Ship component sizes

Can you give an example of components that do this?

It makes sense for engines to get bigger, since there is greater mass. Or life support, because of the greater volume that needs "supporting". Do sensor components, or weapons get bigger as well? I can't think of any valid reason to explain why that would be.

I'd say that it wouldn't make sense for weapons and most of the modules. It does make sense for defenses (X amount of armor spread over a larger ship will be less effective than the same amount of armor concentrated on a smaller ship), engines (the exact same engine that makes a tiny hull go twice as fast isn't going to make a huge hull go twice as fast), and life support (larger hull generally means larger crew, which means you need to provide more life support).

I'll probably take a look at the XML files that specify these stats after the 4D beta comes out, and start making my feelings on the subject better known if I think they're too far out of balance or unrealistic.

Ok good points regarding engines, life support, and armour. Size increases effect all components though. I don't accept size increases to weapons and other systems which operate independantly of ship size. Sensors, ECM, chaff, weapons, etc. Rather than conveying any sense of purpose the size increases are merely annoying.

In fact I'd be happy with what's already been suggested. Engines, support, and armor to scale with ship size. All other components to remain static.

Well, ECM and chaff are point defense. So you may need more to lure correctly incomming missile that are targetting a big ship, or to avoid any dead angle. And you can have more if the ship is bigger

ECM and chaff would have to be larger since it's trying to distract from a larger target. It could be argued that larger ships are giving off more drive emissions and other interference that would have to be compensated for in order to increase the sensor range, so having a sizemod for sensor modules does make some sense.

Just took a look at the XML file, and it looks like the only things that don't have a sizemod subelement are: Missile weapons (interesting implications there for Huge hulls ) and the colony/trade/constructor/troop transport modules. So, other than the other two weapon branches, I mostly agree with, or at least understand, their decisions on what gets a sizemod and what doesn't.

Rather than just looking at realism, what would the game play implications? Making no weapons have a sizemod would mean that offensive ability scales better than defensive ability in large ships. Would that be a desired effect? I'm undecided on that. Having sensors have no sizemod would mean that larger ships could extend their sensor range more easily than a small ship could. I don't see that as desireable.

A large ship *should* be able to extend its sensor range more easily than a small ship. They have more room to add in more sensor packages, and add in more processing bits to better merge their sensor inputs. That's how we build better sensors today... by adding more to the network.

It could be argued that Lasers, Mass Drivers, and Missiles should all be a set size. The systems have their own power generators, and if it works for a tiny ship, it should work the same for a huge ship. This means that larger hull ships will have more weapons then their smaller cousins, but be more vulnerable, as their defenses don't work as well at the same sizes. Oh well. Life always sucks for the big targets as they are always easier to hit then the small ones.

I was attempting to highlight the viability of spending research and manufacturing effort in order to firstly attain large hulls, and then fit them out and build them. To a certain extent the rewards for this effort are diminished because component size increases with hull size. There are more gameplay factors to consider, other than those you mentioned Popup.

Without serious miniturisation efforts a large hull is barely more capable than smaller versions. Sometimes I find I can only fit one extra small component, such a life support or sensor module. Sometimes one extra weapon or defense module can be fitted. Usually not.

Gameplay aside, scaling the size of certain components to ship size just does not make sense. The irrefutable fact is that large ships ARE and should be more capable than smaller ships.

Hmmm... While I'm thinking about scaling components, the usefulness of the tiny hull comes to mind. There is barely enough room on that hull for a weapon and an engine, sometimes not even that. I reckon some review is needed there.

Large hulls have a lot more hitpoints. And most components that do get bigger only get a bit bigger. I have a journal entry on this somewhere that highlights that.  A weapon that takes a 7 on a small hull might use 9 on a large hull.  Some components are less suited for tiny hulls and others are less suited for large hulls depending on the type of weapon or defense it is.

A large ship *should* be able to extend its sensor range more easily than a small ship. They have more room to add in more sensor packages, and add in more processing bits to better merge their sensor inputs.

