Are Smaller Ships Better?
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
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Spacedock delves into smaller hero ships.
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Guys, can you actually put the name of the songs you use in the description? I am hearing this absolute banger and going crazy, because I know it, but don't know It's name. And Shazam can't recognize It, because Hoojiwana keeps constantly talking without taking a single breath.
Nyes!
For military ships - yes as they have target profile as more important factor.
For civilian vessels - no as they have economy of scale as more important factor.
And for all vessels - depending on the task. Ships that is supposed to land would be small and cargo cycler would be planetoid sized.
I have a feeling that fiction mostly put it on its head by thinking that warships(and military vehicles in general) irl are bigger then civilian ones. But for every battleship, tank or Tu-160 there is their own oil tanker, mining haul truck a An-225/A-380. Even among the first ironclads civilian Great Eastern came before Warrior, Gloire, Monitor and Virginia.
Yes, Great Eastern wasn't very useful because it was constructed with too optimistic expectations of economic and market growths then it had gone irl, but in 50 years it was finally surpassed in all metrics. And in none of them by military vessel;)
As for hero ships, the rule of the thumb is that it needs something that makes it unique, but also something that allows it to be present. And of course it needs to be midsized so that storywise it would have smaller vessels to swat aside easily and bigger vessels it'll try to avoid.
In Expanse Rocinante is biggest ship that can safely land on most planets and smallest ship that can mount a railgun.
In 40k there is also only one ship class that is small enough to land on the surface of planets, but also big enough to house Warp engine and Geller field for full FTL capability.
Those are ideal hero ships. Unless your hero can afford several ships. Something Mandalorian haven't thought about. Give your character both the sleek fighter AND carrier for it. Yes, just copy Bebop and Swordfish II dynamic. In fact, just copy Cowboy Bebop in all regards 😅
@Spacedock.
Can you make a video on the Bus and Zephyr One from Agents of Shield.
These aircraft are amazing, and a detailed video on them would be amazing.
What if smaller ships cold be cloaked better? Like blocking radar or whatever quantum scanners in sci fi, for example, large ships cold be sniped from afar, while small ships are invisible to radar. This also justifies dogfights in space, since stealth prevents long ranged fights
Video idea: Top 5 best autonomous drones in science-fiction.
I just watched a video about the attack drone from Oblivion, and it suddenly struck me that it would be a cool video for Spacedock. After Oblivion attack drone, the next thing that comes to my mind is Matrix sentinels. Scary things, they are!
Personally I'm drawn towards medium sized ships as hero ships- smaller ships for me should be somewhat limited in their scope for independent action as a result of only being able to carry so much fuel/food/other supplies, meaning they have to return to base regularly for resupply... whereas the really massive ships are too strategically important to be routinely sent on long term missions or operating independently
I agree. Small sized ships are limited in range while they can exercise the most freedom. Medium ships are a good overall balance. Large ships are expensive and a strategic asset.
Andromeda was a Sci-Fi show that had a large ship but it felt like a small ship because the "Extra crew" were mass produced androids. I really liked that idea because it was the best of both worlds, and justified why a large ship could be crewed by a hand full of people.
There's something to be said for having a ship that's small enough that it requires regular restocking. In a military context, it means it needs to return to the fleet on a regular basis, giving room for reoccurring characters to make appearances and new orders to come in. In a non-military context, it gives dramatic weight to procuring the next resupply (something I think both Voyager and Galactica could have explored in a little more depth.)
@@FearlessSon Deep Space Nina is the show where this comes to mind. The runabouts had character but largely the same regardless of river and the Defiant, too. Though they do spend a lot of time on the Defiant which is largely independent except for its need for maintenance, which is a great plot device. DS9 had some great episodes in older ships like Bajorian strike craft or the Bajorian solar sail.
Babylon 5 ships were either fighters or fully independent ships.
Voyager had the Delta Flyer which was great for some lost in space kind of plots. The TNG shuttlecraft epsidoes were a bit underwhelming compared to DS9.
Reminds me of Warhammer 40K's 'Light Cruisers'.
anything smaller is an escort and whilst no doubt capable of independent action and quite wieldy, Frigates or Raiders aren't really supposed to travel without a fleet to back them up unless they're some Rogue Trader's prize.
Cruisers and larger are major fleet assets, being actual capital ships. they're slow and logistical nightmares, and require fleet tenders and other such things to find enough serfs and techpreists and food and supplies and ammo to feed the endlessly hungry beast that is a 5km flying cathedral-city with guns.
Light Cruisers are a happy middle ground and whilst lone actors like Rogue Traders are said to find them logistical hurdles to contend and tangle with, they are meant to be long-range patrol boats, able to go poking their nose into brewing trouble, and anything that they can't fight outright they're supposed to be able run away from.
While I enjoy military action sci-fi I do miss some of the old school stories from the pulp era where, inspired by the South Seas stories like Terry and the Pirates, you'd have tramp steamers going from port to port getting into adventures while trading with the locals or looking for the next cargo load to the next port. Basically the inspiration for Han Solo and Firefly but not getting dragged into larger conflicts.
In that scenario a smaller ship and crew makes sense. The ship isn't there for a fight. It's more like a cowboy's horse. Its just there to carry you to the next adventure.
But, for some strange reason, unless you're a smuggler, which for some reason makes it ok, engaging in fair trade or honest work is repulsive to Hollywood and to writers in general. I can't possibly say why that's the case;).
"All those extra crew just turn into white noise" *shows stormtroopers noisily marching* I see what you did there.
2:13 As Drachinifel put it so expertly "Your a bit of a crazy captain so will put you on a destroyer, and save the reserve and cautious captains for something like a battleship."
Made me think of the Russian destroyers called Fast, Dangerous, and Reckless, or something like that
@@jukebox_heroperson3994 That’s not a trait only the russians had, during WW2 a lot of Destroyers were captained by mad men, Destroyers that come to my mind are USS-Laffey and HMS-Glowworm, one took on night missions then came face to face with two Japanese heavy cruisers and the other took on and attempted to ram a German pocket battleship.
I love that the the answer came down to "it depends upon the story." There was no other possible answer; anything else is down to personal preference for types of stories.
At least have the ship be big enough for living accommodation, unlike the Naboo starfighter.
I love big ships with minimal crew like red dwarf, Andromeda and the nostromo 😊
Nostromo is particularly well suited to its story because of this. The small crew makes the characters feel isolated, and the bulk of the ship makes it impossible to monitor or control a significant portion.
@@justinthompson6364 The small crew of the Nostromo also says something about the setting. The ship absolutely could support a bigger crew, but a bigger crew is more expensive. Running with minimum crew requirements just makes more sense from a return-on-investment perspective, with the shares divided into fewer hands.
Andromeda is rather unique. Small organic crew with one or more AI characters and the rest of the ship is manned by droids. The ship itself is actually a Capital class battlecruiser!
Theres also that ship from silent running witch ends up with only 1 operator and 2 noticeable robots
On that cargo freighter drip
For me the role of small ships as part of a larger fleet is in making the resources of that fleet go further and providing greater coverage of territory relative to the number of people you can put in uniform- moreover, a lot of those ships will be primarily assigned to fairly boring patrol routes, not too far from facilities where they can be regularly resupplied
Outside of actual war, real battleships tended to stay docked in port. They were just too expensive to operate when not specifically needed.
if i was to make a sci fi, i would justify that a shield generator requires a size up to house, and reactor tech too. where if its really small its efficient or if its really big, like how nuclear fusion is only really sustainable when large.
