Miniaturization Exploit

Well, fixing this behavior could lead to another problem:
As some as noted, it is possible that when your miniaturization level goes up, the size of some components goes up too. If you are unluck,y you can end with a design that you have made before the new level that you couldn't no longer do with the new level.

If you are unluck,y you can end with a design that you have made before the new level that you couldn't no longer do with the new level.

Eh?

Eh? is right. Never post drunk my friend.

Let me explain what he is saying:

When you gain any minituraisation research, the size of components can go up. This is because the hull size space increases so even though the component is larger, it fits in a smaller space (cause the hull size is bigger). There's another post somewhere that gives a really good explanation.

It's not wrong but it can be confusing.

miniaturization does nothing but make more room for stuff on some "hull" it does not enlarge components because it would be counter-productive!

well, if this is true, it should realy be fixed in the next patch, i believe it's one of the 5-minutes fix...

I guess that would be correct, I don't really know, I haven't checked. However, I know for sure that most component size increases in scale with each hull of increased size. For example, Basic Life Support is 2 pts for a Tiny Hull, but a Cargo Hull needs 5 pts for the same exact thing.

It has been said that the size of a component is (some constant amount) + (hull size x some percentage). This is to prevent hull-size cheese.

This may not soung very logical, but one way to look at it is that you can only minitiaturise some parts of a component. For example, a 17inch screen will always be 17inches, but may get thinner. This game represents components getting smaller by making hulls larger. It is a bit counterintuitive but the end result is the same. The parts of a component that can be minitiarised are represented by the constant amount, and the parts of a component that can't be minitiarised are represented by the percentage amount.

Thats how I saw it anyway.

That doesn't really sound right though - there's nothing that can't be minitiarised. For example that 17 inch monitor can be as small as you like if it's a holoprojector or something like that.

Is the increase in component size particularly noticable? Is there a point in the minitiarisation tree where there's no point going further because it offers no advantage?

Yes, it can get to the point where there's no real benefit from minaturization, but it takes a lot of minaturization to get there. I saw some posts dealing with changing the racial modifiers to 1000% miniaturization bonus, and they still could only fit less than 20 engines on a ship. Of course, 20 engines is a heck of a lot, but you'd expect more from that insane of a miniaturization level.

But as far as the original post goes, I noticed this myself, and it does look easily exploitable. Note down the tech you currently have, save the game. Then start a new game as the Yor in a "battle of the gods" scenario with the proper base hull type. Design the ship you want using only tech available to you from the game you want to cheese, then reload that game and start building your fleet of pint sized dreadnaughts. Or for those really wanting to cheat, mod the Yor's racial bonus to an insane amount before creating the design, then proceed as above.

Not entirely sure how the metaverse games handle this (only played one so far, and noticed I didn't have any of my non-meta ships in it), but I suspect its probably usable there too to some extent (if not quite as bad as modding the yor's bonus would give you). I haven't had a game yet where the miniaturization bonus would've made a huge difference, but its still something that should probably be fixed.

I haven't had a game yet where the miniaturization bonus would've made a huge difference, but its still something that should probably be fixed.

In my experience, it makes a huge difference early on. It's the difference of a second laser, or defense, weapons, and an engine on a tiny ship with just the first tier of the tech tree (laser, stinger, mini-balls, titanium, chaff, deflectors)

The simple way around this is to always design a Barebones version of a ship first. Design your ship, put all the jewellery on and no weapons, engines or defenses. This will now appear with the appropriate tech, irrelevent of miniaturisation level.