Topic: hull size conventions?

I saw a post where someone gave the hull sizes they use, from an "escort" of hull size 2 to super-dreadnought of size 19-20.

I didn't see any indications of typical use in the Starmada book (got mine today, thanks).  Is there a general consensus?

I've got a GZG fleet, and I'd like to reflect most of the variety they have.  I could assign 1 (scout) to 12 (super dreadnought), but if I want a bit more variation, 1-20 works, matching the sizes used by the original poster.

What sizes make sense?  Is 12 a really big ship?  Is 20?  I wouldn't want to choose the sizes because I like the numbers, and then find that my super dreadnoughts had too much to be playable.

I'll take another look at the examples in the book.  (I have the PDF for Starmada X, and it just occurred to me that I could take a look at that.)

thanks
andy

Re: hull size conventions?

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

Re: hull size conventions?

andyskinner wrote:

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

This looks limited to me.  Maximum size on the current sheet is 24, so scale everything to that.   You're also missing classifications for auxillaries and bases.

Besides, this is a space game, not a game based on some real world wet navy ship-class naming convention.  Don't let that limit your imagination.

Re: hull size conventions?

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

Re: hull size conventions?

I guess I could make some heftier guns for those big ships, and they'd cost more.  So I guess I'd like to know what sort of conventions there are for weapons actually being used.  How often do you use ROF, IMP, or DMG  more than 2?  More than 3?

andy

Re: hull size conventions?

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. big_smile   

Steven Gilchrist; Jacksonville, Fla, USA

Re: hull size conventions?

GamingGlen wrote:

This looks limited to me.  Maximum size on the current sheet is 24, so scale everything to that.

NOOOO!

Don't do it!

Save yourself!

If you want your max hull size to be 12, then go for it. If I had my way, there'd be a hard cap of 10 hull points for any ship in Starmada. wink

You're also missing classifications for auxillaries and bases.

See, now this highlights one of the two pet-peevy questions I have about starship classifications:

1) Why is "size" the determining factor? It's like that in every game I see... Shouldn't the role within the fleet play more of a part? Just because a ship is size 4, it isn't necessarily a destroyer -- as your point about auxiliaries makes clear. And if the only factor is hull size, what are you really helping by giving a classification? I can tell a size-10 ship has 10 hull points without knowing that it's a "battleship" as opposed to a "battlecruiser".

2) When and how did "Dreadnought" become synonymous with "larger than a battleship"? Not only has the term been out of vogue in naval circles for nigh on a century, the fact is that (almost) all WW1- and WW2-era battleships were in fact "Dreadnoughts".

And, finally, the mere existence of the term "superdreadnought" makes my skin crawl... smile

Just venting a bit.

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

Re: hull size conventions?

BeowulfJB wrote:

Hello everyone!
My ships are WW2 ships sent into space, similar to IJN Yamato  in Starblazers.

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

Show me pictures!

smile

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

Re: hull size conventions?

I will try to have a friend take pictures of my WW2 type of ships as spaceships.  They are not fancy, but I will see what I can do. 
I agree with the idea of not having ships grow too big.  So far, my biggest ship is hull=14.
When I design a USS Missouri, it will be faster, and probably hull 15 or 16  :shock:

*Must resist the dark side of the force...'make ur ships grow'...must resist*
:arrow: Resistance is Not futile. <LOL>

Steven Gilchrist; Jacksonville, Fla, USA

Re: hull size conventions?

cricket wrote:
GamingGlen wrote:

This looks limited to me.  Maximum size on the current sheet is 24, so scale everything to that.

NOOOO!

Don't do it!

Save yourself!

If you want your max hull size to be 12, then go for it. If I had my way, there'd be a hard cap of 10 hull points for any ship in Starmada. wink

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

Re: hull size conventions?

andyskinner wrote:

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

Andy, I'd think about kicking your maximum hull size up several hull sizes. With only one hull box per size, you're not leaving yourself much room for customization of ships in each class.
If you give yourself, roughly speaking, two hull boxes per class, you could have your smallest size be one, with your maximum hull size coming in at around 20 or over. That's not to say that your superdreadnoughts always have to come in over 20 hull boxes, or your smallest scout has to stay at one. But it would allow for variations in each class similar to what we saw historically from pre-WW I through WW II.
Just a thought, anyway.
Kevin

Re: hull size conventions?

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

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

Re: hull size conventions?

andyskinner wrote:

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

No, there isn't -- and that's intentional. A game as open-ended as Starmada needs to avoid such constraints like the plague.

Frankly, I think I am alone in preferring the smaller hull sizes; but that's ok. Settle on the range of hull sizes that works for you and your gaming group...

