Thoughts on hull sizes [DA]

Here's my view on the size of hulls.
Basically, my stand is that, I trust those game makers. So
most of the time I try to find out the raison d'etre for every item in this game.

I also write this long to practice my english and writing/
phrasing and to put my thought in order.

Before start anything, I'm rather new to DA.Correct me if you see any thing.

Lets start by pretending that this game has
only one hull size and weapon and engine evolve through research.
(No defence either)Its simple and nice. All you care is
who gets the best wapon and how fast is the ship.
But still weapon cost rise so you need rising credit income
and factory output to catchup.

And now come the different hull sizes. (still no defence)
Arise following three conditions/thoughts as result.
1-Any given one type of weapon cost the same for any size of hull.
2-Although smaller hull has less space, their components are little
smaller than other hull size.
(e.g. small hull:life supp. size 3 vs tiny: size 2)
This means that you can put more than you might think.
3-It is safe to say that smaller the hull size, we want to have more
of them in number to counter the lack of hit point.
1&2 means one tiny may cost nearly as same as a small hull (if you load timy ship
with all the best weapon) inspite that there's difference of 3hp(which is a big
difference).Then it contradicts with3.
This leads say to keep the price of tiny as low as possible. (Its tempting to fill
all the slot available when designing new ship model)
(maybe u can keep under 100. many planets should able to make one per 2/3 turn
1per turn for industrial ones.)
The best deal for tiny hull comes when new weapon type becoms available.
(eg.laser->plasma->phasor)
New wapon type means ---> Whole lot better attack(better attack for the price!)
Tiny-small hull would say: we want to keep our price low, so you civ leader can
mass produces us. Heck we dont need samller version
of plasma! because putting them more of them make us
expensive. PhasorI? Nice! We get much better attack
for the price.
In short, tiny small hull like 'Any weapon markI', not mark V or VII.
(This goes for bigger hulls.)
Little Summary: this gives mass of rather low attack quick built tiny-samll ships.
Where to use them? Against the much larger ships.
At this stage we dont take account of any defense so biggies will sink with little
bit of less effort. First attack and better numerical advtge(logistic)are welcomed.

Up to now we have scheme of fleet of tiny ship hunting over powered no defence
mid/large/vlarge cruiser. Even lost they are built fast so next wave wont
be so late. CONCLUSION: By design, organized fleet of tiny ship have some adv over
bigger hull ships with no defence. Although, they are
not fast so unsuitable for far distance conquest duty.

Now it comes the defences. Give those mid/larg/vlarg some decent armor. Quicky,
above mentioned fleet of tiny ship will disappear as wave hitting a shore.
Mediocre attack wont penetrate bigger ships armor.
Replacing some weapon to armor does not cost much or almost the same (I believe)
Lets call them destroyer or flakker fleet.

And now real interesting thing happens. What happens if all offence ship and
ship with some decent to good defence fight? All offence wins.
THEN we have the basic scissor, rock, paper relationship we see in many other
strategy games. fighters > cruiser(all offence) > destroyer(with defence) > fighters
Battle ship is one which can rules all of them above.(for me)
may be mass of mid hull all offence heavy corvettes can own
battle ship? and I guess those mid hull all offence is again
owned by fighters again(by wave attack). What a nice little chain.

This game has 3types of weapon and cooresponding defence and i didnt mention much
about movement rate and mixed fleet. So thing is much more complex/complicated.
But at least,this game still have strength hierarchy/chain/cycle.
(rock scissor paper thing) OR this is what I HOPE it exists!

Let me hear about your thought.

p.s. when your logistic is 9 try this. 3+3+3 all small is default.
But when you 2+2+2+3 you can have 4 firing ship instead of 3.
when 15 2+2+2+2+2+2+3. maxed out logistic use. one small ship
should feel like commanders ship.

p.s.s. Atlas in TA will substitute carrier idea. Still,
fighter can be attacked(armored mid hull corvettes).Real carrier and its
escorts can repel some attacks and put Fighters under the cover until the
real fight. Asking too much ?

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Nice reasoning!
However don't forget that your tiny ships will be mostly lost after combat, while larger ships will sometimes survive the fight and be repaired, which means that financially this is preferable.
If you say something is more expensive, do you look at the construction cost or also maintenance?

Would you care for an analysis of updating tiny/small ships with better weapons versus building a new medium/large ship and decommissioning the tiny/small ones, I think that would be interesting as well?
In terms of
- combat (hitpoints, attack)
- construction cost/time
- maintenance cost

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p.s. when your logistic is 9 try this. 3+3+3 all small is default.
But when you 2+2+2+3 you can have 4 firing ship instead of 3.
when 15 2+2+2+2+2+2+3. maxed out logistic use. one small ship
should feel like commanders ship.

That's what the Torian A.I. did in the Terran Ascension AAR(with DL). Draginol's medium hulls kicked them up.

Anyway, the more ships you have, the more space-per-fleet is taken up by engines and life support to make them go as fast and as far as larger hulls. And the sizemods don't make up for this. Also, the space-per-hull and HP-per-hull go up faster than logistics requirements do as you get bigger and better hulls, and multiplier bonuses help larger ships more than smaller ships. There's a reason that you have to climb 1010 RP to get Mediums, a further 2000 RP to go Large, and a further 5000 RP to get Huge hulls. Capital Ships aren't big deals for no reason.

Tiny and Smalls will only get you so far. The only way they can match up to larger hulls later in the game is by using them as force-multipliers for Military Starbases. And that relegates them to usage as Defenders, or in other words, short-ranged point interceptors. Not mobile like larger hulls, because once they leave the oasis of power the starbase provides, they'll be swatted aside like flies.

IMO, the current hull system is fine. Atlas, Fortitude and Driver will effectively allow you to make Cargo Hulled 'Carriers', except, instead of carrying the fleet physically in hangars, you could say that they carry the fleet in a subspace field.

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