Big Ship vs Little Ship fleet

[Stofsk]

We've seen quite a few sci-fi series where the main hero vessel is a Big Ship and full of a variety of death-dealing weaponry, dozens or hundreds of subcraft like fighter wings and shuttles, and often thousands of personnel. Imperators, Venators, Galacticas and Pegasuses, or Pegasi I guess, and even B5 had the Omega class destroyer.

On the other hand, some shows go for the small hero vessel, the Plucky Little Ship That Could, the Fearless Jack Russel terrier to the other series' Grouchy German Shepherd. The Defiants and the White Stars, both seemingly capable of absorbing quite a bit of punishment and yet emerging from a scrap the victor.

What is your personal preference? I suppose you can think up rationalisations for both 'styles', after all this is sci-fi - rationalisations for improbable occurences are a dime a plenty. Some might think a small ship fleet would make more realistic sense, if the story is aiming at being more 'gritty' and 'hard', whereas most space operas seem to favour the big ship that aims to be the poster child for inefficiency. Shows like Battlestar seem to straddle the line with a Big Ship in a Gritty Pitiless Universe.

There are other factors to consider too: the bigger the ship, the bigger the target; the smaller the ship, the less survivable combat becomes.

So, which of these two common sci-fi styles do you prefer?

[Ryan Thunder]

The villian must command his/her/its fleet from an absurdly large flagship. The hero does whatever he/she/it wants. That is all.

[Uraniun235]

I'm a big ships, big guns kind of guy. Of course, "big ship" is relative to the fleet it comes from/faces off against - at a solid 400 meters long, my favorite Arcadia would be a big-assed battleship in Star Trek TOS, but in Babylon 5 it would be squarely in the White Star's "plucky little ship" size category.

[Stark]

The villian must command his/her/its fleet from an absurdly large flagship. The hero does whatever he/she/it wants. That is all.

We just found out where laughably unimaginative childish rubbish came from. Evil King Mark in his mighty stronghold, but Gaffer Tim will stop him!

Hero ships just have to make sense. Defiant was inflated by fans to be some disproportionately capable ship, and the White Star situation is similar (but at least they had piles of White Stars). If your setting supports big tough ships, giving the hero a tiny WUNDERSHIP is just lame, wheras if the setting has different sizes operating in tradeoffs and the hero ship is within these rules, it's fine.

The OP seems to be talking about two totally different things; the hero ship (ie Galactica vs Defiant) and the setting (ie clouds of missile drones vs battlewagons). I prefer large-ship settings, even ones with fighters, but a large ship setting with a Delta Flyer is just weak writing.

The proposal that smaller = less survival is absurd, since 'big ship' settings can still have one-hit kills.

[Stofsk]

It's funny that the White Star is considered 400m long, when it always felt like this little ship which had only a handful of dudes onboard it.

Then there was that picture of Galactica and a present day aircraft carrier for comparison purposes... I suppose if we can build an aircraft carrier in today's technology, then in the future we ought to be able to build larger vessels.

[Stark]

Especially if it's designed solely to look like a ship from a crap 70s show and miss a lot.

Some settings have long-ranged, accurate and deadly weapons, so size is dumb. Other settings have different weapons (or excellent defences that scale with size) thus big is better. It just has to make sense.

[Stofsk]

Hero ships just have to make sense. Defiant was inflated by fans to be some disproportionately capable ship, and the White Star situation is similar (but at least they had piles of White Stars). If your setting supports big tough ships, giving the hero a tiny WUNDERSHIP is just lame, wheras if the setting has different sizes operating in tradeoffs and the hero ship is within these rules, it's fine.

For story telling purposes, a small ship can suit the characters in question. The Millenium Falcon is a small ship, but because the heroes are a Farmboy, Old Wise Guy, Smuggler Pirate Captain plus Sidekick, and Stuck Up Princess, it works. Making the Falcon invulnerable to damage and so on wouldn't, for obvious reasons.

The OP seems to be talking about two totally different things; the hero ship (ie Galactica vs Defiant) and the setting (ie clouds of missile drones vs battlewagons).