@@mryellow6918That is a great idea.
We could have shield technology only applicable to medium-large ships due to requirements needed. And shield generator may even need to draw power from the engine so it prevents people from just ramming into other ships at near-light speeds.
As for the smaller ships, they could use a modified version of forcefield tech. The tech that larger ships use to seal off deck breaches like in Star Trek, but modified with greater power output to fill in the role of a shipwide shield.
Would make them fragile and hard to maintain long term as the technology itself isnt suitable for it. But still work for short fights or your occasional astreoid field expeditions. Making small space craft other than fighers and civilian ships still viable.
No mention of Jenkins? He’s the heart and soul of the Normandy crew.
rip my guy jenkins
Leeeeeerooooyyyyyy *gets splattered by Geth*
The Reaper invasion would never have happened if Jenkins survived. He would single-handedly prevent Saren from even reaching Ilos. Only the Reapers would die. Our lord and saviour, Private Jenkins, would be our protective angel, avenging demon, and the perfect human to save the galaxy!
For a brief period of time I'm sure he was.
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Let pray to the Lord and saviour of the Mass Effect universe
In the Navy, we ran some hypothetical combat drills between frigates/destroyers and patrol boats, and found that in combat, smaller hulls operating in wolf packs outperformed larger hulls in engagements. The main issue however was range. Small hulls, like patrol boats, can't be at sea for 3 months because they don't have the storage or capacity for fuel and personnel.
And that's why the aircraft carrier became such a dominant force at sea. Massive hull, that can carry swarms of smaller craft that are each potent enough to take out another carrier by themselves.
These days the majority of naval ships have some form of deployable aircraft, in fact, ships that can't aren't considered for larger groups or operations.
Small hulls in larger formations will always be superior to one large hull in combat, but they will never be able to do long range patrols or handle fluid operational theatres.
I thought that the Captain in Master and Commander was given so much latitude in his orders was because of the slow nature of communications back in the age of sail
Actually, that would also apply in a space setting unless you have some magical instant communication. Speed of light is quite slow, after all, in the vastness of space.
@@rahko_iEh, I don’t think hard sci-fi constraints could create quite the same feel.
Communications in-system would take minutes. Longer than we're used to these days, but short enough for command to be fairly closely involved where necessary.
Communications between systems would take years, and travel to uncontrolled systems would likely take whole fleets and/or giant arkships for logistical reasons which would rate an admiral-level officer to command them.
The idea of sending individual "normal" ships out doesn't make much sense unless you have either ftl or the entire setting is calibrated to specifically enable it.
@@rahko_i That was a factor in the original series. Uhura was used, not just to save the cost of hiring another guest voice actor (though that was probably part of it;), but because notionally the comms officer had to spend a lot of time sorting through the garbled messages and and minute long delays in the conversation because of the time it took for messages to go back and forth. Since audiences at the time were still within living memory of telegraphs and morse code radios it made sense but, by the time the Next Generation came along, people would have thought is strange not to have instant communication so you had messages going straight to the main view screen.
@@justinthompson6364 Why? I think there are a lot of parallels in space exploration and Earth exploration during the Age of Exploration. In-system communication would take a lot longer than just mere minutes. Just messaging between Earth and Mars can take up to 20 mins, further than that and we are soon talking about hours. That could create a lot of drama and tension for sure, even if not quite as severe as the weeks and months it would have taken to send a message between the continents in the 1700's.
Interstellar space exploration then is of course on a totally different level, talking about months and years, or even longer depending on the setting. For the story to make any sense, it is kind of a must to have some sort of FTL transportation and communication, but even then, it doesn't need to be instant.
@@rahko_i From a storytelling perspective, hours-long communication delays are different from what you expect these days, but nothing you couldn’t see in a crisis, which is presumably where the drama would come from anyway.
From an organizational perspective, I don’t think it means much of anything. Captains are already expected to have a degree of autonomy and the minutes to hours gap doesn't have the same ramifications as the hours to days or weeks gap.
My design philosophy for small crewed hero ships is.. “Big enough to be comfortable, yet small enough to be cozy”
“Big enough to be comfortable” (able to be interesting and have a few amenities for it crew..) but still need to visits ports for proper Maintenance & R&R..
“Small enough to be Cozy” (to get to know the ship and its crew & not be overpowered..)
And have room for expansion. The ability to have passengers, larger cargo payloads that could generate interesting stories, or additional or temporary crew that might need to double bunk/use the crews bonus space as quarters... Some ships are so small, you know the show/book/etc could never add anyone without removing someone first, and that can be very limiting, especially when all the existing crew dynamics have been explored already.
I personally like the take Voyager took. The Delta Flyer gives you the capacity for really small ship stories, while the Voyager is available next episode to do a big ship story.
Even then voyager is a smaller vessel, being a scientific ship in pure design and a shuttlebay with room for only 2 active shuttles.
@@beno22iscool It does also have several hundred crew aboard though if i remember correctly. Which puts it firmly in the 'large ship' group by this video's metrics.
@@IamHattmanin Star Trek metrics I'd call it mid size, star trek doesn't use small size ships a lot, and the runabouts really characterize why, they just can't do much with them, it's a Glorified taxi. Larger ships have sufficient strength and firepower to be believable in combat, the defiant is small but because it is more dedicated in purpose it can fight with the larger ships, the Galaxy class is enormous and has power to match its size but can do a lot of other things way better than the defiant, and operate independently for long periods. The Voyager is just big enough to be able to operate independently for long periods while being small enough that it's clearly not a 5 star hotel in space, its meant to be fast more than comfortable.
@@IamHattman 140-150 or so i recall. the episode where they found amelia earhart mention the crew number.
@@beno22iscoolvoyager had room for more shuttles, she was just supposedly sent out on her maiden voyage without more than two. Something of a foolish idea, given how often shuttlecraft are used as emergency evacuation vehicles.. heck most Starfleet ships have at least a dozen of the things stashed away somewhere…
I'm writing a novel right now about an international war that takes place on a distant and isolated planet. The hero ship of the book is a flying aircraft carrier akin to the SHIELD Helicarrier. Just like the Galactica, its got tons of little quirks and foibles, it's crew has a deep seeded culture and tradition, and the ship itself could almost be it's own character. It's captain is one of the main characters that the story follows, and he interacts with all members of the crew, from the officers in the CIC all the way down to getting his hands dirty and fixing one of the ship's temperamental reactors in the middle of a battle. A lot of people have told me that a hero ship like that is too big, and needs to be smaller and faster to move the story along, but I think with it being a supercarrier, the characters can move around the world just fine on one of the many planes that it carries, and that the carrier serves as a homey place for the reader to feel safe from the turmoil of the conflict that the book follows.
Yo that sounds cool.
I could easily see this carrier flagship similar to Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9, where the station is a floating city, and that is what your carrier is: a mobile city with its own quirks, traditions, culture, and the ways it interacts with her crew and her command staff. Galactica and the Enterprise-D were much the same, and if done right, you can achieve that feeling.
You know space 2063?
so space battleship yamato but aircraft carrier or macross?
I would read that.
For a good feel on military sci-fi, read the Falkenberg's Legion/Co-Dominium/WarWorld series of books by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle or Hammer's Slammers books by David Drake.
