SE Warfare II: Dreadnoughts Suck 

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

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.

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.

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 .

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.

If there's one thing I've learned from starsector is that if your dreadnought isn't working, *you aren't using enough*

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Also its just that small ships can just kill with artillery and railguns from long range and dodge the dreadnoughts shots

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Im gonna build it. Its gonna be big, its gonna be great, and ill have CDF pay for it all.

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 is the ship at 0:18? i lvoe its thruster arrangement and woudl liek to build somethign similar

That's what is call a slot battleship friend.

Making Ship that so modular it can Combine into one ship to travel and Scatter to do stuff and employ Drone swarm

bro.... what??? the CSO class was 32 KILOMETERS long. The Infinity was 5.6 km.

Lots of ships are called "Bad" but sometimes people execute these builds wrong. i mean i had built a dreadnought, but i can agree i lost EVERY battle i had with it. Dont wanna spend my entire day writing this, but just saying that these ships can be decent if executed correctly.

Think of these dreadnoughts like the bismark and the tirpitz, two nazi super battleships that were the biggest in the world and outclassed everything else. They were too massive to afford to lose, and after one assault the tirpitz got hit with a british bombing run, and the bismark launched one raiding operation before taking damage and being confined to port for safety for the rest of its service. When you invest too much into any one ship what you're doing is giving your enemy a high value target

Maybe if the game didn’t lag so much then we could actually use them the right way

Superships are ridiculous. I have said this about the UNSC Infinity, it is stupid overdesigned. If you have the resources to build the Infinity, you have the resources to field 8 frigates, a dedicated carrier, a dedicated battleship with all the armaments that that entails, and a suitable escort fleet. A Super battleship should be designed exclusively as a capital ship killer. It should be escorted by a screening fleet and it should act as a means of protecting the light ships from heavy ships while the light ships counter other light ships and strike ships.

Can't you almost argue that Air craft carriers / super carriers themselves are a concept of a Dreadnaught? Its a bigger and stronger (if you count the aircraft/spacecraft (if in space) as part of its weaponry) and generally is considered a hyper specialized ship that does *one thing* in particular extremely well, it's always heavily defended by other types of escorting ships so that it can do its job without problem Using carrier as a dreadnaught concept, this whole "the entire fleet in one ship" issue is the main issue, not necessarily having a big ship in itself, if for example, its a small part of the force instead of the main part of the force one of my philosophies in Endless space 2, is that when I unlock carriers, I always make sure that the Carrier isn't most of my fleet, but a smaller supporter for my fleets rather I'd say only make a dreadnaught if that only is like say... 20%-30% or less of your fleet tonnage

The only thing Dreadnoughts are good at are looking cool and giving players a false sense of power.

I see them as like a mobile bace and should be built to die in a combat situation but also taking the the fight to the enemy or being a distraction and should be used to push an advancement

sadly your points are true, but a cannon mod pack my server runs fixes a lot. you really cant fit the gigantic guns on small fleet ships so we make fast huge ships with an assload of armor and as many of the giant guns we can fit. with space for a few point defense weapons it becomes a beast in battles. we typically run the dreadnought with a smaller battlecruiser designed for anti-fighter and harrassing targets while our dreadnought demolishes any attempt our other mates make.

Supersize ship =/= dreadnought. A dreadnought is not defined by size, but capability. If you can't win with the ship except under ideal circumstances, then you don't have a dreadnought, you just have a big capitol ship. The fact that you found it necessary to engage fleets piecemeal means that you do not have a dreadnought. A dreadnought should be able to engage an entire ENY fleet, on their terms, and not only hold it's own, but stand a very credible chance of prevailing. "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 statement assumes parity between the dreadnought and its opponents, which is an erroneous assumption. A dreadnought would carry weaponry that gives it the ability to 1 or 2 shot anything cruiser size or smaller and simply could not be fielded on smaller craft due to the restrictions on power generation and management for smaller craft. A dreadnoughts weapons would on a larger scale and likely unique or bespoke to the ship itself. Further' a Dreadnought would need to have an answer for every battlefield situation, whether engaging a swarm of fighter sized craft at extreme close range, or a heavily armored capitol ship at ultra-long distances. To this end, a dreadnought is required to be (relatively) fast and agile, allowing it to position itself for the greatest advantage in any engagement; maneuverability is as much a weapon as a cannon is.

