Viable Large Ships - roles they may fill

[Askannon]

In a different thread, Lauri wrote

Viable large ships have been a dream of mine ever since SB development started. I'm not giving up on them, but admittedly there are certain challenges. I don't want to create a situation where multi-crew is required nor a situation where single seat fighters are obsolete, so large ships need a specific role(s). I'd say it's better to first come up with the ideas about the roles, as how to achieve that can be thought afterwards.

This thread is to keep that thread separate. So here are roles that large ships could fit, if they had either the parts (e.g. plate size for higher armor values) or the technology (e.g. sensors or other utility). It might also be prudent to talk about limits large ships could have to balance out e.g. the fact that with the current damage model larger parts may be impervious to ship weapons, with the exception of explosives like torpedoes.

For large ships to have a niche they should be able to fill combat and civilian roles. Not necessarily at the same time, but more that they as a size class shouldn't be purely seen as combat ships or civilian ships.
For that purpose I propose to not sort by combat or civilian means but by what would be needed to generate a role and the implications for both combat and civilian use.

Baseline Survivability
I've heard that one can make a large ship very durable with enough and well placed redundancies. However, to do so takes quite a bit more effort than to design a smaller size combat ship. Therefor, my first suggestion is to improve the baseline survival of large ships, e.g. by introducing larger plates, shields (I know, some people don't like this but it is an option), or some other means. With a higher baseline survivability, the risk to invest into making a larger ship is lessened, as both the cost (time complexity for making a minimum viable design) and the risk (critical damage in the field) are lowered. This should fit large ships in general, though its impact would depend on how that survivability is achieved, as it may benefit combat ships or civilian ships more. It could however also be applicable towards smaller ships and could therefore be not as effective in promoting the making and usage larger ships.

Utility
This area fits more into how large ships could benefit a fleet, though depending on utility it may even benefit solo play.
To start with one utility that could make it useful for solo and group play: carrier functionality. If one can carry one or more ships, one has an impetus to build a ship that can do so effectively. This can be used for group play, having all the pilots on the mothership until they're needed, thereby saving on operating costs and extending the operational range of the carried ships. And it can be used for solo play, by allowing the transport of a set of specialist ships.

Another utility can be sensors, whereby one ship in the fleet is hyper specialized, maybe even with very large contraptions, towards sensing incoming danger and opportunities in the area. How useful this is towards increasing the size of ships would depend on the usefulness of the sensor-data, which itself depends on the population of the game, but would be useful for both civilian and combat ships.


I end it here for now, even if I didn't really go into the roles a large ship could play except maybe as a carrier. In the end though, I really believe whatever roles large ships will fill, they need to be supported by survivability and utility, whilst smaller ships find their place in the game in their specificity and low risk nature (relative low cost in design time and materials).



PS: since it came up, this thread should focus on large ships as in the size class. If, as XenoCow pointed out you mean multi-crew ships, you should point that out.

 

[Lingontuva]

Would be cool.

Small ships like the fighters we have currently are definitely more realistic in a way when it comes to space warfare, speedy with high damage output.

But I would in many ways like if there were more classes like in space engineers for both small and large ships where there are significant positives and negatives for a larger ship. I should also note that in space engineers these types of ships can go up against each other quite balancedly not meaning that a large ship will always win against 2 or 3 fighters, but it certainly can.

Currently in Starbase there are only negatives for a ship like the empire centurion or fotnz humphrey.

Some cool more star wars like battles would certainly be something more interesting.

 

[XenoCow]

Edited for clarity.

To make these discussions clear and useful, it should be made explicit whether the topic is actually "large ships" as in physically large, or "multi-crew ships" which may be large but primarily are defined as ships having more than one person operating them. Confusing these two topics can lead to fragmented and confusing conversations.

If we are to be talking about ship scale, then let's do that. If we are talking about the number of viable crew, then we should do that instead. Things do get more complex once the discussion of "role" comes into play, but so long as only particular aspects of ships, their crew size or their physical size, then the conversation will be healthier.