Star Pilot: You're missing my point. The same volume of sensor equipment will be more effective on a small ship than a large ship because the small ship interferes less with its own sensors (drive and electronics emissions, etc). Yes, the large ship should be able to reach higher level of sensors because it has more total space that it can dedicate to the purpose, but to get an equivelent level of sensors on a large ship, it will take more space than it took in the small hull.

Now, I don't like the particular algorithm used for determining the size, but that's a seperate argument that I may or may not make later in this message.

rogerano: Large ships are more capable than small ships. yeah, I think there should be more difference, but let's face it, a huge hull only has about three times the storage space of a small one.

Frogboy: I think part of the problem with the current size computation is that in some cases the size of the component is based more on the size of the hull than the size of the component. I'm thinking an algorithm that takes both into account may not get such an adverse reaction. Say give each hull size a "scale factor" and each component a factor of how much it pays attention to that scale factor.

So, say that a tiny hull has a scale factor of 0, and a large hull has a scale factor of 2. A component that doesn't vary its size would have a factor of 0, and the end size could be (size)*(1+hull scale factor*component scale factor). With a hull scale factor of 0, tiny hulls would always use the base factor. With components with a scale factor of 0, they'd always use the base size. Now, if a component with a 0.5 scale factor goes in a hull with a 2.0 scale factor, the end result would be a component of size size*(1+0.5*2) or size*2. Does that make sense. That way I think users will feel the connection between base component size and end result a little better.

I think I'd prefer this method to what we've got, but I also don't think it's going to radically change my enjoyment of the game.

Gah.. I knew something was up with that. So I guess I get the arguments for some components, but explain to me why a beam weapon that does no more damage on a smaller ship takes up more space on a larger ship?

Why not just give the larger ship less spaces and do away with this confusing scaling? Or better yet, get rid of the confusing scaling and leave the number of spaces alone. I was really disappointed having researched all the way to bigger hulls, only to find out I still couldn't equip the ship decently.

Star Pilot: You're missing my point. The same volume of sensor equipment will be more effective on a small ship than a large ship because the small ship interferes less with its own sensors (drive and electronics emissions, etc). Yes, the large ship should be able to reach higher level of sensors because it has more total space that it can dedicate to the purpose, but to get an equivelent level of sensors on a large ship, it will take more space than it took in the small hull.

No. You are completely and totally wrong on this issue. When we want to get better data results from studing something (an atom, a star, whales in the pacific, etc), we don't make the container of the sensor *smaller*. We add more sensors! If we cannot fit in enough sensors, we make the container larger! If we cannot make the container larger, then we add a second of it into a virtual, larger container (ie, the Very Long Base Array). The science yielded does not degrade because we made it larger. Indeed, the data yielded goes up, as we have more sensors targeting the same item/area of interest!

Big ships would have the room for more sensors, and just because they are bigger does not in any way mean they require more avionics to achieve the same result as a tiny satellite! That's not how these things work at all.

The only reason a non-defense component should get bigger with hull size is due to power plant requirements and the space to let a human or a human directed tele-presence device (ie, a robot) to have access to the equipment. That's it.

That's why GC2 is having problems with its ship design. It has no power plant. If all components were standardized to require X amount of hard space + a small variable amount of space to allow for basic maintanance, and they all had power requirements, then everything would scale correctly. Big ships would require big power plants to power all those sensors, engines, mass drivers, etc. Small ships would require small power plants. Power plant considerations could be simplified to the point that as you add components to a ship, it would automatically size up the power plant to power that piece (and let you know when you cannot add another of that piece, just like it does now for space). This is what those size increases per hull is trying to do... add in the space that powering that equipment and maintaining it would require. Just list it, and add in power plant increases in the tech tree (rather then the near useless minaturization).

It's really sort of silly for a space game to have the limits on ships be set by "hull tech". It should be limited instead by your current "power" techs. That's our real limitation in the real world. Powering the beasts we build. As your power tech increases, just how much you can keep economically powered goes up. The more power, the better a craft you can send careening in the spaces between the stars.

