Warship sizes

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

I have a suspicion that warship sizes will peak at a certain point and not go beyond it.

As I see it, the practical limit for a ship's size is how many years it takes to build, and therefore how long it takes to be overhauled.  I can see ships that take as long as 5 years to build.  Sure, it would take a year to overhaul them, but that is 3 years of use per one in the shop.

But a ship that takes 15 years to build?  That would be in overhaul half the time.  I could see technology developing to the point that new technologies are so expense that a significant improvement in technology wouldn't happen for decades at a time, so it wouldn't necessarily become obsolete while it was being built.

When technology is changing rapidly there is a premium on ships that take less time to build.  Even so.

If five years is the practical limit, five years is the practical limit regardless of the tech level, unless larger ships are so much more effective on a cost basis that it is really worth the hit.

So if at the 2050 tech level the largest practical warship is around 300 HS, what developments would increase or decrease that size?

At Tech advances, every system becomes cost denser.  They cost more per HS.  Instead of an average of 6 BP per HS, it edges up to 8 HS, 10 HS, and more.  That means that by advancing a tech generation, a ship built along the same general lines and HS might cost 10%, 20% more.

Factoring against that there is Increasing Shipyard Construction Rate and finding an officer with +30% shipyard build rate.  And I think that cost goes up faster.


Among the implications:
Since number of shipyards can be expanded far more easily than shipyard construction rate can be increased, it will be easier to build and maintain a large number of warships than it will be to make superhuge warships.

Still, if we put an upper limit of 15 years construction as an estimate of what sized ship will be built, that still means ships of 1,000 HS - 2,000 HS are possible.

But I am neglecting some possibilities.  There might be weapon systems which do not radically increase in cost density as tech increases.  Hangars won't increase in cost per HS, after all, and fighters come under different maintenance issues.  An expensive fighter load would not make a carrier take longer to overhaul.

Hunh.  I just noticed that armor caps at 20.  I went up to crystaline armor, and getting up to level 20 didn't even double the size of the ship.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

Re-reading stuff, I noticed that Jump Gates can shift a 250 Hull space ship, if I understand it correctly.

That is an incentive for keeping certain classes of ships at or just below 250 HS.  With a large number of warships in that size area, there is also incentive for designing a class of Jump Cruisers to extend their range beyond the Jump Gate network as well.

250 HS is also in the range where I expect the increasing overhaul time would make it less attractive economically.  Above 250 HS ships will have more limitations on their strategic mobility, so 250 HS is probably the largest sized ships that will be called "Cruisers".

Because efficient freighters that can carry a single factory are around 100 HS, I expect that to be a common class for a long time.  Building a bunch of cheap size 100 Jump Cruisers would be a way of cheaply and quickly extending communications and a jump gate network.  And survey ships probably won't ever grow beyond 100 HS.  So there are long term reasons for maintaining size 100 Jump Cruisers.  And I expect patrol warships would be built around that assumption as well, until minimum sized jump engines started pushing sizes up.

Between 100 HS and 250 HS I do not see anything that would be a particular break point for ship size.  What classes are built would likely be an artifact of whatever Jump Engines were designed by the race in question.  Making the new Jump Engine Cruisers slightly larger than the previous generation would allow a bit of size creep in those ship classes that were limited by the size of the previous generation of Jump Cruisers.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

250 HS looks like an efficient size for a 15 Cargo Hold freighter.

Well, efficient once somewhat better armor comes out.  As engines get more powerful and expensive, freighter designs with a smaller percentage of Hull Space going to engines become more economical.

So if jump cruiser sizes get linked to freighter sizes, I would expect size 100 HS, 180 HS and 250 HS Jump cruisers.  Approximately.

[Steve Walmsley]

There is no limit on the size of ships that can pass through a jump gate. 250 HS is the size of the components required to assemble a jump gate.

Steve

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

Ah, I see my mistake.  I was going by your phrase "My intention is to have no limit on the size of ships that can enter jump gates as they are like a 250 hull space jump drive." in the discussion of Jump Gates, and read 250 HS Jump Drive as somehow the upper limit, rather than the effect of having a Jump Engine of 250 HS.

Oops.

I am concerned that Jump Gates may be too expensive.