Hmm... perhaps I was. If I could edit the OP I would add the following:

1) From an aesthetic point of view, which do you prefer - Big Ships like Galactica or Little Ships like USS Defiant?

2) Which do you find more practical or rational?

I prefer large-ship settings, even ones with fighters, but a large ship setting with a Delta Flyer is just weak writing.

The proposal that smaller = less survival is absurd, since 'big ship' settings can still have one-hit kills.

If big ship battlewagons can be destroyed with one-hit, is there a point to having them? They would effectively be very expensive objects with a giant bulls eye painted on their hull.

Especially if it's designed solely to look like a ship from a crap 70s show and miss a lot.

Some settings have long-ranged, accurate and deadly weapons, so size is dumb. Other settings have different weapons (or excellent defences that scale with size) thus big is better. It just has to make sense.

You're right. Consistency is king when it comes to this sort of writing.

[Stark]

For story telling purposes, a small ship can suit the characters in question. The Millenium Falcon is a small ship, but because the heroes are a Farmboy, Old Wise Guy, Smuggler Pirate Captain plus Sidekick, and Stuck Up Princess, it works. Making the Falcon invulnerable to damage and so on wouldn't, for obvious reasons.

And it's LAME. I already read that story when I was four, I don't need to see it rehashed over and over with 'battleporn'.

Hmm... perhaps I was. If I could edit the OP I would add the following:

1) From an aesthetic point of view, which do you prefer - Big Ships like Galactica or Little Ships like USS Defiant?

2) Which do you find more practical or rational?

The last is pretty loaded; it's just about consistency and you can cook up either. Unless you mean in a 'hard scifi' sense, in which case blergh hard scifi boo. Even in 'big ship' settings there will often be need for escorts, destroyers etc, so it's just about where the focus or primary element lies.

If big ship battlewagons can be destroyed with one-hit, is there a point to having them? They would effectively be very expensive objects with a giant bulls eye painted on their hull.

Settings are different, and you analysis simpleminded. What if long-range drives don't scale down? What if the most effective weapons are huge, and the ships also need to be protected against smaller ships with weaker guns? What if targeting is difficult but a few hits are all it takes? It's easy to cook up rules for a setting to go in either direction. I just prefer 1890s in space.

You're right. Consistency is king when it comes to this sort of writing.

Unfortunately it's pretty rare. Turns out writers get lazy and say 'hey what if this new ship had datalinked missile swarms' in a universe like Star Trek.

[Connor MacLeod]

I like both, since realistically you're going to have uses for both big ships and small ships. Everything else is a matter of design, technology, and tradeoffs.

You can potentially, depending on the technologies you envision, create small ships that can, in groups, stand up to anything a bigger ship can put out (In this case I'm thinking of massive numbers of ships in the Lensman universe that work together in synch yet can throw out ungodly huge amounts of firepower.)

Edit: To think of it another way, consider WW1 and WW2 where you had the evolution of things like torpedo boats and aircraft carriers alongisde big gun ships. Or submarines. Or (in a modern context) practically anything that can carry a missile.

I'm also reminded of the Culture universe's ROU's - which display both how technology and specialization can be used to create a small package.

[Coalition]

The villian must command his/her/its fleet from an absurdly large flagship. The hero does whatever he/she/it wants. That is all.

Even the Buck Rogers TV series had this. The Drakon mothership was huge, but used fighters for combat, which Buck (and friends) were able to shoot down fairly easily.

As for one large ship vs many little ones:
Large ship advantages:
1) better long-term capability. The larger absolute mass it can devote to spare parts and machine shops means it can allocate some of the spare parts mass to machines that build new components out of raw stock, rather than needing to keep different types of spares on hand.
2) lower surface area:volume meaning it can have thicker armor for the same proportion of mass
3) better electronics systems - it can carry a single larger system rather than multiple copies of the smaller systems, allowing better targeting/jamming/scanning/etc.
4) better communications - if it needs more bandwidth, it runs more fiber optic cable or whatever, vs. smaller ships needing to broadcast data to each other.
5) damage resilience - if part of the ship is taking damage, the other parts can shift shields to cover/transfer power/send additional personnel/etc.
6) Defense cracking - if you need a can opener for an enemy system, this is your ship

Small ship advantages:
1) higher surface area:volume - it can dissipate more heat allowing it to run more power-intensive systems
2) lower structural requirements - cube square law, where the smaller ship needs a smaller fraction of its mass for internal structure
3) Construction time - they get built faster, allowing any bugs to be worked out much faster
4) Construction ease - assembly line production
5) Distribution of forces - if you have multiple locations that only need small amount of protection, smaller ships can cover all locations simultaneously


This is off the top of my head.