It's probably not something Brad is interested in doing at this point in GC2, but it would immediately address many game issues. For instance, in the beginning, deflectors would seriously bite, because they require so much power. But as your power tech goes up, they'd became reasonable. Indeed, they'd probably reign as the supreme defense at the end of the tech tree, due to increased efficency in being able to make a stronger field for the same amount of enegy (Deflector Techs), and due to being able to generate more power in less space (Power tech).

Power generation would make it so that you could build big, slow ships, or medium hot rods of space, or fast sensor small ships. But once you start sticking on other things, you lose top speed (energy going to power things other then engines).

One tech to rule them all, One tech to bind them...

Sorry. That's just how I've seen it since the first design elements have showed up. Component's are not working well at the different hull sizes because the power requirements and basic maintenence space increases are being abstracted into the component, and that's keeping things from working in an intuitive fashion.

Large hulls have a lot more hitpoints. And most components that do get bigger only get a bit bigger. I have a journal entry on this somewhere that highlights that. A weapon that takes a 7 on a small hull might use 9 on a large hull. Some components are less suited for tiny hulls and others are less suited for large hulls depending on the type of weapon or defense it is.

Lets move away from the conceptual here folks and get to the practical. Discussions justifying real world stuff are interesting but aren't going to help make the game better.

Ok here's a case in point. Last night I grabbed a medium hull (44 units of space available) and was able to fit out the following components:
- 2 mass drivers for a total of 8 attack
- 1 Shield for a total of 2 defense
- 1 warp drive for a total speed of 4pc/wk

Then I grabbed a cargo hull (70 units of space available) - which is the equivalent of the next hull size up from medium - and was able to fit out the following components:
- 2 mass drivers for a total of 8 attack
- 1 Shield for a total of 2 defense
- 1 warp drive for a total speed of 4pc/wk

Sorry chief but I have to say that these minor size increases you mention have muted the point of attaining the larger hull sizes. I don't mean to come across narky, but that's just the way it is and I can't see how people can argue against. The larger cargo hull has a whopping 26 additional units of space yet offers absolutely no serious benefits to the player for going to the trouble of attaining and then eventually building and wearing the costs of larger hull sizes. Basically larger hulls should offer flexibility - that's their critical function (more hit-points are merely a bonus, not a selling point). As it stands now they're just thicker skinned versions of smaller craft and that's pretty boring.

Let's break it down to a basic cost benefit scenario which will demonstrate why larger ships aren't worth the trouble.

Costs:
- Increased cost / time to manufacture
- Increased maintenance costs
- Component scaling limits / prevents fitting of more components over smaller hulls
- Additional research required to attain larger hull
- Larger hull sizes soak up more fleet logistic points in fleet formations

Benefits:
- More hitpoints
- In certain circumstances more components can be added.

That should make the situation clear. Right now I see one use for larger hull sizes: a means by which one can exploit the soon to be removed situation where the AI will focus combat fire on large hulls. Otherwise the smaller hulls have much more to offer.

Adjustment is needed.

Well, don't forget that cargo hull have only 1 Hp. If you don't plan to receive fire, they are better than large hull for attacking. But it is a big IF.

rogerano:

Very good point, actual in-game examples of this effect. And I couldn't agree more that the points that need to be argued are how it affects the game. That is number one, and after this post, I'm dropping anything that isn't specifically gameplay related (especially since my opinion is to change the system, and I'm debating with other people that think the system needs to change).

Basically, my point was that the amount of space that a component increases is a fixed (per component) fraction of the hull size, so there are times that the hull size plays far more important a role than it should.

For example, imagine a component that has a base size of 5, and a sizemod of 10. This means that on a size 10 hull, it would be a size 6 component. Then, we research an improved version of this, that's got a base size of 4, but still a sizemod of 10. This means that it would be size 5 in the same hull, allowing you to fit two of them, or similar things. Now, let's compare what happens when we put these on a beyond-huge ship with 100 space. Now, the base version is size 15, and the improved version is size 14. Sure, there will be a difference, but it's nowhere near as drastic.