Compared to simply building shuttle Jump Cruisers it appears cheaper to deploy on 400 BP ship than use 10 240 BP Jump Gate components for a two-way gate.  Yes, the ship requires maintenance and overhaul, but at 50% cost over three years that would be 36 years before the Jump Gate was more economical, and that ignores the lost investment potential of that many minerals.

[Erik L]

Ah, I see my mistake.  I was going by your phrase "My intention is to have no limit on the size of ships that can enter jump gates as they are like a 250 hull space jump drive." in the discussion of Jump Gates, and read 250 HS Jump Drive as somehow the upper limit, rather than the effect of having a Jump Engine of 250 HS.

Oops.

I am concerned that Jump Gates may be too expensive.

Compared to simply building shuttle Jump Cruisers it appears cheaper to deploy on 400 BP ship than use 10 240 BP Jump Gate components for a two-way gate.  Yes, the ship requires maintenance and overhaul, but at 50% cost over three years that would be 36 years before the Jump Gate was more economical, and that ignores the lost investment potential of that many minerals.

In the test I've been running, the system next to the starting system is quite mineral rich, and includes a 1x cost planet. so to facilitate transport of colonists and infrastructure to the colony, I built a jumpgate.

This means I can use my "in-system" cargo ships as they outmassed the capabilities of the jump carriers I designed and built (and the next 3-4 generations) instead of building a smaller freighter (which I did anyway).

[Steve Walmsley]

I am concerned that Jump Gates may be too expensive.

Compared to simply building shuttle Jump Cruisers it appears cheaper to deploy on 400 BP ship than use 10 240 BP Jump Gate components for a two-way gate.  Yes, the ship requires maintenance and overhaul, but at 50% cost over three years that would be 36 years before the Jump Gate was more economical, and that ignores the lost investment potential of that many minerals.

How large a jump ship were you considering building? Don't forget any size of ship can pass through a jump gate. Also I would expect a jump gate to have a much longer life than 36 years, it never needs refitting and it is always available without visiting the shipyards for overhauls.

Steve

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

There are basically three choices for strategic mobility:
1)  A Jump Cruiser that travels with the convoy.  Disadvantage, all ships are limited to the slowest speed.  As tech advances, there will be a wide range of ship speeds.  And cost efficient freighter designs have fewer engines than cost efficient colony ships.

2)  Jump Gates.  Allows anything through, no maintenance.  Disadvantage, very expensive and takes a long time to deploy.

3)  Jump cruisers deployed to warp points, instead of travelling in convoy.  Like Jump Gates allow economic development ships to travel at their best speed.

So build a bunch of Jump Gate cruisers with cargo holds to fill out the volume required, a few engines to get them deployed, and deploy them for long periods at various warp points.

For example:
 5000 tons     210 Crew     385 BP      Signature 100-120
1200 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 9/0/0/0     Damage Control 0-0
Cargo 25000   Supply 200  
Ion Engine (2)    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Passive Sensor S3-9 (1)     Strength 9     Detect Signature 10: 0.9m km     Detect Signature 100: 9m km

or
5000 tons     265 Crew     472 BP      Signature 100-240
2400 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 0/0/0/0     Damage Control 0-0
Cargo 20000   Supply 600  
Ion Engine (4)    Armour 0    Exp 5%

or perhaps:
5000 tons     260 Crew     446 BP      Signature 100-180
1800 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 9/3/0/0     Damage Control 0-0
Cargo 20000   Supply 400  
Ion Engine (3)    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Passive Sensor S3-9 (1)     Strength 9     Detect Signature 10: 0.9m km     Detect Signature 100: 9m km
Active Sensor S3-3 (1)     Strength 3     Detect Size 10: 0.3m km     Detect Size 100: 3m km

For economic expansion purposes, these are all good designs.  The more freighters and colony ships using a particular route, the greater the advantage to having them go at their best speed instead of in convoys.


The advantage of a Jump Gate is that larger ships can use it, and therefore one can build larger ships to use it.

So by building a Jump Gate route instead of a fixed Jump Cruiser route you can build size 180 HS freighters to carry two factories.  But you need an awful lot of larger ships to give a Jump Gate route a cost advantage over Jump Cruisers.

Comparing 2400 bp for a two-way gate, +1 year construction, and tying up 5 freighters as well, vs less than 500 for establishing a Jump Cruiser on the route, that is a pretty significant cost advantage.  And that means some 1900 BP and minerals that could be invested in something that would pay off a lot sooner than 36 years.