Timeline for Fundamentally, what are the pros and cons of fleet vs mega ship (warfare)?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
36 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 3, 2017 at 13:49 | history | protected | user3652621 | ||
| Mar 2, 2017 at 8:33 | answer | added | CelestialCaveBear | timeline score: 2 | |
| Feb 27, 2017 at 19:44 | answer | added | user9981 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 27, 2017 at 16:51 | answer | added | thegreatemu | timeline score: 2 | |
| Feb 27, 2017 at 15:39 | comment | added | Grimm The Opiner | The upper limit of ship size will be dictated by materials. How big can your chassis be before it can no longer usefully resist the forces you wish to exert through it? The lower limit will be dictated by your ability with miniaturisation, the size of a single crew member, and the expected endurance and in mission comfort. How small an engine/gun are you capable of building, and how small can the crew space be? You'll crash into one of those limits before you end up with either planet or pea sized ships. | |
| Feb 27, 2017 at 14:20 | answer | added | Valthek | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 27, 2017 at 4:35 | comment | added | Black | I have an old memory of there being a game called Traveler TSI or some-such and an AI optimized the game to the point where it was no longer fun to play. I think it determined with the base rule set that small made for fast and nearly unhitable. More on the side of realism I think inertia+low-grav would tend to agree with that. You accelerate faster the smaller you are and can maintain speed without significant fuel in space. | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 22:56 | comment | added | David Tonhofer | @Pieter Geerkens Not true. AFAIK what happened was that the French had the better ships (prized when taken by the Brits), but the Brits had the better commanders (because most French skills had been purged in the revolution). And Nelson had a system - to go in close: "Nelson had perceived ... that the offensive was the stronger form of warfare between gunpowder navies, given an equally scrupulous, direct and personal management of ship firepower". More in John Keegan's "The Price of Admiralty - The Evolution of Naval Warfare". | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 21:32 | comment | added | pjc50 | Remember the Vasa: Sweden tried building a flagship which sank on its first voyage. Building a ship bigger than any other is always at risk of encountering bigger problems. The history of big ships in WW2 was also unspectacular: Bismark, Tirpitz, Yamato. | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 21:09 | answer | added | Silent Drew | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 18:23 | answer | added | ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 17:26 | answer | added | RandomSearchResult | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 14:12 | comment | added | Tony Ennis | To give more detailed answers about small vs large ships, we need to know about the weaponry and defense capabilities that are available. See 'edit 1' in my answer below. | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 5:16 | answer | added | Loren Pechtel | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 4:19 | comment | added | Pieter Geerkens | An analogy would be Napoleonic era naval warfare. The French focused too much on building massive ships, while the British, needing to defend far-flung colonies, built many more third- and fifth-rate ships (74 and 8- gun ships were 3rd rates, frigates of 32 and 38 guns were fifth-rates). After Trafalgar it was eminently clear which building strategy was correct. | |
| Feb 26, 2017 at 0:03 | comment | added | Samwise | I'd imagine a good balance is not so much in the middle of the scale, but in a mix of large and small. Especially if the battle is going to be drawn-out and far from home. Big ships are good for carrying supplies and spare parts/crew/whole ships etc. and launching heavy long range weapons while smaller ships are probably better for close quarters dogfights but because of their size, are unable to sustain long protracted battles. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 20:51 | comment | added | M i ech | 2/2 Thus, you can mine half of the planet surface, but you can't stop enemy from mining other half, without exposing own facilities to orbital light-speed bombardment. Also, both you and enemy can always bombard other half with kinetic projectiles on suborbital ballistic trajectories. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 20:48 | comment | added | M i ech | 1/2 Your question itself eliminates single mega ship. You fight over planet, which means there always IS some space that megaship can't have in line of fire - behind planet. You can't shoot behind planet with lasers or any other relativistic speeds. You can shoot with guns or rockets at ballistic orbital trajectories, but this limits velocity, so ETA will be huge and projectile easy to evade. Because of that, you will NEVER have full control of planet with one ship. You can deny half of planet, but trying to remove enemy from other half, exposes "your" half. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 20:19 | comment | added | can-ned_food | I didn't make this part of my answer, because it didn't really have much substance to offer, but you could remember Babylon 5. The Shadows and the Vorlons each had their own preferences which expressed in their styles of combat and choice of vessel sizes — especially when they began using their planetkillers. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 19:40 | answer | added | talrnu | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 16:06 | answer | added | Cort Ammon | timeline score: 6 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 16:02 | comment | added | mattdm | This question is explored (with no definitive answer) in Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 15:21 | answer | added | Tony Ennis | timeline score: 16 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 15:09 | answer | added | can-ned_food | timeline score: 6 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 14:09 | comment | added | Donald Hobson | It is next to impossible to Armour a ship against relativistic attacks. Anything that gets hit will get destroyed. Use many smaller ships. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 12:53 | answer | added | ths | timeline score: 14 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 12:51 | comment | added | user2338816 | Reminds me of "Ogre", the first-edition of which was a short-lived micro-(board)game that pitted a single very large, very powerful "tank" against a number of much smaller, less powerful vehicles, plus long-range artillery, etc. The fatal flaw was fairly quickly discovered by various gamers. A hit-and-run type of strategy almost guaranteed that the fearsome Ogre wouldn't penetrate to the opposing home base (though losses on the winning side could be considerable). Later editions fixed the flaw by changing the balance. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 9:27 | history | edited | MolbOrg |
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| Feb 25, 2017 at 9:18 | answer | added | kiltannen | timeline score: 10 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 9:10 | answer | added | MolbOrg | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 7:12 | history | edited | J.Todd | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 25, 2017 at 6:46 | history | edited | J.Todd | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 25, 2017 at 6:40 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 25, 2017 at 22:09 | |||||
| Feb 25, 2017 at 6:37 | comment | added | Dtb49 | Typically megaships are used for long distances or FTL travel whereas smaller fighter ships sometimes don't have that technology and also typically have smaller fuel tanks. | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 6:20 | answer | added | o.m. | timeline score: 32 | |
| Feb 25, 2017 at 5:42 | history | asked | J.Todd | CC BY-SA 3.0 |