Can you give an example of components that do this?

It makes sense for engines to get bigger, since there is greater mass. Or life support, because of the greater volume that needs "supporting". Do sensor components, or weapons get bigger as well? I can't think of any valid reason to explain why that would be.

Ok good points regarding engines, life support, and armour. Size increases effect all components though. I don't accept size increases to weapons and other systems which operate independantly of ship size. Sensors, ECM, chaff, weapons, etc. Rather than conveying any sense of purpose the size increases are merely annoying.

In fact I'd be happy with what's already been suggested. Engines, support, and armor to scale with ship size. All other components to remain static.

ECM and chaff would have to be larger since it's trying to distract from a larger target. It could be argued that larger ships are giving off more drive emissions and other interference that would have to be compensated for in order to increase the sensor range, so having a sizemod for sensor modules does make some sense.

Just took a look at the XML file, and it looks like the only things that don't have a sizemod subelement are: Missile weapons (interesting implications there for Huge hulls ) and the colony/trade/constructor/troop transport modules. So, other than the other two weapon branches, I mostly agree with, or at least understand, their decisions on what gets a sizemod and what doesn't.

Rather than just looking at realism, what would the game play implications? Making no weapons have a sizemod would mean that offensive ability scales better than defensive ability in large ships. Would that be a desired effect? I'm undecided on that. Having sensors have no sizemod would mean that larger ships could extend their sensor range more easily than a small ship could. I don't see that as desireable.

I was attempting to highlight the viability of spending research and manufacturing effort in order to firstly attain large hulls, and then fit them out and build them. To a certain extent the rewards for this effort are diminished because component size increases with hull size. There are more gameplay factors to consider, other than those you mentioned Popup.

Without serious miniturisation efforts a large hull is barely more capable than smaller versions. Sometimes I find I can only fit one extra small component, such a life support or sensor module. Sometimes one extra weapon or defense module can be fitted. Usually not.

Gameplay aside, scaling the size of certain components to ship size just does not make sense. The irrefutable fact is that large ships ARE and should be more capable than smaller ships.

Hmmm... While I'm thinking about scaling components, the usefulness of the tiny hull comes to mind. There is barely enough room on that hull for a weapon and an engine, sometimes not even that. I reckon some review is needed there.

A large ship *should* be able to extend its sensor range more easily than a small ship. They have more room to add in more sensor packages, and add in more processing bits to better merge their sensor inputs.

Star Pilot: You're missing my point. The same volume of sensor equipment will be more effective on a small ship than a large ship because the small ship interferes less with its own sensors (drive and electronics emissions, etc). Yes, the large ship should be able to reach higher level of sensors because it has more total space that it can dedicate to the purpose, but to get an equivelent level of sensors on a large ship, it will take more space than it took in the small hull.

Now, I don't like the particular algorithm used for determining the size, but that's a seperate argument that I may or may not make later in this message.

rogerano: Large ships are more capable than small ships. yeah, I think there should be more difference, but let's face it, a huge hull only has about three times the storage space of a small one.

Frogboy: I think part of the problem with the current size computation is that in some cases the size of the component is based more on the size of the hull than the size of the component. I'm thinking an algorithm that takes both into account may not get such an adverse reaction. Say give each hull size a "scale factor" and each component a factor of how much it pays attention to that scale factor.

So, say that a tiny hull has a scale factor of 0, and a large hull has a scale factor of 2. A component that doesn't vary its size would have a factor of 0, and the end size could be (size)*(1+hull scale factor*component scale factor). With a hull scale factor of 0, tiny hulls would always use the base factor. With components with a scale factor of 0, they'd always use the base size. Now, if a component with a 0.5 scale factor goes in a hull with a 2.0 scale factor, the end result would be a component of size size*(1+0.5*2) or size*2. Does that make sense. That way I think users will feel the connection between base component size and end result a little better.

I think I'd prefer this method to what we've got, but I also don't think it's going to radically change my enjoyment of the game.

Star Pilot: You're missing my point. The same volume of sensor equipment will be more effective on a small ship than a large ship because the small ship interferes less with its own sensors (drive and electronics emissions, etc). Yes, the large ship should be able to reach higher level of sensors because it has more total space that it can dedicate to the purpose, but to get an equivelent level of sensors on a large ship, it will take more space than it took in the small hull.

