Hi!

I use my tiny ships as some kind of fighter. For example when i build fleets with beam weapons, i build tiny ships with missles or rail guns. For every fleet i build one "squadron" of fighters. So it's not easy for the Ai to build a good defense. In my last game the AI builds three different defences on there ships because of that tactic. (Now they have not so much space for weapons on there ships).

And i use in every of my systems a military starbase.

Greetings from Germany
Speedy

I didn't even realize until now that miniaturization could advance far enough to put the "cargo" type bits in a Tiny hull. Which seems more than a little unrealistic to me, but does open some interesting possibilities. (Personally, I'd probably just stipulate that Transport, Trade, Constructor, etc. can *only* go on a Cargo or Large+ hull.)

I don't agree that only cargo and large+ hulls should be allowed to use the various transport modules.

A good example why would be to think of star wars and how there are a large number of various sized transports in that universe. Like the unstandard Millenium Falcon, to the trully Gigantic bulk freighters.

With Da we now have an idea of how many crew members are on each ship size so when I design a tiny hull Transport I get to thinking about a 2 crewman ship hauling around a bunch of crap to be sold off at some god forsaken alien world.

Angelon

Maybe it is interdemintional shrink sort of like the insides of the Dr. Who Tardis which on te outside is the size of and looks like a British police call box; but on the inside is vast and literley infinate in size

Hmmmm, I wonder why I only have a 5 game winner button, when I have actuley won 10 games? Unless it is because I am now at normal and 5 of my wins were at beginner, think that is it?

That does make a fair amount of sense for Freighters (maybe the big ships are transporting, like, thousands of tons of ore, and the tiny ones are transporting very small but very valuable things, like diamonds or dilithium crystals or somesuch.

Trouble is, I don't think the reasoning fits the troop transport carrying 1000 people, and the like.

Just a "flavor" thing, I suppose. And another way to look at it might be "Yeah, it's attached to a gigantic cargo module, but ship itself is tiny."

I use the tinys all the time, actually. I use them as scouts in the early game - long range, to try and contact every other race as early as possible. When I have, I set them all to auto explore. By the sensors 3 stage, my economy's pretty good, and I can upgrade them to survey scouts. They're spread all over the map, so even though I could make bigger, faster survey ships back home, the scout that's already on the other side of the map will still get to the anomaly faster than the small hull or cargo hull which has to cross an entire map to get to that same anomaly.

When the anomalies run out, I set them again to auto explore.

When I've pretty much discovered the entire map, my economy's normally going very strong, and it's faster to just upgrade those scouts to carry constructors than it is to waste a turn with a planet's starbase building a cheap constructor. Depends on my miniturization, but a tiny with a constructor module, plus sometimes an engine, no defenses, it does the job, and only costs 200 or 300 per ship. Then I have a huge swarm to constructors - whether they then come back home for economy bases, or shore up my borders with influence bases, etc. I'll even use them up back home, if I don't need the other two, setting up military bases with ship speed +2/-2, just to speed up getting attack ships out of my territory, and to slow down enemy fleets coming in.

Considering I can quickly get up to the point where I can, when I don't need my planets for military, pump out tinys with constructors and a single engine in a single turn, they're incredably useful - I normally end up with a whole range of fully maxed starbases of all sorts spread around my mid-game territory.

>> Trouble is, I don't think the reasoning fits the troop transport carrying 1000
>> people, and the like.


Just think of them as interstellar tugboats.

I thought it was kind of cheesy myself at first, but that is the way the game and the combat system is designed really.

Frankly, if I had things 'my way' so to speak, weapon power would scale with hull size, and so would transport ability. A tiny hull shouldn't be able to transport more than 50 troops. I think that would be reasonable on a space vessel, and I also take issue with tiny hulls mounting oodles of super-tech weapons that puts them on pairty with much large hull ships that have slightly less tech.

However, that's all been hashed over and over again. (And over and over and over)

Actually, I can buy that pretty easily, and I'll be sure to affix the appropriately gigantic Structure components on my unarmed Tiny vessels in the future....

To be honest, I see tiny ships as the most important hull design next to huge and cargo. Tiny ships for me are very efficient once you max out miniturization, seeing as everything takes up less space for tinies than anything else, although I usually do not put engines on my tiny fighters I usually play the Yor with influence bonuses, and with speed technologies they still move faster than enemies in my territory. I like the tiny ships because planets with just 2 factories can still churn them out instead of taking a hundred turns creating one of my capital ships. In my opinion, tinies counter the huge hulled ships.

So what you are saying is that a ship with no engines can move strictly due to starbase bonuses?

And, since these bonuses are cumulative, it is possible to move at a decent speed within one's own borders?

ALL ships have a minimum speed of 1, regardless of what is or isn't on them or any starbases trying to modify their speed.