Big ships may not be useful but they are fun

If the dreadnought is underwelming tacticaly you should grant it some kind of power on the strategic layer. Like being able to jump it and some nearby ships or just itself deep into enemy territory. Or the ability to scramble enemy fleet jump drives so they can't retreat etc. Or a super weapon that can automatically destroy or disable one enemy ship at the start of a fight If factions are able to commit so mucg resources they should be rewarded for it in some way.

The only place Dreads are good in SE is the crazy servers with little to no rules

Because mega structures are fun to build and they're cool

AND THE DREADNOUGHTS DREAD NOTHING AT ALL!

I would say the main point really comes down to one thing: if you can't afford to lose it, you can't afford to use it. After all, you have to assume in planning that any ship you put in the line of fire will at some point be lost, and if the loss of that one single asset would cripple you, it loses its usefulness as it can't be effectively deployed.

Boiled down to a single sentence: "Never have a single ship represent more than 30% of your total resources and personnel, because the strategic, tactical and logistical constraints on your fleet as a whole outweigh all possible value of a large asset." Or just: "The Tarkin Doctrine sucks" for us Star Wars nerds. *30% for arguments sake; the number might be higher/lower.

"can't split into smaller ships", man, i think you got a concept right there: what if it does ?

I've always thought the only huge ships worth building were Carriers, but the fact that SE doesnt really have the stability to support 30+ people in a fight those make no sense either.

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

When it comes to space engineers, the reality is the weapon systems have a fixed size, realistically, space engineers is the perfect game for Jeune ecole ships, because the largest weapon a frigate can use(the railgun), is the same size and firepower as the largest weapon on a capital class ship, so an analogy will be that in a world war 2 context, the US destroyers have 5 inch main battery, but imagine if the fast battleships could also only mount 5 inch batteries rather than their 16 inch batteries. That is one of the major limitations for large combat ships, in my opinion. For superships. I think that the ideal 'supership' would be slightly larger than their standard capital, like the montanas to the iowas. If its any larger, than its more like a mobile starbase than a combat ship

I think that supercapitals have their place in space engineers. Some systems like refinery armor or massive gravity cannons can only be used on really massive ships. Supercapitals are a chance to innovate, as you have near unlimited space to explore pretty much any concept of your choosing. To make a supercapital work, you can’t just use what the game gives you, you have to innovate, creating better armor, weapons, thrusters, etc. Player built munitions are often far stronger than game provided ones. Obviously supercapitals will never be common or super practical on survival servers but they have their place in this game.

The point of SUPER MASSIVE ships is to specialize into a extreme, usually a super massive weapon that couldn't normally be used. That is why BIG BOYS exist.

The thing about flagships, these huge warships that make PR scream in joy: they're always designed to be accompanied by a sister ship or a fleet. They're not jacks of all trades, they're specialized either as support or a "hammer", carrying the biggest, baddest equipment to have both a range and a firepower advantage over the enemy. Their sister ship usually covers what the flagship lacks, say if your flagship is a carrier it has cannons or if it's full of cannons then they focus on anti-air, anti-destroyer and mine clearing duty. Each other are ready to rescue and retain the other's crew in case one of them is sunk. Of course, each warship/sister combo is then also usually accompanied by a few cruisers or destroyers as well as a screen for other vessels, if their goal is that to battle and not merely an escort.

The reason you can get away with something like Eternity's Edge, is because you aren't trying to hold territory. The vessel IS your territory. Your faction is protecting the assets of other factions out of the kindness of your hearts. But realistically, you can turn and dip out any time, and no one would be able to stop you. Maybe you should have made this clear to the CDF that the only reason you can even have a ship of this size, is because it is all you have. They have to defend space stations and mining outposts, whereas you just have to defend yourself. If they try to create a ship that can defeat the Eternity, they are going to lose everything else. They will not be able to protect their taxpayers, which means their only alternative then is to become mercenaries or pirates, and become just as trapped on their ship as you are.

