On this forum, I have posted some ideas here
WWW Link about GC2 shortcomings on a larger, analytical level. My question here pertains to mere instrumental logic.
I no longer understand the point of larger ship hull sizes. When I got the game first and played on difficulties under crippling, I found them neat, like most things in GC2, while they were new and shiny. Now, I no longer see the point, because of this:
In the late game, when both your ships and enemy ships all have incredibly high damage, I have noticed that most small-sized enemy ships (especially those of the more warlike nations) will have damage ranges around 100 or even more, depending on their resources and starbases.
By the time I can produce Huge ships well, there seems to be little point, since even though my huge ships can easily destroy small enemy ships, each small enemy ship gets in one shot, and one can easily do 50+ hp damage, even with decent armor; two shots accomplish this frequently.
In fact, I notice that the enemy chooses poor times to upgrade existing ships; if I am at war, it is advantageous to attack these ships, since they will only have 1 hp. But doing so makes for odd battles, since I easily wipe his fleet of 1hp ships out with mine, but each of his 1 hp ships can destroy my more robust ones.
In my last game, I found that researching some logistics is enough, since you can start the game capable of making tiny and small hulls. In the mid- to late game, defense seems to become less important anyhow, and in this game I researched none whatsoever; my fleets of tiny attackers were more than a match for all of the enemies.
I don't particularly like warmongering, but at some point, it seems I am forced into violence with at least one nation. Now either I am missing something I should be understanding, or there is some consensus here that larger hull sizes yield diminishing returns. If so, that seems to me to be a flaw that needs addressing.
Thank you for your input.