Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: May 26, 2015, 05:32:13 PM »Large and powerful sensor ships can be a double edged weapon and it depend entirely on your campaign and what type of game you play.
Some consideration have to be made in term of what these ships are suppose to do that you can't do more efficiently with a smaller ship which is cheaper to build, maintain, develop and upgrade. From a cost perspective these sensor boats are really expensive ships, but if you have the time and resources they can be a good asset to your fleet and that goes for both passive and active sensor ships.
In my current campaign ships of this type are more or less not an option, at least not the extreme versions. The research alone is a major factor why they are so impractical. I have a campaign where there are about a dozen none AI nations competing for space exploration and domination in various alliances and with widely economic differences.
In serious space conflict the single most important thing is almost always information. The side that can detect the other side first without themselves being detected will have a major advantage, this lead to large active scanner being a huge vulnerability and smaller sensor ships taking over that role, especially when you consider the amount of research you need to invest in the plethora of sensors you need to develop in a complex environment (especially in an environment where you are up against non AI ship designs).
There is also the fact of urgency, most nations or factions need their recon and scout ships now rather than later, this also put a large focus on each navy receiving ships that are good enough rather than the perfect fit.
If you have more or less unlimited resources, time and/or your enemy are inferior to you then producing hyper specialist ships of all kinds may be possible, how resource efficient they are in the long run when you factor in cost, development, maintenance etc can be questioned forever I presume...
Some consideration have to be made in term of what these ships are suppose to do that you can't do more efficiently with a smaller ship which is cheaper to build, maintain, develop and upgrade. From a cost perspective these sensor boats are really expensive ships, but if you have the time and resources they can be a good asset to your fleet and that goes for both passive and active sensor ships.
In my current campaign ships of this type are more or less not an option, at least not the extreme versions. The research alone is a major factor why they are so impractical. I have a campaign where there are about a dozen none AI nations competing for space exploration and domination in various alliances and with widely economic differences.
In serious space conflict the single most important thing is almost always information. The side that can detect the other side first without themselves being detected will have a major advantage, this lead to large active scanner being a huge vulnerability and smaller sensor ships taking over that role, especially when you consider the amount of research you need to invest in the plethora of sensors you need to develop in a complex environment (especially in an environment where you are up against non AI ship designs).
There is also the fact of urgency, most nations or factions need their recon and scout ships now rather than later, this also put a large focus on each navy receiving ships that are good enough rather than the perfect fit.
If you have more or less unlimited resources, time and/or your enemy are inferior to you then producing hyper specialist ships of all kinds may be possible, how resource efficient they are in the long run when you factor in cost, development, maintenance etc can be questioned forever I presume...