SE Warfare II: Dreadnoughts Suck
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- In Space Engineers Warfare II: Dreadnoughts or super capitals suck.
They were bad before, and now with advanced turrets, penetration and more any utility provided is vastly eclipsed by their inefficiencies as a vessel.
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I explained 5:40 poorly. And it's sorta relevant to explain why smaller ships are quite efficient at killing larger ships
The bigger a ship, the bigger the interior relative to the exterior surface area. So massive ships have a disproportionately bigger interior compared to a equal block count number of smaller ships.
So (made-up) for a destroyer you need to build 5 interior blocks for every one exterior block, a super capital would need 10-20 probably more.
The same way a 10" pizza is significantly smaller than a 12" pizza.
As long as the required weapons can be mounted (minimum size), smaller ships are typically more efficient. Due to just having more surface area relative to the size, which allows for more weapons.
This also completely ignores the weight penalty of having a massive interior entails
To note, this would depend on ship size. A big, chonky cylinder of a supercapital like your "totally not the pillar of autumn", definitely. But something long, wide and flat, like a miniature replica of an Imperial Executor or First Order Supremacy class from Star Wars or one of a Tau Emissary-class from Warhammer 40,000, would have a lot less internal volume relative to surface area. Similarly, a ship with a lot of open spaces, such as many Star Trek designs, would have a huge amount of surface area to internal structure - although a ship like that might not be entirely practical.
To summarise, Firepower in Space engineers is a function of surface area, not volume.
The other thing is that on water, the square cube law and hydrodynamics make larger vessels far more efficient than smaller ones. In space, this isn’t true, so the advantage of going big isn’t there like it is on water.
Sorry, i have to say that you conclusion are so wrong. Supership is useless in your world because of the server setting.
In real world battleship can and repeatedly deployed in small formation that being a navy magnet that attracts multiple time of its force.
The most obvious case is Bismarck. Royal Navy first engaged her with 2x battleship task force, a force ratio of 2+ and Bismarck wrecked hood.
In order to sink Bismarck,Royal Navy detached 4+ battleship, 2 carrier and other ship, that's a force ratio of 4+.
One more example is the battle of jutland, Genman high sea fleet pinned British fleet that is 2x of its size, through out the war that only one battleship
can wreck havoc to many escort, no number of cruiser, destory can remove the threat within reasonable loss.
The reason why battleship suck in your server is because everyship is indeed a battleship, and they can easily outrun the projectile fired toward themselves.
No cruiser/ destoryer dare to come point blank of a battleship because battleship main battery demorish them outside cruiser's cannon range, They can only
throw torpedo to battleship which miss 9 out of 10. What they do is shadow the battleship and wait for reinforcement that's is another battleship.
Ship can't dodge a round that will hit irl because the round travel much faster that the ship. And battlesship also outrange other class, However, in your server
that everyship have same attack range and the projectile speed is way too slow compared with the ship speed. That's why main cannon never hit, what is in your
server is everyone bullet reach the same distance and same speed, why bother a sniper rifle instead of a machine gun.
@@NeilX2010
Three things.
1. Supercapitals aren't battleships. They're MUCH bigger and make up a much larger investment in resources. IRL, we've never had a supercapital because there was never a point. Closest thing would be the IJN Yamato but even then that was just an unusually large battleship.
2. We don't even use battleships IRL anymore, except on rare occasions as heavy artillery in asymmetric conflicts where the enemy doesn't have a reliable counter. Battleships were proven to be obsolete as early as WWII, where torpedo bombers and other attack aircraft proved to be a hard counter to them.
3. Another issue with battleships IRL is that for many economically weaker nations, building, maintaining and supplying even one would effectively bankrupt them, and even more economically powerful nations didn't make the bulk of their fleets out of them. And a lot of battleships were never even used in combat, because the nations that built them were saving them for big decisive battles that never came.
You're focusing in the small picture of a single battle, when the primary issues with battleships and supercapitals are primarily within the larger picture of logistics.
That's fair.
The downside is those types of ships have terrible firing arcs will pillar of autumn designs typically can bring both broadsides to bear in a 270 arc
The irony is that the ships people like to call dreadnoughts often represent pre-Dreadnought design philosophy. The Dreadnought was so strong because it didn't have weapons for every opponent. It didn't try to perform a million different roles. It equipped only big guns, was a tough nut to crack, and packed big dick engines to be way faster than a battleship would normally be. The idea being to clap anything it could hit, shrug off anything it couldn't, and flee when outmatched.
isn't that the armored cruiser/battlecruiser concept?
@@StabbySabby No, it is the HMS Dreadnought concept. Other countries were investigating the idea around the time, but a British admiral whose name escapes me sold the Royal Navy on his vision and got her built before anyone else. The captains of other ships referred to their vessels as 20-minuters, because that's how long they thought they'd last against HMS Dreadnought. It turns out even that was very generous as she went on to sinkk a pre-Dreadnought battleship in 4 minutes iirc.
A battlecruiser is a smaller execution of the idea.
@@StabbySabby Armored cruisers were similar in concept, on a smaller scale. They were supposed to be able to match or outmatch everything that wasn't a dreadnought. The idea was completely replaced by battlecruisers, and then the armored cruiser then turned into "light cruisers". Heavy cruisers as an idea were essentially created by the Washington Naval Treaty.
Battlecruisers were intended to hunt armored cruisers and other ships with lesser armaments, with dreadnought/battleship armaments, but with the speed of cruisers. Very similar in concept, run away from bigger ships, hunt everything smaller. But the battlecruiser had the express purpose of countering armored cruisers, even if that later changed.
The dreadnought concept was like Chaotix said, big guns, and fast-ish, more importantly that they used steam turbines vs regular steam engines.
@@chaotixthefox I believe you are talking about admiral Fisher.
My 'Dreadnoughts' fit the dreadnought design philosophy. It has big guns, slightly smaller guns, and point defences. It's not designed to take out the cruisers and frigates and destroyers... that's what the cruisers, frigates and destroyers in the fleet are for. It's intended to defend itself against anything that gets through the fleet and fighters while getting into position to fuck up the enemy's bigger ships and stations with massed turret broadsides.
The Infinity is a weird case though.
Given pressure and threat of genocide, it was meant to be a colony ship in addition to military.
