Ship types and the battle system

Yeah, I see the sens e in your words, the Dragon Class is not effective against starfighters and bombers any more, and only has slight own defences ( shields and transporters ) against them. That would amke them a Ships of the line, if that is where Dreadnaughts are put. Furthermore I never ignored your posts, I just tried to give more detail to convince you of my opinion.

But one thing. You can produe more energy if you have more reactors. with ahigh enough number you can produce enough energy to maintain the entire system. You don´t always need Zero-point energy ( what is as far as I know low Tier 1 and Tier 0, and so sofar not avaliable to Troodontids ) in order to fix energy problems.

I know that you said that, I never doubt that. I only wanted to point out that the problem of too less energy could be fixed with more reactors. Personally I tend to the idea to use more reactors on a single ship, mainly because Troodontid weapon systems, shields, cloaks, teleporters, drives, etc. tend to drain much energy. In my mind each system ( weapons, shield, drives ) has an own reactor to provide the neccessary energy.

But there's also other factors that need to be taken into account when you make ships larger. Larger ships have much higher mass, requiring increasingly more powerful engines and fuel. You'll also need the alloys strong enough that the ship won't rip itself apart under its own forces. Then there's others, including a couple more plot-proof factors like cost.

I agree that there can be that circle and that it stops ships from becoming planet sized, but if an empire is advanced enough it can negate the forces ( see Drakodominatus and Xhodocto ). But also young empires can have ships of enormous ize ( I asked Wormy about that ), though they acn produce less.

The reactor problem always depends on the used energy source, while advanced ships can produce fuel during missions ( with replicators ).

The costs are problems for almost any empire though the Troodonids are not included in those, because they lack a money system.

On the other hand biggers hips tend to look more fearsome and have higher durability to weapons as well as more space for cargo ( this are the causes why the Troodontids build "huge" ships )