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[Girlinhat]

That's true if it's a fair fight, but if the enemy is produce 5 ships for every 3 you produce, then who's winning?  On the other hand, if you can shed some armor and fuel, and produce one of those big ships in 1/2 the time and cost, then you've doubled your firepower.  True, it's an issue of balance counter-balance, but if you're simply being out-produced then you're simply not going to have an easy fight.

[lavenders2]

That's true if it's a fair fight, but if the enemy is produce 5 ships for every 3 you produce, then who's winning?  On the other hand, if you can shed some armor and fuel, and produce one of those big ships in 1/2 the time and cost, then you've doubled your firepower.  True, it's an issue of balance counter-balance, but if you're simply being out-produced then you're simply not going to have an easy fight.

True, but if you make one big ship that outranges, outsizes and outperforms all the enemy ships than chances are they won't be even able to touch your ship, hence you have countered the enemy and you can continue defending your planets. Although in that case, you probably can't take the offensive unless we were talking about a REALLY big ship, because being in enemy territory takes away that element of surprise for you and gives it to them.
It depends on the situation really

[Girlinhat]

While possibly true, there is diminishing returns.  A fighter can be built as a tiny, cheap, powerful ball of hurt, getting the best damage per ton of any vehicle, and perhaps the best armor per ton as well.  Meanwhile if you try and add more equipment and make a proper warship, a battleship, a flagship, then it costs more overall to add more.  Smaller ships will pretty much always have an efficiency advantage that makes mass production more reliable than flagship specialization.  This changes slightly when you consider the range advantage a large ship can gain, but the basic principle is still solid and favors the easily replaced.

For comparison, if you make a mainline ship with three lasers, then you've got a ship.  If you can make a fighter mounted with the same laser (size reduction?) then you can build 3 of those at much cheaper cost.  If the fighter costs 1/10th as much as the ship, then if you lose 9 fighters in a battle you're still winning.  It doesn't matter if you lose a few because they're cheap as dirt.

[ThtblovesDF]

It´s a complex matter of preference... your dear fighters will need to get brought to the enemy, need sensors on another ship to even find the big-bad, fuel on another or a special carrier, potentially creating a very strong, but very easily disconnected army... destroying any part of it quickly leaves you weak to a more "all-around" made fleet

[Tarran]

Another thing to think of: Smaller ships will cost more overall if they wish to maintain perfect independence from another. Example: 10 smaller ships independent will need 10 times as many passive and active sensors to be as independent as one large ship.

Also, I believe larger ship=more overall armor AND thicker armor. Example: Bonded Superdense armor. Smaller ship costing 213BP with 30 armor thickness, has 150 armor. Larger ship with double components and cost costing 417BP has 38 armor thickness, and has 304 armor total, slightly over twice as much, but costing less than twice as much, and much denser. Armor cost between the two: 168 to 327.

[Metalax]

I wonder if it'd be feasible to play the last surviving colony of an advanced empire, possibly one woken from some kind of hibernation sleep by an impertinent younger race. 1 million population or less but most/all tech researched. You'd likely have trouble crewing your ships but you'd need far less of them.

I would be less worried about the crew of ships and more worried about the possible huge shortage of workers to work basically anything.

Interesting idea. You would want to utilize automated facilities as much as possible to mitigate the low workers, so automines/asteroid miners, fuel harvesting ships, maintainance ships, ship based terraformers and crank out engineering brigades to boost your construction ability instead of construction factories. You would almost certainly have to selectively switch off areas of production, with the 6 month wait when you shift back, in order to shift workers where they are needed.

Crewing ships wouldn't really be a problem. Trained crew produced by the military academies aren't linked to the population of the planet. In addition the slow construction rate due to low population would mean long periods between ships being launched to allow for trained crew to build up.

Low population won't stop your production/research just slow it down(a lot), which kind of fits with the idea that the younger races have to find and deal with you before your population grows and you are able to start really using your production capability. In the mean time your very few highly advanced ships should be able to take on entire taskgroups and possibly fleets of the younger races ships singlehandedly, which keeps it reasonably balanced.

I may try this out for my next game, and it gives me an excuse to do a non Sol start for once.

[ThtblovesDF]

I always liked the idea of a mothership, that is your resource and construction center.

[forsaken1111]

I would be less worried about the crew of ships and more worried about the possible huge shortage of workers to work basically anything.

True, but remember with most or all of the tech your factories, even undermanned, will be cranking out a lot of stuff. As others have said you can selectively shut down sections of your industry to keep everything running.

I wonder if it'd be feasible to play the last surviving colony of an advanced empire, possibly one woken from some kind of hibernation sleep by an impertinent younger race. 1 million population or less but most/all tech researched. You'd likely have trouble crewing your ships but you'd need far less of them.

Interesting idea. You would want to utilize automated facilities as much as possible to mitigate the low workers, so automines/asteroid miners, fuel harvesting ships, maintainance ships, ship based terraformers and crank out engineering brigades to boost your construction ability instead of construction factories. You would almost certainly have to selectively switch off areas of production, with the 6 month wait when you shift back, in order to shift workers where they are needed.

Crewing ships wouldn't really be a problem. Trained crew produced by the military academies aren't linked to the population of the planet. In addition the slow construction rate due to low population would mean long periods between ships being launched to allow for trained crew to build up.

Low population won't stop your production/research just slow it down(a lot), which kind of fits with the idea that the younger races have to find and deal with you before your population grows and you are able to start really using your production capability. In the mean time your very few highly advanced ships should be able to take on entire taskgroups and possibly fleets of the younger races ships singlehandedly, which keeps it reasonably balanced.

I may try this out for my next game, and it gives me an excuse to do a non Sol start for once.

Even more interesting, place a lower tech race in the same system. Enslave them? Wipe them out and take the planet? Up to you. They woke you up after all.

[Flying Dice]

> Enslaveenslaveenslave. As much as I enjoy crying EXTERMINATE! and loosing the dogs of war, an assimilated population would give you a massive wealth boost. Although, for RP purposes, you wouldn't be able to just shift all of your installations to their world.

[Sheb]

Also, really high racial training level, so few crewmen and officers but great ones.

[Metalax]

Unfortunately, Steve seems to have altered the racial training levels to be capped at 5 since the last time I used very high racial training.

[Jacob/Lee]

How do I change the training level?

[Tarran]

View Race Details (Ctrl+F2), top left: Training Level.

[Zangi]

I'd suggest changing the racial training level early on, since it takes a chunk out of your pool of people.  Also, conscript only on vessels that shouldn't see combat.

[forsaken1111]

Also, conscript only on vessels that shouldn't see combat.

Yeah I usually do conscript crews for my noncombat ships, freighters, etc.