Fleets

• Warships (as per my english dictionary) or Ships-of-the-Line: In the early 20th century this was the designation for all ships which where designated for large scale naval battles. They didn't have excetional speed but were the biggest ships avaiabe, packed with heavy artillery and armor. The philosophy here being, that weapons technology dictated, taht range and fire power were more important then armor and speed and battles would usually be fought at maximum range (hence battle lines, see the battle of Skagerrak as biggest example).
• Dreadnoughts: Up to the ship called the Dreadnought, warships would often have a wide array of different calibres in their artillery, which made fire guidance a lot more difficult. A 'Dreadnought' is basicly a warship which uses only one calibre of heavy artillery.
• Armored Cruisers and Battle Cruisers: The battle fleets in this doctrine usually had a smaller fleet scouting ahead, which contained smaller faster vessels. The idea behind an armored cruiser is a creuiser which is armored heavily enough to fight in the battle line, but this concept didn't proof too useful. Battle Cruisers are basicly Warships, which sacrifice armor for speed, but ahve similar artillery. These scouting fleets were also supposed to drive at the tip of the battle line durin the battle and attempt 'crossing the T'. If this sounds a lot like sail ship battles to you, yes, they used battle lines back then, too, and the phrase 'crossing the T' also is from that time.
• Battleships: eventually as hull sizes grew, the functions of battle cruisers and warships would be unified into the battleship. The concept of the battle cruiser also didn't live up to expectations, since they couldn't use their speed advantage that well, but blew up way more often. The name here is very indicative to the ships purpose: To fight in battles. They were too valuable and slow to conduct trade war, and smaller ships were simply inferior to battleships in battle
• (Torpedo-)Destroyers: In that time a destroyer was a smaller ship armed with torpedo tubes. A couple of those escorted the battle fleets, but would often remain withdrawn behind the battle line, due to being too vulnerable, to fight in it. What they did though were raids, at night (when sight range was lower) in particular. But the actual battle was primarily fought between the capital ships. The name in this case is not very indicative. Note also, that destroyers in WW2 would fill a completely different pair of shoes and in modern fleets again have a completely different purpose.
• Cruisers: Here the name is also very indicative: They cruise over the seas. Their main purpose was to conduct trade war. The had to be large enough to hold provisions for extended operations and armament to fight destroyer escort and fast enough to not be outrun, but in turn outrun warships. They were present in battle but by no means suited or designed for it.
• Submarines: in WW1 these were not suited for battle, because they couldn't fire torpedoes while under water and were way too vulnerable above. They were primarily used for trade war. Do also ote, that in that time they had to travel on the surface, because there speed beneath it was a lot smaller.

So ironicly - as boring as it is - pure battleship fleets are quite reasonable. Battleships fight battles, cruisers cruise the seas and escort ships should duck an cover during battles.I am bringing this up, because the space battle fantasy and designations only has this historic timeframe as suitable reference.

So what happens with more modern ships:

• Carriers: In the time between the world wars, the japanese and US navies in particular had realised, that carriers were way better suited as main combat ships (which battleships/warships had been before) of a fleet. This was simply due to the far superior range of planes (up to 400 km) as compared to naval artillery (approximately 20 km with sight range, up to 40 km with the use of radar, which wasn't available in WW1).
• Destroyers: In WW2 the destroyer takes an escort role again, but this time it is for locating and hunting submarines.
• Missile-Destroyers: The cold war brings a shift in weaponry again. The armament with ship to ship missiles (SSM) can rival aircraft in range and is harder to intercept. Missile destroyers are large enough to conduct long range operations. In principle even smaller boats can carry SSM and it is more economical to lose one of these as compared to a big destroyer are carrier, but they aren't large enough for long range operations.

There is more I didn't mention here, but I will conclude with this remark: Due to communications technology up until WW2 made it most practical to treat one ship as one unit in combat. Modern communication computer assistance makes it practical to view a group of ships as one unit. So this is one aspect which can speak against a trend of larger ships.

So if you had anything else in mind with realism, then enlighten me, but if we go by historic terminology, realism is actually rather boring. This also goes for choice of weapons to fight main combat ships (naval artillery in WW1, aircraft in WW2, tendency towards SSM since the cold war).

What is realistic in the sence of the science fiction universe? Whatever you imagine the technology to be like. Is it gonna be a firepower/range dominated technolgy as in the 20th century? Or is it a defense focussed technology as around 1860 (they brought back naval rams because of this! Their modern warships were designed to ram other ships like old galleys^^). Talking realism in scifi games is a mood point in my opinion, because at the point where you accept FTL-travel you are using magic, for all we know. Why not use magic for any other tech either?

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So, on to the actual topic of your thread. ^^

This is not to say, I think the current state of the battle system is ideal.

But if you currently go by the numbers, the larger hulls are usually better in all regards. What could also be done is rethinking the stats on the hulls, so, for example (not very well thought through), huge hulls could have low hp for their logisticcs and manufacturing cost, but high capacity and be well suited as carriers. Medium hulls could feature non ideal hp/logistics and mass/logistics rations, but be very cheap to manufacture (-> escort ships and crusier ships). Large ships could have high HP/logistics => battleships.

Maybe formations (beyond everything is layered by purpose and charges straight ahead) could be used in battle.

And, since I brought up submarines, what about stealthed ships? This would in turn require designating stealth hunter ships. This could also add to the variety.

Another thing I would actually find very interesting is the following: point defense is a fleet property, not a ship property, different from shields and armor, point defense would ahve to broken on a fleet level but then all ships are vunerable.

I hope this was somewhat interesting, else my apologies for the wall of text.