Now, I can't name any examples of components where an improved version of a component has a smaller size but the same sizemod, this was just an example of what can go wrong with the existing system.

The more I think about it, the more I dislike the way GC2 ship design is handled, but I also think it's too late to make major changes.

Issues with the current system:

1) As pointed out by rogerano, at his current tech level, a 50 space hull with +40 miniaturization bonus didn't result in any more components than a 32 space hull with the same level of miniaturization. I dislike the idea of a bigger hull only buying more HP and the occasional extra component due to rounding. This is especially true in that most of the fights I've seen have gone decidedly one way or the other, a doubling or tripling of the hit points would not have changed who won.

2) The fact that an engine that will push a tiny hull 4 times faster costs as much as an engine that will push a huge hull 4 times faster just seems wrong. The same goes for the cost of life support for a tiny 1 man scout or a 1000-man dreadnought. For those components that should scale, the price should scale as well. Maybe if the larger ships did cost more, the devs would be willing to let them be more powerful as well.

3) Just in the space count, the ships don't seem to scale well. You'd think we could build ships over 5 times larger than The smallest ship we would bother with. If we could even double all three dimensions, we could get something 8 times the size, 128 spaces, over 50% larger than a Huge hull.

As I've said before, the only reason to scale weapons based on the hull size is game balance.

BTW, when you mention that you can't do seriously better with a huge hull than medium without a lot of miniaturization, I think you're missing one thing. The medium hull would get better at an equal rate, so at best, you might pick up an extra component or two.

Peace Phoenix: I believe rogerano used the cargo hull as an example because he didn't have large hulls researched (the amount of space would be the same), not because he's suggesting using cargo hulls in combat. His point is that at his current tech level, the only difference between a medium and large hull was that the large hull had an extra 4HP (25%). Not something to write home about, and not something that's going to win a war unless it's a very close one.

I'll start a clean 4D game tonight and report back this weekend on in-game designs based strictly on the military hulls, if noone else does.

Star Pilot:

Big ships would have the room for more sensors, and just because they are bigger does not in any way mean they require more avionics to achieve the same result as a tiny satellite! That's not how these things work at all.

Several of the engineering majors I went to college will disagree with you on that point. Bigger ships usually have bigger engines, more electronics, etc,, which generates more interference which means the same amount of sensors will have more noise to filter out, be it electrical, gravitonic, or whatever. So being a bigger ship CAN work against you when it comes to sensors.

Real world example: High quality non-combat sonar. If your opinion were uncontestably fact, then the fact that you have more room on a big hull for more sonar gear means that that would be the way to improve sensitivity, resolution, etc. But that's not the way it's done by any large noncombat ship that needs high quality sonar. They tow a small pod with all the sonar emitters/receivers, so that all the noise the ship generates doesn't interfere as much with the sonar sensors. In fact, for some extreme cases, they prefer a smaller ship towing the pod so that it generates less interference.

I'm not denying that big ships have more room for sensors, it would be stupid to argue that point. What I'm saying is that 10 space worth of sensors on a big ship will not be as effective as 10 space worth of sensors on a small ship, unless there's some serious noise polution issues on the small ship that the big ship doesn't have.

The only reason a non-defense component should get bigger with hull size is due to power plant requirements and the space to let a human or a human directed tele-presence device (ie, a robot) to have access to the equipment. That's it.

Life support should also scale in size to support a larger crew, sensor scaling is debatable (as we've proven, and not something either of us could answer as it pertains to the GC2 universe, and it's only one component so it's not that important in the overall debate), and engines should definitely scale. The only reason for anything else to scale would be for game balance issues, and that's where the debate belongs.

PopupTarget, I tell you what, I'll go down the road and tell the guys that built Hubble they did it wrong. And Chandra. And Spitzer. For that matter, any and all space probes ever made. Heck, I'll phone up Russia and ESA to let them know they have had it wrong all this time as well. Glad you could clear that up for us. (big wink!) Sorry about that, couldn't resist.