No. You are completely and totally wrong on this issue. When we want to get better data results from studing something (an atom, a star, whales in the pacific, etc), we don't make the container of the sensor *smaller*. We add more sensors! If we cannot fit in enough sensors, we make the container larger! If we cannot make the container larger, then we add a second of it into a virtual, larger container (ie, the Very Long Base Array). The science yielded does not degrade because we made it larger. Indeed, the data yielded goes up, as we have more sensors targeting the same item/area of interest!

Big ships would have the room for more sensors, and just because they are bigger does not in any way mean they require more avionics to achieve the same result as a tiny satellite! That's not how these things work at all.

The only reason a non-defense component should get bigger with hull size is due to power plant requirements and the space to let a human or a human directed tele-presence device (ie, a robot) to have access to the equipment. That's it.

That's why GC2 is having problems with its ship design. It has no power plant. If all components were standardized to require X amount of hard space + a small variable amount of space to allow for basic maintanance, and they all had power requirements, then everything would scale correctly. Big ships would require big power plants to power all those sensors, engines, mass drivers, etc. Small ships would require small power plants. Power plant considerations could be simplified to the point that as you add components to a ship, it would automatically size up the power plant to power that piece (and let you know when you cannot add another of that piece, just like it does now for space). This is what those size increases per hull is trying to do... add in the space that powering that equipment and maintaining it would require. Just list it, and add in power plant increases in the tech tree (rather then the near useless minaturization).

It's really sort of silly for a space game to have the limits on ships be set by "hull tech". It should be limited instead by your current "power" techs. That's our real limitation in the real world. Powering the beasts we build. As your power tech increases, just how much you can keep economically powered goes up. The more power, the better a craft you can send careening in the spaces between the stars.

It's probably not something Brad is interested in doing at this point in GC2, but it would immediately address many game issues. For instance, in the beginning, deflectors would seriously bite, because they require so much power. But as your power tech goes up, they'd became reasonable. Indeed, they'd probably reign as the supreme defense at the end of the tech tree, due to increased efficency in being able to make a stronger field for the same amount of enegy (Deflector Techs), and due to being able to generate more power in less space (Power tech).

Power generation would make it so that you could build big, slow ships, or medium hot rods of space, or fast sensor small ships. But once you start sticking on other things, you lose top speed (energy going to power things other then engines).

One tech to rule them all, One tech to bind them...

Sorry. That's just how I've seen it since the first design elements have showed up. Component's are not working well at the different hull sizes because the power requirements and basic maintenence space increases are being abstracted into the component, and that's keeping things from working in an intuitive fashion.

Well, don't forget that cargo hull have only 1 Hp. If you don't plan to receive fire, they are better than large hull for attacking. But it is a big IF.

PopupTarget, I tell you what, I'll go down the road and tell the guys that built Hubble they did it wrong. And Chandra. And Spitzer. For that matter, any and all space probes ever made. Heck, I'll phone up Russia and ESA to let them know they have had it wrong all this time as well. Glad you could clear that up for us. (big wink!) Sorry about that, couldn't resist.

We are talking *space*. Water naval ships generate *more noise* to interfere with their *sonor* due to the medium they are in. You know, water. When you are talking space craft, space craft noise/interference becomes a serious non-issue at any decent power range (to run your sensors). That's real life space science, as of 1980 technology.

The medium your sensor platform is in really changes what you have to overcome to get good data. For space craft, the medium they are in is a near vacuum, meaning they have a lot less problems then earth side. Of course, they have more hard radiation to worry about, but since you have to worry about that just to have your craft work in that medium in the first place, then its usually a "done/handled" issue. Either you want that kind of radiation (so you let it into your collector and just protect your 'tronics) or you aren't (and therefore shield the important bits as you would for any other component on the craft).