Hello. If I understand correctly, you are not pleased that smaller ships in the game are inferior to larger ships. I feel that the game is accurate in how it represents this. In the modern world a cruiser has distinct advantanges over the most well made patrol craft. The cruiser can carry more and better systems and has better survivability than the patrol craft. Frequently larger ships are faster than patrol craft, and when this is not the case, the range on a larger ship's weapons cancels the small ship's advantage. If you think about it conditions that make large ship better would be aggravated in space. An example, if the large ship's bridge was struck, thew crew could dhift control to an auxiliary bridge, if the tiny ship's cockpit was struck, the pilot would have to hail a "space taxi".

Reading the posts above it seems that other players are effective in using tiny ships as distractors and in support roles. Although science fiction depicts small ships as effective for romantic purposes, I doubt Luke and Red Squadron would have even seen what the Death Star looked like had it been built to modern military specifications, or in GalCiv 2!

On the flip side, jangerel, the difference in the difficulty of building the ships would be phenomenal, and would be reflected in the cost. Tiny ships could basically be built on the planet and then shipped off into orbit all at once, whereas a heavy fighter or, worse yet, any of the capital ships would probably need to be constructed in orbit, with a significant cost being seen in ferrying the necessary components off the planet. We don't really see the ship cost reflect this... a same generation tiny and heavy fighter will see a significant advantage in damage and hit points go to the heavy fighter, but the heavy fighter will cost much less for the effectiveness it boasts. As such, only the heaviest ship that a civilisation can build is efficient enough for use.

Actually, thats a fault on the AI's part very often, as well. They'll have large hulls, but will mix them in with inferior craft, blunting their combat advantage.

Starstriker1 you are right (above I spoke on combat effectiveness). The cost for tiny ships is inaccurately reflected in the game. To give a modern world example a US destroyer costs about $1 billion (Arleigh Burke Class), and a US patrol craft costs $17 million (Cyclone class). The US operates smaller patrol boats which cost less than $5 million to produce each, depending on the type. In capability I would compare the patrol craft to the game's small hulled ships. Tiny ships are too expensive for what they deliver (*cough* hey developers fix this on an update *cough*). I design them (I try to go for that "Lilo and Stitch" police cruiser look), but rarely employ them.

But they make great little starbase destroyers!

I use Tinies as my deterrent military, for the low maintenance. So first, the obvious: you orbit Tinies to prevent invasions. That's obvious. But besides that, I build a military starbase and station several cheap tinies within its sphere. Besides getting lots of deterrent for little maintenance, they actually form a good military force if you place the military SB right.

The other nice thing about Tinies is, your unimportant planets can build them. You can have an economic or research world, just throw on a Starport and it can build Tinies in a respectable amount of time; about half the time it takes to build a constructor. It's worth the one tile. That frees up the mega factory planets to build constructors and your more offensive starships.

Nothing like an 'Eclectic'-class combat constructor. Space the enemy resource starbase and deploy your own in the same turn

Holy cow, I never thought of that. Actually, if you're willing to forego engines, you can fit colony & constructor modules on small ships right from the game beginning; and small hulls are 15 bc cheaper than cargo hulls. I've been building speed-1 colony ships for 85bc and speed-1 constructors for 125bc this entire time, when in fact I could have been building them for 70bc and 110bc on small hulls. Doh!

Looks like you can do the same thing on Tiny ships once your miniaturization reaches 20% or 25% (not sure which). That shaves off yet another 15bc. That means 95bc constructors. How many planets can do that in one turn.... wow wow wow wow wow

HUH. I'll keep that in mind... with a speed ability bonus, the lack of engines would be very quickly offset by how much cheaper the ships would be.

I'm trying that next time!

Dude, yeah! 70bc colony ships every turn vs. 105bc colony ships every other turn, but they move an extra square? And then if you can somehow swing an early miniaturization bonus: 55bc colony ships!!

More important, I'd think, is having cheap constructors. The colony ships being that cheap could be too harsh on the homeworld population... though you'd see a substantial benefit in simply being able to shift production to research and social production as well.

For a super breeder, massed colony ships like that could be a fantastic strategy.

As mentioned above, using Small and Tiny Hulls for Colony ships and Constructors is cheaper than using cargo hulls.

Early on it makes a HUGE difference, I can actually keep up with the AI in terms of mass colony rush on higher diffiuclty settings. In aprticular, once you get Basic Minitiurization, you should be able touse Tiny Hulls for Colony/Constructor modules.

Later in the game, you can use em for Cheap Troop transports. When conquering a system of 3+ habitable planets, I usually conquer the juiciest planet with 3k troops then rush build cheap troop transports to take the remaining planets. Its fast and its cheap. Useful strategy if you have Habitable PLanets set to Abundant.

This works b/c the AI usually doenst research SOldiering to the max, invaders get alot of inherent bonuses over defenders, and the AIs planets in my game are usually far from max pop due to the AI liking to build unguarded troop transports   

Speaking of Super Breeder, massed cheap troop transports is starting to look good. It's so easy to hit 99% approval or the farm limit with those guys, it helps just to pull off 1 billion and take their sweet time travelling somewhere.