Sorta - I might as well repost the purpose of the thread (and it has evolved slightly since the first post)
[size=120]The purpose of this thread is for people to post their opinion on these types of ship, while it would be awesome if a common consensus could be reached and we get consistency across the mods - It will be ultimately up to the modder to decide if they wish to use the suggestions here or go with their own.[/size]
so like I said, matter of opinion is all it boils down to, but ignore everything after that 
Yes and no . .
We could end up with an consensus with ship sizes and when you load up several mods you will have a sort of continum. So a Ancient Dread is equal to a Deserters Dread.
If a consensus is reached i will be changing Unity to match
The problem is, large capital ships (ie, Levi’s) exist for a reason. Sure they may not be the most efficient) but they have a role. Someone mentioned the honorverse earlier and something like their “Wall of battle” (I use a modified version for my missile fleet, works REALLY well) is one role you could put them in. Alternitavly, there’s teh concept of the “shield-r***” from AstroEmpires. Sure, Levi’s may not have the best armor/power to credit ratio, but the SLAUGHTER smaller ships in huge numbers do to strong defenses, and lots and lots of powerful guns.
I disagree that the best utilization of large capital ships (sDN, Titans, Levi’s, deathstar-type-things) is fixed/fortified location attacks. They may require more planning and elegance in use, but they’re FAR better as trapping units. Let’s imagine a scenario in a GSB 2.25 campaign. There’s a rebel Missile fleet, running from two other players. he’s using a GIANT Cruiser-Missile fleet, and his FT defenses are surprisingly effective enough (or the map has some MASSIVE anti-FT things in place, enough to make FT fleets not worth it). The other players are using capital ships, with a fast cruiser energy fleet chasing. they send their capital’s ahead, using them to block access to key systems, while moving more around to act as giant walls in space, limiting where he can go. They’re the ultimate in Area-Denial! Each of the LARGE capital’s (SDN and Levi’s) should be NIGHTMARISH! Sure, only 1-4 would fit onto the map at Caspian-IV, but those 1-4 would also faceroll the AI fleets.
just chipping in regarding ship size limits…
If you wanted to have space stations, you could theoretically already build it in 4 different sections, as 4 different ships and just put them in a fixed location where they but-up perfectly against each other, like 4 quadrants of the death star.
That way you can even have a quarter of your space station destroyed at a time.
Just musing out loud 
i love how cliff “stirrs the pot” with handgrenades
awesome idea!
although, the idea has struck me before that i could design modular space station. but totaly forgot about it!
I had a similar idea for space stations (which would also work for modular ships). Basically, you create larger than usual modules, create a ship hull with a completely blank/transparent image, give it turret/hardpoints at the right locations, and your items will be right up against each other. If you design the module graphics so that they meet nicely then you have instant modular ships.
the only problem with that, is that the only modules that you can make visible is turrets. and they move!
but thats another idea that would work for gsb2! instead of choosing premade hulls you can choose a starting point, like a bridge or cockpit, and add ship pieces to it. these ship pieces have their own stats, weight, bonuses and hardpoints.
some ship pieces could have room for more ship pieces to be attached…
i think this would take the game to a whole new level!
thoughts?
Now you’ve reminded me why I ditched the idea. Of course it can’t be done, silly Kemp. I swear, sometimes my memory is out to get me.
Oh, ideas are flowing right now. Shame I have a ton of work for the next few days. 
lucky for me, i dont 
This numbers probably would help getting rid of the OPness my not released dreadnought modules are having. Tweaking the hull capacity could be the solution…
The problem I see is that those tight hp differences between the biggest classes may leave few room for variety between hulls but that will end up being each modder’s decision anyway.
50hp and 100 standard? That’s a total of 150 slots. 150 squares on the ship design screen. Good luck creating designs with a hull like that using the existing ship editor.
People won’t like to see only square slots in the editor screen when placing the modules. Hell, some people the more time they need to spend customizing the ship the probabilities of them giving up will start increasing a lot (unless the user is someone who likes building stuff which I think most of us here are but I prefer avoiding certain surprises…).