The eternity seems more like a long haul mothership rather than a Dreadnought. With all the production systems, durability, and size makes it quite useful for a expeditionary fleet. It could repair and maintain large fleet of vessels, acting as a mobile repair dockyard, along with that is its carrying capacity. It would be able to house multiple utility vessels, like mining, scouts, transports, faber, and other such parasite/subcraft that allows a fleet to run. Its able to safely carry them, making the fleet self-sufficient, since most fleets need a dedicated logistics unit and shipyard to reinforce the fleet. If you cut off logistics, they would run out necessary resources to maintain there vessels, making them less combat effective overall and giving them limited amount of time they can stay in combat, but you wouldn't have that. Same goes for cutting off access to shipyards, they cant make more ships and do extensive repairs, so you can eventually bleed them dry, with them unable to replenish loses, whereas you could. Infinity could handle most logistics purposes and has minor ship production ability via fabrication craft, which would take more time compared to a shipyard, when out in frontier or unknown that may not be luxury you have. As well Eternity could defend itself and handle large super heavy vessels that a fleet may encounter, which would usually inflict heavy loses. While infinite handles the enemy super capital the rest of the fleet could handle the remaining forces, especially with support from Eternity parasite craft. Eternity itself could heavily augment a greater exploratory fleets combat ability, with strike craft, fire support, handle larger vessels, and draw fire. Most fleet commanders, upon seeing infinity would target it, drawing fire away from rest of the fleet, which is logical it could field the most fire power, but its ability to support rest of fleet is far more useful. Do agree the concept of Dreadnought does not work, and role of super capital does not work for Eternity. But as a long haul vessel, mothership, and flagship for a fleet it does. A mothership like Eternity gives fleets far less dependency on supply lines, able to support fleet well via its firepower, and parasite craft, and handle heavy capitals. Equipping fleets on long haul expeditions, on patrol fleets on far off border, or to fleets going in deep into enemy lines would be a great benefit. dreadnought itself could work well in a larger armada, if its armed with a super weapon or weapon of mass destruction..The concept of Dreadnought that's a fleet on its own would not work, but as central vessel or centerpiece of an armada designed to support and work with it would. Edit 1) Someone did make a good point, dreadnoughts could come of use due to them fielding super weapons or weapons of mass destruction that can't be used by standard capital vessels, so thank you Mike Whitake

First time ever hearing of SE, immediately captivated, you have yourself a new sub! You are very thorough and could make documentaries

Bigger and more is often less. Two well-designed cruisers with good synergy can match or even surpass a single battleship/dreadnought/titan/Jimmy John's Super Salami Sub or whatever you want to call it. They're cheaper, more versatile, damage is spread out over two ships as is targeting priority, etc. Also, despite my bad call in overconcentrating the Rider heavies, I'm still proud that the Ravager never became a port princess like other "superships" of her ilk. She basically never left the front lines, outkilled most of the other ships in the fleet, and always came back for more.

Dreadnaughts and big ships in general are a bad move if playing solo even against the AI as the time for fixing can take ages oppose to ten mins max on smaller ships

It's funny, the kind of ships that dreadnoughts end up being in Space Engineers are the kind of ship that HMS Dreadnought, the ship that revolutionized warship design, broke away from. Pre-Dreadnoughts were these large ships with every caliber of gun under the sun, overbuilt and inaccurate as all hell. You couldn't tell the splash of one shell from another so how are you going to correct your aim after all.

Imo the most important thing is evasion. Auto guns predict where ship gonna be, which can actually be taken advantage of. If you constantly change directions the enemy guns won't be able to really hit you as you are never in a place they predict you would be. I remember capping entire space stations with a space suit just because of that fact ;) So, relatively tiny destro with way better ratio of engine thrust to mass will achieve better value for a block because it simply cannot be hit enough times by huge, bulky, capital weapon using dreadnought. And now you got 10 of them. Now 10 ships is pummeling that huge cow of a dreadnought while not receiving that much of a return fire.

My favorite fictional example of this is the Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars. It's a normal ship for it's faction; there are literally hundreds of them around the galaxy, but at the same time it's also considerably bigger than anything fielded by anyone else. It's also less of a battleship and more of a mobile military base. Not only does it have the gun batteries and large hangars and fighter complement, it's designed to house and haul marine and ground forces complement from planet to planet. All in one ship. And it has all that, because it's not designed for warfare, but for policing and subduing scrappy rebels. I would guess that if you pit an ISD against a same sized ship, or even a smaller, nimbler one, that is purpose-built for hauling firepower to the field, the Imperial would lose.

