I'm Tired of Stupidly Big Sci-Fi Ships

You forgot the best super-sized ship!!!!

MEGA MAID!!!! DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM!!!!!

Even in real life the advent of missiles has made these massive ships increasingly outdated. Battleships are gone by now. And we don't know how the current carriers might fare if two peer countries (say USA vs China or something) go head to head. After all the big ass flag ship of Russia went down to one or two Ukranian missiles last year.

In space where missiles can go fast as they want, and nukes are freely usable, I think there will be no survival chance for a big slow ship. You can have 100m thick armor, but there is a nuke out there that can melt it. So I think space battles will be fought by mass amount of small ships, with supply/carrier type ships far far far away so that they are not at direct risk

what about Dragon ball (z, and gt as well) ships?

The thing with large ships is there gets to be a point where you don’t need more people to take care of it

Actually, armor of a fixed thickness (ie, lets pretend 1m of steel was sufficient to handle whatever you were planning on throwing at it) does benefit from the square-cube law. This is because the mass of the armor then becomes k * surface area where k is the mass per unit area (or density * thickness).

Heres the thing i find funny you want to reduce the amount of crew as much as possible we'bsite from children of a dead earth explains why yet you could recycle about 100 percent of your water like that of battlestar galatica and have alge beds and such to make your own food you wouldn't have to worry about supplies though you keep others as a back up, the only thing would be is fuel (however you could lower the fuel requirements if yoru ship has a deuterium and tritium reactor that has a breeder inside the reactor to make tritium so you can store more deuterium for better range and endurance and small amount of tritium for when starting the reactor or such) and maintenance (of course you can lower the maintenance cost further with automation) not to mention i think personally the smaller 18,000 crew on the 5km long UNSC Infinity than what it actually looks like it needs is realistic because you can reduce the crew with automation and such the zumwalt has the lowest maintenance about a 100 million a year compare to other U.S. navy ships, which are their much higher. crew numbers are crucial because a lot of that space is going to be taken up by equipment, mostly fuel, weapons, armor, electronics, etc.

Has anyone mentioned the size of a GSV in the Culture?

It's a matter for what is "too" large. Large ships are often better big reactors, better engines for long distance travel and in pick up speeds to match to exceed fighter bomber and interceptors speeds once the momentum is going. More weapons or larger weapons, or super accurate one prevent smaller craft from doing any attack runs, unless it manages some sort of stealth tech.

The way I look at it is that these are economies of multi planetary organizations capable of producing these large ships it’s form of force projection humans aren’t typically intimidated by smaller ships when our own side has bigger.
Additionally with some of these ships having smaller than expected crew sizes keep in mind automation is a increasingly common many things normally done by humans are now done by some form of robot I’d say sci-fi ships would have more droids than humans unless that setting had some form of A.I rebellion.

I thought the point of fiction was to be fun, not to be so incredibly realistic to an obsessive degree. If that's the point of your universe, so be it, but when you try and go after something like star wars or warhammer for prioritising massive fun ships over making things realistic, then you're just being dumb.

"If something has more mass, you need more thrust to move it at a reasonable speed"

True on earth, but not really in space. In space only the acceleration is affected, not the top speed. Of course the large ship still needs enough thrust to get to a reasonable speed in a reasonable amount of time, so the point does stand, but the exact details are off...

He's tired of big ships and I'm tired of horizontal ship design

I feel like a lot of the size/crew discrepancy comes from the fact that on earth there is gravity and the military wants to cram the most amount of people on as little space and therefore weight as possible. I mean have you ever seen the bunks on an aircraft carrier? Or their corridors? In space you dont have these constraints. The corridors and bunks in most SciFi are depicted as large multiple times their real counterparts. If every crew member gets 10x the volume the ship needs 10x the volume!
Also as you said these massive warships need a lot of supplies so a large portion of their size comes down to cargo and maybe even production. Also I think in future there might be a lot more automation so there is less crew for even bigger ships.
When I see SciFi my brain goes ape mode I really love big ships. Especially around the Imperial Star Destroyer up to Dreadnought size so anything between a Mile to 10-20Mile!

Wow so big

loved the sponsorship intro. And yeah some sci fi has gone a bit silly with ship size. Like big ships are cool, but not if every ship is always huge and powerful. A planet destroying super station being big makes sense, but for transports, battleships, etc its nice to have ones just big enough to do the job. (I think a bad offender here is the more recent voltron tv show, if you've seen it you know what I'm talking about.)