We are talking *space*. Water naval ships generate *more noise* to interfere with their *sonor* due to the medium they are in. You know, water. When you are talking space craft, space craft noise/interference becomes a serious non-issue at any decent power range (to run your sensors). That's real life space science, as of 1980 technology.

The medium your sensor platform is in really changes what you have to overcome to get good data. For space craft, the medium they are in is a near vacuum, meaning they have a lot less problems then earth side. Of course, they have more hard radiation to worry about, but since you have to worry about that just to have your craft work in that medium in the first place, then its usually a "done/handled" issue. Either you want that kind of radiation (so you let it into your collector and just protect your 'tronics) or you aren't (and therefore shield the important bits as you would for any other component on the craft).

Now, there are certain things that you can be interested in, where you have to take into account the *instrument* housing. But adding another collector of that information improves your data, regardless of if you are just cramming it into a twin into the same protective tube (hull), or putting it on a follow pod. Indeed, it is common practice in remote sensing space craft to split your sensors across multiple craft (meaning you have *many* follow pods). This is not due to a bigger craft to hold them all causing any interference in their data collection, but rather, it is to keep the size of your needed platform down, making it cheap to launch and being able to keep the instruments and recorders powered (smaller individual sensor "packages" means they are easier to keep powered off of batteries when they are lights out --- Power generation is the true design limitation on real world space craft).

Additionally, adaptive techniques are well established for those times you are stuck with housing/mother craft interference.

Adding sensors always scales in space applications. Always. Whether its gravitc, EM, solar particles, whatever. The more sensors, the more info you yield. It's not literally scalar (ie, 20 sensors doesn't yield a x20 science data increase over 1 sensor), but we aren't trying to get down to that level for GC, are we?

Now, we can ignore that if you like, but by limiting any hull size modifiers for sensors to only minorly scale (to cover the extra infrastructure required for that hull size) would at least allow bigger ships to gather better local intel (more sensors means they will let the user see things further out from that one craft). This is only going to improve the *user's* gaming experience, isn't it? Bigger ships can see further because they can be crammed with more sensors. Finally, a real reason to build a big ship. AWACs.

re: Crew and life support
Life support was something I thought about. But, as we don't know about crew requirement's and at what point automation allows 1 person to do the work of 10, I thought it best to skip over, for game reasons. Power generation, by itself, can actually keep things under control. Then there's the whole different life form things (who's to say the Yor isn't the space ship itself, for instance?) and what sort of effects people would expect from that. If any. But setting that aside, let's pursue this line of thought and its possible game-effects for the moment.

Let's see... your computer/automation techs would let you reduce the number of crew to operate any component/equipment. You'd research various medical advances (particularly psychology and bringing down community health costs) to increase the number of people you could create as a long term crew (all that stress kicking about in space, isolated by months to years from the nearest friendly assistance or facilities), so you couldn't build a huge crew military ship at the start of the game. Humm.. So, this would work as in a tiny ship would be crewed by 1 person, small ships crewed by 3, medium by 9, etc etc etc. Ok. I'd suggest leaving the crew number limits as hard limits (although a Galactic Wonder might increase the effective number allowed at that level), so that what would happen is that in the beginning, civs couldn't build much (each component requires 1 or more people to run), but as your automation progresses, 1 crewman can "man" more components, resulting in ships becoming more capable as you advance in the game. So far so good, right?

The only real drawback to this is that it makes computer/automation techs so much more valuable as their benefits increase your ship capabilities as well as your research or construction capabilities (depending on the particulars of where automation gets placed in the tech tree).

Just my thoughts and opinions. I think using power generation is a better limitor for a game where you can play a variety of alien species.

As for the game itself, I think larger hulls should fit more onto them. That's the point of bigger hulls, to me at least. If you can fit 2 missile shooters on one of your small hulls, isn't it reasonable to expect to fit significantly more missile shooters on bigger ships? If you cannot, then what is the point of bigger hulls? If they take longer to make, but cannot do more for you, why would you ever need to build them? I don't understand the strategic importance they are meant to play otherwise.

