It's a bit complex, and the name is 'misleading' but the net effect is that you can in-fact add more components to all of your ships. The maximum space on the hulls will increase, but you will note that many times the components get somewhat larger as well. Why they chose to do it this way, I can't say. Maybe it is more convenient from a programming perspective. Either way, it will let you stack more things on your ships.

ok that still leaves on question unanswered. why do components get bigger based on the size hull you use

it makes sense for some parts to require more space, like engines. the same amount of power that would make a small hull go 4 moves wouldnt have the strength to push a bigger hull that fast.

weapon and sensor techs, however, have no explaination that i am aware of

IMO it is the larger hulls that are outclassed.

I would like to see weapons reach a level that would require a larger hull. As it is, when you have all the minaturization you don't really need the large and huge hulls. In all my games I have only built large or huge ships a couple of times and that was just for fun, not because I needed them.

It makes some sense that mega weapons like doom rays and black hole erupters would only fit on a mega hull.

ok that still leaves on question unanswered. why do components get bigger based on the size hull you use

Because you can't put a 4 cylender Geo metro Engine in a dogde 3 ton and expect it to go very far???
So bigger ships having more mass need bigger engines to overcome inertia.

life support.. If you put a one room unit a/c in a stadium it's probbaly going to get a little hot in there with the 12k people

So you obviously need more life support to support more life?

The technology should be called "effiecent" utilizaition of the space, more than Micronization..
Remember this technology goes hand in hand with the building technology.
Miniturization, just makes things more Economicaly efffiecent in size.. Think of it like the old computers that took up a room, compatired to the new computers that do 700x as much and fit on your desk... That is miniturization.. They made it small and more effiecnt so you can fit 500 more computers in the same room., where before you could only put one.. This is obviously not happening in the game.. if it did you would not need to research better lasers, or engines which for the most part are getting smaller and not really more powerfull each time you research a new one..

Effiecency is.. the old hull that had 50 points for for a standered piece of equipment. You make a more effiecent hull that moves a bulk head one way making yours hull more efficent. Or you can find a lighter stronger matierial that is more efficent so you need less of it. and that gives you more effiecent space..

So in reality you would need a very Efficent 4 cylender engine to preform like the dodge turbo diesl engine.. which will not happen.. You can't put the small engine in the larger ship.. But you can make the larger engine room more effiecent and it make more room for more engines that are the same size... If you want a smaller engine well you need research the next gen engine..

I hope that confused you enough, and you stop saying that didnt answer the question..

And to answer your next question.. Yes, I am a baulderdash master! (the board game were you get points for making up the most believeable lie)

It ain't shown on the tech tree itself from what I can see, but if you look at the files for the ship components you'll find an entry for each of them, and each gives you the fixed size, ie the base size, and the modified size for each hull. The actual component miniaturisation occurs through reseaching up the tech tree through the follow-through techs before you get the new ones.

Basics is you want to create a laser fighter on a tiny hull. Now to start with you've got a 16 space hull with nothing on it and a standard laser which takes a base of 10 and a mod of 5 to account for the extra odds and ends like mountings. That means your basic laser fighter (The Starfury) has one laser on it because it's not got the room for anything else.

Later you complete the Laser 2 research, miniaturising the laser components enough that its base size is now 8 with the same mod. Now if you don't put anything else on the Starfury you can fit two of the new generation lasers on there. You want more lasers on the same size ship, so you go either Laser 3, shrinking it to 6 space, or miniaturisation 1 giving you an extra 15% spaces on the hull, bumping it to 17. Neither alone does the job, but together you've a 17 space Starfury which can equip two laser 3s and have space for extras.

Eventually you gain the last laser tech, meaning your Starfury can have a Laser 1 (10), Laser 2 (8), Laser 3 (6), Laser 4 (5) or laser 5 (4) as its weapon. Each generation shrinking the components down to give you the same stuff for less space. You can also get more miniaturisation techs, each giving more room on the hulls as they work by miniaturising the required components of the ship itself, namely the powerplant, main engine, core lifesupport, command and control systems, etc.

The miniaturized guide to miniaturization

Doing some research of my own, found a few questions about miniaturization and not many answers (none that I could find), so a couple of hours of research and testing later …. Here it is.

Each of your miniaturization tecks adds to a total pool of a miniaturization bonus. This bonus is applied to your hulls space i.e. A "medium" hull ship has a base size of 38. With 25% miniaturization (Enhanced miniaturization) it will have a new hull size of 47 (38x1.25=47.5)

I think that was pretty basic, let’s go on

Where some peoples problem comes from is that sometimes the space your components (engines, weapons ect) takes up, is more than before you got your miniaturization tecks. Well they do. The space your hull components take up is a multiplier of your hull size, so if you increase your hull size your components may take up more room (but you will have heaps of extra room from the miniaturization process, so whatever)

Using the same case as the one above
When equipping an Ion drive to a Medium hull, with zero miniaturization, the ion drive will take up 7 spaces but with 25% miniaturization the same ion drive will take up 8 spaces, so much for making things smaller eh?
The math

The base size of an Ion drive is 4+9% of hull size, so when your hull gets bigger …. So does the stuff
Base size of component = c
Final component size = C
Hull size = H
Hull size modifier = h

h x H + c = C

9% x 47 +c = C
4.23 + 4 = C
8.23 = C

If you replace the 47 (hull size with 25% miniaturization) with 38 then you will come up with 7.42 (seems to round down always)

Well I hope that helps some of you out their that are tweaking there warships to the nth degree (that is what was looking into myself)

my info comes from https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Miniaturization Link
and the Galactopedia https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=162&AID=105605 Link

hope this explains miniturization for you

Selous, yeah basically what I thought though I didn't do the math.

Is there any rules of the thumb though on what to do to avoid such effects? What is the worse case scenario in terms of mininturaization causing the size of the component to be worse? Increasing by 1, isn't too bad, considering that i usually have slack space anyway in most designs, though it seems strange that tech designed to make things smaller, does the opposite.

Seems to me that this counter miniturizing effect will be worse, the more h is. In other words if your component scales a lot with hull size, minituralization might hurt. Correct me I'm wrong, but beyond a certain level of minimuraization, for all researchable components and all hull sizes it will be helpful. Is there such a level? What level is it?


In general does mintiturzation techs work better with bigger (say medium++) hulls ?

What's the component with the largest h?

i think the reason that stardock apply the miniturisation to the hull rather than the components themselves should be quite easy to understand:

a 15% drop in a size 10 item would make it size 8.5
a 15% drop in a size 8.5 item would make it size 7.225

and so on. even with rounding its messy. and once rounding is introduced per unit the error range increases. there is a way around this, but it adds to the number of maths operations needed to be satisfactory.

with hulls it is easier to do as the numbers involved are larger and need only be applied once per hull rather than each unit to be attached. you only round the final figure onceif at all.

it is far more efficient and appropriate than applying it to the parts themselves.

But it obviously offends peoples sensibilities, which is more than fair.....