Aeson -> RE: Escort & Capital ship type? (10/20/2014 7:39:03 PM)
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quote:
As to Naval Doctrine, we could always impose rules that limit the number in class to something like... For every 3 Escorts you can build 1 Frigate. For every 3 Frigates, 1 Destroyer... For every 4 Cruisers you can build 1 Capital/Carrier. This kind of balance is rather arbitrary and silly. 160 ships before I can build my first capital ship or carrier? No thanks. Especially not when 108 of them are escorts and a further 36 are frigates. Going into World War Two, the Royal Navy had 22 battleships, battlecruisers, and carriers (combined total), 66 cruisers, 184 destroyers, 45 escort and patrol craft, and 60 submarines, according to Wikipedia. The US Navy at present has 10 carriers, 22 cruisers, 62 destroyers, 10 frigates, and 76 "escorts" if you class submarines and littoral combat vessels as "escorts," again according to Wikipedia. By your rules, the Royal Navy should have had about 3542 ships going in to the Second World War and the modern US Navy should have about 1610 ships, over two thirds of which are "escorts" - types that are easy enough to build rapidly when you need them - and if you include frigates, nearly nine tenths of the fleet is composed of types which are barely used during peacetime. What you really should be doing, if you find yourself lacking a reason to build small ships, is finding a reason to make them rather than imposing arbitrary and ridiculous limitations on fleet composition - why do I need to build 108 escorts, 36 frigates, 12 destroyers, and 4 cruisers before my shipyards magically become capable of building a capital ship? Why do my shipyards suddenly lose the ability to build a capital ship once I build that one ship, at least until my fleet's size reaches 216 escorts, 72 frigatse, 24 destroyers, and 8 cruisers? Instead, make it so that having an adequate number of escorts patrolling the trade lanes gives a 10% bonus on trade income and tourism due to increased feeling of security felt by the civilians who know that there's always an escort within a reasonable distance able to render assistance in case of accident or attack, which increases their willingness to engage in shipping and tourism. Give all colonies in a star system a happiness bonus when they have their own dedicated defensive squadron. Maybe countermeasures work better on smaller ships (of course, given that it's not all that clear how countermeasures work currently, it's not clear that this isn't the case already), or maybe smaller ships are relatively more difficult to detect at long range (e.g. something like Long Range Scanner detection range = basic detection range multiplied by [0.7 + 0.3*(ship size)/1500] or some such thing). Now you have a reason to build little ships, because you have a reason to have large numbers of ships and it's cheaper to have lots of little ships than lots of big ships. It's true that this is still arbitrary and a bit silly, but it's far less arbitrary and silly than the "my shipyards forgot how to build capital ships and can only rediscover this arcane technique after I build 160 assorted other vessels." You can keep your battle fleets of big warships, but now there's a reason why you'd have little ships to go with them, even if they don't accompany them into battle. That being said, I don't feel that there's a significant problem with the current system. It's entirely realistic for several little ships to be at best a poor match for a single larger ship in a straight fight. I feel that the larger issue is more that the game's economy allows you to support an all big ship navy while providing adequate coverage for your empire.
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