Ship Size vs Internal Spaces?

[Mirrored Way]

I haven't tested this hardly at all, but I have learned that simply changing a ship designed with a 1::1 correspondence between size and internal spaces (e.g., a ship with 512 internal spaces made to be a size 512 ship) is much weaker than a ship that has a size much larger than a ship that has a size much larger than its internal size count. Don't laugh, but I played for a long time without knowing that. ("WTF! How are they gettng ship size 1200 when I am limited to 512 no matter what I do?!" Yep. That was me.)

I am just getting into SR2:Herald's DLC [Herald]. I read somewhere that vanllla SR2 [Vanilla] penalized you for not using all of the available internal size, and that Herald doesn't. Should I still try to use all of the internal space in Herald?

It appears that, when you change ship size, the command requirements, combat speed, turning rate and FTL characteristics remain the same, while the health, damage, stores, power and support pretty much scale proportionately. And, ya, cost/maintainance go up by a factor that is close to the size proportion, too. Are there any gotchas not apparent in the gross numbers? Like, maybe, "the bigger sized ship is easier to hit" or something?

Are there any tips you can share on how to do ship design in Herald is different than Vanilla?

[dolynick]

Hex limit count generally means that each hex is weaker. With a default 128 hex flagship, each hex's "strength" is 1/128. With a 512 hex titan, each hex is 1/512. You need 4x as many hexes in a titan's subsystem to be equal to a flagship's equivalent. There are some exceptions of course, depending on the specific hull and nature and specific subsystem (Command for example).

Other than that, it's fairly straightforward. Doubling the size of the entire design will double the strength of the individual hexes. There are, again, some exceptions as there are some systems that do not scale with size (like FTL or Command).

One thing that isn't apparent and could be considered a "gotcha" is the interaction of weapon damage vs Armor DR. Armor DR also scales with hex size (not just health), so it sort of double scales. A larger armor hex with higher DR will nullify more damage from a given weapon than a smaller armor hex will. This is why 2 size 100 ships are not the equal of 1 size 200. The size 200's armor is negating more of the damage from every shot from the small ship. By inverse, the size 200 is also loosing less of a % of it's weapon damage to the smaller ship's armor DR each shot.

[Mirrored Way]

That's useful info, Dolynick. Thanks.