I don't necessarily disagree with the end result of what you want, but I want to disagree with the comparison to modern warfare, which I have seen a few different places on the forums. To assume that the dynamics of future warfare are the same as current warfare is a huge fallacy. In contemporary warfare small, agile units and vehicles are especially useful because our weapons are not particularly accurate. Armor is less useful because weapons are powerful enough to penetrate it. It is not hard to imagine that in the near future computer targeting could vastly improve, That, combined with faster ammunition speeds, could create weapons that are pinpoint accurate, even against very fast targets. If that happens; small, quick craft lose almost all of their advantage. If you can hit anything, then you want craft that can take and dish out more punishment. Similarly, if armor technology were to take a leap ahead of weapons technology, suddenly heavily armored units could become very valuable, even if they are easy to hit.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be better balance between many small ships and fewer large ships. I am just saying that making an argument for a game set in the future based on current technology is flawed. The reason to do it would be that it makes the game more fun and dynamic, not that it reflects the current military paradigm.

Carriers/fighters are the things I'm looking forward too the most.  Been a long time coming, and I hope Stardock does it good.

Well one thing to keep in mind is in modern warfare a single F22 is more than capable of taking out a Carrier or Battleship with a single missile.  That is not the case is most futuristic space combat media examples. 

In Star Wars or Battle Star Galactica a single fighter would NEVER be able to take down one of the larger battle ships. They might be able to slowly accumulate damage on them, maybe take out a gun or two or maybe a sensor pod, but they would never destroy them.  That is the roll of other Capital ships.

In most future-ish game sims Carriers usually serve the roll of fighter screens or taking out enemy support units like frigates or corvettes.  They tend to do very poorly against Capital ships designed to fight other Capital ships.

I don't necessarily disagree with the end result of what you want, but I want to disagree with the comparison to modern warfare, which I have seen a few different places on the forums. To assume that the dynamics of future warfare are the same as current warfare is a huge fallacy. In contemporary warfare small, agile units and vehicles are especially useful because our weapons are not particularly accurate. Armor is less useful because weapons are powerful enough to penetrate it. It is not hard to imagine that in the near future computer targeting could vastly improve, That, combined with faster ammunition speeds, could create weapons that are pinpoint accurate, even against very fast targets. If that happens; small, quick craft lose almost all of their advantage. If you can hit anything, then you want craft that can take and dish out more punishment. Similarly, if armor technology were to take a leap ahead of weapons technology, suddenly heavily armored units could become very valuable, even if they are easy to hit.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be better balance between many small ships and fewer large ships. I am just saying that making an argument for a game set in the future based on current technology is flawed. The reason to do it would be that it makes the game more fun and dynamic, not that it reflects the current military paradigm.

The argument that targeting systems of the future will provide pinpoint accuracy and take out fast targets is flawed.  All through our history, technology has provided more sophisticated weaponry and targeting systems to one side of a conflict.  And, yet, those same forces experienced defeat on the battle field. Overwhelming numbers can neutralize any force.  The Chinese did it to us in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir; Russia did it to the Germans in the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Zulus did it to the British in the Battle of Isandlwana.  The defeated force possessed technologically advanced weaponry and the victor just provided overwhelming numbers.  But, the real question is can a light fighter type ship be effective against a large armada.   Pirate ships should fall into this category and in an asymmetrical warfare role.  Further, the US Military is investing in smaller, lighter, and more lethal force (i.e., Special Forces).  There is something to be said about a light forces that keeps gnawing away at those big heavy capital ships.  You need deep pockets to keep up with the war of attrition, but it is possible.        

I have to disagree with your entire premise. Future combat will encroach on relativistic velocities, where small agile ships will be able to cover HUGE areas of space in short periods of time. AI assisted targeting, laser/new weapon tech will make speed and maneuverability the most important factor. Imagine being launched from a carrier as a fighter craft several AU's out from the sun. you accelerate towards your targets, and because there is no resistance in the form of air etc. you can reach speeds close to C. Say you are traveling at .9C and merely let a few tennis-ball sized spheres of Tungsten drift forward on your original trajectory as you slow down.

These spheres will be carrying a velocity of .90C and slow large targets would be completely obliterated if only one of these landed with such a devastating force. If you can accelerate to say .97C (entirely plausible and possible within the laws of physics) Your initial light signal when you were launched will only be minutes if not seconds ahead of your ship. So once an enemy sees your ship way out on the edge of the solarsystem, you're actually only 20 seconds away from the inner solarsystem, and your nice little tungsten shots will slam into any ship too slow to move. Targeting at such high velocities is beyond human ability, so AI targeting would be required to calculate these shots and how they will relate to the curvature of space-time, particulate matter etc.

Once the surprise is lost then targeting with dumb munitions such as these will be quite difficult and lower speed combat will serve a purpose. Missiles, energy weapons etc. would pack a greater punch at lower speeds.

