Cramp more modules into a ship

[rhood]

I dont know whether this is a bug or a feature i dont know.
When i choose to upgrade an existing "User" design, an Impulse Drive of size 6 takes up only 4 spaces. An effect of Advanced Miniaturization? I dont think so because when i clear my design in progress, the drive reverts to its original occupancy of 6 spaces.
Using this loophole, i am able to cramp 7 Laser-V, 2 Impulse-III, 2 Shields and some support modules into my medium hull!
Has anyone noticed this loophole?

 

[Pentium]

Module size depends on hulls size too. Is the design where ID takes 4 spaces smaller than the ones where it takes 6?

 

[rhood]

Hmm... interestingly i am not able to replicate the feature in another game of mine. I dont know what i had done to bring out this "bug".

 

[warpstorm]

Were you playing as the Yor?

 

[rhood]

Nope, not Yor. I was playing with customised race.
But i am not sure why this "miniaturization" effect only works on "upgrade", not a new. And in the midst of "upgrade" and i press "Clear", the effect is gone too.

I have attached a snapshot. Notice that the Impulse-III occupies size of 6 but occupies only 4 when i put it on the ship. The weapon and defence modules have similiar effect too...

 

[Pentium]

What are those questionmarks doing there?

 

[Vizzini]

Nope, not Yor. I was playing with customised race.
But i am not sure why this "miniaturization" effect only works on "upgrade", not a new. And in the midst of "upgrade" and i press "Clear", the effect is gone too.

I have attached a snapshot. Notice that the Impulse-III occupies size of 6 but occupies only 4 when i put it on the ship. The weapon and defence modules have similiar effect too...

The question marks in the screenie are odd, definitely not the norm... have you by chance downloaded or installed any mods or customized ship/graphics from GalCiv2.com?

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

I think that the game would be better off if miniaturization would merely affect modules, but leave weapons and engines as they are.

Also, beyond my comprehension why weapons and engines take up more space in larger hulls- this doesnt really make sense in real life. I'd have welcomed it, had the GalcivII Team instead added some really large weapon turrets which, by default, are so large that they'd only be able to fit on Large of Huge Hulls.

In real life a Battleship would not carry an increasing number of gun turrets over, say a cruiser; i.e. cruiser = 4x3 guns, and BB = 12x3 guns of the same caliblre. Nope, real life has bigger calibre guns in heavier armored gun turrets. Not the number of guns should increase the larger the hull becomes, but the possible calibre (read=damage value) of each gun.

With the way GalcivII techtree works better guns keep getting less space-consuming over time :| rrrrrright....
Hence, bigger/better guns should respectively use up more space, IMHO, already I can pack 8x damage Mass drivers on my tiny hulls (add my Boni and its 12x damage points per fighter). That means I could put the same attack value of a Dreadnought on 3 to 4 fighters. nonono- tiny hulls 's shouldn't be able to carry weapon systems like that...

 

[BSmith1068]

Also, beyond my comprehension why weapons and engines take up more space in larger hulls-

I agree with you on the weapons.... For the engines, I look at it this way: The technology lets you build an engine that will let you go X parsecs per turn. The larger the hull, the bigger the engine that is needed to do so.

A real life example would be with airplanes. The Boeing 777 and Boeing 737 both have two engines that one could argue are at the same technological level (turbo fans). The 777 engine is much larger than the 737 engine.

Looking at this in terms of the game, the 777 engine takes up more space, but the 777 is a much larger hull than the 737, so the overall ratio of engine space to total space is similar if not better for the larger ship. (I am at work right now so I can't do the math, but it might be interesting to see what the ratios are for the various hull sizes in the game - size of one engine:total hull capacity.)

Make sense or am I totally off my rocker?

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

Makes sense indeed, though small craft will never be able to go faster than larger vessels. That a larger engine is required to move a larger hull makes perfect sense.

Again however, one faces the problem of the larger hull allowing too many engines to be mounted. I mean, what about speed boats (40+ knots) traveling faster than warships (30+ knots)? In real life a ship will have a certain number of engines or turbines, warships usualy have 2 turbines (and usualy they additionaly feature an set of screw-driven machines, should anything happen to the turbines. One system is meant to act as an alternative to the other, not jointly.)

So what we'd need for miniaturization to make sense is to have engine types for each particular Hull size. Otherwise there will be Huge ships equipped with, lets say 8 engines that will travel 32 parsec/week while a tiny ship will have a maximum of 2 engines and merely travel 8 parsec/week (which renders the concept of scout ships, fighters and patrol vessels absolutely useless )

If we now had particular (Huge) hull engines that increase in output and space they might consume miniaturization comes in most handy. No longer would we have the I'll-just-jank-another-engine-on-it approach. A tiny hull would benefit from having its own lightweight series of hull-specific engine techtree.

Perhaps one could even tweak the game engine one day to simulate hull and component weight: Imagine a concept of your vessel getting slower with ever new gun turret installed, thus needing more engine power to maintain the desired speed...

 

[Vizzini]

Makes sense indeed, though small craft will never be able to go faster than larger vessels. That a larger engine is required to move a larger hull makes perfect sense.

Only makes sense until you remember that in space, there is no weight - only mass and inertia. Tho I'm no rocket scientist I seem to recall that it takes the same amount of energy to move a really huge ship in space as it does to move a little tiny snub fighter.

You could always apply "Honorverse" physics to the problem and say that the larger hulls need larger engines because of the need for bigger and better "inertial compensators" tho

I do think there should be different classes of weapons tho - bigger and meaner (and more destructive) weapons that can only be mounted on large+ hulls and such. Makes more sense.

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

Hm, inertial compensators sounds good to me cuz otherwise there'd be no limit to whatever one'd like to fit- even if that were 20 engines to a fighter (hull space points would be out of the window).

Edit: What would limit tiny hulls in space shouldn't be speed but range

But, yes, lets talk more weapons

 

[One Man Bucket]

Only makes sense until you remember that in space, there is no weight - only mass and inertia. Tho I'm no rocket scientist I seem to recall that it takes the same amount of energy to move a really huge ship in space as it does to move a little tiny snub fighter.

Hmmm. If I remember my schooldays corectly I think it's momentum that is most important, and momentum = mass x velocity. The mass of the ship times the velocity of the ship equals the mass of the propellant times the velocity of the propellant. This means that you need to eject the propellant at very high speeds, or you need to eject lots of it. (Or both of course.) The bigger your ship, the higher its mass and as a result the bigger the engine you need to eject the propellant at the desired speed and/or mass.