Ship sizes vs capabilities?

dracounguis

With the T6 Miranda and T6 Connie being such tiny ships vs some of the monsters out there like the Ent-J and Vengeance; I was wondering where the STO community resides on size affecting what ships can do. Yes, STO is a game; so allowances are made for playability's sake. And consider one ship class (aka not comparing a Defiant to a Galaxy class) & same Tier level. How much should ship size/mass have to do with capabilities? With regards to weapons, HP, turn rate, etc. Currently, the only main difference is big ships turn slower but have a bit more HP vs smaller ones. They all have essentially the same weapons, console and shields capability.

warpangel

So long as players are only capable of fielding one ship at a time, they have to all be equally powerful regardless of size or nobody would fly the weak ones.

celticvengence

From a game standpoint I'd say maybe some lower hp and greater agility for smaller ships simply because it is what the mind expects.

From a trying to logic the ships I figure they aim for a certain amount of firepower and then larger ships can just carry more things that don't have an impact in the game proper. Like a larger escort might carry extra landing parties, or maybe more stores/rooms so it can go on an extended run compared to a smaller escort that provides security for a space station.

discojer

Bear in mind that originally the smaller ships with high stats were justified because they were from the future, the 26th century. They might look like old ships, but they aren't.

That kind of went out the window with the Enterprise J (since it's also from the future). And then the new Miranda isn't from the future.

kodachikuno

3 words for you...

compactified subspace folds

We have TARDIS tech, all arguments about 'size matters' were made irrelevant by the devs themselves

tyler002

The only real limits smaller ship size imposes that I could think of off the top of my head would be things that aren't really part of the game, like smaller crews (good luck protecting a Defiant from assimilation) and limiting them to only one role due to space restrictions (like a Defiant being incapable of science & exploration missions).

kiralyn

/shrug,

It's a game. The ship's appearance/size is a costume, same as whatever jumpsuit/massive combat armor/shorts&tanktop your captain is wearing as he fights Borg.

Just like the Ent-J being the size of a starbase and several centuries more advanced doesn't mean it's 100 times more powerful than a Sovereign, the TOS Enterprise being tiny & old doesn't make it a popgun mounted in tissuepaper. Because it's a game, and the ships are balanced to the level they are, not the size/tech-level/whatever.

flumf

When it comes to smaller cruisers versus larger cruisers size and mass can't have a significant impact on performance reasons being gameplay balance. A cruiser needs to be capable of performing the basic gameplay functions of any other cruiser regardless of size. Basic gameplay of a cruiser being tanking whatever the enemy dishes out while pummeling said enemy into submission.

lianthelia

I voted what I voted for a reason...my primary reason is because I think Escorts should be glass cannons again...Escorts are a lot lighter...but they only have slightly less hull and shields but are much more agile and they can tank almost as good as a Cruiser.

Now basically all escorts have 8 weapon slots...if not a ideal 8th weapon it's still a 8th weapon. Escorts should be more fragile than they are...and I say this as someone who has and flies multiple escorts.

Science Vessels...basically in this day and age in the game shields mean almost jack...any npc with tachyon beam can drain even Sci ships dry in one pass. Would be nice if shields actually meant something again...

darakoss

Its not the size of the ship but rather the tech put into it. Bigger doesnt equal better.

szim

I would prefer if they concentrated more on ship class than ship size. The distinction between escorts, cruisers, dreadnoughts, and science ships should be more prominent in terms of hull, shields and power generation. They could even introduce a class specific weapons modifier:

escorts: large boost to weapons cycle, relatively low damage per cycle
science ships: medium boost, medium damage per cycle
cruisers: low boost, high damage per cycle
dreadnought: very low boost, very high damage per cycle

In other words, if a dreadnought hits you, it hits you very hard but there's more time for you to prepare. An escort hits you constantly, dealing relatively low damage per cycle but is much harder for you to counter.

If they tune the numbers just right, dps would remain unaffected.

spiritborn

It should be noted that a lot of the "smaller" ships in canon are specializied to a high degree, for example the defiant class is little more the a set of guns strapped to a warp drive.

Another good example was that the Nova-class USS Equinox was in much worse shape then the Voyager since the Nova-class wasn't really built for long term missions away from a starbase like the Intrepid-class was.

The Universe-class is just a logical conclution of this "generalist ships meant to survive a long without starbase support" theme most larger Starfleet have (and presumebly KDF and Romulan ships as well) in that Universe-class is a mobile starbase. Essentially the larger ships have more space used for other things then firepower (for example the Universe-class has 2 hangar bays big enough to fit frigates).

Also out of universe(no pun intended) you want your ships of the same tier to be equally useful in combat in broad strokes if there's major differences in firepower or durability the whole thing becomes a balancing nightmare and you don't want to make players feel like they're being punished for liking a certain ship.

shadowwraith

i'd rather cryptic sort out the disparity in the amount of ships between the 3 factions (excluding bundles and cross-faction) atm the federation (25c and TOS) has more ships than romulan (excluding KDF and fed ships upto T5) and klingon factions.

leemwatson

I'm sorry but no-one can use the excuse of the 'timeship' anymore. All ships in-game would be using the same technologies! A Miranda should not stand a cat in hell's chance of taking out a Universe Class ship! Again, they would have the same technology. A Miranda class should not have similar HP to a Jupiter Class either!

