I just used the ship builder to try making a size 20 and size 12 ship, and the 12 looks plenty big.  So it looks like:
Scout: 1
Corvette: 2
Frigate: 3
Destroyer: 4
Heavy Destroyer: 5
Light Cruiser: 6
Escort Cruiser: 7
Heavy Cruiser: 8
Battlecruiser: 9
battleship: 10
dreadnought: 11
superdreadnought: 12

And if a heavy frigate is as big as a destroyer, so what?

Do you try to fill all the space units, or do you commonly leave some unused?

andy

That list wasn't meant to be exhaustive, so other ships fit in at appropriate size.

I'll try some more with the ship builder, but it seemed hard to fill the space up to 20.  I got the impression that there could be way too many guns on my superdreadnought.

I'd still like to get a sampling of what people actually do.

thanks for comments,
andy

Hello everyone!
My ships are WW2 ships sent into space, similar to IJN Yamato  in Starblazers.  0n these ships, every weapon has an IMP of one.  I let the rate of fire = the number of barrels the weapon had in real life for the heavy weapons.  The damage gets larger as the weapon size increases, 
Right now, my biggest ship is my 14 hulled USS North Carolina.  It has 3 weapons corresponding to its 3 main 16 Inch gun turrets: 
:arrow: 16 Inch guns; Rng=30, ROF=3, Acc=2+, Imp=1, Dmg=4, w/Piercing. 
These mounts are: [GHIJK] [GHIJK]  [HIJKL]
The 5 Inch guns fire more rapidly:  Rng=18, ROF=4, Acc=2+, Imp=1, Dmg=1.
The ship also has hyperdrive and Armor Plating, Speed = 6 & Shields = 4.
Cost = 1404.
The 14 Inch guns on the slightly smaller 13 hulled ships, such as on the Pennsylvania, California, Mississippi, etc are similiar, but Rng=24 & Dmg=3.
This has worked out well.  I am playing these Admiralty versions of my ships today.    

Steven Gilchrist; Jacksonville, Fla, USA

You've mentioned this many times -- but I've never seen pictures.

Show me pictures!

This is sorta what I was looking for.  How has Starmada usually been played?  Tested?  What are the norms, and what are the limits of things that aren't that unusual?

I don't really related to Dan's other rants.  I just know that GZG makes beautiful ships in many size gradations, and I'd like to be able to come close to respecting relative sizes.  I'd rather have 12 different levels than 10, and the ships at that extreme do have rather large models.

Dan, what do you usually see?  Do the Starmada X: Brigade ships reflect the range you expect to see in ships, and in gun sizes?

Anybody else?  I've seen other people designing ships up to size 20, and other people agreeing with them.  What's common practice?

In the meantime, I'm going to start designing with 1-12 hull sizes.

thanks,
andy

Does that mean that everyone but Dan regularly goes up over 10 in ship sizes?  There doesn't seem to be a convention. 

I think there is room for customization in that you don't have to use all of a ship's size units.  But I haven't looked to see how inefficient that would be.  So a size 4 ship with some empty space could be a size 3.5.

I love getting responses from different people, because I don't think everybody is doing the same thing here, and the Starmada rules leave it pretty open.  Dan says he'd rather not allow size > 10, and two folks encourage me to go up to 20.  But the ships I'm making at size 1 and 2 seem to be getting too much stuff in them, and I'm worried about getting ships that are too crammed.  Hmm, I wonder if I should be looking at the Tech Level stuff.

andy

Nah, you're not alone. In our local campaign, we have tied construction time to the number of SU. This makes the big ships (2,000+ SU) take too long to build. Each race tends to build one or two but their expense and time to build makes them almost too valuable to use in any but the most critical battles.

True -- as seen in the term "frigate".

But I was just wondering when the change happened, is all. Battleships ARE Dreadnoughts.

Perhaps it was Franz Joseph in the Star Trek Technical Manual, and thus SFB. But note that there is no Federation "battleship", just a Federation "Dreadnought" -- so the two can be seen as equivalents there. But at some point the latter came to mean "larger than a BB", at least in space combat games.

DN larger than BB isn't always the case. See Star Fleet Battles where BBs are larger than DNs.

You're just sucking up, Steve.   

The game Imperium by GDW used the term dreadnought for classes of ships that were not as powerful as battleships.  This game predates Star Fleet Battles by two years.

I do tend to use some navy conventions..... but use a combined terminology remeniscient of the age of sail, as well as WW1 and WW2.

The specific terms also vary depending on the race, or faction, that I am running.  One of my human factions fields "frigates" that are about Hull 4, while another human faction has them listed at about hull 7 - 8...

The largets ship I routinely field is a 10 - 12... and rarely have more than one or two of those on the board... I tend to favor hull ranges 4 - 10 as my primary combatant ships.. with the 1 - 3 ranges as support, or specialized.. and anything 11 and over fairly mission specific (carriers, or specific heavy combat designs). The largest ships I field are approximately Hull 14....and those are extremely rare.....

I have gone larger for specific scenario games, but I prefer the smaller sizes for general pick up games, or when I run some of my own factions.

In my opinion... the larger ships are expensive enough that I expect them to be very rare... if fielded at all... just due to cost and manufacturing times. Being that I used to work for Northrupp Grummen Newport News, and have actually worked in shipbuilding.... I've seen exactly what goes into the construction of a single ship.

For that matter, our modern Nimitz class carrier is constructed of 90,000 tons of steel. This does not include insulation, wiring, furniture, or anything else... just the steel used to build the actual ship. It takes an average of 1500 to 2500 workers per shift, 3 shifts per day (24 hour construction), spread out over a period of just more than 5 years to assemble one.... and that's with modern construction techniques, and having most of the parts and assemblies pre-fabricated. Also, once the ship is built, it goes through trials, and then comes back to the shipyard for another 6 months of final fitting based on the sea trials. The total time, to include part fabrication, and assembly is approximately 8 and a half to nine years.

I figure most star ships would be constructed in orbit, so you have to consider getting the materials and manpower to the shipyard. Even if you can do everything is space... there is a lot of logistics involved....and a high cost. And the larger the ship, the more time, money and manpower involved.....

I see a lot of small to medium ships... the large hulls would just be too expensive to risk in combat... or for normal operations.

John

[quote="andyskinner"
Am I missing something about being able to use leftover S.U. space as a fractional part for hull sizes?