I'll go down the road and tell the guys that built Hubble they did it wrong. And Chandra. And Spitzer. For that matter, any and all space probes ever made. Heck, I'll phone up Russia and ESA to let them know they have had it wrong all this time as well. Glad you could clear that up for us. (big wink!) Sorry about that, couldn't resist.

NP, we're arguing points that aren't exclusive, and failing to communicate. BTW, a far more effective example of your point would be the AWACS. That amount of sensors couldn't have fit on anything even a bit smaller at the time. I really do understand what you're saying. I never said that a larger sensor platform couldn't be better overall. I even said that I wasn't arguing that point.

Also, there's only been one person who didn't say that a large hull should hold more. Sadly, that's the one person who's opinion counts most on this topic.

At any rate, I'm back in this thread because the situation got WORSE in 4D. Now, the amount that the sizemod factor adds is based on the sizemod percentage of the effective size of the ship, not the base size. So, a life support module that takes 5 spaces on a cargo hull with no miniturization (having a capacity of 50) takes 6 spaces if you've got 20% miniaturization.

What this means is that if you've got a colony ship design that needs another 4 spaces on it to fit a needed component, so you research basic miniaturization, get another 5 spaces, it's quite possible that that needed component still won't fit! That's just counterintuitive and will throw players who aren't expecting it. It also means that the whole miniaturization line just lost a good bit of its benefit. I haven't heard if this is a bug or the intended behavior.

I still don't have better data on this, the game I started last night CDT'ed, and both autosaves were unloadable as well, just before I got large hulls researched.

I'm playing a good 4D game now but it's early stages. Will perform some solid experiments when the game has progressed further.

No solid numbers yet, the only stable game I had I won on influence before I was ready to do the testing, but here's a few things I noticed:

1) The sizemod of components tends to go down as you research more advanced components, so while a large ship based on early techs (say miniballs or mass drivers, or other components of the first generation or two) may not be much more effective than a medium ship, if you're designing them with late generation components, (black hole gun, etc), then the difference is more pronounced. I can't say that this effect bothers me to a great degree.

2) The fact that the sizemod increase is now based on effective hull size instead of the base hull size is eating about half of the miniaturization bonus. Most of my designs that went from a 50 space hull to a 62 space hull (first two levels of miniaturization) would gain 4-7 spaces, with 2 and 12 being the extremes. The only way to hit 12 was to use nothing but sizemod-0 components, and there aren't many of them.

2) The fact that the sizemod increase is now based on effective hull size instead of the base hull size is eating about half of the miniaturization bonus.

I guess the problem was already in beta 4C since I remember wondering myselft why the life support modules have increased their size (from 5 to 6) on a cargo hull. Now I know, it is when I have got the miniaturization level that have put the cargo hull to 62 space.

Ironic, isn't it? Researching miniaturization makes components take up more space.

It's really confusing in it's current state. I would argue for multiplying everything by 10 (spaces available, spaces used) and then applying miniaturization to the components. So a 10% miniaturization bonus to something taking up 70 spaces would make it only use up 63. I'm sure the way the game is coded makes it easier to increase the spaces available on the ship, but that coupled with parts getting bigger is just bizarre.

I say multiply it by 10 so we don't introduce more percentage rounding issues, like when you do something evil to increase your PQ and then not actually get any benefit from it.

Look, really, nothing complex needs to happen here. If I've managed to convince anybody that scaling component sizes is broken, then there is a simple solution. Fixed component sizes (for those that make sense) are the go.

- Weapons, defense, sensors, and special function components should be fixed in size.
- Life support and engines should scale to hull size.

This change is simple, logical, and enhances the perceived usefulness of larger hulls. It is also a compromise between fixing the size of all components, and the current system. In addition I believe this change can be localised to XML files which is easier than changing both XML files AND hull space units (where-ever they're stored).

I agree (mostly, defense should scale a little, but not as much as engines). I really don't see any non-game balance reason for most components to scale, though I still think that the sizemod shouldn't take miniaturization into consideration and that's not an XML change.

The Hull space units are in XML too, btw.

Ah righto. Yeah agree regarding sizemods and miniturisation. Broken