With the square/cube law, there SHOULD be a huge advantage to larger ships. The same thickness armor gets heavier proportional to hull area, or N^2, while the internal volume increases proportional to N^3. If greater internal volume enables greater ammunition stores and larger and more efficient engines and power plants, then given effective armor, larger ships should be more effective per unit weight and per unit cost. What this means, is that Space Engineers is balanced such that the square/cube law doesn't work. This actually makes sense for the game devs, because that way, they don't have to deal with burgeoning inflation of component count and load on the GPU. That could result in too much lag.

When you called a 25k block ship a dreadnought I realized how huge my ships are in from the depths cause thats like a normal warship to me

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.

The "Dreadnought" Type Ships Are Supposed To Be Line Breakers. The Type Of Ship You Send To Deal With The Toughest Nuts. Supported By A Well Rounded Fleet, They Are NOT Supposed To Be Solo Actors. A Good Example Of This Being Done Right Is In Stellaris Gigastructural Engineering Mod With The Katzen. Trying To Deal With The Kaizer Moon Without Your Own Attack Moons Is A Pain, Extremely Costly And Show How Powerful This Type Of Ships Can Be.

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.

most universes also have another reason for dreadnoughts or super stations like a death star... and that is a super weapon or weapons of MASS destruction.. an example weapon we see in SE would be the Atlas super laser.... using these weapons can be a game changer considering the range and damage these weapons have... and MOST are balanced with long reload/recharge timers and/or huge energy requirements... whilst this may not be an issue in your verse, it is a consideration when dealing with the choice of whether or not a dreadnought or other super capitol/station does or does not suck...

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.

For a great visual exemple watch OUTLANDS episode 7 as you see the shields MELT and how reliant on "secondary" munitions the eternity actualy is

Damn I’ve never thought of it this way. But now that I think about it, one giant ship really is more vulnerable than a bunch of separate ships, no wonder any massive ships I build get shredded by cruisers xD

This is similar to why you see Titans used so rarely in battle in Eve Online. They're a big resource investment (after the economy changes anyway) and using them always carries the risk that the enemy will drop a capital fleet on them, forcing you to commit *more* resources to defend it, and so on until you're in a massive UNPLANNED (very bad for an online group with IRL schedules) battle that carries a huge risk to your faction's security even if you win- which can't be guaranteed since you're at the mercy of who can log in. They also provide a vital function in their ability to bridge in subcapital ships, allowing you to drop the majority of your players in expendable ships wherever you manage to get a spearhead, so you can't afford not to have them. That being said, they're hardly irreplaceable, in fact thanks to years of economic shenanigans the big alliances pretty much have an endless well of Titans to spend. The real danger is the morale aspect of losing them: big alliances effectively have infinite resources and small ones can fight indefinitely without territory, MMO wars are decided by player morale and losing a Titan hits players harder than it really should because they're symbolic. The morale impact of losing a Titan is only really eclipsed by the morale impact of losing the biggest battle of the war, which is why you mainly see Titans committed in those regardless of the actual cost-effectiveness. This is also why you can't just sacrifice one, even if it would make the most economic sense morale trumps that. Better to lose far more in a pointless battle but keep players engaged than to just sacrifice a Titan. In a game, even if you could survive the loss of a super-ship in terms of resources, you might not in morale.

This was the thinking of the U.S. Iowa class vs the Yamato. The Japanese biggest fear of the Iowa was her speed and accuracy (which today is still the most accurate guns of any war ship to date) they where sure they could win if they saw the Iowa coming and could stay out of her range but give it a cloudy day and the Iowa closes in range the Yamato was too slow and too inaccurate to have a good chance of winning. It's one of the reasons they never fought.

I was apart of a faction in an SE server that was making a dreadnaught as our main base. For my whole time with that faction it took them over a week to build that single ship while other factions that were apparently weaker had there own fleet that essentially out powered what we had at that time. Easily said the ship got attacked and raided forces the leaders to just turn it into a station

I only build ships that big for the looks and Roleplay, nothing more, just like in real life dreadnoughts are an obsolete class of ship with very VERY few exceptions

I know super ships are just a Kilomitors long billboard sign saying "I'M AN SCARY SHIP". and don't have much use. *But it's still an kilometers long billboard sign saying "I'M AN SCARY SHIP"* try getting FF pilots to engage that kinda thing without nope'ing out XD

Needs more dakka, unless/until you have god tier defence (most games have very weak defence). Mobility helps No Hits = No Damage. However Mobility gets rekt when targeting gets insane. E.g. in SE terms, OP scripted weapon systems. Quantity can beat Quality to a point.

