GalCiv ship scales

from GalCiv2 Forums
This is going to sound stupid but bear with me:

Is there any way to determine what the real world scale of GC ships would be if they actually existed? The reason I ask is because it is hard to get a sense for how large or small craft is supposed to be.

Viewing the screenshots, its difficult to make an educated guess. From the looks of it, a rank and file starfighter seems to be roughly a quarter of a capital ship's size, which would be unlike anything I've ever seen scaled in any other sci-fi setting. It would seem to imply that all spacecraft regardless of class or function are especially large.

I realize that this might be due to the fact that if the ships were built to scale (as much as could be expected considering its a game) then presumably the fighters would be so small compared to the capitals, that you'd have to squint to see them.

Putting so much thought into something so trivial and taking this so seriously is personally frightening. If this post has caused the reader trauma in any way, sorry. But its killing me! Would a GC fighter flying next to a Capital ship look like an X-Wing flying by a Star Destroyer? Is there a tech you can research that gives you a life?
9,528 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
As I understand it, the smallest craft you can build are more like corvettes than snub fighters. They are designed to function on their own for long periods of time and a handful of people will live inside the smallest ship.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
That way of looking at it is particularly reflected in logistics considerations. The amount of points a ship takes up for a fleet increases by twos. Tiny hulls take 2 points, the next largest 4, and so on and so on. It's presumable, then, that the resulting ships scale up accordingly.

Snub fighters in warfare like that in Galciv would more likely be robot or remote-controlled rather than sentiently run.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The scaling is different in different situations. In the build mode the tiny hull has a 16+ capacity which would be easy to visualize as a ship no more than 30-40 feet in length. The massive hulls go up to 70-80 or so max capacity so that would be 5x larger or up to 200 ft in length which might be a little shy of what you would expect. A ship the length of a football field is not hard to envision.

If you choose to think of the tiny hull as a ship capable of carrying a crew of 4-5, the size goes up exponentially but I have a difficult time envisioning a tiny hull fighter that carries more than a pilot

In the battle mode you get a better idea of scaling with fighters being very tiny and Capital ship as huge.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't really view the tiny hull as a fighter hull.

Fighters are generally not built with particularly long voyages in mind. Which is why they're completely reliant on easily accessible refuelling and rearming facilities.

Each ship you build in GCII has the facilities to spend months in space and travel interstellar distances. Just look at what you have to put on them in game; engines capable of faster than light travel, life support and lifesupport. It just doesn't promote the feel of being a fighter jet to me.

That's just my rather uninformed opinion however, never even played the beta so what would I know?
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I find myself thinking of the smallest hulls in GalCiv as being small corvette class vessels with a crew complement of 5-10ish, but that's just how I choose to envision it personally.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Its not just Europe, here in Australia we wont be getting it until mid-March as well.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Ugh, just found a glaring typo in my post. Instead of repeating life support when listing ship components, the last one should be sensors.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Plitski Sin as a New Zealander I feel your pain about the release date. That's why I decided to order the game direct from Stardock, meaning I will be able to download and play on February 22nd (NZ time).
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the feedback all. I guess it stands to reason that the ships would be bigger, cool.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I would call "tiny" a heavy fighter, and " small" a gunboat. There was a posted gameplay example not long ago in which one of the Stardock guys came up with ship stats for each class (eg., size, crew, engines, etc). I think you make them up yourself.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
This is the journal post that contains examples of ship scales:https://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?AID=101743.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Well I was just thinking about the troop transports though. I'm assuming these are regular troops rather than robotic troops, which means that you can figure out the space it takes for 500 divided by the size of the transport unit. Since I"m not at my game (dang you work), then I can't give you that number, but that would be a decent basis to tell how much space is related to size for units. The food and bathroom facilities would definitely be a problem though, along with the smell