Just from the video name, I prepared to go into long discussions about the practical considerations and various mission profiles and the relative technological capacity available in the setting, only to get caught up by the _narrative_ considerations of smaller versus larger ships.
Well-played, Spacedock, well played...
Neither better or worse. As you mentioned at the end, it depends on what the story is being told. Sometimes the ship is just a prop while it can be considered a character like the Enterprise. The smaller the ship, the greater the focus of the story on the crew.
I feel a big ship is better for more large scale stories. Like your ships crew gets stuck in a political or military intrigue stories.
Another is the government in exile storylines where for one reason or another your ship’s government is destroyed or conquered and now you are the last bastion of your people
@@Nostripe361Intrigue can happen in either case, but it definitely does depend on the exact nature of the plot.
A small ship can unravel a major scheme, but "the battleship USS _Dauntless,_ pride of the fleet" warps the political situation around itself by sheer significance the same way the mass of a planet warps space through gravity. It could be the _target_ of a major scheme, or even have one take place entirely onboard, all while needing to manage the oppressive attention of politicians and admirals.
@@justinthompson6364 I agree. I think the difference is how they are involved. Either type of ship can go either way but usually, a small ship is most likely going to get accidently involved by stumbling on some evidence of something or picking up an important person to the intrigue that they now have to protect or escort to their goal.
Meanwhile A larger ship is more likely to be direct involved in the intrigue such as being a major faction in said intrigue, a target of one faction, or the ones investigating the issue that the antagonist faction needs to avoid.
I also agree that a big ship gives you the ability to have the entire setting of the intrigue being on the ship itself like hunting for a saboteur or assassin.
Weirdly when I was talking about the big ship I was thinking of the old anime Starship Operators. Its an anime set where a starship filled with navy trainees is the only one to escape from an invasion of their world by another interstellar kingdom. The entire show is about the ship trying to escape to safe harbor while dealing with all the issues of being the equivalent of Free French from WW2.
But if a ship is too big it will be less dynamic, More likely to be a strategic asset tightly regulated anld controlled through lots of bureaucracy. Not much spontaneity on a super dreadnought. @Nostripe361
The Rocinante is a small ship and the ship is part of the crew, clearly.
I think small to mid-sized ships tend to work better in videogames because it would simply be a pain to traverse twenty decks to chat with Liara, and then another ten decks to set a destination. However, it wouldn't make sense to use the Defiant or Millennium Falcon as the command ship of an attack fleet during the Dominion or Clone Wars.
Well, you can put elevators on your ship.
And didn't they actually use both those vessels as command ships? The Defiant seemed to be the defacto command ship during Operation Return, and several other battles, and the Millennium Falcon seemed to be used as one during Endor.
And in fact you could use a small ship as an AWACS, i.e. a mobile mission control room.
It depends on the sort of game, of course. A first or third-person game where you're moving seamlessly or at least via elevators that hide loading screens or the like certainly push towards smaller ships for the reason you say, but that doesn't apply to a more Infinity Engine-style game where you can more easily have the ship divided into smaller 'points of interest' maps that you move between using a world map, and of course things are entirely different if the game is in a genre where in terms of gameplay you as the player is commanding one or more ships, not an individual or small party of characters.
I mean, you wouldn't use the Falcon because it was a rebadged light freighter. The Defiant was an 'escort' ship, designed to be a warship. Why wouldn't it serve as a command ship or flag of a fleet? Its small, fast, can tank a lot of damage relative to its size, while still having a sufficient crew to support that mission.
@@Bateluer So this goes into things like fleet doctrine and ship capabilities if you are familiar with Alfred Thayer Mayhan's Influence of Sea Power upon History that will answer your question. but the short answer is in most naval fleets the smallest ship with flag facilities would be a light Cruiser and generally speaking fleets are built around a/number central "flag" ship/s usually either an aircraft carrier or battleship around the flagships you would place heavy cruisers, then light cruisers, then destroyers. The Defiant and the Normandy can easily outmatch vessels of their own class but we see in Operation Return that the Defiant struggles against sustained
fire and the Valiant was essentially one-shotted by a Dominion battleship.
@@THE_REAL_POLITIK Both the Normandy and Defiant can punch well above their weight classes though, and the Defiant has been shown to be able to tank an incredibly amount of damage in firefights.
Its been a while, but iirc, the Valiant was also crewed by drugged up cadets who struggled to even keep the temperamental Valiant running. The Dominion also took down the Galaxy class Odyssey with a handful of Jem Hadar . . . light cruisers?
I love how it all came back to “the setting is determined by the story you wish to tell”
I do a few short stories, and the settings are vastly different between them, because the story i’m trying to tell has different requirements. A story about uncovering a heinous plot that’s gone uncovered can usually be done with the flexibility that a smaller ship provides (the expanse) whereas larger political thrillers and military fiction is usually done with larger ships. Anything is possible, but different settings are better suited for different stories.
The conclusion of "it depends" applies extremely well here. Having just rewatched Firefly myself, I can say with certainty that a small, tight knit crew of friends, family, or even loosely related individuals shoved into one space for an extended period of time, that can result in an absolute ton of great stories and character development. On the other hand, I also love shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, where there's a massive crew milling about at any given time, and you'll never know them all or even a fraction of them as well as the main cast.
For the latter, I feel like that sense of scale helps flesh out the world, or the ship itself, more than the characters. If you see Marines during boarding actions, if you see engineers fixing up the ship's systems, if you see pilots joking around with each other in the ready room, that gives a feeling that everyone has a purpose, and everyone has a life. When you see an engineer get blown out into space after frantically fighting a fire, or a Marine gunned down in a firefight, or a random fighter get ripped to pieces in space, that can hit you just as much as a member of the main cast being put in peril. At least it does when it's written well, and not when your extras are little more than punching bags and excuses to show bad things happening.
I recall things I like from many sci-fi series, and there's constantly little things I remember that don't involve any of the main cast, but side characters and background extras too. Infinite Warfare, when Gibson is threatening a crewman with "death by slideshow" for doing something unsafe, or when a couple wounded Marines get left behind as you're running for cover from an air strike. Babylon 5, seeing the pilots' faces as they're about to go head-to-head with their own ships in Severed Dreams, or watching the narn and security team in a brutal fight with Alliance boarders. Battlestar Galactica, a group of Marines all crossing the volunteer line at the same time, then every member of the crew taking up arms to defend the ship in her final assault.
Having people in the background doesn't have to be vague and meaningless. It can be a fantastic opportunity to show smaller moments of whatever you're trying to get across, and create very memorable scenes in the process, without even showing or mentioning the main cast at all.
One of my favourite parts of small ships is that you can tell how the interior and exterior sets are meant to fit together, and can always know where you are in the ship (e.g. Serenity), but even in a big ship with as much character as Galactica, we literally don’t have a clue where any rooms beyond the flight deck are. However, this can also be a double edged sword, as it can make it obvious when the interior and exterior don’t match (e.g. Rocinante, Millennium Falcon)
Nyes!
For military ships - yes as they have target profile as more important factor.
For civilian vessels - no as they have economy of scale as more important factor.
And for all vessels - depending on the task. Ships that is supposed to land would be small and cargo cycler would be planetoid sized.
I have a feeling that fiction mostly put it on its head by thinking that warships(and military vehicles in general) irl are bigger then civilian ones. But for every battleship, tank or Tu-160 there is their own oil tanker, mining haul truck a An-225/A-380. Even among the first ironclads civilian Great Eastern came before Warrior, Gloire, Monitor and Virginia.
