I think he was referring to the issue of shock damage, not optimal energy generation.
Generators don't get any benefits from being bigger though, so there is no optimization for energy generation. A bigger reactor has more structural points, making it somewhat unlikely to be destroyed by Meson 1 damage attacks. When you have a lot of shields, the shock damage doesn't really matter as Ostia said, so these Mesons and in theory size 1 warheads are the only threat to components for nearly all the game.
However, in the statistics it still comes out the same I think. I can't check the data right now, but I think a double size reactor had exactly double the hull-points, so if you have one at 6 or two at 3 -- still just takes 6 statistical hits to be destroyed. The two reactor version would mathematically be less chaotic and more predictable in the amount of damage they receive (/turns they last on average), while a 6 hp reactor is somewhat more prone to extremely lucky streaks or misfortune.
Given that
all components of your ship get hit at random when under fire, you might favor to go with one that resists that one lucky hit more sturdily, but it really doesn't make much difference under longer fire.
(--all this might be wrong if hull-points don't scale linearly like I thought...--
)
Anyway, I myself now have shifted to only research reactors that can by themself power a fast firing quad-turret. Usually power 24, and 40, 64 or even wasteful 96-100 on later game stages. (maybe that is why you AL created one at 64 too?) I don't care much about the little difference in research costs it makes, but I try to avoid the discomfort of having too big of a reactor ready, just in case I happen to design a smaller ship for once. (happened with one of those 20k destroyer aids, who needed an extra project for their first version)
I was thinking about implementing infinite deployment time in the next ship size up (400kt?). Since I've been hearing that the recreational modules are somewhat buggy, perhaps I can try adding cargo bays and cyro berths to give "shake n' bake" colony capability. This does rely on having at least partially habitable system bodies available however, so I'm wondering whether this method will be reliable enough. Thoughts?
400k is not enough for that. You have to remember that the recreational facilities are draining from the mission tonnage, so when minimum armor, crew, fuel, engines
and engineering already take 50%-60%, you would spent half and up of your mission tonnage just for this infinite deployment thing. Though it would have more armor and hull resistance, such a 400kt ship would in essence turn out to be as strong as your current 200kt ones, which seems like a waste of resources.(not that that would really matter, but for the principle of being economic and design elegantly, it fails)
This is why I normally target the first recreation facility ship to be 1mt (military or not), where it only consumes around 20-25% of mission tonnage. I had a 700kt one in a former game too, but at that time I was still flying with only 25% engine designation on power-factor 1, which was a bad choice for what I wanted it to do.
I don't know what is up with those facilities though. On some ships they work, then on the next identical replica of the same ship they don't. It happens for military and civil ship types alike, so the module itself directly has some code problem. They work often enough to make it feasible, but it always sticks out as annoying when it fails, because you usually have to either rebuild or at least update the design of the failed ship slightly to get another roll.
If I ever figure out what the cause of this issue is, I will promptly make it known on the forum here.
The cruiser looks good now though. Be sure to report positives and negatives you find in operation, because I am curios how others deal with the big ship strategy.
Only potential issue I see is that your former bombers didn't seem to use the standard ship ammunition, so they won't have refills with what I see there? Or do they now use shells as well?