I make this point because Lauri himself mentions both large ships and multi-crew ships without making a distinction between them. I have been coming to these conversations mostly thinking we have been talking about multi-crew ships but from the way @Askannon perceived my (admittedly poorly worded) post about trying to separate the two topics he thinks this is a conversation about physical ship size.

So, I suggest future dialogue be very explicit in what the topic is. Consider even being very straightforward to the point of saying "I'd like to make a suggestion about how physically large ships... This is not about the size of the crew..." Primarily, I suggest dropping the term "large ship" and replacing it with "physically large ship" since that emphasizes the size better.

Spoiler: Old version of this post

One thing that I think needs to be made clear in any of these kinds of discussions is the distinction between "large ship" and "multi-crewed ship." They are not necessarily the same thing. I feel like most of the conversation about "large ships" is really about "multi-crewed ships."

I say this because confusing the two might lead to trying to solve the problem of ship scale metas but neglect to take into account the part that, at least I think is the fun bit, the number of crew being greater than 1. If this distinction is made, then the conversation can move away from "How can we make ships of X scale balanced against ships of Y scale" and into "How can we give advantages, fun roles, and useful roles to crew members on a ship so that ships that have large crews are competitive."

The conversation thread about ship roles is however important to keep. "Competitive" for multi-crew ships may not even be in a standard combat role, or if they are for combat, in a role that cannot or should not be filled by single crew ships. Overall, the role discussion has to happen both before and in tandem with the conversation about the need for crews. Crews will not be able to be forced into competitiveness so there will first need to be some kind of role that both ships with crews, and that individual crew members can have before multi-crew ships can become viable.

This was a little all over the place... I hope some of this makes sense.

 

[Askannon]

Currently in Starbase there are only negatives for a ship like the empire centurion or fotnz humphrey.

Some cool more star wars like battles would certainly be something more interesting.

I think the main reason for why is because Starbase ships have so many different points of failure:
Power production, storage & distribution
Propellant storage & distribution
Pilot & control
Frame integrity

Now that I think about it, maybe adding a less explosive alternative for fuel and propellant could be something interesting as it could allow for more distributed systems instead of the all-or-nothing citadel approach that is needed currently. If they are less powerful than their baseline counterparts that would encourage bigger ships in and of itself. Batteries are probably fine since their explosions aren't that far-reaching.
Admittedly, this addition/change would encourage mostly larger combat ships for the added redundancy, as I can't quite think of civilian use cases except exposed generators and propellant tanks which they at times already are.

 

[Askannon]

This was a little all over the place... I hope some of this makes sense.

If I understood correctly:
Large ships tend to be separated from multi-crew in discussions, rightfully so.
But they are also confused into being the same, making discussions about solutions less targeted.
You want to make crew roles on large ships part of the consideration.


I can agree to a degree that large ships also need talk about crew, but I feel like adding that into the mix here is too early:
we don't know if host-issues can be fixed (which I think are the main reason against multi-crew at the moment)
most crew roles that would work on a large ship could probably work on a small ship unless the component for why they were on the ship doesn't fit on a smaller ship
all crew roles that we can think of need to have an application while someone else is a pilot. That means their roles have to be something of worth while the ship is moving, otherwise the pilot could fill the role while the ship is stationary

Those are a lot of very specific limits on a crew members viability, which goes beyond the scope of this thread.

Besides, when large ships are out and about, any organic need for crew would solve the question regarding roles already. But since large ships currently are very limited in the roles they themselves fill (hauler, miner, storage & artwork) that natural solver doesn't even work and we can only theorize about what roles a crew member may fill, while allowing more ship roles is something that is less depending on the whims of multiple people (since, if it is possible someone will eventually make it and if it works it will be adopted more widely)

 

[XenoCow]

If I understood correctly:
Large ships tend to be separated from multi-crew in discussions, rightfully so.
But they are also confused into being the same, making discussions about solutions less targeted.
You want to make crew roles on large ships part of the consideration.

I evidently did a poor job of making my point well since it was taken to mean the opposite of what I meant. Please see the post again for a revised, clearer version of what I meant to say. Thank you for helping me to improve as a communicator.