Hull sizes and Their Implications

Problem with the Carrier argument

from GalCiv2 Forums
This came to mind only fairly recently during the back and forth on the matter of Carriers for future GalCiv games or even being implemented in GalCiv2 somehow.

It is merely an analysis of the 'logistics' (not in terms of Logistics in GalCiv's mechanics, necessarily) to support carriers.

How big are the fighters in comparison to the capital ships in this game? Has anyone bothered to think about this with respect to this subject? A Huge's base size (and the size that the Miniaturization merely expands upon on an even scaling principle) is 80. A Tiny's base size is 16. At best, you could fit 5 of those Tiny ships inside the Huge, based on these values, but then the Huge couldn't do anything but hold those ships. It wouldn't even have the space to have the drive or range capacity to make such a thing worthwhile.

This is not only statistically true, but the visual sizes of these ships also doesn't lend credibility.



As shown above, the ship sizes are in steps both visually and statistically. The best choice for a carrier fighter would be the middle-row Tiny. In this visual depiction, it appears to have the least substance to it. Almost the entire frame is taken up by the cockpit, with presumably barely enough room for the baseline engine and the most basic of life support systems to keep the pilot alive. You could potentially fit alot of these inside a larger hull.

Let's decide to use the Star Destroyer middle-row Huge for the Carrier. Potentially, you could maybe fit six or so of the declared 'carrier fighter' in that frame with reasonable success. Even more if you wish to consider the larger ships to be scaled down from their true size - but the statistics seem to tell me otherwise, so let's stick with the idea that they are all to scale to eachother.

Now, six fighters isn't much of a complement of craft for a carrier. Modern-day aircraft carriers carry dozens of fightercraft. The Enterprise, for instance, has capacity for 85 fighters. To be able to haul that many Tiny hulls (which, if the Human hull appearances are to be believed, are as small as you could possibly make a spacecraft), there would have to be a ship with a Hull capacity of 1360 by default. This is exponentially larger than any possible Huge hull.

In Homeworld, carriers tend to have capacity for around 50 fighters or 25 Corvettes. Homeworld 2 may have changed this - but in addition to the carrier's capacity, the Battlecruisers were also given launch bays so it could hold its own fighter complement - which essentially made the Destroyer the only proper capital ship (frigates tend to be considered 'under' capital ships) to not be able to carry a complement of fightercraft.

These two classes of ships are hundreds of times larger than the fighters they could carry. The fighters in GalCiv, however, are not so infinitesimally small - at least according to the game mechanics and statistics.

The long and short of it is that, as things stand, no ship could function as a carrier. The scaling is just too far off for it to work. Unless you intended to have four fighters each to a Huge-hulled Carrier (with the remaining 1/5th of the Carrier dedicated to speed and range to distribute among its assigned wing).
13,992 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well remember that you can make ships (visually) much larger than the base hull, usually fighters look like little dots compared to my huge ships.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Some people read way too much into cosmetic and game-balancing features. Honestly, you may as well claim that in Civilization, each unit is actually composed of a single person or ship, and that a warrior is physically taller than a tank.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Since ship scaling is currently implausible as it is, I'm not sure why this should be a deal breaker.

Homeworld wasn't really proportional, either.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Nowhere does it say the unit sizes are the same. In fact if you go and look the weapons and other items you attach to the hulls change in size for each hull yet each weapon takes up more? space.

Take it however you want. Personally I would like carriers but to have them extend range, like starbases do. So you could have in essence a mobile starbase for range purposes. In a huge galaxy that could have many benefits.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
the way i see it the tiny hull in this game is a frigate and the small a destroyer

i have said this before there are already fighters in the game next time you build a military base one of the modules is tiny fighters

all you would have to do is take that module and make it ship capable and again the module would only be able to hold 3 fighters each meaning as the man said up in the first post that if you put one of these on the tiny hull guess what your tiny has no armer or weapons and in this game the best you would see of your fighters would be the same as what you see in missiles and fighter defense is already in the game it is the missile defense no matter what weapon the fighter would have
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I use this equivalence

Tiny= Corvette
Small= Frigate
Medium= Cruiser
Large= Battlecruiser
Huge= Dreadnought.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well remember that you can make ships (visually) much larger than the base hull, usually fighters look like little dots compared to my huge ships.


This is true... but the fact remains of the Hull capacity (which can be interpreted as the Hull's true size) does not change no matter what you add to it.