They wanted it to carry materials, resources, and people en masse, with the ability to defend itself.
I feel like not enough people know this. It's a constant misconception about what the Infinity is supposed to be, and why it gets used as a long-haul exploration vessel rather than a cornerstone of the UNSC's post-war Naval strategy, which actually *is* mass utilization of lighter ship lines.
@@trenchbird4722
Yeah, it's function is survival first, war second, and is meant to escape if need be.
The scene where it slipspaces in and crashes through a Covie ship with far weaker shields was pretty hilarious though.
Why don't people read the lore? If they did, they'd know about this. It isn't even the first time in the halo franchise a civilian vessel was repurposed for the military. The Spirit of Fire was a colony ship meant to deploy habitation buildings and infrastructure. The Infinity was meant to be a contingency plan to flee the Covenant, going far into space (potentially beyond the Milky Way). When the war ended, it was given better armour and weapons and turned into a Warship.
@@martinosborne4703 Probably has something to do with the fact that 1.) Halo is branded as an action fps power fantasy so lore is the last thing majority of people look for and 2.) The lore is split into multiple mediums so its pretty hard to keep track.
@@pillarmenn1936it’d be the last option. The fact of the Infinity being an Ark for humanity if they lost the war is first (and only, I believe) in the books that take place between 3 and 4.
That pretty much no one read
I personally make use of only one dreadnought in my faction in space engineers, and calling it a dreadnought is probably a bit of a misnomer. We have no base and instead live on one of these massive warships, using it as a mobile base and disengaging from battles whenever possible. Even in our case I wouldn’t want to put it in combat, but if we do get backed up into a corner it’ll put up one heck of a fight. Basically my point is
Dreadnought = Bad
Mobile Base = Good
You have a Craftworld... Or a Mothership.
@@kabob0077 tis a holy ark mechanicus, not a xeno craftworld
We did the same thing on an old server I played on, just because a few clans where so dominant on the server, you either had to be small enough to go unnoticed, or become nomadic.
that what the infinity class in halo was meant as a powerful lifeboat in case they lost the war
Another point I havent seen made amongst all these other excellent points: if killing one ship cripples your navy, the enemy can design one or more ships specifically for the task of killing that ship. Depending on the effectiveness of their counter, they might have to pin you down with their navy, or maybe its some BS meta-ship, 100% guaranteed at least 1 kill. Either way, for the cost of an relatively small tonnage of extremely specialized ship, they've crippled your entire navy, not just the flagship.
great point that I forgot.
A specific class was created to deal with the Eternity; the DDK. Which was basically a destroyer with a high yield, low reload weapon, basically meant to fly right up to slow super-caps and just point blank them
@@GetBrocked was it a shotgun, or a cannon? My ideal vessel would be a super-shotgun style weapon, and fire into the rear engines. Most ships would be absolutely gutted. I also saw a rotor-based fragmentation missile, capable of coring out a ridiculous volume (on servers where those are allowed) a few super low cost missiles could potentially delete your entire navy.
The only viable reason I can think of for a proper "way too large to be conventionally practical" dreadnaught would be a ship primarily made as a mobile shipyard and command center. Any dreadnaught designed and intended to be used directly as an aggressive weapon is a waste, but a support dreadnaught can use its massive size to house technology other ships couldn't, and can sit in a defensive position without making its owners seem weak (as in the way using an aggressively oriented dreadnaught for defense might make you look afraid). In this case instead of having firepower in a less mobile configuration as it could be spread out in smaller ships, you instead have firepower in a more mobile configuration as the alternative is to fit it to a immobile structure. Importantly though, this means the only way this ship should be used is defensively. So for example, the Nova Class Battlestar is a good example of a ship such as this which is fairly well designed, but which notably was used wrong. The Last jedi's Supremacy is another example, as it would have served much better in a defensive role, and had no purpose being used to hunt enemy capital ships (although it was arguably too large even for a defensive role). While this removes or at least minimizes many of the problems aggressive dreadnaughts have, it is still putting a lot of eggs in one basket. And so, it will often still be better to spread the resources out, but in this defensive form, there are at least times when a navy might benefit from pooling its resources into one ship. Not by making an aggressive weapon, but by making a defensive tool.
Anther good ship I think would be the chapter ship home of the Imperial fists from 40k. (My brain ain't working just yet to remember the name but I'm sure someone does) It's slow and powerful, but it's main advantages is it's tired defenses, a mix of heavy plating and some of the best voidshields possible. It's also a berthing for the fists' chapter fleet, and tends to rely on those and its nigh uncountable void fighter craft hangers to deal with anything more then a small (for 40k) fleet. Hells, I'd call it a slightly mobile shipyard/defense platform rather then a ship.
I feel like the bigger ships should mostly be used as a seige weapon more than anything or be a big meatshield to distract enemy units rather than to be damaging or take out other units.
Space engineers has a sweet spot between Functional and Mass . Too small and you can be crippled by a few vollys of weapons or stripped of turrets . Too large and you cant repair / build or maneuver . For me i think the sweet spot would be 18k blocks and the largest around 25k for survival combat .
my argument, is that 25k is way to much.
Especially when you could realistically field 5x5k ships.
The only real exception to this rule aside from niche applications, at least in my opinion, is when you don't have anyone to fly the other ships--it doesn't matter if you have a fleet of 30 little warships, if you only have enough people to fly one or two. Dreadnoughts make a lot more sense when you have similar resources to multiplayer factions, but only one pilot.
An advantage that a single large ship has is that in a situation where you only have one person, a larger ship can field more firepower for fewer players
It's also a HUGE pain in the ass for a single player to maintain.
I often think about ships in terms of what they get for the weight they have to haul around. Super capital ships always have so much dead weight. Especially if they are also production centres. If you have tons of production modules as well as tons and tons of cargo on board that isn't repair components or ammo then you are that much slower in a fight for no gain.
Instead of a ship battle, a fight against some of these ridiculous ships becomes more of a base assault. The big ship is basically stationary and the attacking fleet can pick how and where to strike.
big ships are more cinematic
in practice, efficient builds are best, which means minimal everything to get the job done
so fewer corridors, enough armor to get by, enough guns to kill the enemy, and a good enough engine to get to your destination and back
this is also more cost effective (as per square cube law)
This. This is why I try build all my ships in survival first, and then greeble and pretty them up in Creative. If a single space dude/dudette could assemble it with pieces from his backgarden and it can kill modded in ships with ease using only vanilla/official DLC weapon systems with the 110 speed cap? Probably a decent ship innit.
