Simple Solution to the Miniaturization debate

A warp engine on a huge ship should be larger than a warp engine on a tiny ship, right?

I agree with the weapons idea. A larger weapon should be more powerful.

As for engines, since some of the engines involve things like quantum theory instead of just impulse, there should be engines that just won't fit on smaller ships.

I removed the size mod for all weapons, but left it for armor, engines, and other compnents that it made sense to be larger on larger vessels, such as sensors and life support. I'm going to see how that plays. I will probably have to adjust the defenses.

Certain things it just makes sense for them to be bigger on bigger hulls.

That's a great idea for the weapons and sensors. Bigger = badder. With everything else the size mod should stay because it takes bigger engines, more shielding/armour/point defence, more life support etc. to keep a big ship functioning.

YEP! a lser on a fighter should NOT do the same damage as a laser on a Dreadnaught; especially since the laser on the Dreanaught is waaaaaaay larger.

Seriously, man!

if we had tactical combat, where there is a concept of Range, the extra size of weapons on larger hulls could perhaps be offset by giving them better accuracy at long range, or less damage fall-off with range, rather than increased raw damage?

actualy it doesnt make sense for engines
a bigger ship requires more force to accelerate
F=MA
then some stupid kid is going to say things fall at the same speed blah blah your stupid at physics
its called intertia.
It requires more force in space to push something heavy then something light...

YEP! a lser on a fighter should NOT do the same damage as a laser on a Dreadnaught; especially since the laser on the Dreanaught is waaaaaaay larger.

Politely, I disagree, who is to say I did not take the same laser off the fighter and simply put it with all of its power and targeting systems on the dreadnaught? How would that make it larger, how would that make it smaller, how would that make it any different? Why should it be larger just because I moved it from one hull to the other? The technology didn't change.

A warp engine on a huge ship should be larger than a warp engine on a tiny ship, right?

Definitely, engines should change on hull size. Takes more arse to drive that big bulk through space.

Firepower doesn't equate to size so much. Just because a cannon is bigger doesn't mean its more bad, take a cannon ball vs a kinetic round, one could argue that smaller did more damage. Musket to Rifle, Technology changed, size went down, damage was relatively the same, accuracy increased.

My whole debate on mini is that currently the system doesn't work, I should not at any time lose the ability to pack in more items when I have a 100 hull go to a 120, yet I always do, unless I research the next weapons, defense, sensor, and propulsion group to gain the size advantage there.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

Politely, I disagree, who is to say I did not take the same laser off the fighter and simply put it with all of its power and targeting systems on the dreadnaught? How would that make it larger, how would that make it smaller, how would that make it any different? Why should it be larger just because I moved it from one hull to the other? The technology didn't change.

I believe he was saying that since the laser is larger, it should be granted some sort of bonus unless it was reduced to the same size.

actualy it doesnt make sense for engines a bigger ship requires more force to accelerate F=MA then some stupid kid is going to say things fall at the same speed blah blah your stupid at physics its called intertia. It requires more force in space to push something heavy then something light...

In a perfect environment (in a vacuum), all objects do fall (accelerate) at the same speed. Air resistance is what changes that, but basic Newtonian Mechanics is taught as if the world were a perfect environment. Only the more advanced aspects start to consider every element and then the calculations start to evolve into calculus problems instead of trig. and algebra.

Yes F=ma, but that is for acceleration, which is probably only effective in combat, although all of the ships, no matter what size, seem to be literally just floating adrift in space. Acceleration isn't as important when it comes to total distance one can travel. Then you are getting more into work, and not force so much.

Yes, F = m x a, but we are in space, so their isn't any gravity (unless you want to go into gravitational fields) to work against, thus even the smallest engine can move a massive object, it would just take it a lot longer to accelerate it.. And that is work, not force...

In other words, I can try and push a box for hours, but unless I push with enough force to overcome friction, that box isn't moving. Now in space, if I devote the same amount of time to pushing something of similar mass, it will start to accelerate since I am only working against it's inertia, which isn't force since it's not pushing back.

So in this case, it's W = F*distance, where Force is the actual force I am applying, and not m*a.

Yes, we do need bigger engines to push bigger ships in the same time it is needed to push a smaller ship to the same speed, and that is probably the case since a fleet moves together after all...