For me personally, I like the larger ships for both gaming and ~Real life. Gaming advantage is that instead of teaching someone how to work several (dozen?) smaller vessels and keep track of them, they only have to deal with one ship. ~Real life is where you can have a large ship that is used to longer missions, allowing for exploration, assistance, and even combat. In the case of heavy combat, you have a chance for the main characters to survive, due to all the shielding and armor around them, rather than a squadron of smaller ships that have funerals after every battle due to ships destroyed.

[NecronLord]

It's funny that the White Star is considered 400m long, when it always felt like this little ship which had only a handful of dudes onboard it.

The whitestar is 120-250 meters, in the show. It's just reference books that make it 400.

[Stofsk]

It's funny that the White Star is considered 400m long, when it always felt like this little ship which had only a handful of dudes onboard it.

The whitestar is 120-250 meters, in the show. It's just reference books that make it 400.

Thanks Necronlord, it's been years since I've read that site.

[Thanas]

Also, the whitestar was quite in some trouble when going up against dedicated warships with comparable firepower.

[Commander 598]

I'm having a hard time answering since there are two kinds of big:

1) The length of the ship from the outside.
2) The appearance of the ship from the inside.

Galactica was certainly bigger than the Enterprise by #1, but it felt smaller by #2 - the sets felt less varied, we didn't see as many random things happening inside, etc.

Nonsense, you just weren't paying attention to things like the massive hangar decks that stretched off into the distance or in more recent cases a large group of civilians practically hiding in the bowels of the ship unnoticed by most of the rest of the ship and battles on board that feel as though they're taking as long as a ground battle over a city.

[Gunhead]

I like a good mix of both small and big ships. But my sod starts to break after 1000m long ships. You'd have to come up with an excellent reason why ships need to be bigger than that. Otherwide I tend to go with the "compensation theory".

I also like fleet action. Big fleets ftw.
And no craptastic spacefighters.

-Gunhead

[Covenant]

Dest is talking about the portrayl of the ship, which was indeed much smaller than the Enterprise. Galactica was a very big craft, but there's really no way to get much of a sense of scale--characters walk off-screen, through a hallway, and then to basically wherever they wanted.

Turbolifts, decks, and large expansive offices may be unrealistic and silly, but it made things feel larger and more spread out. We also never saw a bunk rooms on the Enterprise, and people had their own bathrooms! This was like an apartment complex. There were Holodecks, layers and layers of research areas instead of one little lab for Baltar, 10-Foward instead of that flight-deck bar and the small pilot room, and so forth.

It's not a bad thing to say "They didn't show us tons and tons of useless garbage on the ship," since a degree of economy with regard to one vessel is usually a good thing. But it isn't like they ever had a shot where we got a chance to watch a character take a 30 minute walk from one end of the ship to another, so it's fair to say. It's not a point of ego to defend how big the ship felt.

I also vote for big heroic vessels, with the size only being restrained by the amount of commitment the crew has for the mission. I don't like those ultra-labyrinthine vessels that are just big stupid cities in space, since it's not like the average guy in that situation really has much of a role in the combat, and I always feel like a more dedicated, specialized warship (ala the Defiant) is more heroic than one where a bunch of non-combat people are dragged into risk without a voice. The best kind of ship, for my tastes, is one that has a tiny crew but a lot of actual warship, so everyone can be motivated and heroic and you don't ever worry about all the cooks and cleaning crews and data entry personnel sitting onboard wishing the captain wasn't a freaking madman. Scale up the defiant so you have an AI core and one hundred other people commanding a ship the size of the Galactica and there you go.