Good roundout discusion.
3-5 units.
That's the rule for army comand.
3 allows you enough units to do something. 5 is about the right amount to keep track of.
If there's one thing I've learned from starsector is that if your dreadnought isn't working, *you aren't using enough*
What I took from this: if you make a supership, and please don't, make it a cluster ship using a modular system so complex it makes you sick from the disorientation of thinking about it.
A very fine presentation. It makes a lot of sense. It gave me an interesting prespective on fleet configurations and ship engineering.
I know this is in reference to a video game, but realistically (assuming "shields" don't exist) a small missile could be initially accelerated by a cannon, further accelerated by a giant laser at the launcher hitting an onboard sailed (deployed after launch), then later guided toward the target using onboard sensors and thrusters. The launcher could use the laser to brightly illuminate the target to assist with guidance. The laser would be put through a diffusing lens to increase the illuminated area (necessary with the light delay when the target is far). The missile could carry a simple chunk of uranium (high density and boiling point). Essentially no conceivable armor or active protection system could stop the slug once the missile has carried it to an intercept course. It's simply too hard to boil and has too much kinetic energy. Even if melted, a ball of uranium going at 1% of the speed of light would punch through the armor. Depending upon how much mass it collides with, it would either continue out the other side at a similarly high speed or vaporize itself and everything it touches on its way through, introducing an immense amount of heat to that part of the ship. If desired, a single (larger) missile could release multiple balls of uranium shortly before impact (like a shotgun) (this is how modern ballistic missile interception typically works) for improved chance of critical damage. Alternatively, multiple missiles could be used.
In modern day, super carriers are large, but they already are vulnerable to nuclear ballistic missiles, so long as the enemy knows their location and is willing to press the launch button.
However, their advantage in conventional war doesn't really translate all that well to space. They remain far beyond the horizon at an uncertain location. The enemy is likely to employ aircraft to try to locate it, so it launches its own. A large number of smaller ships (IRL) cannot be used to launch the aircraft, because things like the catapult and hanger elevator are quite large. The size helps make sure there's plenty of each type of specialized personnel and equipment, such as aircraft mechanics. (If the aircraft were smaller, the carrier could be too. However, smaller aircraft [and smaller missiles carried by them] tend to have limited range [for similar performance/speed] due to greater air drag relative to their mass [fuel capacity]).
Sure, there might be something like a carrier used in space, but realistically it would be very small, since no equipment is needed to launch a craft. The "carrier" could just be a long-lasting/efficient engine, fuel, supplies, and comfortable crew accommodations. At the sign of conflict, the crew would transfer to the combat module, and detach from the cruise module. A station could also launch crafts, but that would be analogous to an air base.
I like your video, however, I would say a 'Super-Capital' ship isn't just a ship. It is a statement. It is a symbol of national prestige. They are the flagship's of their nation. They are not a fleet upon themselves, but they are a fleet worthy threat. A threat in being. If I know your super capital is in a area, I have to dedicate enough ships to counter. More then counter. I have to leave enough ships in order to deter you from risking such a ship. 5 destroyers may be a threat to the Eternity, but that might be a risk you are willing to take. If I only have 15 destroyers, and it takes 10 defensively deployed to deter you, now my fleet is down to 5 ships for aggressive actions. A super capital is a threat and a boast. "Look what I can build and field. I am so powerful, I can afford such a ship. Do you really want to risk my wrath." And super capitals are not usually deployed alone. I really like your arguments presented, but don't over estimate the phycological effect. A super ship isn't the one and only ship you build though. Japan didn't just build the Yamato alone. It was the super ship at the head of a very diverse and powerful fleet. I would say a super ship should be like the US super carriers. They are the centerpiece of a fleet and a power projector. A force multiplier. We don't deploy the Nimitz alone. It has a fleet with it all times but it brings a fleet's worth of firepower alone. If you are going to try and take it on, you want to make sure. You will assign overkill to guarantee. Which I would say again, ties up the enemy. Because that super ship always represents a "what if" in the back of your enemies mind.
Except the US can build a lot of super carriers, more than any other nation can build regular carriers. Such that I wouldn't consider US carriers as a super project.
This would be more akin, in my eyes, if we built a carrier design that dropped our fleet carriers from ~12 to 2.
Now I think you'd agree, sure, there's national prestige, but to the point where it's actively limited our combat capability.
Good points however
@@GetBrocked Oh yeah, a all eggs in one basket isn't a good strategy. The Infinity was a bit of this but that is because she was meant to be a Ark ship for humanity to flee on. They needed a all purpose style of ship and it was only after finding the shield world and the technology from there that she became a 'super ship.' Often they are a great narrative design though. Like Galactica. The last Battlestar against the Cyclons. It plays great for the story but not really in practice.
You've got a good point about deployment, but I do want to note that it assumes you have the resources to deploy a diverse fleet alongside a supercapital. That's kinda hard to do in SE.
@@GetBrocked prestige is overated and looses the war
i would take a dozen Normandy SR2s or even SR1s over a couple of destiny ascensions
Currently working on modifying a Dreadnought found on the workshop.
So much to repair if it gets damaged... Dreadnaughts are huge, they get hit EXTREMELY EASILY!
So many damn systems, so many control seats needed to fully man it, etc, etc.
But damn is it cool, also functions as a Carrier, as most of our larger vessels do.
so basically super heavy ships are just another example of focusing so much on winning the battle that you're sacrificing the entire campaign for it
I agree with the inflexibility thing. In a game I play called stellaris, you build ships. There is a supership called the juggernaut, and it takes many years of in game time to build, and is costly, so I don't want to lose it. Typically I feel better off building a smaller fleet than using the juggernaut.
These ship discussions make me think it'd be interesting to see you do a series on Rule The Waves 2. (Or Rule the Waves 3 whenever it comes out)
Super ships really need to have mods, it can be done without but mods help alot especially for mods that cut down on the amount of thrusters and gyros you need
The ship you’re in the video,looks like it took some heavy inspiration from the Pillar of Autumn,which with the mention of the CSO Class Super Carrier earlier in the video on top of that,definitely gains my respect
"First" rule of Dreadnoughts, Titans, and larger vessels, whether on water, in space, in air, or otherwise.