Yes, Great Eastern wasn't very useful because it was constructed with too optimistic expectations of economic and market growths then it had gone irl, but in 50 years it was finally surpassed in all metrics. And in none of them by military vessel;)
Don't forget the _Black Pearl._ While not Sci-fi, you get a lot of the same concepts in _Pirates of the Caribbean._
I've come to really like this term "hero ship". Makes me think of the one in my next novel project.
2:25 the Surprise in Master and Commander was one the smallest Vessels navys in that time considered ships and not boats.
I think the reality of ship size is that it is a function of the unit economics of the ftl drive. In a setting where the smallest ftl drive is the size of a car, then having a millennium falcon sized ship makes sense. On the other hand, in a setting where the smallest ftl drives are massive (and I mean, why wouldn't they be huge) suddenly it might be far more economical to have huge ships.
Especially if the drive is like a "slipstream" style drive where it just opens a portal into hyperspace, so a larger ship might not require a proportionally larger drive.
I had an idea for a setting like this, where ftl drives were extremely expensive and large, but don't scale linearly with ship size. So the economics work out to where there are these huge mother ships that essentially act as ferries between systems. And everyone has to dock their individual smaller ships in a "ferry" to traverse interstellar space. Could be lots of interesting and unique settings/drama there.
In most cases, you find smaller ships and crews with independent operators, whereas the larger ships tend to be part of a larger organization. Notable exceptions are Andromeda and Galactica. Sure, Andromeda started out as a Large ship with a typical large crew part of an organization, but then it was a large ship with a small crew acting as independents for most of the series. Galactica started out as part of an organization but then became the central figure and was the organization itself after the fall. IE, Galactica no longer had a higher command it was taking orders from; it was the top end of the command chain for its fleet.
It all depends on the writing. In some of the Warhammer 40K books, they have massive ships, far larger than the scale of anything discussed in this video. But they are able to focus different parts of the crew and tell radically different stories that intertwine a key times to advance the story. It's a really powerful tool when used correctly. In general though, I think the smaller ships are easier for writers which leads to better viewing. I actually really liked the dynamic on Enterprise. I would have enjoyed a couple more Mako focused episodes though.
I liked that early Star Trek had such accurate weapons that being a smaller or more evasive target was effectively a non-factor, and since shield strength and to a lesser degree weapons strength was proportional to reactor size, a larger ship of equal tech level would always beat its weight in smaller ships. It feels like as soon as DS9, with the Jem'hadar fighters this philosophy was being lost. I appreciate sci-fi fighters and smaller ships, I just mourn a distinctive universe where the very laws of physics contrive to make them completely nonviable in a frontline role.
3:17 Brutal use of irony, Hoojiwana. T_T You often pick perfect clips from a really broad range of mostly SF media to illustrate or emphasize your points. And you frequently include humor without overtly drawing attention to it. Your style and work are wonderful!
How about a big ship that is the main base for a smaller ship to dock in, the large ship is mobile command while the smaller ship is the main cast (or deployment squads) ship, and it's theirs, within military regulation anyway
Fleets are a orchestra of units. All playing their part to the whole. A Battleship, despite its great power is very vulnerable without its escort Destroyers/Cruisers covering its weaknesses. Same for the lesser combatants, they need the bigger units like Battleships to take on things they have little chance if combating.
When it comes to lone units however. Operating by themselves. Things are different. You can evade, you can be clever, you can hit when they're vulnerable. You can retreat when its clear its not a good fight. You are not leaving a fellow ship crew behind if you run.
Amusingly, the hero ship in the 40k Rogue Trader RPG (which IIRC Spacedock recently plugged) is a lowly Frigate, and yet it being 40k has the population of a small country living on it, some of whom see the command staff so rarely that the captain is considered practically a demigod.
Specifically, it appears to be a refitted Firestorm-class frigate, with the prow lance being replaced with torpedo tubes. At approximately 1.8km long, she's pretty small as 40k ships go (although almost bang in the middle of typical frigate hull lengths). I'm not sure I'd say she has the population of a small country in it (that class typically carries a crew of roughly 25,000, so large town to mid-sized city, maybe?).
In the theme of it depending on the story you want to tell, one aspect in favor of big ships is the latitude a big ship has. The "Wildcards" fighter squadron of Marine Aviators in Space: Above & Beyond were the main ensemble cast, and a lot of episodes had them flying out on this or that adventure away from the ship - but the USS _Saratoga_ they were posted to was a carrier, a battlegroup flagship, and that means there's plenty of room for other departments to make their appearance as needed.
A chapel, a small hospital rather than simply an infirmary, intel analysts, war rooms for the flag officer's staff, and of course "Marine country" where the main characters in the show lived... A small ship might have either a shared multipurpose area, or a single (probably cramped) compartment if the needed equipment is specialized, while a capital ship can have its own dedicated spaces with proper elbow room to work with. Still not necessarily _large_ spaces, but room enough for the story to take advantage the ship being a mobile base rather than just transportation and a bunkroom.
Here's the thing, ship size is based on the technological context of a setting. For example, if your ship uses hydrogen (aka the worst fuel for anything _not_ fusion or antimatter) as a propellant, then that ~14m^3 is going to *_hurt_* in general (use water as propellant if you've got gas-NTRs or fusion rockets, sure the density of that 1m^3 of water hurts but not as much as just how much your surface area balloons when fitting all that ~14m^3 tankage), so you'll need to limit the size of the ship. In Star Trek, on the other hand, smaller tends to be less effective as your primary goals with your ships in that setting need to stuff as much firepower and shielding as possible forTrek ships tend to dance like fighters already, which means bigger _is_ better (the Dominion fast attack craft are an exception largely because their weapons were somewhat unique and they pulled a lot of compromises to get that much firepower into that hull).
In a few of my settings, the answer to this question is, 'what niche is the craft fitting in'. For example, for a ship whose niche is planetary offense operations (basically an LHA/LHD), you'll need a fairly large ship to support everything of the landing force up to and including orbital fire support while a ship whose niche is for light system patrols whose main opponents tend to be ships that aren't top-of-the-line military tend to be smaller.
Different sized ships have different purposes. Sometimes you NEED a big ship, sometimes a little ship will do. Depends on the tech, the desired role, the desired capacities, how far from home does it need to operate, does it need to be fully self sufficient, so many variables.
One good way to give big ships more character is to have each major section of the ship, (which would otherwise be generic copies stacked one atop the next) have it's own design theme and slightly unique color scheme. Obviously they would still share a lot in common but having each "deck" or compartment be unique in some way lends a large ship both character and believability. Obviously this is difficult in serialized shows where you have to reuse big sets and can't afford to make say five different flavors of corridors, rooms, quarters, etc, but it's something I'd consider spending a little time describing if I were writing a story or a bit of extra time modeling if I were making a game.