That was a lot of text, but since I learned a lot from it, thank you. But as I read it I conclude that my topic is still valid but my fact where wrong.

 "When I see the fleets attacking me and all the ships in the fleet are battleships the game looses a sense of credibility."

As you showned me a fleet made for battle can be all battleships, but as you implied in your text. Not all fleets would be fleets made for battle. There would be smaller fleets for scouting et.c. But as it is now all the fleets you see in late game are battleship/carrier fleets. And as you wrote...

"A couple of those escorted the battle fleets, but would often remain withdrawn behind the battle line, due to being too vulnerable, to fight in it. What they did though were raids, at night (when sight range was lower) in particular."

...this means that the fleets had smaller ships in them even though didn´t play a large part of the battle they served other roles in the fleet. This is what I am missing when I talk about realism. The only reason there is a smaller vessel in enemy fleets is to fill up the missing two logistic points. They have no role in the fleet. Edit: Also if you look at all nations fleets no one have more or less only battleships/Carriers, there are many other vessels since they have different roles to play. And if a empire have only the battleship sizes in all fleets I think the sense of beliviability is lost for me.

Now about realism. It was a bad choice of word since like you said, these kind of games aren´t realistic. But the developer have made lots of effort into making it belivable, you know it can´t happen but the game still tries to make it feel like it could happen. I can´t describe it better but I hope you understand what I mean. When I think of space fleets my mental Picture comes from WW2 pictures of fleets, with a few battleships/carriers escorted by several smaller vessels or Star Wars when the rebel fleet exit hyperspace at Endor. There are a few larger vessels surrounded by many smaller ships. And I am well aware that it is my mood setting of beliviability.

I still feel like changing the composition of fleets would be more in my realm of beliviability, and also make for more interesting challenges but I could also go for a change of the fleet role. The AI builds small fleets for scouting. Raider fleets designed for speed and to avoid my fleets and instead attack my spacestations and spaceyards. As long as all AI fleets aren´t maximized battlefleets. Since I am not a coder I might be in very deep water but I think my first suggestion would achieve more for less work.

I mean - as I said, I agree with you in that the combat system is not ideal and made a few suggestions myself.

But one thing I would actually argue in addition: Why impose arbitrary limits (max X% of hull size Y), when you could also try make the fun way the one most favored by game mechanics? One example I suggest was making the largest hulls not be the sturdiest ones.

I guess the easy way out for SD would be to make the AI use mixed fleets, but then they might encounter player fleets which only use one ship size and are superior due to this.

I do also conclude from this knowledge, that there could be more depth in the combat without implementing tactical combat.

I agree with the OP.  A fleet that is only made up of one type/size vessel is boring and unrealistic.

Torpedo boats are faster than destroyers, which are faster than cruisers, which are faster than battle ships.  At least with the auto designed ships, the opposite is true in GalCiv3.  Which means building anything smaller than your largest ships is dumb and counter productive.

Either a battelship engine in a torpedo boat should make the torpedo boat much faster than the massive battleship, or the torpedo boats engines should scale with ships size so you can get as many or more engine "modules" in the torpedo boat so it can be made faster tahn a destroyer, cruiser, battleship.

I would also help is there was some differentation in the model sizes.  1 armor, chaff, point defense, main gun, missile launcher, etc. should't all be almost the same size.  Battleship main guns are 14-18" verses 4.5-6" for destroyers (using the ww2 example), NOT the same size.

zuPloed: Yes, but the change you suggest wouldn´t it only mean that the AI will still fill up its fleet with one size ship, not just the largest. The way I see it it just Changes the problem.

And also, I guess if mixed fleets are used it would have to be incorporated so the players also are inhibited by it. In one way that could actually be a quite interesting extra problem for some players. Trying to find ways to put together the "best" fleet and having to mix sizes in it. Would it be a good idea to have a huge kinetic weapons platform going in for the kill supported by some medium class missile boats? An interesting thought is also  would weapon specialization choices, like less mass, longer range et.c. have more impact on fleet composition?

Yes, you would also need to change the AI for your suggestion or mine (now that I think about it), so the AI actually builds the lower sizes. If the AI actually builds the lower sizes, I think it also uses them in fleets on its own. You only need to make the AI build the ships of the right size (else they will simply send fleets of one huge hull only). I actually think this can be modded at the present even.

Have the AI build fleets in a more controlled way would be prefereable though. It's part of a long list. ^^

I just don't like arbitrary limits. It's lazy design. I would prefer if the balance was so deep, the optimal way was to build diverse fleets for game balane reasons and not because someone somewhere behind a desk decided, you are limited like this. That's why I suggested these:

A related problem is not only are bigger ships better in every way, but they usually don't cost much more than ships half their size.  While some economy of scale is realistic, we have far too much.

I know what you mean...

I like to have a balanced fleet

http://oi68.tinypic.com/35auomp.jpg

Here you can see I have 4 Huge Hull Battlestar(Capital Carriers), 3 Large Hull Assaultstar (Escorts) and 2 Medium Hull Gunstars (Guardians)

In GalCiv 3  I find it's a good combo. The escorts soak the enemy weapons, the guardians shoot anything that comes near the carriers. and the carriers assault fighters hit the enemy big ships.

*can you tell I am a BSG fan?*

I was mostly using pure Carrier/Battleship fleets myself, but kept coming across AI Assault Carriers and I had to change my plan to incorporate the smaller Guardian Frigates to protect my Carriers from Assault Fighters!

If the AI did the same, they may have some protection from my assault fighters!

So I agree, the AI has a fleet of 2 battleships, 4 carriers.

My fleet of 4 Carriers, 3 Escorts, 2 Guardian Frigates beats it.  If the AI had a fleet of the same the battle would be more even...