You'll need more than just one.
The mentioned percentage, per each of the above, must become at most 1% in order to risk any one of them, let alone more than five.
Space is like the Ocean; actual battlegroup capital ships, ie nuclear carriers, are defended by an entire fleet because of their power and vulnerability, and quite often normal people can't see passed the bigger and better idea.
I think the one major reason to consider a Dreadnought is actually not specifically for its combat capability per say... But rather a single question: "Where do we put the Admiral?"
Basically, VIPs and command structure needs to be well protected; and If you are in a situation where the only way to effectively command your fleet is in person, then no matter what ship said command chooses to board, that ship becomes the ship with the "if we loose it, we lose the war" asset. A dreadnought is suitable as a vessel to protect the admiral inside it; that is assuming we're not going with designations like "Mobile Fortress" or "Heavy Armored Logistical Support Carrier".
This was something I thought was cool with Stellaris where the smaller corvettes and destroyers are making up the bulk of efficient fleets with only 1 or 2 battleships and dreadnoughts rather serving the role of heavy artillery providing supporting fire and carrying the heavy weaponry needed to bust down heavy fortifications, these ships only being useful for large resource rich empires that can also afford a large fleet of smaller ships which are able to distract fire away from the bigger ships.
"How often did you see a destroyer that has anti capital ship weapons, anti air..."
Looks at real world destroyers
Tbh, your chosen Scenario for the Eternity's Advent is pretty much something I wanted to do with a Dreadnought.
A very minor nomadic faction living inside a Super Ship. The reason it is such a huge vessel with everything concentrated upon it? Because it's their mobile home.
They need everything they could ever need inside that ship. But yeah, Dreadnoughts are truly impractical. That is why we don't build these things anymore.
It's kinda hilarious that your opening statement features footage of a ship class which -- in its respective universe -- is known to be incredibly tough but prohibitively expensive. It's not the most powerful nor the largest, but it was more than durable enough to carry the massive balls of every man and women and sassy computer aboard.
Your point about superships being proportionally less efficient relates heavily to the Square-Cube Law. If you double a ship's size, its surface area, useful for mounting weapons and thursters, quadruples, but its volume and therefore mass octuples. This makes them both less maneuvrable and proportionally less powerful than smaller ships, mirroring what you said.
This changes a bit if one can find a way to leverage the volume in ways that smaller ships can't; for example, missiles. Missile attacks in real life would depend more on the total number of missiles your ship can carry, rather than how much surface area you have available as launchers. Internal stowage can let you use all that extra volume to carry many times more missiles than smaller ships, making massive saturation attacks possible that greatly increase the firepower of a ship.
This also applies the other way; smaller ships can be disadvantaged if downscaled too heavily. Say we halved the size of a given ship, which would allow us to build eight times as many half-size ships. These would have proportionally more surface area for mounting weapons and thrusters, but what if each ship required one crew? In Space Engineers, that's not unthinkable for medium-to-large vessels. Now you need eight times as many pilots as before, as well as eight times as many docks for servicing the ships. It all comes down to finding a healthy balance.
I think the Bismarck is also a good example of the super-ships don’t work philosophy. She sunk the British flagship in 15 minutes (granted, the Hood was badly in need of a refit and modernization), and then got the entirety of the British navy hunting her down because she was such a threat. That’s another problem with super-ships: they’ll be able to win every battle, but that capability is so scary your enemy will exhaust every resource in their arsenal to make sure it’s at the bottom of the ocean.
I think another thing that would’ve been useful to touch on are the issues of arming and fueling a massive super-ship. With so much of your navy concentrated into that vessel, your enemies won’t even need to engage it in battle. A force focused on smaller, lighter, faster ships could just intercept all the poorly defended shipments of supplies going to the dreadnought or blow up the refueling stations before she even arrives.
All in all, great video! Haven’t seen any of your channel before, but I’m definitely subscribing after this!
The GTVA Collossus from Freespace 2, took 20 years or something to build, and was lost within like 4 battles
Honestly, the best use of a supercapital ship is to keep it in the backline to defend important areas, like shipyards and important mines, or even chokepoints
Every time I see supercarriers in workshop, I always wonder who actually would use this for any purpose. Personally I always tried to design a sort of Destroyer that houses 6 or 8 AI controlled drones and a limited production of said drones or AI controlled torpedoes. I mean I am ONE guy playing this game. Any design involving multiple crew is doomed to fail, so to me this game is about utilizing autonomous and automated solution, more than size.
Also its just that small ships can just kill with artillery and railguns from long range and dodge the dreadnoughts shots
You can also look at the sea south of Ukraine. I watched a couple of simulations on what it would take to destroy the Russian fleet near Crimea (before the sinking of the Moskva) if you took out the Moskva in these scenarios you could almost take the down the rest of the fleet uncontested because the Moskva was the only ship with sufficient long range anti air capability. They prioritized it and overwhelmed it's defenses with the concept of really large numbers and just clean swept the rest of the fleet when it sunk until Russian air support arrived. And by that time the damage was done and their forces where already on their way home.
I guess the theory of these is to maximise the output of one player in battle, but they kinda really drain from everything else logistically.
The argument i can think of for super capital ships is, they can beat any smaller force without being destroyed, and they can support their fleet w/ their defenses, or by being the highest priority target.
This only works if it has enough survivability, though. (And being able to repair in-between battles)
It really depends on the system these ships exist in, in other games growth may be exponential. moar volume = more efficient. A much higher armor standard prevents smol weapons from working.
Ive always Found that SE, even with high power weapon mods, suffers from the simple hardsci truth that dodging exists. Even in the event a huge ship has massive firepower, armor belts, and to an extent shields, a lesser ship has the speed to outmanuver these muninitions, wherein the capital does not. larger SE ships just as a rule struggle, and supercapitals are simply the culmination of such.
The only point this isnt the case, is when you introduce say.. A laser weapon mod. Something that allows a well designed capital to safely and reliably pick off targets at range. Ironically, as others in the comments have noted, this is a dreadnaught scenario.. Have the Armor, Range, and Speed, to kill everyone you meet... Although i feel you already acknowledged such an ideal ship when mentioning general capitals. But its a fun point regardless.