There are certain considerations i think when deciding how big or small a ship should be largely related to a ship's role (and how realistic you want things). Those considerations are range (depending on what propulsion systems are used combined with what is powering the ship overall, a storage space for fuel and space for power supply and propulsion units are required; also a larger ship will require even larger engines/propulsion units and a larger power supply), speed/acceleration capabilities (a lighter ship will require less energy to accelerate, while larger engines will provide more thrust), crew compliment/passenger capacity (includes but is not limited to the living space for crew and any passengers, but also affects other things like space requirements for life support systems, food storage, possible space for food production, crew stations for the ship to be operated from, and possible common areas), and finally weapons/armor and/or equipment/cargo space (space for mining or science equipment, space for storing, launching, and landing Small craft, storage space for any raw materials a ship harvests, shield systems, cloaking/stealth systems, space requirements of different weapon systems (missile pods, rail guns, various energy weapons, lasers, turrets, plus storage requirements for ammunition, etc)).
A lot of these considerations create feedback loops or influence the other considerations in ways that increase size requirements and this goes for maritime vessels as well. In fact, the US military often (not always though, see part afterwards) finds that feature creep on a system of systems (what most major military vehicles are these days), results in size increases out of proportion with size of a feature by itself (higher power requirements, more crew needed to operate additional equipment (which leads to more food being needed, etc).
Some mitigation measures for reducing size requirements are things like increasing automation (such as replacing part or all of a gun crew with autoloaders, adding automatic fire suppression systems (last one maybe a mixed bag), remote operation (CROWS on land vehicles, the main gun(s) on a modern destroyer or cruiser), and feature reductions (usually cancelled out by replacement with another capability, an example being the removal of the resupply crane on us destroyers (or cruisers, forget which) which removed the ability to resupply missiles at sea but freed up space that is used to carry even more missiles). As you can see, taken realistically, determining space requirements and thus size for a vehicle/craft/ship can get very complicated.
One of the best examples of a well-done "big ship" is the Cerritos from Star Trek: Lower Decks. Having a good number of episodes really gives you time to flesh out a lot of the "extras", and it being animated leads to you seeing the SAME additional crew rather than different faces every episode. Over seasons of show, it really gives a strong sense that this is a CREW who all know each other at least a little bit, even if it's just to nod to each other as they pass in the hallway.
I appreciate you ending the video on "Ford, I think I'm a sofa."
As always, Stargate gives us some compromises between the extremes:
1) In the case of the Prometheus and the Daedalus-class ships, there are lots of random background nobodies around, and the only one we ever get to know is the Colonel in charge, *but* as most of Gate is not ship-based, we tend to focus just on SG1 or Shepard’s team, who just happen to be *on* the ship for a particular episode. This works better than you’d think, and honestly the destruction of the Prometheus is one of the most emotionally impactful scenes in the second half of the franchise.
2) The Destiny, which has an accidental crew of 80+ people, seven of whom are the main characters, and another seven or so are recurring characters who turn up in virtually every episode. The recurring can and do die, and it has stakes (Such as Riley’s death), *AND* while we don’t know the 60 or so random background characters, we *DO* know that each death is one fewer person on a ship that can not be resupplied. By the end of the series, 20 people have died, and the ship *does* feel a bit emptier as a result.
I think something Star Wars Corvette size is ideal. It gives you plenty of space for extra crew and cargo yet small enough for flexible storytelling.
I thought the video was about whether smaller ships are better in battle, but a discussion about whether they're better for story telling is a pleasant surprise.
Depends on the technology that makes them tick. Famously, the ships from Blake's 7 had a crew of three because everything was automated, and they were there just in case something went wrong with the automation or a decision from a living crew member was required.
A better title would something like, "Stories, do they need big ships or small ones." Since this was not at all about the ship, but the story. A ship should be as big as it needs to be do do the mission it was designed for, and no bigger. So if you take that to your emphasis on the story, it should be as big as it needs to be to tell the story that is being told.
Going back to the tail end of the '70s, Blake's Seven did a pretty good job of giving us a small crew in a big ship. Although, they could really have done with a considerably bigger SFX budget.
In a completely different vein, but with some parallels nevertheless, the first two seasons of Red Dwarf had a very small crew rattling around in an enormous ship.
This video reminds me of a thought I keep having about Star Trek: Voyager. A major point was that Voyager was a much smaller, less luxurious ship than what we were used to from the Enterprise-D, with a much smaller crew that was supposed to grow into a big family. Of course, Voyager thoroughly wasted almost every premise it touched, but looking back, I think it actually should've been a ship designed for the type of journey it would ultimately undertake. It could still be out of it's depth by virtue of not all crewmembers being on board and not all facilities finished by the time of the shakedown cruise that left it stranded, but that would've given it room to believably grow into a ship that could survive the journey without the use of the almighty reset-button.
Smaller ships are better for sublight maneuver due to larger thrust to weight ratio but larger ship may have better ftl due to more space.
Very true... unless the opposing ship is a Reaper, in which case it has the smaller ship beat there too.
Carrier Fights for Everyone
Disagree on the advantage a large ship has.
Small ships are better at maneuvering and accelerate faster that much is clear, but large ships don't have to have better ftl because ftl doesn't exist and even if it did it would vary wildly depending on your means of ftl. The real advantage of large ship is that pesky square cube law that robs us from cool giant robot. You can put a lot more stuff inside a large ship and have better armor, storage etc... That is because the volume increases faster than the area, this is why doubling a square makes it a bigger square and not a rectangle.
@@pougetguillaume4632 depends on your universe in general, if you have multiple types of FTL available and have torpedoes capable of destroying everything in one light minute, bigger ships are better unless it is a cheap surveillance drone.
@@addisonchow9798 in a universe where you fire a torpedo that can destroy anything one light minute away wouldn't smaller ships be the norm because you don't want to be putting all your eggs in a single basket?
Smaller ships are always the underdog ships.
Larger ships are more big picture.
On a slightly more 'hardware' side of things, I'd also argue there are (in most settings) a kind of milestone system to the size of a ship.
Either it is large enough to have a capacity, or it isn't. That could be a shuttle bay, a railgun, or some other *thing* that allows the ship to do something that it otherwise wouldn't be capable of.
On the other hand, if the ship is *three times* larger than needed to fit a certain system, that doesn't necessarily mean it can do that job three times as well. It might have diminishing returns, rendering any extra size beyond a certain point a bit of a waste, or it might increase exponentially from the square cube law, and benefit larger ships.
Thus, I think the most interesting settings (from a ship-building perspective) are ones where BOTH are true, for different reasons. It forces a dynamic where larger and smaller ships are symbiotic with one another, and neither is always at an advantage.
What the heck 😂. I thought you were going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of ship size, but you spent your entire time talking about what are essentially the "red shirts" of each franchise and whether or not they have value to the story.
The smaller ,the more dedicated a ship tends to be . The larger , the more multirole a ship tends to be ,to a point where he can carry small ships to compensate his weakness and make it even more multirole. Defining the limitations and roles of a ship just by it's size is already great for naration.
On the other end of the spectrum you have the Greatship (Robert Reed) with a star system sized ship .Where the characters of the crew aboard are entire civilisations.
I was totally expecting this video to be on the practical advantages an ddisadvantages of small and big ships. But a lesson in storytelling is also good from time to time I suppose!
That's what I love about Final Space, especially the first season. You can have a small number of characters to make the ship feel alive, but to accommodate its size, there's a whole lot of robot drones that do maintenance.
I liked that this is about narrative for the story and not just the arguement of realism. Which also comes down to setting, mission and technology available.
