I get Vandermeer point that large ships have certain economic and efficiency advantages but the little ships also give other advantages that make them competitive. I guess we will have to await for multi player aurora to discover who is right in the big vs little question. Until then it is a question of play style.
I have actually no doubt that small ships will be better in matters of raw fire power. That is basically the thing everywhere (and the reason why we build carriers after all). Large ships sacrifice mass designation for longevity in fuel, msp, and other components to support other ships. They save some mass on the armor (unless you increase that ofc.), but that is not enough to bail them out.
There is some offset coming from the shields still, because in a broadside of 1 10*sized ship vs. 10 1*sized ships, the smaller only regenerate at 1/10th of the large one despite having potentially the same maximum shield "hp" altogether. (if they even bothered to have shields that is) I don't think this offset is enough, but definitely rebalances.
Your comparison with the missile cruiser and frigates+colliers is not really fair though. For a real comparison both units should use the same weapon type, otherwise you just prove that amms(+box launchers) do more damage per stored ammunition than real missiles (with normal launchers on top), and that is no surprise. Amm ships are whole type of unit because this is widely recognized to be superior when you can dictate the engagement range. (..and the reason why missiles are still used too, is of course because you
can't always chose the range in which case long ranged weapons become important)
10 ships of 15000 tons can just cover much more ground then a single 150000 ton ship.
That
would be a point normally, but every really large ships has (at least for me) space for hangars and can control a large area around it with the highest reaction speed that your empire can muster.
It is true if you are talking about capturing points and parking there maybe, but that doesn't happen so often. In my case it becomes obsolete later too, because once the mid-large ship phase is passed (100-300kts), and you get your first megaton ships, then those can have big enough hangars to store escort destroyers.
For example I planned a 1.1mt heavy cruiser in my current game, which will hold 2 20kt destroyers together with its 20 fighters and 20 bombers. Other than for big NPR and Invader wars, that should be enough to cover any space you'd want (often enough even in those cases).
I can split them up into smaller task forces, I can simply leave damaged ships behind for repairs instead of taking the whole squadron down for repairs, a single lucky hit will cost me much less time to repair/replace.
Hmm, that is all true when you really receive a hit. Thing is, your capital ships tend to not get damaged because the shields soak everything up. I have never played different than this large ship style, but MarcAFK above managed to surprise me with his report of critical hitting mid caliber weapons. Why is that? ..Because, despite all the NPR wars and uncountable other little space threats I have been through, I never got damaged by one of those weapons, in all that time.
The only things that can deliver enough "damage per second" to pierce through capital shields are usually AI "pdcs"(/their space base equivalent) with their intensive Amm spam. I had multiple cases where AMMs managed to get the shields down, but yet not a single incident where the AI managed to do this with other means (mostly, because I could react to fire though, whereas it is usually too late when disastrous Amm salvos get spotted). The only other two times I ever received damage on a capital ship was against mesons.
..But it is true that
if you receive damage, it takes out virtually "your whole fleet" as a large ship for repairs. Small hits I sometimes chose to ignore though. 'Battle Scars' are cool on capitals.
And on a player vs. player basis, this would likely become much much more problematic, because they will know how to damage large ships (outside of mesons). This could become the main counter argument in that case actually. Without some "hull-repair ship" that can patch some thing underway, the only other thing to kind of counter a little is to turtle like the Galactica.
Against the current AI though, you end up needing way less repairs, even in real wars. In the "Astral Republic Showcase" thread, there was recently an NPR war, where I pretty much conquered all with just a single 300kt cruiser against an militarily equally sized, and -as it turned out after looting- even equally teched opponent. ...Shields were drained to around a third sometimes, but in the end: The cruiser didn't even get a scratch. It is an AI problem here because exactly that ability to "spread out and cover more ground" let me take apart their forces one by one, where a concentrated fleet would have defeated me for sure.
Against AI, large ships are superior combatants for this.
Also I can keep more officers in circulation.
I started a new topic for this, because this has bothered me for a while and I had more to mention, which would lead abroad here.
