Hull Size and Combat Balance

Someone on the forums made a comment a while ago about large swarms of tiny hulls being OP. I remember that being a problem in GC3. Between the different defense mechanic in GC4 and the hit point buffs that larger hulls received a while ago, I'm hoping that this won't be a problem in GC4. Still, as long as defense remains weak relative to offense, I think large swarms of tiny hulls are going to be exploitable.

On the hand, supposing that this issue did get fixed, you would simply have another problem: bigger ships would be inherently better, and so one would have no reason to build smaller ships. This leads to a situation where the game is basically a technology race, with very few tactical or strategic choices that can make a difference. Right now, with all forms of weapons being equalized, the last thing we need is fewer choices about fleet composition.

I had an idea that would help keep smaller hull sizes relevant throughout the game without letting them completely overrun everything. My idea would place all hull sizes on a spectrum of "maneuverability" and "resiliency," with tiny hulls being the most maneuverable and massive hulls being the most resilient. Weapons would also have their own spectrum of "tracking" and "penetration," with the weapons attached to tiny hulls having the best tracking and weapons attached to massive hulls being the most penetrating by default.* Better tracking would counter maneuverability and better penetration would counter resiliency. I imagine that for a battle between a fleet of small hulls and a fleet of medium hulls, the impact of these factors would be pretty negligible. For a battle between a fleet of tiny hulls and a fleet of massive hulls, both sides would have their effective damage reduced drastically, perhaps by as much as 99%. So the massive hulls would get at most a scratch, while the fleet of tiny hulls might lose some ships if the massive hulls are lucky enough to get a hit.

With this system, both small and large hull sizes are important. If you don't have big ships, you can't take out their big threats. On the hand, if you don't have enough small ships, the enemies can harass your freighters and asteroid bases while taking on minimal risk.

One interesting side-effect of this would be that to keep your transports (for instance) safe, you would protection from both kinds of threats. If you only have a big escort, enemy interceptors could "slip in" and destroy your transport. If you only have small ships escorting the transport, you can't prevent a big assault ship from barreling in and taking the transport out.

Not only would such a system make fleet composition more important and combat more interesting to watch, it would also reflect what space combat looks like in movies like Star Wars, where small ships fight primarily small ships and big ships fight primarily big ships. (The Death Star does not count as a space ship, so don't even bring it up!) I think this sort of "realism" makes the game more fun.

*Another idea would be to have specialized weapons like "armor-piercing missiles" and "fast-tracking missiles." These could either be distinct modules or specialized weapons technology (like in GC3). If it's the first option, you could build big ships that specialize in taking down little ships and little ships that specialize in damaging big ships. Or, if it's the second option, you could choose to give all your missiles better penetration, for instance.