The only situation where a big oversized ship would make sense is if it was basically a flying planet. That means if it houses the entire nilitary structure, civilian structure and everything surrounding that. Having giantic oversized pure military ships is actually straight up dumb because they are expensive, much easier to lose control of (imagine boarders take control of an entire section, in small ships that would be little space in a big ship like that that would be an entire country worth of space. Goodluck trying to take control over thatvever again, how are you gonna find them in there?) The only idea why one of these would make sense from a military standpoint is if they are so bigbthat theyaare selfsufficient they could in theory uphold blockades for an indefinite time or siege for eternity. And in combat that they are too fat to die. After all if you need several dozen WMDs just to get to a vital area then its likely that that shop is going to live long enough to wipe out you before you wipe out it. These are the only two benefits I could imagine, however the coordination required to operate one of thede would be immense. And I dont think Ill exxaggerate but I am pretty certain that the only way to keep a ship this size running at a pace remotely comparable to that of a smaller ship would be if a majoritynof systems were automated. Otherwise the command chain and execution oder for orders would be so long that they wouldnt be able to react to anything in a reasonable time. Imagine being about to collapse with an asteroid and you would need a few hours just to get the order to raise shields down to the actual shield operators.

ok important thing about "scaling" a ship can be big, but lifesupport systems are often finate

you talk in depth about aircraft carriers... 330 feet with 25 decks and a crew of about 4500!!!!

except then you get an Ohio class, at 170m thats over 500 feet... with 6 decks, its almost the size of a ww2 aircraft carrier! but its got a crew of 155.

Typhoon class, 175m 160 crew?

Why? why are these ships so big... but have crews so small? Life support. Subs operate smaller crews because life support is finate.

SO... seeing a 500m starship with 20 decks, 1000 crew seems about normal.

I hate seeing writers make their ships giant and not give them a specialization. Take the republic cruiser from star wars. Its ostensibly a cruiser. It fights more like a battleship but its also a troop carrier, aircraft carrier, and command and control ship. In what way is that interesting at all besides "big ship do it all"? Its also completely unrealistic. Why would you want a thousand troops and hundreds of aircraft have to ride on a ship that may be called to engage directly with enemy combatants? Why should your direct combatant be burdened by carrying troops and aircraft? When instead these roles could be better handled, at better cost and better efficiency, by multiple ships and support vessels? You may say "how does this matter at all to the story?" The answer is how am I supposed to take your characters and factions serious if they don't seem to even follow logic in designing their ships? Wouldn't it be cooler if the writers put in the effort to think about logistics and doctrine, making a ship feel like its a part of an actual navy versus "big ship do all, big whoo"

For the halo ships, they usually have an AI that can automate almost all functions that you could also use a human for tbh. Comms, scanning systems, gunnery, etc can all be operated by an AI quicker and more efficiently than a human.

Interesting that Kyle Hill just did a video explaining why there should not be any small ships in space sci Fi.

Another way of making gigantic ships is to have the FTL drives require a truly massive volume as a minimum standard to even work. This would immediately force interstellar ships to need to be a certain minimum size, and to give them flexibility, designers would increase the size enough to allow them to bring along smaller non-FTL ships that can be used once they arrive.

Enter the ship from SpaceBalls

Macross colony ship also huge! And can turn into mecha!

A couple arguments in favor of supersized ships: A larger surface area means greater ability to radiate heat, room for more redundant systems, room for more and/or larger reactors, and typically speaking a better ratio of force multiplication to crew requirements, as with sufficient automation crew requirements will grow linearly with the functional systems of the vessel- reactors, weapons, scanner arrays, whatever- but the size and therefore capacity and overall integrity of the vessel (assuming competent designers) will grow exponentially. Supersized vessels with crew compliments that seem incredibly small by our modern standards are, tactically, more akin to a mobile fortress meant to soak damage and control territory. We see a lot of this in Star Wars: Capital ships go down with a slowness that almost seems designed for cinematic effect, giving most or all of the crew time to evacuate via shuttles, escape pods, or whatever else is in the hangar opposite the incoming fire. Maybe one or a handful of crew members stay behind for a 'last hurrah' to fire the big gun or ram an enemy ship- but it's surprisingly normal for most of a massive ship's crew and passengers to escape outright.

This isn't entirely cinematic effect; unlike your Millenium Falcons and X-Wings, a capital ship takes a LOT of ordinance to completely destroy, and its main reactor is going to be in the most well-armored part of the hull if you want to capitalize on destabilizing the reactor to take down the vessel. I'm not clear if, like Star Trek, arbitrary force fields can be used for damage control- but with sufficient honeycombing, this isn't necessary anyhow.

TL;DR: The main utility of supersized ships, in my opinion, is as mobile fortresses. They're meant to carry lots of weapons and take lots of damage- and compared to smaller vessels, the ratio of crew escaped versus KIA in the event of one going down can be expected to be much higher.

I disagree, especially in regards to the star destroyers. They also serve as troop transports and space carriers for tie-fighters. It just depends on the context.

To be honest, the reason why large starships in franchises like Star Wars is because they have the resources, flexibility, man and alien power to build huge ships.

Really? Gigant ass ships and structures are some of my favorite things in SciFi.
You can also argue that AI an automation play a significant roll in the reduction of crew members needed to pilot such massive ships, but most likely is due to lack of research of the topic 🤷🏻‍♂️

In Star Trek, the Enterprise D was considered massive and was the largest Starfleet vessel of that era. Yet it is still half the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer.
😁

Well that's too damn bad!