[Themightytom]

You mean that little room with fairly obvious greenscreens on the sides? Nothing ever happened there except for the tiny area next to the entrance where the Chief would hang out and the occasional meeting (also contrained to the small are, but the crowd makes it feel bigger then); it could have been a little garage.

it would have been a pretty sweet multi story garage, but your right nothing ever happened in the launch tubes, certainly not zounds of executions/ murders. There was no father son bonding the night before a mission, or a glorious return from an occupied planet or any revleations about final cylons with two of them staring warily down ffrom the upper levels, they certainly didn't open a crate with a stowaway down there or have multiple explosive assasinations and what not killing half the pilots and major political prisoners and whatnot.

Similarly, the water tanks got television magic to make them look big, but nothing ever happened there after the first few episodes, so we quickly forget they exist.

That ticked me off too, I never understood why we didn't have constant scenes set in the water tank, people swimming, playing volleyball or just plain taking a bath.
"What the frak is up with this water, it tastes... tangy..."

This one is legit, for what little exploration it got. Then again, the whole civilian fleet was fairly neglected, except for the President's room.

Well its not title "Battlestar refugee fleet"

On the other hand, wtf were all those empty places there for originally?

Dogsville used to be a hanger bay, you can see some obvious storerooms convverted into housing (The Chief and cally's bed barely fit in their room, same deal with Athena and helo)
with dwindling supplies and gear the Galactica was probably spreading itts stuff out among the fleet as needed freeing up storage space, theres also the fact that despite being antiquated the galactica has probably been upgraded "Somewhat" over the past 40 years. the computers aren't networked but maybe they are smaller, heck it should ahve had to house twice as many pilots as it had twice as much launch capacity. Recreation facilities might have been designed to be better but with the overcrowding they decided the second cafeteria wasn't neccesary.

You mean the short walk from the hanger deck to the CIC set that just happens to have all the main characters along that one path?

When did anyone walk from the hanger deck to CIC down a "Short walk"? They use it as a jogging route for crying out loud. Actually i've never seen an elevator or staircase on galactica, so those little mini flights would mean taht getting anywhere from one deck to the enxt would by neccesity be a "long" walk.

That's the thing that gets me the most - there didn't seem to be many destinations on the ship. We're told it is huge, but all we saw in most episodes was the CIC, the pilot's places, and that little part of the hanger. And, of course, the Action Bathroom.

We've seen that courtroom/meeting room a number of times, Tigh and Adama's quarters the bar, dogsville, what you want a little atrium and a suite of holodecks? Its a battlestar not a luxury liner.

...and then you go on to name MORE lcoations so I'm out :-p

Contrast to the Enterprise D, where there was of course the same stuff over and over again (the bridge, engineering, etc), but also new things we see that have been there all along. This starts early with the battle bridge. Later on, we see various labs where Data and Wesley work. We see the schools and the computer core. Various maintenance rooms for the sensors and warp drive.

A. the series was twice as long, and as the plots meandered wherever the wind blew there was more of a "need" for eye candy and new locations.
B. We see the turbo shaft and a lot of cargo bays. these are interesting? Enterprise D always seemed like a big empty ship, this is actually commented on in the DS9 episode with the Tribbles, because even the OLD series had more people wandering around doing stuff. Then again if you have a ship made up of empty space how much crew can you really cram in there.

Even the regular locations felt bigger than anything in nbsg, with the exception of the CIC.

And the hanger bay... and the engine room and the water tanks and the viper bays...
BSG's lack of space was an intentional story telling device, whereas Star trek's expansive environment was the result of chaotic episode planning. it isn't the set you find appealing, it is the relaxed laid back whimiscal story telling in Star Trek.

Cottle's sickbay had like two beds we get to see.

Because there were actually dividers that gave privacy like a REAL medical facility. How am I supposed to concentrate on recovery if i have some one legged jackass singing on one of me, and two old people sucking face on the other (I'm looking at you Adama)

Crusher's sickbay had her surgery table, the resting beds, and her office.

As well as better lighting and a selection of jello ona bureau intended to simulate blood samples, because we keep those out in the open and not in a refrigerated drawer...