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

Re: hull size conventions?

cricket wrote:

Frankly, I think I am alone in preferring the smaller hull sizes; but that's ok. Settle on the range of hull sizes that works for you and your gaming group...

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.

Re: hull size conventions?

cricket wrote:

2) When and how did "Dreadnought" become synonymous with "larger than a battleship"? Not only has the term been out of vogue in naval circles for nigh on a century, the fact is that (almost) all WW1- and WW2-era battleships were in fact "Dreadnoughts".

And, finally, the mere existence of the term "superdreadnought" makes my skin crawl... smile

Because it sounds "kewl" ?  8) 

Just because it went out of vogue doesn't mean it cannot come back.

Re: hull size conventions?

GamingGlen wrote:

Just because it went out of vogue doesn't mean it cannot come back.

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.

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com

Re: hull size conventions?

Well, and whether or not its an 'origin', we can certainly blame David Weber for the proliferation of the convention.  The Honor Harrington stuff is enormously popular, after all, and with size gradiations that run (roughly):
LAC
Corvettes
FF (mostly out of military service due to size, but still in existance)
DD
CL
CA
BC
BB
DN
SDN

Its not suprising that the convention is picked up on.  Note that Webers BCs are NOT in fact BB firepower on a BB hull that has cruiser speed and armor (as in theory were the WWI BCs.. in theory), but are in fact really more just 'heavy CAs', intended to serve a fleet screening function, and like the original U.S. frigates to 'outrun anything they cant outfight' (Ive always wondered about this.  If each size class is slower and more well armed than the one before it, cant EVERY ship outrun the ones that it is disadvantaged against?)

I know for my own conjectural space navies, I use DN and BB interchangeably, and use both 'BB' and "BBF" type hulls (U.S.S. Iowa and her sisters being the real world BBFs... Cruiser Speed, BB Firepower and Armor.. done at a cost of MUCH higher displacement...)

Re: hull size conventions?

cricket wrote:

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.

Re: hull size conventions?

In the splendid game Starfire, there were these ship types:
corvetts, frigates, destroyers, light cruisers, heavy cruiser, battle cruisers, battleships, super-dreaadnoughts, monitors, etc.  Each ship class was larger than the one before, and the larger ones were slower.  Also the hull cost for the larger ships was higher too.  The ships bigger than battleships were called Super-dreadnoughts, not simply Dreadnoughts. 
I had lots of fun with this game 20 yrears ago because it was a game where you could design your own ships.  My designs were often very brutal...  :shock:

Steven Gilchrist; Jacksonville, Fla, USA

PS:  Great tho Starfire was, Starmada is superior in all aspects  smile

Re: hull size conventions?

BeowulfJB wrote:

PS:  Great tho Starfire was, Starmada is superior in all aspects  smile

You're just sucking up, Steve.   big_smile


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.

Re: hull size conventions?

What term to classify ships?
Modern Destroyers are the same size (or bigger) than WWII Cruisers, size has given way to role.

Does it matter what term you use, after all some of the races are not even Human. Who knows, in the future spacecraft may be called "Matter Movers".

I think that everyone tends to get tied to Actual past classification. Why worry, they are YOUR ships.

Now, where did I put Her Maj's Iron Steam flyer class 2?

Re: hull size conventions?

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

Re: hull size conventions?

I wanted to answer one of my own questions.

I wondered whether you could provide some variation on size within the hull size integers by leaving some space units open.  After experimenting a bit, looks like you can, if you are using the combat rating.  If you're using the S.U. for a campaign or something, it might be inefficient, but it looks like it only changes the defensive rating to take into account the extra hull point.  (Am I right?)

In that case, I could use it for another defensive option.  Design the ship for size n, then at the end crank it to size n+1 and don't use the space up.

That might make sense for me.  I'm getting my version of GZG's NSL (slow-ish, armored, mostly basic guns) into shape, and the ratio of damage dealt to damage taken seems (no actual experience yet) higher with Starmada.  I don't feel a need to reproduce Full Thrust (or the ship classes--I just would prefer to reflect relative ship sizes), but having their ship style as a guide helps to keep a theme going.

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

andy

Re: hull size conventions?

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

If anyone's missing anything, it's probably me... I have no idea what you're asking... sad

You can always leave SUs "empty"...

Someone (can't remember who) asked a while back about setting a particular number of SUs and then deriving a hull size, which can be done.

HULL SIZE = (SPACE UNITS / 100) ^ .77

Thus, if you wanted your ship to have 2500 SUs, its hull size would be 12 (11.92, rounded off).

Daniel Kast
Majestic Twelve Games
cricket@mj12games.com