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.

The specific ship you mentioned might actually function perfectly well in an IRL setting, considering it has a manufacturing facility on board, it covers all of his maintenance costs because it's capable of taking in raw materials and replacing damaged components. It could in theory at that point build another one of itself. It seems like the centerpiece of a defensive force of a colony or expeditionary Force.

Extremely large sized ships work amazingly well... As non-combatant vessels. Your crew size was basically half the real estimate, because a "Dreadnought" that requires 10 would need an escort of at least 10 fights to be fully effective. I think where these sort of builds shine is where you make it a rule that teams need a large enough ship to dock and "live on" and losing that counts as a loss, but for roleplay reasons you can just play with small ships and reasonably sized groups.

This is the reason why I bank heavily on custom scripted weapons, because on top of being HIGHLY customizable, it is by definition one of the highest force multiplier you can get on a ship, even with the added logistical cost, the cost of the weapon and the heightened complexity of operating the ship. Simply put, it allows ships to punch well above their weight by greatly increasing the potential of ship components by being smart about their use. for example, a big spinal weapon system can allow ships to really bring in the hurt on the larger vessels but it quickly loses efficiency over distance or against more nimble targets. However by using a ballistic computer, for difficult shots you can have the computer aim at the predicted intercept point. While you lose some things (like being able to aim at a specific part of the ship) and you add the extra complexity of operating a complex lock-on system, but on the flipside you can DRASTICALLY increase the envelope of situations the ship can comfortably hit the target at, including for some cases *ranges beyond the visual capability of the pilot* though pulling those off is not only are but requires fleet coordination. Another great examples is guided missiles, especially large grid ones. They require a dedicated, purpose built ship to really work with any degree of reliability, which puts IMMENSE additional design pressure upon the vessel, however their key aspect is being able to turn ship components (like thrusters, hydrogen tanks, or blast doors) into potent weapons. They do not rely on the same rules as weapons, instead following the same limitations as ships (usually far more constraining but also changing what weapons work best against them). And they tend to scale in their damage output the bigger the target is, allowing a small ship, piloted by a smart and aware crew, to punch above their weight class in a way that is usually not easily done without these kinds of systems. It can also be used in a more passive way to increase individual effectiveness of each crew by giving them acess to more information or automating some tasks. For example, you can have 15 fighter pilots, or one drone operator operating 15 drone fighters. You lose a lot of individual skillsets for the fighter pilots yet that means you can now allocate those 15 fighter pilots to, for example, fly 15 missile corvettes. It allows to shift strengths in unconventional ways which thus allows to defeat enemies which by any regards would de-facto win by using conventional tactics and ship designs.

I think a quote from a book I read describes this perfectly; "the loss of the Hood was to the British a loss of ~7.5% of capital ship strength. To the Germans the loss of the Bismarck was a loss of ~45% of of capital ship strength."