Of course, any and all discussion ends when you add Spinals, especially modded ones, that can pummel capitals into submission at franky absurd ranges. But thats just the inverse logical extreme of the previous point in practice.. Either way, i feel actual fleet structure, a well rounded spread of ships will always win over any one consideration.. If you have the room for a supercapital in your doctrine. And the backup, i think you can justify making room for one. Its general tunnel-vision that is more likely to doom a factions navy more then any one investment or logistical burden.
Spinals are an anti capital that only capitals or a ship entirely built around it can use. But yeah once laser come in to make dodging an unreliable defense, being able to take the hits becomes more important, and thats when ship size naturally increases to have thicker armor and accomodate more redundancies.
This is why in Stellaris, I NEVER make Juggernauts and Titans unless I have Megastructures and ecumenopoli to support the production and can take the hit when I inevitably lose those ships if I make a bad strategic and tactical decision. I also never rush getting Destroyers, Cruisers and Battleships until I can afford to lose them (Which usually means teching up and rapidly expanding to get the minerals and alloys needed to even build them). So yeah, excellent video.
I try not to build oversized ships. But the highly modded player-made anti-ship missiles i developed are basically the size of Polaris SLBM's so it's not easy to keep the ship size under control. But the missiles are so effective that its 100% worth the trouble.
Unless it would be a arsenal ship which has been considered for modern navies. Basically a missile carrier that can launch a fuckton of long range missiles before enemy ships are within range to fire their own shorter range weapons.
I think the major issue is that the thing with these super ships is that they do everything. If you had a similar number of guns with exterior mounts for a pair of escort vessels, then minimize the interior, and nix the bays. It would cost less points and the guns that you can place on the smaller don't have to place on the main.
Then there comes the point in which every major ship set I've ran is that the only 2k ships on the servers I play on are the two massives at 2.1k and 2.3k are a massive hanger repair dock thing, and a world eater.
There is a 1k ship there that has a super rail gun from some mod making anything larger than it not really useful since one shot can make you inoperable at worse, or at best unable to take out the thi gs taking out your main engines.
I built a Titan class, carried 2 battle cruisers, 2 destroyers, 8 corvettes, and 6 fighters. It could jump everything into battle and then battle. Used it on jacks server 1 .
There are two scenarios I can think of, where a dreadnought would be insanely useful: first- if you have such strong economy, that loosing a ship of this class isn't too different from loosing a smaller ship. Second- if you know for sure that this ship will completely destroy the enemies, and take minimal damage, if any at all, just complete superiority in everything. Of course, this would not work in space engineers, but in reality or in other games it can work.
Oh, and yes, GIANT jack of all trades ships are:
Titans
Mobile space stations
MCB
Lincours.
And what if...we don't need stations? We don't need base, we don't need positioning?
My titan, if you can name it, have 20 ships connected in it, all of them are self-functioning and for your world are capital ships and destroyers, all of them connected to main body, making massive titan ship, if we need resources, we go to planet and annihilate massive part of it, if we need more, we destroing asteroids fuileds, if we go war, we destroy all stations of other factions, we not connected to anything, we not need anything, we are migrating fleet that conected to one body.
As a starsector player
The pandemonium class dreadnought was created as a diplomatic ship meant to show diable avionics military, technological and industrial power whenever they do their fleet demonstrations during diplomacy
However most of their officers favor the maelstrom battlecruisers due to it being more practical
What I'm saying is dreadnoughts are more effective as mobile bases or shows of power
Your better off with a carrier for a flagship
Battleship of your area daring
Dreadnought is a ship that is faster and can shut further and harder than any other ship so no one can hit it when he can catch up to anything and run away from anyone. Drednot moment is when the first ship of this kind is built and all fleets become obsolete.
I am mainly a creative ship builder but sometimes test some of our (often massive) ships with friends in a survival setting. It is not a completely fair comparison as we use modded thrusters and scripts are enabled. But most of the issues you describe here I find are counteracted by the following thing: you can drastically cut back on the required crew by having automatic welders on all important systems. With scripts you can also set automatic targets for your ship to focus (+ you have guided missiles) so you no longer need gunners. On average we only need 2 people (not counting fighter pilots) to manage a ship about twice the size of the large ship shown here. One person for fire control systems and to give the script new targets to fire the guns and missiles at. The other person to pilot the ship and manage fighter launches and recovery (this proces is managed by a separate person in the case of a carrier or ship with large amount of fighters). The modded thrusters are a big help though as they off course allow for high maneuverability on large ships significantly improving their effectiveness. I do agree with your view on concentrating all effort and recourses on one ship. To us it doesn't matter because we do it for fun but in a true survival setting it would be deviating to lose one giant asset and it would make a lot more sense to spread out the power. Also you off course can only be in one place at a time with with one ship and by building more smaller ships you spread out your sphere of influence.
The only time a super ship is a good idea is if you can build something so powerful that it's just an out of context problem for your enemies, and preferably provides capabilities multiple smaller ships couldn't. A good example of this is the Laconian Magnetar class of the Expanse. Sure they were massive and they only had 3 but each carries an utterly ridiculous super weapon, one was able to singlehandedly take the Sol System while only using that super weapon once in a show of force and they still had resources for 280 extremely powerful destroyers.
I found a ship on workshop that requires 10 people to work as intended and a full crew with turret guners are over 20
Another thought is that with a one off super ship like the Eternity, you tend to get the same thing we see in Halo 4,
Del Rio didn't want to risk the most capable vessel the UNSC had due to her cost and the morale loss, effectively making her useless. this also happened with bismarck/tirpitz and Yamato/Mushashi, since if they are damaged you lose their firepower for a long time and resources now have to diverted. but if they aren't used you have the same problem.
Large super ships are almost always used either recklessly or over-cautiously
yep it's really hard to tell when it's time to hold back, and when it's time to commit it and risk it for the biscuit
@@GetBrocked especially with how the eternity doesn't have a support group, if you had the heavy Cruiser and two DDs for escort, and if they were EFN loyalists, it would make the world of difference, however you would still run into the COA wanting you to be a big stick and the KE throwing everything they can to bring you down as the morale loss would be crippling
@@UNSCrearadmiral I'd imagine the EFN with a support fleet of 6th gen warships would just be lights out for the system.
Only with a joint strike would anyone stand a chance of defeating it.