Anywho, as for the power of an engine, that is not calculated on size only. (i.e. a size 10 engine doesn't produce twice the power of a size 5 engine). Size refers to volume... so if 10 referred to volume of a perfect cube, the area of a square, the power would be more of an exponential factor**...

** - (Using the size as an area of one side would make it a straight multiple of then)

Using 10 as the volume, you could then say that each side has a length of ~2.15, and for the 5, a length of ~1.71. And for simplicity's sake, let's say only one side of the cube is "pushing" and that the force is consistent over all of the space, we'll give it a value of 1 to make it easy.

So you could then say that the size 10 produces 4.64 units of force, and the size 5 produces 2.92 units of force. (length of side * length of side)

So in actuality, the size 10 only produces about 1.6x the force of the size 5.

Lastly, you could just say that I wasted 10 minutes thinking about that and should just sum it up in one or two points.

1. Keep the size mods that change the components size based on hull size, except for weapons.
2. Throw out the size mods that make components get bigger with better miniaturization, it goes completely against miniaturization,
3. Having miniaturization increase hull size is great, it lowers decimal rounding errors and allows for over 100% miniaturization. (Since theoretically, a component reduced in size by 100% would be reduced to 0.)

i agree with the weapons mod. A weapon shouldn't need to be bigger to function on a larger ship. unless for some reason it was more powerful.

anyways guys, you cannot appy newtonian physics at this level. here you need to apply relativity since we are dealing with speeds faster than the speed of light. newtonian physics is only "correct" at our current technology since we are dealing with speeds much much less with the speed of light and therefore the relative error is very low.

thats why you study mechanics first before you hit relativity since mechanics is the basic. think of mechanics as beam weapon theory and relativity as disruptors

sorry back to the topic at hand

In a perfect environment (in a vacuum), all objects do fall (accelerate) at the same speed. Air resistance is what changes that, but basic Newtonian Mechanics is taught as if the world were a perfect environment. Only the more advanced aspects start to consider every element and then the calculations start to evolve into calculus problems instead of trig. and algebra. Yes F=ma, but that is for acceleration, which is probably only effective in combat, although all of the ships, no matter what size, seem to be literally just floating adrift in space. Acceleration isn't as important when it comes to total distance one can travel. Then you are getting more into work, and not force so much. Yes, F = m x a, but we are in space, so their isn't any gravity (unless you want to go into gravitational fields) to work against, thus even the smallest engine can move a massive object, it would just take it a lot longer to accelerate it.. And that is work, not force...

How much physics have you taken?
Yes you would take along time to accelerate. That inlcudes negative acceleration. With your method every ship would only move in a straigh line, would need to speed up and slow down over large large areas.

And work is area under a Force vs Distance graph. So duh err you have to take physics into account.

anyways guys, you cannot appy newtonian physics at this level. here you need to apply relativity since we are dealing with speeds faster than the speed of light. newtonian physics is only "correct" at our current technology since we are dealing with speeds much much less with the speed of light and therefore the relative error is very low.

So with dealing acceleration at low speeds we can argue using basic newtownians. So therefor it does apply thank you.

Your argueing with a Math major-physics minor. Work isnt just what i stated. If you wanted i could explain dot products and cross products.
If there is anything else that needs to explained please ask.


Remeber braiks dont work in space. Basiclly the ship has to turn around and fire its engines in the opposite dirrection. This is all for basic physics involving speed being over an area, and not warping space. Still working on that.

and nobody mentioned anything about combat, my comment was made as an overview of the situation about space travel in general

Your argueing with a Math major-physics minor. Work isnt just what i stated. If you wanted i could explain dot products and cross products.

kinda condascending aren't you?

cross products and dot produtcs? arguing with a math major? seems like you take your math very seriously dude... i wonder if you have anything else besides your math... and dont go ego tripping on me, math without application is nonsense and from all i know all you know is theory.. how do i know? coz i am a computer science engineering major, speciallizing in scientific computation (didnt want to throw titles but you started it), what we do is we take YOUR math and put it into pratice by applying the theory to computers. basically we take your theory and develop practical algorithms on it. (i guess what im trying to say is that the MATH your talking about is basic stuff to us) so dont ego trip

im not gonna comment anymore since it would be counterproductive to this thread. sorry for the inconvenience. just cant stand ego trippers who feels that they know it all... remember theory != real life. try computing the inverse of a 1 milllion by 1 million square matrix using YOUR theoetical math and we'll see which takes longer, your computation or the dregin invading arcea using star gates

ya i know it was basic but alot of people on here are dont know much physics or math, just stating it so that you know i am not talking about my ass..
But with what your saying you could just put a very very small engine like the 1st one and it should be similar to other one. And that 2 engines shouldnt be better then 1 since 2 engines would only increase acceleration.

