How to Compose a Sci-Fi Space Fleet

Wishlist Sins of a Solar Empire II and Support Spacedock: steam.gs/l/157jf/Spacedock

Naval strategy is build strategy. You will fight a war with what was built years ago

Kuat Drive Yards, “How many pizzas would you like to order, my Lord?” Sidious, “Yes! Dew it!”

Miranda Class: “I didn’t hear no bell!”

This just made me remember, I would love a new Empire at War for the Space battles alone. I would always get 1 Star Destroyer, 2 Victory class, 1 Interdictor, and 4 or 5 Tarkin cruisers for fighter screening.

Random thoughts: 1. One reason to have "battleships" is if they can carry unique weapons denied to smaller vessels by their sheer size. For example, in the Traveller RPG, Capital Ships have "spinal mount" weapons built into the structure of the ship itself and aimed by pointing the entire vessel. They're either particle accelerators or meson guns. These both need a long distance to accelerate their subatomic "projectiles" so it's simply impossible to build small ones. 2. Another reason for ships to get hacked abou... modified is treaties. The interwar period of nval treaties is the classic case in point. Several nations had huge battlecruisers in build which were then rendered illegal by the Washington Naval Treaty, however this document did allow for them to be converted to other uses, and it just so happened to give the signatories a carrier allowance too. Many of the battl cruisers were therefore converted into carriers, since they had both the speed and the size neccessary for the role. Those navies that chose to cancel or scrap their big battlecruisers then had to make do with conversions of slower or smaller ships, while waiting for all-new designs to be finished. These differences in turn influenced the tactical thinking of the navies in question, depending on what kind of carriers they ended up with. 3. Ships can last a VERY long time in service with several navies. A number of US Navy destroyers built at the end of WWII mader it into the 21st century, in some cases with their third owners. needless to say, they'd been refitted and refitted over and over, first of all by the USN and later by their new owners to keep them relevent. 4. You can end up with a hodge-podge of modified second-hand ships by being a lower-tier power with no shipbuilding capability, that has to buy their ships on the market or get given them, with inevitable political strings attached, by a big power "patron". If you then change horses and leave the patronage of one great power for another, then you may end up with a bizarre mixture of legacy systems and new ones, all on the same vessel. For example, after being dropped by the Soviets after the Yom Kippur war, Egypt had to turn to the west for arms. They ended up with Soviet-supplied Komar class missile boats, re-equipped with Italian missles, British radars, and british-produced, Swiss-designed guns. India wasn't dropepd by anybody but didn't want to be over-dependent on anybody either, so they ended up with locally-built, British-designed frigate hulls and steam plants, equipped with Dutch radars, and British, Russian and Swedish weapons. On later ships, Israeli missiles entered the mix.

Step 1: Build 3000 sovereign classes.

One note on Trek is that the Excelsior class was initially designed as a ship that was easy to modify due to the idea that it would be an ongoing testbed for new technologies. It was the first ship that Starfleet attempted to build with a transwarp engine, which while the initial design did not live up to expectations in even the slightest way, it was still regarded as the most flexible ship in Starfleet at the time and came into ubiquity throughout the Federation. That's why it was able to last just so incredibly long.

If you haven't ever looked at it, I highly recommend looking at the how to build a navy page on Atomic Rockets. The article it's based on was written by Chris Weuve, who is a naval analyst and used to work for the USN's Center for Naval Analysis. It gives you all of the steps that, ideally, you should take to design and build out your fleet. Some of it was touched on here, but I don't think it gets across how your assumptions and resources affect what kind of fleet you wind up with.

my WiFi has forced me to listen to 'Sins of a Solar Empire' 5 times now

The mission of the fleet change the make up of the fleet. A deep space patrol will have more ships that can build and repair the fleet while a boarder watch fleet need less ship to repair itself and even less speed.

Video suggestion: top 10 sci fi factions with the best logistics.

Look at the MCRN. They had a diversified fleet but every ship was able to stand on it's own. Maybe not long but it works. The Donnanger carried smaller ships while flying with others at its side. The UNSC was built on Frigates. That was smart enough of an idea. B5 used a good fleet variety. Whitestars in a swarm were lethal as it got. Trek does rely on old ships but they're a peace time society. Makes sense a good ship would last a while.

Here's an idea for a video concept. WHAT CONSTITUTES A DESTOYED SHIP We expect ships that are "Destroyed' to just go boom and disappear in a fiery explosion. Heck in games the destroyed ship is often just REMOVED from its former location after it has been destroyed to leave EMPTY SPACE. But is that going to be the case? What about ships that are adrift?

I find the geometric fleet formations in LOGH very aesthetically pleasing. It’s a simple way to make out the ludicrous amount of ships amidst the natural backdrop of space.

A fleet doesn't just exists, it serves a purpose. This purpose defines the ship types included. If the purpose of the fleet changes over time, the ship types of the fleet will change to.

1)Drop Homeworld player into the archive of ships from all available sci-fi; 2)watch what they end up stealing. Jokes aside, I feel like only BSG ever raises a question of fleet logistics. What if FTL stops working and your fleet gets stuck? Suddenly you need capability to resupply and exist within local resources. Which might be new star system or it might be Garden of Kadesh ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I like the united fleets that you can build through treaties in Mass Effect 3. A dozen different species coming together against a seemingly impossible threat.

I can't say this enough. Thank you for including a source for all of your clips. There's so much good shit in there that I have missed over the years.

A couple of the advantages of Starfleet is ships are built at dozens of different star systems (for real world costs of production we only see Earth and Mars shipyards) but with all the model lines and various ships the largest advantage is they all use compatible tech, and hauls. You can actually take a Galaxy warp nacelle and attach it to a Intrepid class ship. Now its not great, but will let you limp home. Theres a book (sorry I don't remember the name) that involves the survivors of Wolf 359. Its about 100 people and the cobble together a ship from a intact warp drive, a single nacelle, and various other parts they find and make it to the nearest starbase.