In general I don't mind anything in the 1-1,5 km range (I absolutely love the reimagined Battlestar Galactica). 19km range (Executor) is kinda getting stupidly big.

I mean when the empire (in star wars) has control of and access to the resources of a significant portion of an entire galaxy, why wouldnt they want to use those resources effectively? I dont exactly know what to call it but there is a law of nature that the larger something is the more efficient it is, trains are more efficient than cars as an example. Larger ships can carry more of all resources while simultaneously being more efficient on fuel with their carrying capacity

You kidding me? A few kilometers long is tiny. In space, bigger = better, and as long as you don't try and land the damned thing you should build as large as your technology level would permit.

Complaining that the ship is much too large for its crew and asking what they do with all that space and then claiming that they would need vast numbers of support ships is blatantly silly.

A single well industrialized solar system should be able to afford to build hundreds mile long battleships with less and 5% of their GNP.

This is literally the problem facing the modern day USN. We built supercarriers too big and expensive to protect and tiny patrol ships that we can't build enough of and can't take a hit or hit back anyway.

My favorite one is Mass Effect 2. They destroy the first Normandy then they Design, build, outfit, and crew the entire thing in 2 years. Even if it's automated to build a space faring warship 200 meters long with state of the art systems and tech that all just so happen to be perfectly compatible with one another is an absolutely crazy feat even for Mass Effect standards. Also how tf does the Collector ship even know the Normandy was even there? Not everything needs to be explained but considering we can hide from Reapers in ME3 that's a pretty big deal.

Finally a vid that makes a point ive been thinking for years!

The problem is it actually takes a mathematical mind to workout that an object twice the length ( with other proportions being equal ) ends up having 8x the volume.

Hence what i find most disappointing is not the paltry crew numbers associated with these gargantuan ships (you'd assume the AI /automation is gonna handle a lotta functions), but rather the pathetoc cargo/support ship/fighter carrying capacity of these.

I mean a real life 300m x 80m x 70m aircraft carrier can hold circa 100 aircraft, you would think a ship 10x larger in each dimension in volumetric terms should be able to hold therefore 1000x more. I. E. 100k space fighters. But nope they are often 'impressively' able to carry a few hundred or so.

Someone seriously needs a future IKEA to help make their internal spaces more efficient!

My problem with oversized ships is when they enter the atmosphere of a large planetary body. All that metal should be ripping itself apart. That artificial gravity only needs to overcome the (lack of) gravity of space and need only apply to the crew, it would take orders of magnitude more power to overcome the gravity of a planet to keep the ship itself together. I assume atleast, i don't actually know, but my gut is saying a 10 kilometer vessel would have a pretty tough time in a gravity well.

They’re cool though.

These giant 5km+ dreadnoughts are exceedingly rare with only a few dozen at most existing

what's too big and what's too small when running around. think about here on earth we have highways and roads. if traveling say from new york to la would you take your family car or would go with a u-haul? of course the one which doesn't have the kids of is the right pick on that run. but size might be too small with an x-wing if flying more then 1 person but super star destroyer was just right. also recall the ships were that big to create jobs for lowly crewmen by the hundreds of millions on them let alone support yards and so on.

How about having them huge and thousands of them in hiding that nobody seems to have noticed supplying the materials or staffing for?

I mean if you think about the actual role of the Imperial star destroyer it has to be massive, but really anything bigger than that is insane.

To be fair for the Infinity, she was designed to be a species refuge ship, able to carry a huge population if the covenant destroyed Earth. She only needs a crew of 30 000 for her new combat role, but she could carry a lot more.

Independence Day: Resurgence Mothership only feels like just a space station rather than an actual space ship, and there's no reason for it to be that massive when its goal is to harvest the planet when they could've have a harvesting ship three times smaller than the previous Mothership.

There was a magazine cover from the 1940s -- I forget if it was from Amazing Stories or Astounding SF/SF -- that showed what appeared to be a B-17 or similar aircraft. Except this "B-17" was loading passengers via escalator ... and from the looks of it was loading the entire population of New York City. That's how long gigantism has been with SF, and how stupid it can get.

Does anyone remember when the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 was considered a "huge" starship for its time?

The Star Destroyers seem practical enough to me, but the bigger ones get a bit silly. The Star Destroyer is effective since it isn’t trying to do anything high level. It’s just a combat vessel through and through and achieves that effectively because its scale provides it with materiel for a ton of firepower and independent capability, since it is able to defend itself with almost no diminished returns, unlike something like the Executor, which tries to fill a role that does not benefit from scale and thus wastes the useful space it takes up with a decreased efficiency in all the things it could have actually been practical in.

Larger ships can have less personnel due to a higher usage of automation (i.e. why the Pegasus needed less personnel than Galactica despite being larger).