I don't see what the fuss is. Even if you're completely ignorant about the field of physics, it's obvious that you need a more powerful (and thus larger) engine to push a larger amount of mass the same distance at the same speed as a smaller amount of mass.

And technically, space is not a "perfect vacuum." There's all kinds of space dust and free ions and such floating about. Space is not a void, it's simply under extremely low pressure. While there is barely any friction, friction still exists and can slow down your ship.

And if I'm cnot mistaken, warped space is exactly the same as "normal" space, only instead of us moving to the mountains, the mountains move to us.


GCII Fanboy

And if I'm cnot mistaken, warped space is exactly the same as "normal" space, only instead of us moving to the mountains, the mountains move to us.

i only didnt want to bring this up cause its arguable since... well we dont know what this is....
but ya if talking about space warped due to gravity and present theores on it... ya not arguable i think

well i really didnt say that... all i said was you cant apply traditional newtonian physics to space travel since we are dealing with speeds greater than the speed of light...

well i really didnt say that... all i said was you cant apply traditional newtonian physics to space travel since we are dealing with speeds greater than the speed of light...

ya thats deffinatly true about some of the stuf like when we started talking about space warping and what not

it's obvious that you need a more powerful (and thus larger) engine to push a larger amount of mass the same distance at the same speed as a smaller amount of mass.

well im not saying that thats not true (the engines part) but often times the obvious is not always true



and yes i completely forgot about the whole warped spaced being like normal space.. so ok

Well i think that we both agree that engines need to be scalled. Which is in opposition to someone elses.

BTW for my misspelling,

I am on a tiny tiny laptop its hard to type sorry.

and dont go ego tripping on me, math without application is nonsense and from all i know all you know is theory.. how do i know? coz i am a computer science engineering major, speciallizing in scientific computation (didnt want to throw titles but you started it), what we do is we take YOUR math and put it into pratice by applying the theory to computers. basically we take your theory and develop practical algorithms on it. (i guess what im trying to say is that the MATH your talking about is basic stuff to us) so dont ego trip

Hey now. I'm a math major compsci minor and all I have to say to you is that your major wouldn't exist without math. I'm not going to ego trip or anything, I just love math so much that I feel an unresistable urge to comment.

Hey now. I'm a math major compsci minor and all I have to say to you is that your major wouldn't exist without math.

major would exists, speciallization wouldnt oh and if not for math then we wont have the wonderful galciv II that we all love

Well i think that we both agree that engines need to be scalled.

engines definitely need to be scaled.. true

Yes. That is settled now... Back to the topic. Engines must be scaled.

I am guilty of skipping to the bottom of this thread, so flog me if you must

I think that weapons should ONLY be scaled in damage/size ratio if tatical combat is also added. A larger weapon, while using the same base technology, would be more powerful because it would have more power to draw on, or more ammo, or allow a larger recoil (and thus larger slug rounds). But it would be harder to aim, and would raise the overall mass of the ship (resulting in lower manouvering ability).

So if we want to link weapon size to damage (which IS reasonable) we need the following factors added to combat

range
ship manouvering ability
accuracy

This also makes it reasonable to add hardpoint specific bonuses for weapons (ie, forward mount weapon has reduced accuracy when firing rearward)

Oh, and on engines.

FTL system is galciv2 is wormhole based, so the actual ship speeds never exceed the speed of light, and simple newtonian physics are still OK. The wormhole, as explained in game, is actually kind of a rolling field that travels with the ship, reducing the length of spacetime around the ship as its sublight drives push in a given direction.

I think engine scaling is good as it is. We can assume that the mass of a ship will remain relatively proportional to its power output (size of reactor), and therefore the size of the engine does not affect the speeds of which it is capable because the total power of an engine would be linked (in a linear relationship) to its power source.

That of course assumes that all these power supplies and/or engine reactions don't have some kind of exponetial or similarly complicated input/output equation

It's a pipe dream guys, tactical combat isn't going to be in gal civ 2. For gal civ 2, components have to be scaled otherwise smaller ships would be useless pretty much instantly when the enemy went up a size.