Ship roles and AI to govern the targeting is essential to good game-play and immersion, and basing strategies on modern day laws of physics or scientific theory is perfectly acceptable.

The thing about space is smaller craft are not going to be faster, they might be a bit more maneuverable (which is almost a moot point in such a vast area) but a battleship is going to be able to simply outrun them.

Destroyer sized hulls should be the smallest for any space warfare. Fighters would only be good in planetary actions.

Though something that would work is a ship that deploys a bunch of drone weapons platforms. They don't zip around like a bunch of mosquitoes on crack, but rather sit there and lay down a torrent of withering fire. You would have a hard time taking them all out if they dispersed and they would have better fields of fire, allowing for more concentrated firepower than turrets on the surface of a ship.

EDIT: If such a system was implimented, they could be used more effectively on the defense, having their drones ready to rock immediately. On the attack they would need to take the time to deploy after battle was joined (as the drones would be too slow to move into the attack while disembarked)

For the military folks, dont think of them in terms of a carrier, think of them working like a team of infantry with ATGMs deploying from an APC, with conventional battleships like the MBTs

I'm pretty sure you didn't understand my premise, so here it is: There are many ways future tech could develop, particularly relevant to this discussion, in the areas of targeting vs. evasive capabilities and damage mitigation vs. weapon power. That is one of the fun things about a future setting: we get to write the rules, because we have no idea what the rules will actually be. Given this, balance between large and small ships should be based on what feels the most fun, not on the realities of contemporary warfare. Because the tech is made-up it can be adjusted to fit the balance that works best for the game.

The reason I posted is not because I disagree with the premise of the OP, but because as we discuss what will be best for the game, we should do it in terms of the game, not in terms of contemporary or hypothetical future technology.

After its shields had been taken down by the concentrated fire of the Rebel fleet, and I would tend to think that a fair amount of luck was involved in that crash actually causing the Executor's demise - there are, after all, only about 20 seconds between the time the A-Wing hits the bridge and the time Executor hits the Death Star. Had there been more time for damage control teams to respond, I would expect that an auxiliary command center would have been able to reassert control over the ship and prevent it from ramming the Death Star.

No idea about Battle Star Galactica, but the two Death Stars are among the largest capital ships I can think of in any work of science fiction (and yes, at the very least the first Death Star is a ship rather than a station, and there wouldn't be much point to the second if it were not also mobile), and both of these were destroyed by a handful of fighters. Granted, the first arguably fell to a design flaw and the second could be said to have fallen due to its incomplete state, but they are nevertheless examples of capital ships destroyed by the action of a small number of fighters.

Smaller size vessels have the potential to have significantly better acceleration rates than the larger vessels have, even if the engines on the smaller craft aren't really as 'good' as the engines on the larger craft. If we make the simplistic assumption that all of our designs follow the same basic plan, then we can say that the ship's mass goes up with the cube of its length and its rear surface area goes up with the square of its length. Thus, in order for the acceleration rates to be constant across all sizes, the engine exhaust pressure must increase linearly with the ship's length.

In reality, of course, you're not going to be using the same basic plan for all ship sizes, and a ship's mass is likely to increase somewhat faster than its volume as you require greater strength in the various members for larger structures. I also could not say whether or not you could expect to be able to increase the exhaust pressure of the engines at least linearly with the length of the vessel if all you do to change a design is multiply its dimensions by a scaling factor.

I would also point out that the smaller vessels are likely to be more agile because the bending stresses involved in turning are related to the size and distribution of the vessel about the axis of rotation. While there could be a size of vessel beneath which making the ship smaller will not allow you to make it turn faster due to other design considerations, there is a point where the size of the vessel will become an impediment to its ability to turn.

There is a maximum speed under real physics, and while aerodynamics are effectively immaterial in space there are other reasons why you might wish to keep the profile of the ship small. Nor is it necessarily the case that your space ships do not need to consider atmospheric performance, though it's relatively unlikely in my opinion that a large capital ship would be designed to be capable of atmospheric flight (though we must remember that, at least in Galactic Civilizations II, the ships are built at the planets; while the larger vessels are almost certainly built in orbital shipyards, I would not consider it surprising if the smaller vessels were constructed on the planet's surface, and so aerodynamics would not be something that could be completely ignored).

I agree.  This is a game.  More specifically, this is a science fiction game and ultimately it is meant to be fun.  Space fighters are cool staples of science fiction, and based on this,  I think they should have been introduced long ago whether or not they make sense according to what we presently perceive  as science fact.

It's funny, but I don't recall ever seeing any arguments on the Fallen Enchantress boards about dragons not being scientifically possible.  I wonder what's behind all the apparent huff over fighters in Galciv.