Ironically, while the Eternity has the legs.
The Heaver Cruisers like the Dawn class are far more suited for the type of combat we see in Outlands
Just got this game. The thought of having the fuel these monsters in survival sounds ridiculous.
I'm more interested in the concept in the idea of a ridiculous super ship that more than a military asset but also major production asset. think of a foundry ship that lays down hulls and refines material on the move. Practically a ship that performs the function of a system's industrial base.
I prefer super ships to be extremely focused in one department and require basically a fleet to defend. For example, a super cap that has the ability to support an entire fleet, be it ammunition supply, fuel, point defense, or medical facilities, but has practically no firepower other than point defense and maybe a few close range anti fighter cannons. It would require to have at least an entire forward defense screen to shield against torpedos or other defensible ammunition and it would have to be so far back to avoid any high velocity fire that it would be basically out of the fight from the start. The only way (in terms of conceptually) that a super cap would be viable is if you can somehow reduce the mass and force required to change its position that it can not only evade any incoming fire, but move at a pace reasonable for the rest of the fleet to be effective in terms of movement and coordinated pushing and running blockades.
Supercaps should stay at the far back lines, far out of the battle unless its specifically designed for defense or offense with suitable defense, until the battle has completed and the support is required.
You can make super battleships work, but you can't keep gluing conventional weapons on them. The whole issue is that you need game changing weapons or you would be better served by spreading out your conventional firepower.
I wonder how realistic this would be, idea and tactic wise to real space combat, I know the games not super realistic, but I wonder just how much the ideas he talked about in this could be converted to real life
If we consider the Expanse Universe to be realistic (since it's probably one of the closest we have), I'd say it applies pretty well. The railguns alone would be a problem, since a craft that big and slow is an easy target over long range, while smaller ships attacking it can stay far enough away to still be able to dodge its own railguns. Also there are things like structural integrity and even the electrical wiring that become exponentially harder to deal with with increasing scale.
I believe the entire point of Dreadnoughts was that they’re the core of a fleet group. Eternity’s Advent has- to my knowledge -rarely if ever fought with a fleet. If she _was_ to sail with a fleet, she’d be utterly devastating to face off against as nobody would be able to close with her without having to go through the supporting vessels in the fleet.
I realize your server and ships are based around roleplay, but it’s worth noting that Dreadnoughts are only worthless when they’re the only opponent in the fight for multiple fights.
I do wanna say that the UNSC infinity is absolutely absurd by technological standards in the halo universe and it carries with it 12 heavy frigates, and at least at at its introduction, it was the ship thats technological advantage made it invincible… it crashed through ships bigger than it undamaged, it crash landed after forerunner tech disabled it, and suffered so serious structural damage
the Infinity is a terrible ship from a story telling perspective.
It really ruins the "real" feeling halo had/has. It's just such a quantum leap forward, and doesn't really make sense on both tech, story, and world building way.
I completely agree on all counts. And on the build efficiency angle I would also point towards specialization (as was done earlier in the video). If the super ship needs to be able to use anti-capital and PD, then dedicated, smaller anti-capital and PD ships can be made. And as an added bonus they can go to 2 different places (tactically and strategically) as-needed.
Buuuut for the sake of completeness (and curiosity since I can't quite pin it down): what about the aspect of such vessels where they act as a force-multiplier?
And bonus question: what about super-carriers? I would imagine that efficiency suddenly shoots up since the interior has combat value now.
I'm gonna build twenty dreadnoughts now out of spite. Each ship has a role, and if SE didn't want me making a dreadnought class ship, they wouldnt provide the resources or ability to build anything of that scale
Admittedly, I'm not one for PvP in most instances, but this looks like fun. Also I'm curious as to what constitutes what in terms of ship classes in your server. I've heard you mention destroyers, frigates, cruisers, armored cruisers, battleships, and "dreadnoughts." Do things such as Destroyer Escorts, "Pocket Battleships" (e.g. KMS Graf Spee), Escort Carriers, or Fleet Carriers, etc. exist in the game as well?
if little ships are killing you you dont have enough dakka get more dakka to solve the problem
now a question: what do you think about Supercarriers? mix up between the power of a classical Battleship and a carrier but the size of a superdreadnought to carry a huge ass amount of drones/ fighters whatever, (when i still played much i had a design which could carry small destroyers of mine)
When I build Capital ships I focus on having a really heavy forward facing gun
Then having small guns to defend from all sides
Having probably four or five layers of armor
And putting everything else into the engines and to the infrastructure of the ship
Basically my ships are just thrusters and gyroscopes with some guns on them
And what I say a forward facing gun what I actually mean is like 6 to 9 different gauze cannons sticking from the front the front of the ship and then wrapped in a thick layer of armor
Theirs usually conveyorbelts going everywhere and a whole lot of power sources put in many different parts of the ship
I never put all of my power sources and things like that in one place because that means if someone shoots that that area there then that resource is now gone on my ship so I never put everything in one place and so that leaves me with vast open areas inside the ship which serve only the purpose of making the ship bigger and being a place for redundancy when it comes to my conveyor belts because man I have a lot of those
And yes redundancy is the key
Matter of fact I think on my last capital ship I made I had a six different areas that produce power and like eight different areas where I had thrusters
Probably the most impressive thing though was the fact that I had designed this massive ship to also be its own mining ship designed to be able to mine through planets and in which it does
Fairly quickly
It can chew through planets easily
Honestly kind of reminds me of a worm how it digs
A dreadnought is not a "big ship", it is faster, better armed and better armoured than it's contemporaries. That is it. If your big ship does not satisfy those criteria it is not a dreadnought.
this is why even in real life they just moved from having giant armored battleships with massive guns to having smaller boats that are more nimble, cheaper and have missiles
big ships just not practical anymore
yup, though on the other hand mega sized spaceships make sense for any function except military, as the square-cubed law gives it more internal space for less external armor proportionally, as well as room to carry more supplies and extra fuel/bigger engines, spare parts for repairs, or even just larger/more comfortable crew accommodations, and so on.
As long as you can afford to go big, in space you have little reason not to.
I had visited a server that had a team that used 1 battleship 3 cruisers and 6 destroyers.
Pretty good ships. The thing that made this team different from the others is that all their ships had merge blocks that allowed them if they wanted to fuse all the ships together into a super ship(dreadnought). It was quite something to witness.