Engineering had Geordi's office, the warp core, and the pool table we could focus on whereas nbsg's hanger had just the one open place.

Geordie had an office? For what his TPS reports?
I see what you're getting add, youw ant a more varied environment. You can't ahve that in a depressing refugee centered story though, you need the flying Hilton for that, OR something like star wars wherte they throw away detailed sets for one movie. The bridge of the star destroyers and the set of the Death Star were always interesting spaces, is that what you are looking for?

Character wise, how often did we see people on Galactica who weren't regulars or red shirts?

WHAT? Galactica turned all their recurring characters into meaningful people, yous ee Racetrack and Hotdawg playing Pyramids and you actually KNOW WHO THEY ARE! Who the hell was the Blue guy we kept seeing in STNG in the hallway? Who knows! Not having red shirts is a bonus not a deficit. Even the ships captains, they found the same actors to reprise roles and they gave them a hint of character, baltar's harem, the marines, etc. out of curiosity though what falls between "regulars" and "redshirts"?

On the Enterprise, we get to see the other shifts on the job. Sure, they were just extras who are quickly replaced by the regular crew when they beam back up, but it helps get the feeling that there are a lot of people on the ship.

You don't get that from seeing 20 ppl share a bathroom? The other shifts are ALSO run by main cahracter, ie: helo appears to be running the night shift in early season 3. Dee and Gaeda are not omnipresent, but it becomes a plot point that Gaeta is ahrd to replace, he works so much no one else can do his job as well.

We get to see various specialists for the episode (not as often as I would probably like, but we do), like the folks in the random labs doing their mundane tasks or striking up brief romances with the captain or Riker. This again gives us the feeling that there is a lot going on there and the ship is too big to get to know the whole crew.

there is definitely a fundamental difference in our opinions on this note. i always thought itt was a STRENGTH of BSG that we got to know So many characters even to a limited extent. The ship is big but the crew know eachother and worktogther. meanwhile on the enterprise you have the Elite staff and then the minions who were pretty much cannon fodder of fluff. it didn't matter what happened to them. Who was the dude who was torn up on the bridge in "Genesis" did we learn his name? Did we every rally find out who did it?

"Mmmm yes Worf I am aware that you were turning into an armadillo, but seriously how do I explain that to his family?"

vs the way they handledthe death of Sgt Mathias, tears funeral etc.

[Themightytom]

1) From an aesthetic point of view, which do you prefer - Big Ships like Galactica or Little Ships like USS Defiant?

Depends on the format. For sweeping grand stories (B5, star wars), definitely the bigger ships. For smaller scaled less convuluted plots (Alien of the week style stories like TOS or character driven shows like Firefly) Definitely the smaller ships.

Anomalies include Farscape, which started out character driven but seemed to end up on a grand scale. Moira was a big ship but pointlessly empty. Red Dwarf on the other hand had zero plot, but the coemdic way they took advantage of the rediculously large mining ship was entertaining enough. Galactica didn't fit into my preferences either actually, because it was a giant battleship setting for essentially intimate stories. you don't need a ship the size of galactica to tell the Adama father and son story, it actually got to be awkward when Lee became a commander and then had no ship. The son followed in the father's footsteps, and then sort of went for a piggy back ride.

2) Which do you find more practical or rational?

Well for "Stationary" settings the medium sized ships make sense. For big, long range operations, the big ships make sense, they can carry more supplies.

Sufficiently advanced technology reverses these roles though, how big is a TARDIS? You can have lots of "little" ships with that tecnology. your fighter pilot on patrol can take a trip the bathroom, grab a snack from the kitchen and just double check his enormous missile inventory is secure, why does HE need a support vessel.
Stargate on the other hand has giant city sized ships running around, you don't need anything larger than a shuttle if you feel like travelling the "old fashioned way" and NOT using a stargate.

[Stark]

Also, the whitestar was quite in some trouble when going up against dedicated warships with comparable firepower.

And they were used with specific doctrine and tactics to be effective, using their agility for concerted attacks. They didn't instantly invalidate the use of bigger ships.