Some people read way too much into cosmetic and game-balancing features. Honestly, you may as well claim that in Civilization, each unit is actually composed of a single person or ship, and that a warrior is physically taller than a tank


I'm not reading too much into the cosmetic. I'm reading in just the right amount from the solid numerical values, and comparing them to the cosmetic- the asthetic- and merely confirming that the visual is accurate, or pointing out a glaring error in scale.

Since ship scaling is currently implausible as it is, I'm not sure why this should be a deal breaker.

Homeworld wasn't really proportional, either.


I'm still basing it on the numerical scaling values more than actual visual scale.

Nowhere does it say the unit sizes are the same. In fact if you go and look the weapons and other items you attach to the hulls change in size for each hull yet each weapon takes up more? space.


To be perfectly honest, weapon sizes increase alongside the ship hulls, so technically there's even less of a gap between the sizes than one would think. I think this is what you meant, but I just feel like clarifying.

(Particle Beam takes up 15 on Tiny, which starts out with 16, while the same weapon takes up 22 on Huge with their 80 capacity - 15/16 = 0.9375 and 22/80 = 0.275 ... (15/22) * 80 = 54.5454 ... that's about 3.4 times the size, as opposed to being 5 times as the actual capacity value on its own would suggest)

the way i see it the tiny hull in this game is a frigate and the small a destroyer

i have said this before there are already fighters in the game next time you build a military base one of the modules is tiny fighters

all you would have to do is take that module and make it ship capable and again the module would only be able to hold 3 fighters each meaning as the man said up in the first post that if you put one of these on the tiny hull guess what your tiny has no armer or weapons and in this game the best you would see of your fighters would be the same as what you see in missiles and fighter defense is already in the game it is the missile defense no matter what weapon the fighter would have


I normally interpret them as being Frigates and Destroyers, as well. Just confuses me that the AI calls them Fighters and Heavy Fighters regardless, as well as the fact that, at least with the Terran frames, these sizes of hull actually do look like fightercraft or corvettes with a handful of crew.

And I know about the Starbase module. Fighter Drones - a Military Starbase module that improves Beam Attack of ships within its effective range.

So, technically, yes, fighters are in the game - even though they're as drone craft, much like the anti-missile (and potentially anti-fighter) technology of a similar concept.

-

Yes, the game's scaling is severely skewed. Yes, I'd probably be interested in seeing carriers in it. However, it's quite clear Stardock has no intention of using them... And while the game's combat is pretty much equivalent to Civilization's (that is, basically just Defence and Offense ratings being measured against eachother), I don't see them making much of a fundamental new aspect of gameplay unless they are used akin to Artillery strikes in Civilization or something. Otherwise, they're really not much different from missiles.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I use this equivalence

Tiny= Corvette
Small= Frigate
Medium= Cruiser
Large= Battlecruiser
Huge= Dreadnought.


... That may actually be more accurate, especially considering at least the Altarian Tiny and Small hulls - I haven't worked with much beyond Terran and Altarian hulls, so I'm only clear on the fact that Terran Tiny hulls look like actual Fighters, and Altarian Tiny and Small hulls look like corvettes and frigates, respectively.

This, to me, suggests that the Terrans are actually better at Miniaturization than the Altarians, which just doesn't seem to make sense to me.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

They might actually be the size of fighters, but the Altarians might just use a lot less 'glass' in ships of said class.

I thought the initial post quite concisely made your point though, that the size differences between the ship types really isn't enough to make carriers logical. Not to mention that the low hitpoints of a tiny hull doesn't justify the cost of mounting a nice expensive gun or two on it.

It's true you can swarm an opponent with large numbers of small craft but you'll be losing a ship every turn and be lucky to even do 1 hitpoint of damage if they were smart enough to put on defenses. Even with no defenses, base hull hitpoints increase a lot faster than logistics and production costs, so you shouldn't expect to have sufficient numerical superiority to have made anything but a terrible blunder.

The idea of a carrier is interesting and resonates, I think I've given the idea a nod a number of times in forum threads, but how the hull capacity works out on paper is just another reason to discount it. You'd need to start from scratch and rebalance every ship class.. which is likely quite possible, I'm not sure but this stuff might well be in an XML somewhere, but it doesn't seem worth the effort to me.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like the idea of the game mechanic of mobile Military starbases standing in for carriers. The Military starbase already has existing ways to make tiny and small ships more effective with offensive, defensive and speed buffs. In the simplest case, you could have a mobile Military starbase and every unit stacked with it move (slowly) as a fleet.