i have a counter argument for this, and i realized it while i was in the middle of building my capital ship in SE after going through a few days worth of nonstop grinding in World of Warships; first of all we need to clear all of the confusion in the room, "Dreadnought" is a term given to a very heavily armored ship that can fight any kind of threat with reasonable effectiveness, which fits in Space Engineers because a Massive Jack of All Trades Ship is best described as such. historically Dreadnoughts have existed originally as Heavy Cruisers retrofitted to have far more armor, and bigger guns, as well as a substantial array of casemate guns, AA batteries, Dual purpose Flak Cannons, etc. this style of combat was gradually phased out by World War II due to the rising prevalence of Aircraft Carriers and the rising costs of maintaining these Dreadnoughts amid the Washington & London Treaties. eventually to reduce costs and risks of losing their Dreadnoughts, a new type of ship was born. based on the Dreadnought design principle but vastly different in roles. the first is what we are all very familiar with, Battleships. These Ships were designed strictly to engage the enemy at extremely long ranges, most designs of this type did away with its casemate turrets and added a dual layered casemate belt and main armor belt, their armor was redesigned to follow the "Turtleback" configuration, whereby the interior of the ship would be armored layer by layer to form strongholds within every section of the ship, from the Fore/Bow & Stern/Aft Armor Sections, the Primary Armor Belt, the Casemate Belt, the Auxiliary Section, the Torpedo Belt, the Superstructure Section, the Barbette Armor, the Primary Gunmounts Armor, and the Citadel Section. (you can guess which one is the most important) some ships would even have a Secondary Citadel for protecting the Barbettes, and the Primary Citadel would gain an extra spaced layer and be renamed the Stronghold Citadel. These Ships were heavily armored for both long range and close range combat, but the latter is avoided as much as possible. Some designs would also have "Icebreaker Armor Belts" for Bow Tanking or Ramming an enemy ship. The entire purpose of Battleships designed with the Turtleback Configuration is to essentially be the proverbial "Castle that stems the Tide". fighting from a distance to support smaller friendly ships, offering a juicy distraction for the opponents while the team intercepts them, providing a delaying action to help buy time for allied ships to change the tide of battle, or acting as the primary command center for every ship in the fleet. these ships can definitely hold their own, but are not designed to fight alone in protracted engagements. the second type of ship is what is known as Battlecruisers. These Ships are designed with mobility in mind, borrowing the best parts of Heavy Cruisers, laying down heavy fire or long range artillery fire while evading incoming fire, these ships are intentionally designed as "Glass Cannons" to boost their mobility and maneuverability, and therefore are designed with an "All or Nothing" Armor Configuration, intentionally thinning the armor of all the previously mentioned sections, or taking full advantage of armor angling to force exhibit armor ablation, peeling the armor to prevent an over-penetration into vital sections (and yes this actually works in space engineers too), with the only armor section having any real protection being the Citadels of the Ship. The entire purpose of Battlecruisers designed with All or Nothing Configuration is to distract the enemy as much as possible while making them hurt hard, and finally when you have their attention, make them miss every single shot aimed at you so you waste their time while they cant focus on your allied ships. this is the embodiment of the Opportunistic Sniper, taking cheap shots and immediately dipping out before things can even have a chance to get hairy. the third type of ship is what is known as Pocket Battleships. These Ships are designed with the ability to brawl at close range and absolutely decimate the enemy before retreating, these ships are designed specifically to have as much weapons as humanly possible with an emphasis on extremely hard hitting unavoidable saturation of damage on an enemy ship, either to cripple them or to destroy them, and are meant to stalk their prey under the cover of land masses, rough oceans, or heavy storms, the very emphasis of Guerilla Warfare and Hit & Run tactics employed by the Americans, and of Blitzkrieg employed by the Germans. this type of ship is much smaller than the previous two types, and therefore don't strictly need to pick between a Turtleback scheme or All or Nothing scheme for its Armor Layout since its smaller size guarantees much greater mobility, maneuverability and lower detection profile. however these ships are extremely risky to pilot since the tactic used to saturate the enemy requires that the ship has to be so close to and surprise them that they cannot react fast enough to evade, retreat, or retaliate, making the chance of your own demise extremely high if you are not a very experienced and confident captain. unlike the first two types however, this type works best alone to keep its trail hidden.

Maximum practical size is an interesting thing to talk about with warfare paradigms in scifi settings. For real life, the maximum is minimum. Each individual ship can't really protect itself from the weapons used on the field, so you make them as small as you can manage with as many as possible.

