the square cubed law. this is where the power problem gains some traction. because of this. a ship double the size of a smaller one would actual require more then 4 of the normal versions to equal its power. This is because the smaller ones attribute more of the total space to hull the the larger ship has to.
[Third] My Opinion
(Warning major incoming opinion) Larger ships are often show pieces or stat busters. Making very large ships takes time, but does pay out possibly over its intended amount. With more open space on the interiors of slightly larger ship can make enormous difference in the overall power of a ship. The problem is this is how things work it real life, and because of that I think it is EXACTLY as it should be. I am not saying all thing are balance, I am merely saying that the amount of power of larger ships is done correctly.
[Last] Conclusion
There are lots of other problems not considered here. These are simply problems I have not heard about and thought they should be pointed out. If you have any additional concerns for larger ships, or a dispute to one of my claims above, feel free to comment and tell me.
Thanks,
The Wozard
[DOUBLEPOST=1418494600,1418494463][/DOUBLEPOST]Wow. That is embarrassing. The title is miss spelled, and I can't find a way to fix that.
oops