At any point they could attach and detach if needed.
Dreadnoughts are cool but they do require a lot of crew to operate and when you have over half your team on one ship you can easily be out flanked, out maneuvered, and picked apart by a team that has more ships with one to two man crews.
I think the best ship I ever made was a ballistic missile frigate. Took 4 people to operate. Had two torpedo tubes up front with customized torpedoes that actually had to be loaded manually like how you would on a sub.
Mainly it was a support vessel. It wasn’t good on its own but with a fleet around it to draw fire it would wreck any ship that I could land a hit on.
The torpedoes were by far the best weapons other than the ballistic missiles about six silos on the top the major trouble with a ship like this is instead of ammunition I had to load up enough components to weld up missiles and torpedoes. Once you run out of components your basically heading back to base. Secondary weapons were mostly used to shoot down small fighters and incoming missiles and torpedoes.
I haven’t played in a long time so with all the warfare dlcs it probably wouldn’t last long before it got hit and the torpedoes and missiles detonated destroying the whole ship.
But all this to say I agree. Mostly dreadnoughts are more of a deterrent especially if your new to space engineers.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
more or less.
man the fusing into one ships sounds awesome, hilarious, and terrifying at the same time. Bet that was a sight to see
@@GetBrocked it was I don’t think they ever really used that feature in a fight. But it was an option, the faction leader at the time said it was more display than anything. It reminded me of power rangers and the mech that all their vehicles combined would form. He said there was a lot of bad reasons why they really never used that function in a fight mainly because its just too much of a hassle to connect during a battle and that if one ship was blown up the fragments from that ship could compromise the rest of the ships.
This was like 2 years ago.
Thank you for this dissertation. I learnt a lot.
Potential counter for evasive maneuvers: set up an array of cannons to shotgun blast the opposition. Probably good for bombardment as well.
So lesson is, big resource investments must mean more maneuverability and ease of use to be useful.
Thing is, you're looking at it with the perspective of a real-life engagement, or a strategy-game one like you have on your server.
Thruth is however, on most servers you play, you will only have to fight against a maximum of about 3 or so ships at a time, which - if you really designed your "pride of the fleet" right - can easily shrugged off.
And often, you wouldn't even use that ship to fight other ships, but rather destroy the enemie's static locations, where one big-ass gun carrier is actually a viable tactic.
The only really good large ships are carriers for mass amounts of drones, that can hold an entire strike force alone. I’d use these as the centrepiece of my navy and then focus everything else on smaller ships like cruisers or frigates (which would be AI too). I would design them to be cheap and disposable.
I built an extremely massive ship. It was so big that i built it in 4 parts, and each part lags my modern PC.
It wasn't a Military Ship, it was an "Oil Rig." It's kinda funny how small ships are in SE compared to IRL. It was sized to be to scale to IRL Oil Rigs.
Fighters in SE can be smaller than cars. The smallest IRL fighter is HUGE in SE.
Grand Admiral Thrawn agrees with this video
UNOPOSED UNDER CRIMSON SKIES IMORTALIZED OVER TIME THEIR LEGEND WILL RISE, AND THEIR FOES CANT BELIVE THEIR EYES BELIVE THE SIZE AS THEY FALL, AND THE DREADNOUGHTS DREAD NOTHING AT ALL.
If you're gonna make a ship too big to lose, you're gonna have to make it too well-designed to fight. You have to make it so that within a certain range fighting it head-on is not viable because smaller ships need less shots to die. If you design a dreadnought to have a large exterior and small interior (mostly by making it flat) you can make it so that the sheer amount of weaponry simply overpowers the other ships before they can do significant damage. What you could also do is focus on railguns. The big flaw of railguns is that they are very VERY hit or miss. On smaller ships they aren't viable, because you've dedicated so much to the damn thing that if you miss you're suddenly a space brick that moves. But on larger ships, you can strategically place clusters of them that cover all area around to ship, but are also big enough that you're gonna hit something with at least one of them. And 1 or 2 good railgun turret shots is a destroyer gone. Ships like these have their issues but if you situate them around cover with a fleet of stealth ships out of sight you can bait the enemy into a very crucial engagement that's automatically in your favour.
Is it possible to use a ship that's more like a Carrier? Big ship, lots of armor, mostly PD and a hangar filled with remote controlled small craft, or even having the crew of larger ships remotely controlling them from the Carrier? That way you don't loose the crews of smaller ships while also have a menacing flagship.
11:00 It's ironic because this is precisely what the real Dreadnaught was meant to counter/replace.
I mean, yeah, you kind of can't split apart your ship. There are merge blocks. 15:55
I mean if both sides agreed on a war of only dreadnaughts it might be more interesting, but if you can use smaller ships the balance is ruined
Great content. Love this game and play it daily
I do have a question. What mods were used in the beginning clips? Saw some great guns and interesting armor slopes that I dont recognize
AWP for the guns. Not sure on the slopes
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if energy shields were to become vanilla / added to the equation, I feel like the tables would turn in favor of large ships. All that interior space could now be utilized for power and shield generators.
potentially. There is still the tactical, and strategic inflexibility.
To Be fair when Designing a Flagship (what you call a super ship) it is always suppose to be supported by smaller ships no lone ship will ever work well against a fleet of coordinated smaller ship fleets. But when the Flagship is designed for command and control, slightly more focused for anti capital warfare it becomes more suitable for combats. Example will be UNSC ship designs. if you look at say the Flagship of UNSC fleet pre~covenant war, the UNSC flagships tends to be carriers specialized for mass fighter strike and C&C with some ability to defend it self in capital warfare and point defense. So I think when designing a Flagship, it should be slightly specialized but also be escorted by specialized ships to fill in the gaps where the flagship will lack.
Looking purely at one-to-one-combat, so not counting issues like the dreadnought only being in one place at a time, so on so forth, it being viable depends mostly on the available weapons and if shields are a thing. If the largest weapon fits on a dd, then the fleet of dds has more firepower due to their greater combined surface area, however if the largest weapon is really big and doesnt fit on normal sized ships, it might be viable, because the dreadnought might just outrange its enemys and kill them before they can shoot. If shields are a thing the dreadnought has the same volume as an equal fleet of dds and might even save on components that dont need to be scaled up, and so it can gernerate as much or more power for its shields as its opponents. In a fight the smaller ships would have to break through all of the dreadnoughts shield to damage it/ lower its damage-output whilst it only has to dropp the shields of one dd to start doing damage, meaning that the enemy would lose ships and firepower much faster. So yes in a vanilla or vanilla-like environment the dreadnoughts only reason for existance is to show off or for when both sides only bring one ship but other scenarios have different dynamics.