It's been a while since I played SE but I don't recall needing a crew to fly a large ship. I use to solo build and fly large ships on my own all the time. Back before the point system to limit the number of blocks, and even Holographic Blueprints were put in is when I use to play. In survival for simplicity I went for the Borg style of ship design with multiple layers of armor. My first design was suppose to be Borg Sphere but it looked more like a Diamond cause SE doesn't do curves. It was a large ship block set with one turret on each of the 6 ends and I got so good at building them I could build it survival in about 10-20 minutes or so. For larger ships I built a Borg Cube which was 13x13x13 Heavy Armor with layered armor on the inside. The thing was a brick with the most important internals at the center so even when all my weapons were gone I still could often break off from combat to get away. But that wasn't the largest ships I made in survival. The largest was the Borg Tactical Cube which was 26x26x26 heavy armor and took me about 6-8 hours as I recall to build in survival. Which was pretty fast considering I had building the standard cubes down to a science that only took about 3 hours and this thing was several times their size. Both cubes were meant for a single role, combat. So they didn't have the multi-function issue you mention. The Tactical cube was basically just more of the same, more surface area for more turrets, larger insides for more layers of hull. The ships both used gravity drives so they could could go really fast and thrusters were mostly just for making slow maneuvers. The Tactical Cube was so well armored I actually just used it to ram other ships sometimes including cutting a larger ship in half as it was a lot longer but not as tall or wide as my T.Cube. I took moderate damage but they were in pieces, and I did it more for fun and as a way to show I don't care about my ship getting damage than it being tactically advantageous. During that time I came to find I had a lot of the same lessons as mentioned in this video. Even though I was a solo fighting against groups so I could only be in one spot at a time having the one large ship had some major draw backs. First and foremost was the resource cost and time. Repairing those cubes was a PAIN. there would have damaged or destroyed parts on the other side of the layered armor. So I would have to grind out the damaged armor piece to replace tubes used to feed ammo to the turrets. The Gyros were encased in heavy armor as well and again sometimes a few would get destroyed and being in the middle of the ship it was hard to get to them other then fly through the hole to manually repair. At times it was easier to just grind down who sections of the ship and replace it. For those wondering how a solo could build such large ships in a short period, it is with a large welding ships. I had 13x13 wielders on the front of a modest ship that was mostly just assemblers and cargo bays. I made it that size so it could build one full layer of the Cube without needing to move. So much like a 3D printer I just laid one layer at a time turned on wielders and waited a couple mins and repeat.. Most of the build time was simply placing blocks. With the new blue print system I could probably pop out a cube in like 20 minutes, though the addition of engines damaging blocks on the ship make internal engines a problem now. Have a bunch of large ships around my base with auto turrets on was great for defense though. When it came to attacking though a lot of combat in those days was more scouting and raids. Thus the quick and cheap to produce Borg Spheres became my goto ship as I didn't really care if I lost one and they were super easy to repair plus with 6 turrets of which 5 could always fire from any angle when approaching the ship made it have a relatively high damage output compared to a lot of other ships I would stumble across. And being a lot smaller also meant it was really hard to it. The result was I mass produced them and would do raids and fights dealing way more damage then I took in a ship I didn't care about losing. Since they were also heavy armor at times when I lost my turrets I would use them to ram the enemy ship causing massive damage. Then just respawn at base hop in another which I got several of and go again as one mining run got me enough to build dozens of them. For size the spheres were basically two small thrusters point in all 6 directions, gyro, turret on each end, and encased in heavy armor. A single door on one side with like one open block inside and the cockpit is how compact it was. If had a team we would of zergs the enemy like crazy. :) So yeah the Massive ships are cool to look at, fun to take out for a fight, but when it comes to the logistics of war they aren't that great.

main point against dreadnaughts comes from a very good piece of advice from EVE Online: Don't fly a ship if you cannot afford to replace it. In other words, if you cannot replace a dreadnaught, don't build and field a dreadnaught.

I call this problem the Yamato problem. The Yamato was big. It was powerful. It was downright terrifying. And it cost the IJN a massive portion of it's budget. It's biggest problem? Logistics.

For some historical context for everything Brock has spoken about look at the German kriegsmarine during world War 2. Specifically the heavy surface raiders and the Bismark. The battle of the river plate shows how one "super" ship can lose to a group of smaller ships Artic convoys JW51B and JW55B are both battles that again show "super" ships or heavy capital ship forces can be beaten by larger groups of smaller ships and better coordination. The channel dash shows how "super" ships are always major targets The entire outcome of the surface raiding plan by the kriegsmarine shows how only having a small group of heavy/super capital ships means you don't have the hulls to be everywhere you need and take advantage of all opportunities to win or do damage. It also shows how in these types of fleets even moderate damages of capital ships csn cause a mission kill and delay operations for months or more.

I’ve been looking for a good SE server for a while. Is this one patron members only?

I think you really countered your own conclusion at the end. Dreadnoughts are more effective as a center of a fleet. We see this at the end of Outlands season 1 when the riders lend some ships to help the Eternity and we see the true power of it. In combat ut allows the Eternity to focus on maiming one ship at a time as the fleet helps defend it from the other enemy ships avoiding it getting swarmed. More importantly though if its set up as a mobile refinery and factory it can allow a fleet to extend its operational range. So to end: yeah I dividually they might suck.. but using a nuke as a sniper rofle would suck as well. Its more about how you use them rather than the class it's self.

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.

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.