For the story I'm doing, I've opted a sort of middle ground. A carrier, but there are 3 groups of heroes that meet up on the carrier. The main fighter pilots, the experimental genetically enhanced marines and the crew of one of 2 corvette class that docks with the carrier for long interstellar flights. The corvette will have limited long range capabilities for missions and a perspective in larger battles. The fighter are short range and can be isolated having no FTL ability and the marines can have ground or boarding stories. The problem there is narrowing down to the leaders of each and the secondary characters being quite ensemble and only a few will be cared about. But we'll see how their arcs go. This version is quite new and I'm only now designing the ships, testing animations, outlining plots and a few character profiles.
It depends on how they are used.
One series I'm reading usually has huge hero ships. In Star Trek their size allows them to carry ships like the Enterprise (Classic, A; B; C and D). Sometimes several episodes play out on a smaller ship and we get to know some of the crew. As they are not part of the main characters, they sometimes don't survive their appearance. Sometimes their entire ship gets destroyed and sacrificed. Other times the main characters take a ship the size of the Millenium Falcon or the Serenity, depending on the side mission. As they have dozens or hundreds of them, they also can be sacrificed. That allows them to take on combat missions without risking the hero ships, stealth missions even ground missions with a notable security force.
The writers keep a good mix of the different missions and adventures so the size and capabilities are not wasted.
I should add that the hero ships in that series are the only ones or one of the few available to the hero faction that can travel to other galaxies, where they don't have the resources of their faction behind them, so the smaller ships, which can range up top cruisers and battlecruisers in size, have to keep the main ship safe if they want to make it back home again.
Sadly often these capabilities are wasted in many franchises. As much as I like Star Trek, they have underutilized ships like the Galaxy-Class Enterprise D.
P.S. I realize that they do have budget constraints.
I think the Rocinante sized ships are the best for narrative. Small enough to feel familiar and cozy, but big enough to punch up in a fight.
That said there command crew sized vessels are great for episodics.
I don't know that they're the best for narrative, but I do prefer them: Rocinante, Serenity, Defiant, Jupiter 2, and of course the Millennium Falcon.
Gotta love a corvette!!
And if you're going for a more realistic setting, a small ship and a large ship pretty much have the same requirement for warm bodies in term of basic watchkeeping duties. Dealing with a warship model, you'd need a crew of probably 12-20 to maintain operations for more than a few days, if only to have 2-3 watches' worth of people (I figure a bare minimum for watchkeeping is 3-4: someone at the helm, someone on sensors/comms/weapons and an engineer and technician, while a dedicated officer of the watch would be a nice bonus on a small ship but a necessity on a large one).
That adds up to 12 people, and you would still need some warm bodies for the day to day regular maintenance, food prep, a medic, and a captain (and perhaps a First Lieutenant/XO/First Officer/etc) who may or may not keep watches but are available round the clock.
@@HunterAP the ships are personal just big enough to live in but that is it
My opinion on it before watching the video:
Honestly it depends on the level of firepower, the accuracy with which that firepower can be put out, the quality of defenses, and whether or not those defenses scale in size. If we're talking Star Wars, carriers with screening forces could deploy so much firepower that larger ships cannot stand up to them, or you could base them on a planet and with sufficient planetary weapons, such as ion cannons, you could easily destroy an attacking fleet in conjunction with ground based fighters. In Star Trek, though, there's something to be said for size. Cruiser sized ships are best because smaller ships don't have the defensive capability to stand up to larger ships, which have more energy to throw into their weapons and the fire control systems to use those powerful weapons against any sized target from a very long range.
I personally would absolutely LOVE to see a sci fi show centered around a battleship captain in a time of war. Battlestar Galactica was great but it was more about the situation they were in than fighting a war. A show where the main characters are the people onboard a battleship as it goes through a war, along the lines of the book series 'Blood on the Stars', would be a hit, I think.
This is a two-edged question and this video answers 1 edge, the other is "are smaller ships better?" as in the role and existence of smaller lighter tonnage vessels as a part of a larger overall force deployment.
My early days of imagining space battles was thousands of 1500 meter long ships with dozens and dozens of fixed forward beam weapons whose formations were stacked up 100's high and 100's wide and simply filled space with all manner of energetic doom - in that light smaller ships were junk.
Later on I went with a more integrated fleet with some big heavy hitters (battleships and missile carriers) supported by a bigger number of medium ships (cruisers and destroyers) themselves supported by a range of even smaller types (frigates or other uniquely named oddities whose design role was literally "glass cannon" such as my medium class guns on a 120m hull aptly named a "Cruiser Killer Mk 1"). I would sprinkle in specialty hulls where needed, super fast straightline ships for deep reccon or "experimental" type ships - usually with a very powerful weapon that would come in from hyperspace, take a single shot then have to depart and literally go away as they had no defenses due to power constraints. Not all force deployments even had or needed a capital ship, some cruisers and flight of frigates would often be sufficient. Smaller ships suddenly became a useful and core element of detailing a fleet action and sometimes were the "fleet" in their own right with bigger ships absent altogether.
I see what you did at the end there. Coolest ship ever, it's size doesn't matter, and it's both the largest and smallest anyway.
Also comes down to thematics. Films and stories often pit the protagonists in a small ship against the antagonists in a large ship for the simple reason of making the protagonists the underdogs. It’s classic David vs Goliath storytelling, and it’s popular for a reason. But as you pointed out, there are also plenty of large ships that work great. I think almost any size can work as long as you emphasize the important parts. At the end of the day, it is just a story.
Blake's 7: Big ship, the Liberator, with a small hero crew. Aside from no sequel and the stint where Dr. WHO writers took over, this was one solid space opera on par IMHO with the 2004 Battlestar Galactica. What it lacks in special effects compared to today is a charming line of ships, characters, and plot.
Instant like for the XCOM background music!
A small ship can be better, depending on the setting and what it's used for.
I think the idea of "relatively small vessels are better for story" has another merit that i havent seen discussed: variety of threats. In a setting where combat can happen, whatever the tech level, a smaller (but not the smallest) vessel can face a larger variety of threats. Your crew might have to face down a group of smaller starfighters, using wits and training to overcome greater odds and more maneuverable craft. Then the next crisis can involve a David vs. Goliath battle where our Davids in the smaller face an enemy dreadnought as the proverbial monster. Then there's the more equal duel between similar ships.
What I find to be interesting about the observations made about the ‘character’ of big vs small ships seems to be almost opposite of how it has been historically.
Small ships might be personalized TO THEIR CREW, but viewed from an outside perspective it can be difficult to distinguish different ships from those in their class at a distance (enter: US Destroyer swarm circa 1945). There are just so many of them that it is hard to make stand out. (The same is true of planes, you recognize a model, but not the pilot/crew)
Big ships, on the other hand, are much more recognizable. Because of how big they are, their ability to absorb damage, the changes to design over construction and the long service lives meaning frequent retrofits, individual ships are much more likely to develop a distinctive character and community around them.
it depends on the task you need the ship for in any show, but a lot of the designs i've seen take from WW1/2 era naval combat but evolve it for space, with Big Capital Ships like Battleships or Battlecruisers, then a more Patrol focused Cruisers which can quickly be re-tasked as needed for escort or rapid response, then we come to escorts/pickets with Destroyers and Frigates designed more to be a outer escort screen for a Battlefleet or transport group, rarely operating independently for extended periods of time due to their more limited stores capacity.
The only cause for bigger ship stories are that last week or a couple pages ago senior staff member got demoted/killed/rotated off/court martialed and there's a really big pool of replacement candidates that replace said character.