Now, there are certain things that you can be interested in, where you have to take into account the *instrument* housing. But adding another collector of that information improves your data, regardless of if you are just cramming it into a twin into the same protective tube (hull), or putting it on a follow pod. Indeed, it is common practice in remote sensing space craft to split your sensors across multiple craft (meaning you have *many* follow pods). This is not due to a bigger craft to hold them all causing any interference in their data collection, but rather, it is to keep the size of your needed platform down, making it cheap to launch and being able to keep the instruments and recorders powered (smaller individual sensor "packages" means they are easier to keep powered off of batteries when they are lights out --- Power generation is the true design limitation on real world space craft).

Additionally, adaptive techniques are well established for those times you are stuck with housing/mother craft interference.

Adding sensors always scales in space applications. Always. Whether its gravitc, EM, solar particles, whatever. The more sensors, the more info you yield. It's not literally scalar (ie, 20 sensors doesn't yield a x20 science data increase over 1 sensor), but we aren't trying to get down to that level for GC, are we?

Now, we can ignore that if you like, but by limiting any hull size modifiers for sensors to only minorly scale (to cover the extra infrastructure required for that hull size) would at least allow bigger ships to gather better local intel (more sensors means they will let the user see things further out from that one craft). This is only going to improve the *user's* gaming experience, isn't it? Bigger ships can see further because they can be crammed with more sensors. Finally, a real reason to build a big ship. AWACs.

re: Crew and life support
Life support was something I thought about. But, as we don't know about crew requirement's and at what point automation allows 1 person to do the work of 10, I thought it best to skip over, for game reasons. Power generation, by itself, can actually keep things under control. Then there's the whole different life form things (who's to say the Yor isn't the space ship itself, for instance?) and what sort of effects people would expect from that. If any. But setting that aside, let's pursue this line of thought and its possible game-effects for the moment.

Let's see... your computer/automation techs would let you reduce the number of crew to operate any component/equipment. You'd research various medical advances (particularly psychology and bringing down community health costs) to increase the number of people you could create as a long term crew (all that stress kicking about in space, isolated by months to years from the nearest friendly assistance or facilities), so you couldn't build a huge crew military ship at the start of the game. Humm.. So, this would work as in a tiny ship would be crewed by 1 person, small ships crewed by 3, medium by 9, etc etc etc. Ok. I'd suggest leaving the crew number limits as hard limits (although a Galactic Wonder might increase the effective number allowed at that level), so that what would happen is that in the beginning, civs couldn't build much (each component requires 1 or more people to run), but as your automation progresses, 1 crewman can "man" more components, resulting in ships becoming more capable as you advance in the game. So far so good, right?

The only real drawback to this is that it makes computer/automation techs so much more valuable as their benefits increase your ship capabilities as well as your research or construction capabilities (depending on the particulars of where automation gets placed in the tech tree).

Just my thoughts and opinions. I think using power generation is a better limitor for a game where you can play a variety of alien species.

As for the game itself, I think larger hulls should fit more onto them. That's the point of bigger hulls, to me at least. If you can fit 2 missile shooters on one of your small hulls, isn't it reasonable to expect to fit significantly more missile shooters on bigger ships? If you cannot, then what is the point of bigger hulls? If they take longer to make, but cannot do more for you, why would you ever need to build them? I don't understand the strategic importance they are meant to play otherwise.

I'm playing a good 4D game now but it's early stages. Will perform some solid experiments when the game has progressed further.

2) The fact that the sizemod increase is now based on effective hull size instead of the base hull size is eating about half of the miniaturization bonus.

I guess the problem was already in beta 4C since I remember wondering myselft why the life support modules have increased their size (from 5 to 6) on a cargo hull. Now I know, it is when I have got the miniaturization level that have put the cargo hull to 62 space.

It's really confusing in it's current state. I would argue for multiplying everything by 10 (spaces available, spaces used) and then applying miniaturization to the components. So a 10% miniaturization bonus to something taking up 70 spaces would make it only use up 63. I'm sure the way the game is coded makes it easier to increase the spaces available on the ship, but that coupled with parts getting bigger is just bizarre.

I say multiply it by 10 so we don't introduce more percentage rounding issues, like when you do something evil to increase your PQ and then not actually get any benefit from it.

I agree (mostly, defense should scale a little, but not as much as engines). I really don't see any non-game balance reason for most components to scale, though I still think that the sizemod shouldn't take miniaturization into consideration and that's not an XML change.

The Hull space units are in XML too, btw.