A second tier option would be to add a hangar module to the starbase which, based on the quality of your logistics tech, could "hide" a number of tiny and small units stacked with the base: in fleet actions, units "stored" in the hanger would not take part in the fight, and would all be destroyed if the starbase were destroyed (or perhaps would be gradually destroyed as the base takes damage).

Mobility starbase modules would become available as you improved your engine speed tech, and would be added with constructors like any other module. This would allow the devs to playbalance the maximum speed of these starbase carriers without having to take into account potentially unbalancing "all engines" design strategies possible with normal ship design.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And while the game's combat is pretty much equivalent to Civilization's (that is, basically just Defence and Offense ratings being measured against eachother), I don't see them making much of a fundamental new aspect of gameplay unless they are used akin to Artillery strikes in Civilization or something. Otherwise, they're really not much different from missiles.


Excuse me... I meant 'And so long as the game's combat is...'

The moment they allow you to utilize Heavy Mount or Point Defence Mount variants of weapons or something akin to them, and have a more tactical combat phase where such weapon variants make a difference in accuracy (along with hull sizes having appropriate evasion defence bonuses), fighters will always have a fundamental disadvantage.

As it stands, combat is resolved in such a simplified manner that there's really not much that can be done.

Such things are likely not possible to change for GalCiv2, even with expansions. I'm somewhat surprised ship combat doesn't take a more prominent role than it does, considering the great deal of focus on ship design. Much like making your own designs to such an extent in games that have more of an action focus (flight sims, mecha sims, real-time strategies, etc) makes sense. Just the nature of the beast. You design a craft more than just performance-wise, you'd prefer to see it function fully.

Ah well...
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Carriers are actually considered super-capital ships, much like dreadnoughts.

Battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers, and destroyers are standard capital ships.

Frigates and corvettes are escort ships, and not considered capital-class vessels.

Therefore, I think it would be entirely plausible to include carriers, despite the scaling issues; merely make carriers super massive; roughly three or four times larger than the Huge hulls.

I think, in all honesty, there's more to GalCiv than number-crunching. Imagination. Hence, we're given no hard facts about sizes (dimensions, volume, area, etc).

Don't let the amount of space available on a particular hull size put you in a box.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I seriously doubt those images are to scale...At least in the sense you are talking....Not everything is this complex... It's more than likely simply that smaller fighters are not visible in a true scale.

As for points, I think that is for gameplay reasons... and the game is meant to be modded. You can change all that.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, all I'm saying is that to add carriers would require a serious rebalance (likely the pain-in-the-ass that the devs want to avoid). I'd rather see weapon mount sizes come into play for tactical reasons and the size of the hull being factored in for how easily they can be hit before carriers get involved (which would likely be something to consider for a GalCiv3).
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd rather see weapon mount sizes come into play for tactical reasons and the size of the hull being factored in for how easily they can be hit before carriers get involved (which would likely be something to consider for a GalCiv3).


Since you really seem to be into the "tactical" thing quite a bit, I was wondering if you have worked out any possible formula's that might be useful in helping the devs or even a modder to work it out? As always, your posts are insightful PaladinStorm, but very in depth. You are obviously heavily steeped in the strategy of things with relation to game mechanics. Tell me, what game do you/have you played that is so in depth with relation to strategics being coded into the game?
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Perhaps Earth 2150/2160, or Homeworld, or Master of Orion (I absolutely loved the second game's tactical phase, and can still hear that battle music playing... ... and I also remember jumping into Antares orbit with a fleet two rows thick, the Avatar at the front. Ahh... glorious. The Avatar - now THERE was a PreCursor Ranger)... Hey, one of my all-time favorite games was X-COM. That game featured a very good Tactical battle phase contained within a fairly comprehensive Strategic overview phase. There's base construction, research, manufacturing, and fighter interceptions. Ground combat as good as any squad-level tactical strategy - just not sure how else to explain it without going on and on about it. (xcomufo.com is a pretty good resource for it, and is also connected to a fan project to produce a new game in the spirit of X-COM.

I haven't tried any of the Total War games, but I get the feeling I would really enjoy them. My father has played them, but he avoided the Tactical phases of the game when he played, and mostly focused on the empire management.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree, I think that hull sizes should have an adjusted defense...
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I still think that without a true tatical battle, carriers are a waste of time. When ship size, attack speed and manuverabilty are added along with the ability to control all your ships at a tatical level AND in a true 3D envorment(x,y,z axies) in every battle then come talk to me. Until then carriers will be nothing but fluff and a waste of the designers time to implement.