zenkmander
Posts: 62
Joined: 3/26/2012 Status: offline
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I can think of a couple scenarios where smaller ships may have an advantage, but keep in mind that this game as a whole is very situational (depends on starting settings and playstyle). Capturing Ships Early to mid game, players are likely to have many pirate raids against their colonies. To save money and resources on building my own ships, I like to capture these pirate raiders. As I research bigger construction sizes, I find it better to keep my capture ships on the smaller side due to speed and maneuverability. In my experience it's best to have 3-4 assault pods per capture ship, plus maybe a tractor beam, and that obviously uses space that weapons would otherwise occupy. If I built these ships to max size, I would run into diminishing returns on thruster speed and vectoring. Since enemy ships usually try to escape once shields are down, speed and turn rate on capture ships is of utmost importance to me. Invading Colonies If I'm trying to capture a fortified enemy colony, I like my troop transports to be fast and agile. If I max out their size and throw on a ton of troop compartments, I'll run into diminishing returns on speed again. I like to give them just enough shields/armor to get through the enemy's defenses (takes a bit of trial and error of course). If I make them big and lumbering, that gives the enemy that much more time to reinforce with other ships and possibly destroy a transport and the troops onboard. Since troops can take a while to recruit, I want them to get landed as soon as possible and not be sitting ducks in space. Expansive Empire (This depends entirely on starting sizes. I tend to run Occasional Colonies, so empires end up a little more spread out. If you have Plentiful Colonies this might not apply) My newer fringe colonies (non-strategic locations) tend not to have spaceports or full integration with my supply line at first (ie lower priority when it comes to stocking fuel). I assign a fleet of smaller ships to guard these since they're not necessarily significant (no expensive facilities built, no local refueling point besides maybe a gas mining station). If I go to war, I'd prefer to lose these cheaper defensive ships instead of my big ones. When enemy empires attack my colonies, they usually bring relatively large fleets, and I can't have comparatively large fleets guarding every single colony for obvious reasons. If I did assign my big ships to these defensive fleets, the number of ships in those fleets would be lower, so as not to crash my economy; and even though it'd be fewer big ships, the overall resource cost (ie chromium) would still be higher than a more plentiful fleet of smaller ships with less extravagant and/or numerous components. Not to mention that since there wouldn't be a spaceport, those bigger and slower ships would spend more time refueling, thus highlighting their maintenance costs in contrast to the costs of smaller ships. If I have the biggest, baddest, most expensive ships around, I want them to be as active as possible. ---------- Again this all depends on playstyle. I just wanted to offer another perspective so people don't outright condemn smaller ship designs. I think they do have their uses. EDIT: There are also escorts to keep in mind. Every now and then enemies will send some light ships to attack mining stations, resort bases etc. These might have decent defenses, but occasionally one will be outgunned. I like to keep my own escorts just big enough to counter such skirmishes. I see no use in making escorts overly large, just the right size to get the job done. More than that is overkill in my opinion. I could have my big cruisers handle those, but I don't think it's fuel-efficient at all, so overkill again.
< Message edited by zenkmander -- 12/13/2013 8:47:22 PM >
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