You can perfectly make them I only say that they would be a pain to design later…
(There’s always the premade ships option but then a great part of the gameplay is lost, the ship design screen)
I’m watching closely the opinions of both threads in order to change 3xper1ment4l according to the consensus reached here
The problem I had while applying this stations by parts idea is that they got knocked back by enemy fire, randomly pushing the parts around after some serious pounding. If I recall correctly, not even a lot of 9999 weight modules avoided that goddamn effect (knockback is calculated from the damage dealt and the total weight of the ship according to the tests I’ve done). Making parts with 10 hp is not something in my plans.
That stations idea was something I tested loooong ago so feel free anybody to prove me it can be done right with the actual GSB version.
The tactical catch I see with this is that if and when any single segment of your n-part station is destroyed, the explosion will severely damage the other n aligned parts. That’s a pretty ugly tradeoff IMO, but you’re the author. :-,
Cliff said that because in the original Star Wars mod for this game that is how the creator built the death star. At that point in the game’s development phase there wasn’t a knockback effect, the power generator explosions were small or non-existent, and we couldn’t make any ships larger than about 250 without crashing the game.
I actually think that having the power generator damage works quite well with multi-part space stations because in reality losing one section of a space station is going to cause massive damage to the rest. The ship knockback effect however is an issue that will most likely prevent anyone from doing this.
Hey there! I know I’ve not made my presence known in a while, but I saw these today and just couldn’t resist. for me, I put capital-ship classes as such:
from largest to smallest:
Light cruisers, cruisers, heavy and battlecruisers.
then I have ‘supercapital’ ships;
battleships, dreadnoughts, and superDreadnoughts.
light cruisers are mainly for PD or low-energy/crew weapons, with lots of turrets and few module slots.
Cruisers are middling-range, with fairly even module ant turrets slots.
Heavy cruisers are light (relatively) on the guns in favor of modules. mainly for “support ship” roles like light carrier and such.
Battlecruisers are the pinnacle of capital-ship tech, boating overwhelming firepower and lots of modules. in a group without Supercapital, these are usually the flagship.
battleships are basically the battlecruiser’s bigger, meaner brother. essentially the same, but able to mount enough generators for bigger weapons.
dreadnoughts tend to be module-heavy, but it’s really a matter of preference at this point.
Superdreads are like the ‘leviathan’ designation, ships so big that you usually only have one…
light cruisers tend to be in the low ranges 100-145, cruisers vary between 150-200, hv. cruisers and battlecruisers are usally in a 180-250 range.
battleships are in that 280-330 range, with dreads in 300-400 and Super dreads as anything bigger.
I also have freighter classes, light, med, and hvy, but I haven’t made any yet.
smallest to largest?
Whups!
guess that what I get for posting at 5 AM ^^;
yes, I mean smallest to largest.
sorry, Idk if this counts as a necrothreadomancy or whatever, but I had an idea that I thought would fit nicely in here.
So what if…
Dreads, Juggers, and Levs all had 6-9 hardpoints…
But…
Big turrets?
-Like the MOAT turrets that will be in the Union mod. You may be saying, ‘oh, theres no way to restrict the modules to the type of ship you want and not have it be available to all cruisers,’ but there is:
-Say I want my big giganto turret to have a cost of 250. I put 2.5 in the cost for the module, then a cost boost of 10000% for the dread/jugger/lev hull. This way the only practical turrets for this ship will be the giant ones. To prevent smaller ships from using the big turrets, make the turret need 7,000 power. Then give the hull a 10000% powerboost. You can do that same thing with standard modules, so that you can have dread/jugger/lev amror/shields/crew etc…
Idk if this has been done before, please correct me if this has.
The problem with huge power boosts is that when the ship goes up, so does the rest of the fleet 
so its not dependent upon the reactors base power output, its the end output after bonusses? hm… That could open up new possibilities…