I'll say it again, no common sense in designing and allocating stats and weapon hard-points.

veeger

I understand both sides. Maintaining player balance while offering lots of choice is very important. But on the other side having every ship capable of performing more or less the same is kind of silly. But I do understand Cryptic/PWE are in this to sell ships and nobody is going to buy a new ship if it is not competitive.

Personally, I'd like to seem more variance amongst the ships. But I suspect that might be too much for Cryptic to manage/balance as more flavours certainly add magnitudes more complexity in balancing. It would be nice for other play styles besides FAW boats gain some traction.

hanover2

Sounds like a few people bought those ridiculously huge ships, and then were disappointed when it didn't effortlessly faceroll AI and human players alike.

If one ship was substantially better than all others, then everyone would be flying that ship. Is that what you want? Every zone, every instance, filled with the same ship all the time?

nikeix

celticvengence wrote: »

From a game standpoint I'd say maybe some lower hp and greater agility for smaller ships simply because it is what the mind expects.

That's what the land lubber expects. In the Age of Sail the larger ships were the faster ones .

Warp engines kind of strike me as economy of scale tools - twice the mass gives you a lot more the twice the power. The implication being they don't put warp cores in belt buckles because the smaller you get, the less efficient it is until it become unusable entirely. Aside from one oft-touted example (and lets be honest, the Defiant exists only because CBS was stealing the plot line from another setting entirely, where the starbase commander gets a small super-powerful ship in the third season that's amazing because it's built on elder god-tech...) Star Trek has pretty consistently held up "bigger is better".

nikeix

hanover2 wrote: »

If one ship was substantially better than all others, then everyone would be flying that ship. Is that what you want? Every zone, every instance, filled with the same ship all the time?

You say this like the Scimitar and later Vengeance weren't the best in their respective factions and propagated like tribbles because of it. Their rampant population growth constrained by chiefly by cost rather than competitive alternatives...

angrytarg

I'm not sure what I'm voting on here. How I perceive the status quo or what I think it should look like?

Because I personally often criticize not only the relation between ship classes but also that there is no rhyme or reason in their design in the first place. STOs basic premise is very unlucky for a Star Trek game, essentially being build on balancing each and every ship to perform exactly the same with very, very minor differences that mostly don't qualify as true class differences. Basically - fien tuning is still possible, though - every cruiser in th game performs exactly the same, every escort is more or less the same etc. But between classes, the differences are also very miniscule since the story is laid out so a B'Rel does the same things as a Galaxy which is simply "insane" - then again, it's a theme park and someobdy else made the comparison between starship and clothes worn on ground. That's basically how STO works.

In my personal "dream" state of the game ship size would massively influence a ship's capabilities - but not render frigates useless, just have them perform differently. I am well aware that in the current gameplay state this wouldn't work, you'd have to reimagine ship-to-ship combat being far more strategical at least like a "Starfleet Command" or "Battlefleet Gothic" style of tall ship combat with smaller ships being more arcadey but having to really time their attacks and concentrate on key systems, maybe winning battles by simply disabling an opponent for a period of time instead of blowing it up. Crew needs to be a vital statistic once again, boarding and resistance would make large ships very dangerous. Small vessels would hardly take a few direct hits from a large cruiser but would make up for it with flanking, countermeassures and reinforcements. Weapon hardpoints had to be reworked entirely to fit the vessel - large cruisers carry the heaviest weaponry - or exchange one heavy weapon for a few more lighter ones. You get the idea.​​

mercurythefirst

szim wrote: »

IIn other words, if a dreadnought hits you, it hits you very hard but there's more time for you to prepare. An escort hits you constantly, dealing relatively low damage per cycle but is much harder for you to counter.

Except that's anti-canonical, Defiant had a deflector dish the size of a teacup, bunk beds for crew "quarters", a 4-man sickbay and a structural integrity generator on drip-feed, precisely so its normal-sized warp core could output all it had into making its weapons hit harder and engines push more force than any other Federation ship.

Larger ships have other priorities, even the Dreadnoughts have proper crew quarters, multiple transporter rooms, workshops and a whole bunch of other TRIBBLE you won't find on an Escort.

With escorts or light cruisers you aren't really sacrificing power or survivability just because they are smaller. You're just sacrificing strike range and the ability to go on long missions with the type of support starfleet mandates for long missions.

The Miranda is literally meant to sit around near starbases in home space and react to threats. It's the standing reserve ship of Starfleet. It's not going to do a cruiser's job any more poorly just because it's small, it just doesn't have the amenities to stray far from home.

brian334

This ship left the drydock 13 seasons ago.

meimeitoo

brian334 wrote: »

This ship left the drydock 13 seasons ago.

It has.

Larger ships should turn slower; and they generally do. Larger ships should also have different weapons (small, medium, large), like in EvE Online; but, indeed, that ship has sailed a long time ago. So, I've learnt to let go.

angrytarg

mercurythefirst wrote: »

(...)
The Miranda is literally meant to sit around near starbases in home space and react to threats. It's the standing reserve ship of Starfleet. It's not going to do a cruiser's job any more poorly just because it's small, it just doesn't have the amenities to stray far from home.

That's the defiant, according to the DS9 TM. The Miranda is a regular cruiser, nothing hints at it having a limited mission profile. It was the go-to workhorse of the late 23rd century, having the sual multi-mission profile of Starfleet. In the Dominion War combat scenes we see it acting as frigate support alongside the Defiant, but that is due to all the years that have passed and it was probably reasonable to fit all those surplus Mirandas with skeleton crews and weapons to support those strafing runs, but I would be careful to extrapolate a limited mission profile from that when evidence to the contrary exists.​​