I guess what I should have emphasized was that starfighters are "cool staples of science fiction".  I'm not advocating that just because Star Trek has food replicators, that we should have them in Galciv as well.  I just think that starfighters are THAT iconic to this genre.  Sure, maybe magic can't make food in the Harry Potter universe like it apparently can in the Death Gate Cycle, but they both DO have magic (I assume - not familiar either).  I guess my point is that something as classic as starfighters belong in a game like Galciv simply because of there inherent coolness.  To NOT include them would be like making a vegetarian hamburger.  Certainly possible, but it wouldn't taste as good.

Clouds of fighters swarming around strafing capital ships are a huge part of the backdrop of what a lot of people imagine a space battle to look like (well, it is for me anyway).  The notion is cool, fun, and not so far of an imaginary leap as a lot of other systems that are already included in the game.  Some things just fit, and I think carrier-based starfighters surely do.

i must disagree ejecting the warp core only accounted for about 5% of the solutions at least 50% of problems were solved by connecting the affected system to the deflector dish

It's not about the engine. It's about the energy required. Say we use a tech like Ion Propulsion. It derives a given thrust for a certain amount of energy. To increase the thrust we must increase the power (size) of the engine, adding to it's mass. It's a viscous cycle.

To accelerate in Space in micro gravity at high speeds it would be lethal to any organic entity inside if you were accelerating through space. Especially with sudden changes in vector.

The way to avoid this is to free-fall through space as a means to accelerate. If you are free falling you do not experience the crushing forces of acceleration. You can free fall by warping space-time infront of the ship to different amounts. Generating a micro-singularity would accomplish this. No wif you had a cerain amount of energy you could generate in a power-source for a ship you could generate a micro-singularity of a certain size.

You would have to have this micro singularity flash into and out of existence at tiny fractions of a millimeter in succession to avoid having any mass (the ship) cross the event horizon giving the micro-singularity actual mass and a means to exist independent of the whatever-tech can create them, as a micro singularity creates a small but incredibly high gradient warp in space-time a smaller ship will fall rather fast. A larger ship would fall at a slower rate unless you could create a larger warp in space time (requires more energy). The smaller ship has less of a sort of a resistance to leave the space curvature it's on thus falls at a faster rate. Both ships can hit the desired top speed as there is nothing limiting it except for the gradient of the space-time curve. If it's a steep enough curve then the ships can reach .99C but never the speed of light. EVER.

The only thing that can accelerate faster than the speed of light is space-time itself (proven by our understanding of physics and observations close to whatever we see as the "big bang" event. To move a ship faster than light you have to envelope the ship in space-time creating it's own sort of mini-space or universe for lack of a better term and then move that space-time in relation to the surrounding space-time.

Once a ship is moving at close to the speed of light the space-time around it is quite distorted and finishing off the "bubble" of space time around the vessel would take less energy as the velocity of the ship is doing most of the work.

The role of a fighter craft of lower mass would serve the purpose of striking larger ships before the larger ships of an attacking force arrive in the area of space the battle will commence. To stop smaller craft from accomplishing this goal you have to kill them off either by long-range fire, objects they hit in their approach or other vessels designed to intercept them. Once they are in close combat range their lower mass would equate to greater maneuverability, as to accelerate a more massive ship would require a more advanced power source and that more advanced power source could be applied to less massive ships thus the differential in maneuverability and acceleration would be preserved. So the role of the lower mass ship is still relevant.

There is a work of fiction that uses the known laws and proposed and supposed laws of physics to create a quite engaging story and method of combat/future world.

I stumbled upon it and was pleased how true to actual physical laws it adheres to. It's called the Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas. It's a must-read I say.

Oh, I don't know about that. You do always use the FTL drive for map movement, but it's fairly clear that movement within a system takes place at far less than the speed of light for all but the fastest of GCII ships, unless you assume that the ship is not moving for large fractions of the time it spends in the tiles around planets and stars even when it's just passing through or that each action takes wildly different amounts of time. After all, each ship gets to take so many actions per turn, and each turn is 1 week long. Therefore, each action takes roughly 1/(number of actions per turn) weeks to resolve. Earth is only about 8 light-minutes from the Sun, but it would require about 2 move actions to travel from Earth to Sol in GCII (could be more, on occasion), yet 8 minutes is about one twelve hundredth of a week when the fastest GCII ships have something like 50 moves per turn. Beyond that, combat almost certainly takes place at subluminal velocities, as lasers are a practical weapon and as depicted in the combat viewer of GCII propagate significantly faster than ships, missiles, and mass drivers move.

As far as counter-arguments to using a roughly even division of time between move-actions go, I'll just say that if it doesn't take roughly as long to travel 1 tile in the neighborhood of a star or planet as it does to travel 1 tile in deep space, there's no reason to draw the map the way that GCII and GCIII do, as you'd be able to depart the system in sufficiently little time that it would have no real impact on your ability to travel to another location. As far as counter-arguments for assuming that the ship is taking all the time allotted to a move action for whatever action it's undertaking, answer me this: how much sense does it make for the ship to not move for some fraction of the time?