I played a game called BSG Deadlock for about 5 years, and one of the awkward parts of the game besides an AI that learns your tactics and knows how to wreck them, is the constant razor balance you need to maintain between flexibility of movement which is vital in a missile based warfare system that requires radar locks, and enemy's tried and true method of jumping giant missile boats DIRECTLY IN THE MIDDLE of your fleet and going to town, you learn bigger is slower, however slower has a better chance of going "oh crap what was that?" next turn instead of "oh f............" You WANNA field nothing but Jupiter Battlestars, however they have the speed of a tortoise with focus issues..... I spent no less than 2 years trying to come up with the perfect fleet formation, and once I found one, they nerfed it.......(grumble) so the hunt remains.
The fleet I used. I called Hammer. It was a 6 hull fleet which kept head hunting to a minimum, and was 2 carriers, 2 heavy armored missile boats, and 2 battlestars, 1 Jupiter and one Minerva. the Minerva being a Glass Cannon Orca to the Jupiter's Megaladon. It was also fast enough to disengage if everyone aggroed on it exclusively in close quarters, with its own flak to better fend off being outside the Jupiter's flak range, and every time you free up the Jupiter to do what it did best. And if everyone jumped on the Jupiter, well its called a Glass canon for a reason actually able to out dps a Jupiter. While the Carriers and Missile boats covered strike craft control and torpedo strikes adequate to "answer" a Base Star. The formation could even run as 2 independent fleets and lose very little strike power.
Dreadnaughts are Battleships, that is just a name giving to Battleships in WW1. Named for the first true "Battleship" HMS Dreadnaught, which became the gold standard for all other battleships of that time period. They are just normal battleships, not a separate class of ship.
That saying "jack of all trades" doesn't mean what people think it does. The full saying is "A jack of all trades, and a master of none, is still far batter then a master of just one" It is actually an anti specialization saying.
TLDR: at most, a ship should quantify 10% max of a fleet, and the main ship should be composed of many smaller ships/drag a bunch of mid-small ships into battle: the ol' anthill strategy. except even the anthill is pissed and is itself, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivouac_(ants).
Would you say that your ship or the Infinity would be a good f. O. B or mobile headquarters for deep space or behind for enemy lines
Im gonna build it. Its gonna be big, its gonna be great, and ill have CDF pay for it all.
haha. Im linking that in the discord.
There's a point of diminishing return once you pass the 4500-block area in SE. Even in the most perfected roleplay servers, anything over 5K flat out is just not a good idea. It takes insane engineering skill to make a ship that big both maneuverable AND be able to withstand endless fire.
Dreadnoughts are centerpiece ships. They're what you bring as the coordinator, flagship, 'big kahuna' or 'boogeyman'. If anything, they're more as a showpiece rather than any kind of practical item to use in combat. In a traditional server, a ship that large, 25k blocks, is so large that you literally would be barred from even attempting to build it. Even IF you had the resources to spare, which, let's be entirely honest, no one has that kind of resource stockpile on hand.
The single largest ship I've ever fielded was a 'dreadnought' class vessel dubbed the Lazarus. It's got a reputation for being an immensely durable, impossibly powerful vessel capable of full in-atmosphere, interplanetary operations up to and including 1G. We build it whenever we become established enough, even though it has become more a relic of times long gone, much like the Battleship of today.
But yeah, nice breakdown. Agree with everything said here. :) Love this stuff, subbed!
I mean, super ships COULD be useful as long as you don't go overboard. An oversized battleship or supercarrier could be an excellent centerpiece for a fleet, especially if it can function as a sort of mobile base, like the UNSC Infinity does. it could be a serious force projection tool, but needs some form of escorts, which can be a pain to work in Space Engineers. This only works to a certain extent, however, and if you go nuts with the scaling or fall victim to feature creep, it would easily turn into a Death Star scenario where it's just a massive resource sink and you can't use it in any meaningful engagement. Even then, it could be an effective fleet in being, like the Tirpitz, stationing it at strategic locations to make capturing the location too costly to be worth the gains, thus even if your ship never sees battle it was still effective on a strategic level as a deterrent.
… What about The Last Hurrah? The proverbial final monument. The “are Race is dying, and nothing we can do will stop it” ship. The “this is what we were” ship. The final monument of greatness made to Scream into the uncaring Void “WE WERE HERE, AND AS LONG AS THIS SHIP STANDS, WE STILL STAND IN SPIRIT.” If your on the out as a species and you know it, why wouldn’t you build the biggest, baddest thing you can?
I’d love to see someone make a to scale Phalanx (40k) in space engineers. Not sure if it would be possible though.
Tbh, capital ships are like the death stars. They pose a 'threat' but once taken out, what does that faction have
what is the ship at 0:18? i lvoe its thruster arrangement and woudl liek to build somethign similar
I know this video isnt about real life at all but Im not going to let that little detail stop me. In real life if we ever get to having warships in space you'd only ever probably get smaller ships / drones with harder to detect radiation emissions/ smaller radar signatures or absolute gargantuan ships because that way you get to have more armour, radiation shielding like water (which is also useful for not dying if you plan to have a human crew), more cargo/munitions/other supplies, and for the same % of volume taken up. Smaller ships will defend themselves by 1) hopefully not getting shot at (since if the ship has a living crew it's not going to dodge missiles due to the G forces) 2) Having a strong point defence package. Larger ships however wont be able to hide well if at all so will need extremely thick armour along with a near impenetrable point defence system to not get knocked out. But I find the whole idea of warfare in space between two separate factions dumb because all it would take is one side dropping a really, really, really big chunk of metal (or many said chunks) into a planets gravity well to destroy whatever they dont want on the surface of that planet anymore, and good luck to whoever is on the receiving end of a several dozen kiloton chunk of tungsten or other dense metal flung towards you from outside the system. Sure it'll take a while to get where it's needed but it's very unlikely to even get spotted before it's too late.