[Coalition]

Talking about practicality is much easier. Realistically, among reasonable sizes, bigger spacecraft are superior in every way but two:

a) They probably cost more, and thus you will be unable to operate as many of them. Storywise, this is probably a good thing, since it gives an excuse for our heroes to be the only ships in the quadrent.

b) They are limited to less acceleration, which is usually pretty irrelevant (space is so huge you can take your time), but in certain specific settings it might matter.

For (a), this is going to be true, as the smaller ships can be built assembly line style, using mass production to drive down their costs per ton.

For (b), why would this be true? If both ships have devoted 10% of their mass to engines, then wouldn't both of them get the same thrust? I'll agree that the larger ship will have more of its mass fraction dedicated to structural mass, but the smaller ship will have to devote more of its mass to armor.

For the larger is slower, we do have the Honorverse where higher mass ships have lower accelerations, but we also have Star Trek where larger ships seem to go faster (possibly due to cross section vs volume?).

[Thanas]

Also, the whitestar was quite in some trouble when going up against dedicated warships with comparable firepower.

And they were used with specific doctrine and tactics to be effective, using their agility for concerted attacks. They didn't instantly invalidate the use of bigger ships.

To furhter elaborate on this, the first thing the ISA did after the war was to build bigger ships, even massive ones.

[Parallax]

Sufficiently advanced technology reverses these roles though, how big is a TARDIS?

Exterior or interior?
And even then, it seems to be extremely variable depending on what the pilot(s) want. The default exterior configuration is something resembling a cupboard/wardrobe sized affair but the Doctor has tried to manually reconfigure the exterior dimensions into the Great Pyramid before and fully expected the change to work.

In novels, Type 40 TARDISes were seen to be configured to resemble space war ships with fully functioning exterior weapon systems. Yeah, that's incredibly daft but ... *shrugs*

Interior dimensions ... well, really friggin' huge is about as accurate a size as you're going to probably ever get. They're not infinitely big, certainly, but it's at least the size of a city or so. Big enough, as demonstrated, that there are parts of the TARDIS that the Doctor hadn't been to for centuries.

[Batman]

Where does 'larger ships go faster' come from anyway? If he's talking FTL the rules of physics go out the window ANYWAY and under impulse smaller ships DO appear to be faster, or at the very least more agile, than battlewagons.

[Coalition]

This isn't actually feasible due to practicality problems. Engines need to shoot propellant out the back, and thus the number of them you can tack on is limited by surface area. The surface area doesn't grow as quickly as the volume, and thus mass, meaning you can't really keep the same proportions. (Unless, of course, you design your big ship to be basically a bunch of little ships linked together, but at that point, you might as well just stick with a bunch of little ships.)

If the acceleration is one engine dependent on power, you'll be able to scale it linearly for a while until you hit implementation problems in getting that much power to the propellant; you'll need more cooling in the small area, the high voltages might be more than the engine can handle, that kind of stuff. The kinds of engines that work like this tend to be low acceleration anyway.

True, I was thinking that the back end of the ship would steadily look more and more like a nozzle as the ship increased in mass.

So a smaller ship might have 1/4 of its rear area used by the nozzle, a larger one would be half its rear area, and the capital ships would be pretty much all engine if you looked at it from the back. They would all have the same acceleration though.

For linking lots of little ships together, that would run into the fun of ship structure, so the port group of ships isn't accelerating faster than the starboard group of ships. Plus if one of the engines is damaged, that acceleration will be suddenly cut off, meaning the structure will have to handle the sudden load.

Basically the speed differential between smaller and larger ships would not be as bad as between airplanes and surface ships.



For my larger ships going faster, you are right that it was for FTL. My guess was that warp power depends on the cross section of the ship. Larger ships will have a higher volume:cross section ratio, allowing them to be more efficient at same speeds, or able to go faster. This could be due to them simply being the newest ships also. I'll concede this point.

[SAMAS]

Personally, I prefer something Assault Carrier-like. Kinda medium-small. Think the Nadesico and just about every major ship in Gundam (White Base, Arghama, Archangel, etc...).

But since we're talking about spaceships, I made this page on TV Tropes a week or so ago. Anything that particularly needs to be added/corrected?