medcatt medcatt

Big zippy dreadnoughts versus slow mini fighters?...

▼

Big zippy dreadnoughts versus slow mini fighters?...

from GalCiv2 Forums
Excellent game, Galciv II is. One thing that bugs me though, is that it seems like the way we have the correlation between speed & hull size right now is a bit unrealistic, i.e. large hulls can fit more engines, and thus go much faster than small hulls. Whereas if we try to recall "real life", big ships lumber by, and small ships zip around...

I think we can change this situation if we have "speed" as the result from interaction between "hull weight" and "engine power". i.e., mod the designs to have hull weight criteria for each hull type, and mod the engines so that they give "engine power" rating instead of "speed". More hull weight would require more engine power to move the ship.

That way, we can have for example small fighters with a warp engine zooming by at 3 parsecs perweek, whereas large dreadnoughts using the same single warp engine can barely cough up 1 parsec, for example. We can of course, install more engines to overcome this.

i've never done any modding, so i dunno how easy/hard to implement this... would be interesting to see though.
modding
18,749 views 29 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"considerably faster".............

The only boat I have ever been on is a canoe as a child and john boat and have no knowledge on this topic. In relation to land distance and speed, how fast is 8.5 kts? It does not "sound" that much faster than the big boys.
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well - I know "considerably" faster sounds strange. 8.5 kts are 15.3 km/h or 9.5 mph.
Not much on the ground or in the air. A destroyer at full battle speed of 38 kts will only
be 15% faster than a battleship with 33 kts. I was merely trying to set some facts
straight.

I am not saying that speed alone is decisive. Here maneuverability paired with higher
speed makes it much more difficult to calculate fire solutions, i.e. to hit the craft with
BALLISTIC weaponry. In Space Sims this is worth nothing really.

Its just, that I think, that, from a physics standpoint, not much changes in respect to
the old fleet vessels in WWII and space ships. Its a mixture between mass (inertia)
and propulsion, which decides about maneuverability and acceleration in space.
Top speed will not be an issue with the same net engine power. Heavy and light
ships will eventually reach the same top speed under these settings - the light
ones just in less time. Energy supply and ship design (air/water resistance) are
certainly not of importance for space ships - but there would be additional problems
with gravitational forces which affect ships with greater mass much more the the
smaller ones.

Just my two cents.

~S!~

Dioscur
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just to throw a spanner in the work in space it might be possible for a large ship to be more manoeuverable than a small one. Since any ship that wanted to take less than a month to get to half-light would need some kind of inertial dampeners a big ship with lots of thrusters could theoretically out-manoeuvre a smaller ship. However since this is counter-intuitive you could argue that the inertial dampeners can only cancel out some of the inertia, making small ships more manoeuverable.

I like the idea of tiny hulls maybe getting a proportional bonus to defence and perhaps even attack due to manoeuverability. Ironically the only thing I use tiny hulls for at the moment is transports.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the wet navy, larger (or more correctly longer) ships are faster because those large ships have what is known as displacement hulls. I don't remember the technical reasons behind it, but basically unless the hull can plane above the water (al la ski boat) the speed of the ship is limited by its length. A ski boat actually skips across the top of the water. That's why a ski boat seems to take off once it gets out of the water and up on the plane.