Moya in Farscape is relatively large but with a minimal crew...technically the Pilot assisted by the DRDs, the former prisoners, John Crichton and an assortment of people who join from time to time.
I’m an OTR truck driver. Just discovered your channel like three days ago. And have been binge listening to your videos every drive shift since. Just wanna say thanks for the great content
The first ST ships were basically a hull around the warp core, half of the vessel was dedicated to the drive.
And honestly, I like it more that technology to break the laws of physics needs a lot of room and can't be fitted into the trunk from a space sprinter.
Comparing two ship designs assuming everything as identical as possible; just one ship twice as wide, tall and long making it 8* the mass of the smaller.
Advantages of smaller ships:
- higher surface area to volume, meaning 8 of them can dissipate more heat for their mass than a single larger vessel (larger vessel has only 4* the surface area but 8* the volume and heat-generating equipment)
- faster to construct, so you can replace losses and bring in new designs faster
- more ships, so you can patrol more locations and keep ships on station for longer periods (3 months on-site, 6 months transiting or in the rear = 1/3 of the ships always working vs the larger ship only on station 1/3 of the time)
- smaller shipyard and repair yard needed, meaning you can build up combat infrstructure faster
Advantages of larger ships:
- higher volume to surface area, meaning exterior armor and shields will be twice as 'thick' compared to a ship 1/8 its mass (larger ship is 8* the mass but only 4* the surface area)
- all communications is internal, so no worries about a random transmission giving your position away
- more likely to be damaged after a fight (compared to smaller ships being destroyed) so you can get the ship back into action on-site faster vs replacing new craft
- wider variety and capability of onboard repair systems. Small ships will have 8 copies of the same repair systems, while a larger ship can have more extensive Machine Shop on board. (i.e. smaller ships might carry several copies of standardized piping that are cut and bent to standard lengths, while a larger ship will carry a lot of straight pipe and a pipe-bending machine)
the size of the ship is determine by it endurance requirement which are calculation by the number of days it can survive without resupply. modern destroyer and frigate has almost identical firepower, however destroyer can operate for far longer with more fuel, food and missiles in storage. the issue with tachi in expanse is that as a corvette "sized" ship, it really wouldn't have the storage to last the crew for more than a week. if you eat everything you see in the pantry, it last about a week, if you can't RTB within a week you are dead. so that limit what the crew could do with the ship. afterall it was design to dock with it mothership when not in use which is perfect.
IMO, what is the best ship size depend on how you are going to build the story, can such a ship actually achieve the independent operation it requires... does it has enough logistic capability to perfrom its mission. the fleet has ship of different size because different size ship can do different mission better. there is no one size fit all... US tried with LCS and it was a hot mess... don't do that. having different size add to the character, that one issue with the starfleet, it is mostly just different ship class of very similiar size...
A lot also depends (IMO) on how deep into the minute details you want to get with your worldbuilding. Things like navy structure, doctrines, etc for the ones that like to get really down in the weeds and be able to answer questions like "What would this ship be used for? What mission does it fulfill? How does it fit in the fleet structure?" A lot of creators and readers don't care to get that drilled down, but to me I like having at least a vague idea about a ships expected role in the larger scheme of the fleet and government.
Depends on the plot and the rules of the universe the ship exists in. Like in Star Wars smaller ships were considered inferior as they couldn't put much power into shields or something like a cloaking device. Yet in the latest star trek film the enterprise was completely overwhelmed my a swarm of incredibly small ships. A similar thing could be seen in the ancient's weapons in Stargate Atlantis (essentially unmanned people sized drone weapons that acted more like ships than drones).
As far as a balance of character size, interior layout, power, and maneuverability I'd say my favorites are those that can handle 1 to 2 dozen people on board.
I got to set foot on the Surprise when I visited San Diego. That ship feels a lot smaller in person than it did in the movie.
I got 2 things on this.
In my ttrpg game I do tend towards smaller ships but I also like having a handful of key NPCs and dozen or so no name NPCs. Say a ship of about 15-20 crew counting the PCs.
As far as killing the PCs the ships has cloned bodies for about 10 in cryo. On away-missions the PCs would copy their minds into the computer core or update the files before going. If killed and the mind of the PC can not be uploaded then the copy is used. This also means that the ship and it's computer core is protected form harm as it is their failsafe to survival. Also this makes killing an enemy harder or the goal are different. "If we don't destroy his brain now he will remember I am the spy when his clone is revived!"
What makes a ship "small" is often relative to the setting. The starship Voyager was considered a small ship in Star Trek lore but is dramatically larger than the Millennium Falcon and maybe even the Normandy. But the nature of the show is that the ship was stranded so far away from home that they would have to scrounge for fuel and supplies for years if they were to ever make it back. Also the inciting incident caused the loss of some key crew members so not everyone in the primary cast, let alone the rest of the ship, were actually qualified for their jobs. A much larger vessel intended for longer trips without resupply may have not have had as many difficulties as Voyager did, including the larger base crew having allowed greater redundancy in people qualified to fill key roles.
By contrast Luke and Han never seem short of fuel or supplies no matter how much independent travel they do in an X-wing or the Falcon, respectively. The only time their vessels being small is relevant in their stories is when they go into combat where encountering very large vessels and/or large numbers of enemy fighters is very likely. Being small is expressly remarked as an advantage during the Battle Of Yavin as the Death Star wasn't designed to deal with enemy vessels that small.
In defence of The Empire at Yavin IV, the Deathstar was actually quite capable of dealing with the Rebel Starfighters. In fact X wings and Y Wings were popping left, right and centre in the battle. Between the Turbolaser Towers and the Flights of Tie Fighters, the Rebels were getting their buts shellacked by the Empire. Luke himself nearly bought it if it wasn’t for Han coming in at the last second to save his skin from Vader’s attack wing.
@@Beuwen_The_Dragon In the movie it is expressly stated that the turbolasers weren't effective which is why Vader ordered the TIEs to be launched.
I like Medium sized ships, they can give you familiar and lived in locations without and aren’t as hampered narratively as larger ones may be.
Enterprise being shrunken down to half the size and civilians removed in Voyager was a smart play in terms of ship design IMO.
No negativity, I've loved this channel for years, but this basically a creative writing lesson channel now. I like this, but this is what bit is.
Love the XCom 2 music. I wonder if the Avenger would count, being a Elder space ship repurposed for XCom's needs?
I work on a ship which has a quite small crew. There are around a dozen of us (currently 11 regulars and one slot which we fill with external contractors) but only half the crew is on board at the same time, the other half has R&R. At a length of 178 meters, I wouldn't exactly call the ship itself small though, plenty of space to get some work done away from the others if we get too misfit-y.
The fregate class size ship seems the best, for me. Larger than a corvette like the Millenium Falcon, enough to have random crew, a main group (commanders, squadron members) and some smaller ship like fighter. And the size is small enough to avoid anonymous big ship like a Star Wars star destroyer as you explain. Something like the Tantive IV in Star Wars 4 seems to fit perfectly the goal.
One facet is the size of the FTL-drives, and for my own writing the inter-stellar ships end up the size of a small station as a result.
And escort ships end up limited by the size of the mothership's drydocks in order to carry them through the unstable wormholes created.
Overall these days I lean more towards The Expanse end of the spectrum that the Star Wars side of things.
You need an Eagle 5 for that homey feeling, you need a Spaceball 1 to destroy stuff, inside and out.
