How big of a ship can SFC2 handle?

[CaptainPierce]

I've recently gotten off my lazy butt and started in again on converting Trekmods ships into SFC2. The first one I did, the Dominion "Leviathan" class carrier, is giving me some problems: enemy ships seem to be able to "park" underneath it, inside my weapons coverage, and just shoot up my rear shields with impunity. The ship is nearly 2km long--is that my problem? Am I pushing SFC2 beyond what it can handle? How do people put things like Borg Cubes into the game, which should (by rights) be even bigger? Is a certain compromise in scale necessary to work with this game? Or am I missing something?

[Wicked Zombie]

Technically, all ships should have a limit on their scale in-game for shear playability reasons. One of the drawbacks in SFC is that there are no limitations on ship-to-ship interactions and they tend to fly 'through' each other despite their scale and shields. So if a ship is a kilometer long, the weapon arcs and blind spots on the ship are much more critical than on a smaller ship.

You can have a ship as big as you want as far as I know, but the only way to prevent these 'crossover' problems is to set up a ship as a planet or asteroid to allow for collisions and possibly get rid of the weapon arc issue. Though I think that prevents the ship from being able to move...kind of a drawback in and of itself. You could also give the ship better weapons coverage with wider arcs and increase shield and power levels.

I've got a few 'huge' ships, namely the Borg Cube, Mauler, and Realm Conqueror, that aren't exactly playable in the game because of these very problems. I usually have smaller alternate versions for this very reason which is probably the only way to solve things. It may take away the shock value/realism of having a super-sized starship, but the size doesn't help their capabilities in SFC's case so you might have to resort to using a smaller version to represent it.

[CaptainPierce]

Thanks for the advice, WZ. I've been playing your Borg Cube (which seems to be roughly 3km compared to the stock FCA) a little, and have definitely noticed how the usual problem of ships flying through each other has been amplified. Ships don't, however, seem to get "stuck" inside it like they do with the one I'm working on, which is actually smaller...

[alchemist]

Indeed.

If only George Lucas could read this, lol.