Fast enoung to dodge the big shots meant to take down capital ships, big enough to still have proper armor and shields. Perfect combo.
Seeing the defiant in the thumbnail for small ships.
Yeah, it’s constantly referred to as small in Star Trek but the thing is 170m long, there’s modern aircraft carriers that are 180m with 800 crew
Im loving so much Gundam footage on the channel lately
shame they havent done a video on the series yet
Better is also a term that requires qualification. How is it better? Just like what qualifies as a small ship, as you suggest. Navys on earth the trend is towards small or medium vessels like frigates or destroyers because of cost and spreading fire power out over many targets. It has been shown that many small ships can usually take one large impressive ship, The Bismark and Yamoto and her sister ship as examples of that.
So glad the Heart of Gold got some recognition there at the end. I've always thought that, despite the absurdity of the setting, it's actually a very solid ship design when you think about it.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm referring to the model used in the movie, not the old BBC series. Yeah, definitely not that one.
I always thought a Saber class ship, with a crew complement of 40 would be an interesting show for Star Trek to focus on. Less redundancy when you think about how you need staff for the 3 shifts (essentially 13 crew per shift) plus the captain. That is assuming everyone works an 8 hour day. But what happens when crew get injured while fighting a hostile force? People would be on duty 12 hour days or more. If Voyager had actually gotten to do a whole season of Year From Hell, I think it could have been quite engaging and they could have focused and developed some of the characters who got ignored in later seasons, like Samantha Wildman and Lt Carey. It might have even given Neelix more to do.
i think i goes down to the age of sail frigates, big enough to fight everything smaller then themselfs, fast enough to out run bigger ships and capable to operate on themself without additional forces
"How many men did we loose? "All of them" "At least they won't have to mourn each other"
There is a philosophical approach that I take even in my writing. Going by realistically speaking, spaceships that are too small don't get the returns of being able to manufacture them in droves. But, ships that are too large can still be destroyed by an internal nuclear strike.
However, it also really depends on the type of sci-fi. Maybe you can have a story where bigger is better or smaller is better.
- The Defiant in ST was amazing, but it had things that helped it, including advanced technology, improved weaponry, and better shields/armor, combined with speed, making it potent for its smaller size, but it might have been argued to build a bigger starship and incorporated those same things while carrying even more weapons. At the same time, the Defiant was also more of a first step in really updating the Federation fleet roster.
- Space Battleship Yamato did support the concept of bigger means better. Bigger ships could carry better powerplants, carry more armor, better shields, and more weapons. It wasn't uncommon for the Yamato to rip enemy destroyers/cruisers to pieces with its main guns and continually survive the onslaught posed against it. When the Yamato worked, the EDF decided to introduce the even bigger and more viciously armed Andromeda class.
I think a small ship depends on what universe you're in. Star Trek for example: a small ship would be around 100 meters with the la sirena being 85.5m and the Protostar class coming in at 139m. Shuttles and runabouts don't count in this case. Battleships, Carriers, and Cruisers all have thier place, but a small ship is easier to obtain, run, upkeep, is lighter, you can land on planet if you need to, and avoid being seen more easily than a larger ship. For comparison the Razorcrest is 25m, Millenium Falcon is 34.7m, Serenity is 82m, Roci is said to be 46m, The Normandy is 170m which would still be considered small in the Star Trek universe. Special shout out to Bo-Katan's Gauntlet at 68m, Hera Syndulla's Ghost at 43.9m and Ahsoka's T-6 1974 at 22.8m.
Credit to whoever's decision it was to put in clips from Gundam 00. Love to see it
I really think a better ship for mando after the razor crest would be a lancer pursuit craft. It was a patrol ship produced by MandalMotors. Most notably the mandalorian bounty hunter Ketsu Onyo flew one named the Shadow Caster in star wars rebels. It was about the size of the falcon, had a decent amount of cargo space but was mostly used for patrolling, bounty hunters, or crime syndicates. It required a pilot but also could use a copilot, and it had space for 4 passengers. It was fast for a ship of its size at 1050kph in atmosphere. Its armament consisted a dorsal mounted triple light laser cannon turret and a forward-mounted twin light laser cannon. Its fire control system was also relatively advanced making it easy for a single pilot to use. It also had a ventral mounted tractor beam projector and it also could be outfitted with more weapons very easily.
I think Mando would be happy to own a Mandalorian made ship and with him traveling by himself often there's no need to have a troop transport like Bo Katan. They could very easily write in him stealing one from a crime syndicate or Bobba Fett could give him one since he was fighting them.
A small, Serenity-sized ship is essentially a household, with the found family as their community. A larger vessel like the Enterprise is more like its own village. It's a different type of community, both large enough and small enough to have its own distinct ship culture. The Galactica is *explicitly* a community and culture in the form of a ship, because each of the Battlestars are literally carrying the last refugees of their home worlds (and species). Both options have their own advantages and excel at different styles of story. Neither is inherently more "heroic" than the other.
The cut to Wash at 3:18 is *chefs kiss*
Y'know, you could mix the two setups by having a series revolve around a group of smaller ships, or dividing the crew of a larger ship into smaller groups, and each group gets their own storylines that intermingle.
Just an idea, anyways.
You showed it but didn't mention it: the Normandy's smaller cousin, the Tempest, much better fits the 'small ship' description with 11 crew. I love that design.
Tempest isn't a combat ship. It is Explorer
Mass Effect Andromeda's Tempest sits right in the sweet spot IMO. Large enough to have plenty going on, but small enough to feel homely.
Doc Cottle is my favorite Battle Star Galactic character.
you forgot to mention the option of having a big ship and a small crew at the same time and what interesting plotlines that can provide, like for example destiny in stargate universe, where the size of the crew and the ship are so incopatable that it causes issues, such as the crew not being able to repair the ship fast enough in many cases because they simply lack the manpower. But at the same time the ship acts as a sort of lost temple that the crew is slowly discovering, each time they open a new room they find something interesting. Its basicly as much of a mysterious location as any new planet they teleport to.
Another example of such a dynamic can be red dwarf.
Something we haven't seen in sci fi much is the small scale picket or defensive screen ships. Ships that generally travel in tandem with the big boys as part of a flotilla. In star trek, an Oberth or Miranda. Pretty much the only place we see fleet action with distinct ship designs and diverse characters is in Galactica.
It would be fun to have a very small ship with like 20 total crew taking part in larger conflicts and challenges. The Harrington books do a lot of that in the early books (when it isn't being a ham fisted allegory of the cold war and/or French revolution).
The Miranda Class gets so much flak for being ‘an old ship”, but many forget that Miranda class Starships were medium/Heavy Frigates before Starfleet demilitarized after the Khitomer Accords.
They’re as fast and maneuverable as the Defiant, still quite heavily armed. And though they may not be as heavily armed or armoured as the Defiant Class, we did see them hold their own quite well during the Dominion War. They arguably did better than many bigger and newer Starfleet ships. We see Mirandas taking pounding after pounding, and still going, while Akiras, Nebulas and Excelsiors get melted in seconds.
A picket/screening ship I think would actually better suited for a smaller hull size, about like an Oberth, but hopefully better armed and shielded…maybe a ship slightly larger than a Runabout would actually make for white a useful gunboat to speed into the enemy and harass them as the bigger ships stay off and bombard the enemy with long ranger weapons.