Why not build bigger dreadnoughts?

I'm not completely sure, but if I recall correctly, wasn't there a "washington-style" (per WW2 for reference) treaty in which max ship size was established? The Batarians did not sign such a treaty and were building a bigger fleet

Because larger ships are prohibitively expensive to build, maintain and use in terms of fuel, power and range. Mass Effect fields require more power the larger the field is and the more mass it reduces. This has the direct consequence of drastically reducing the ship's discharge limit and its power efficiency.

The ONLY solution to this problem is to improve the efficiency of FTL drives so that they draw less power and run longer before needing to discharge.

A good analogy are WW1 tanks - the tank engines at that time weren't very powerful, so they moved slowly, got stuck easily and guzzled absurd amounts of fuel. The weak engines also couldn't support the weight of overly thick armor or heavy weaponry.

When the engines were improved in the two decades leading up to WW2, things had changed. Now the tanks were incredibly fast and durable compared to their WW1 counterparts, and had massive main guns that put all WW1 tank guns to shame.

So to answer the question of the thread: because the necessary technology has yet to be invented.

Manoeuvrability. Increasing mass slows your acceleration. Warships need to be able to dodge - otherwise you're increasing your enemies effective range. They also need to be get where they're needed rapidly. . Of course this assumes you can't just scale engine power smoothly with ship size, but the lore certainly seems to indicate that's true.

Also, putting too many resources into a single ship is questionable strategy. Firstly because it makes them too much of a loss if they're destroyed. Secondly because it would limit your ability to flexibly respond to threats if your military power comes in too big lumps.

I'm sure it would be possible to create such a huge warship, but presumably practical experience and battle simulations have led to the races of the galaxy accepting ~1km length as the optimal "bang for the buck" with the technologies they have available.

Also, shooting at extreme ranges you're going to have issues that your sensors are limited to the speed of light. So no matter how fast your gun is, you're accuracy is going to be limited because you've not got real time information. Though you could mitigate this by employing "spotter" frigates, I guess.

Also, the Battle of Palaven codex in ME3 allows the Turians to make a short FTL "jump" to essentially negate the Reaper range advantage. I don't really like this, because I think it fits poorly with other lore, but if you accept ships do have this sort of capacity its a strong argument against focusing on range as an advantage in ship design.

You would lose manoubrability, that's for sure. It happened with the Reapers and they are only slightly bigger than your average dreadnought. But that's a trade off armies have done all the time throught history. An aircraft carrier is huge because it needs to, even if it's slower or less manouverable than a battlecruiser or some smaller vessel. A larger dreadnought would make up for it by firing much farther distances and hitting much harder.

Same thing as before. Putting huge amount of resources in a single ship is a risky, but it's worse than not doing it. That's why the US have enormoues aircraft carriers.

A safe assumption, but one not supported by any evidence. Indeed, larger dreadnoughts seems to get advantages, like the Geth one.

Aiming would be harder, probably. But the very threat of such a ship inside your system would be problematic. I mean, you can also pound planets or space stations. And they can't dodge.

Yes, I was thinking that when I mentioned the Reapers earlier. But as you said, it's a bit problematic. It sure would make you question build larger ships, but then, it would make you question buildings big ships at all. Why not just put a drone armed with multiple nuclear ordinances and jump it inside the enemy fleet?

The Geth did build one oversized Superdreadnaught, it alone was capable of holding out against the whole Quarian fleet, it was one of few things blocking Quarian advance which allowed the Geth to fight back at all.

It was likely built to help the Geth Against the reapers, but I'm pretty sure it would have fallen to a full Reaper invasion. Trying to Out gun and out shield the Reapers was pure delusion on the part of the Geth... Though desperation knows no limits I guess.

It's cost prohibitive mainly, but there are also strategic considerations. Is it better to have an entire fleet of dreadnoughts or one super dreadnought? It might parallel the German WW2 battleship Bismark which was the biggest thing going at the time but lasted less than a year, disabled by British WWI biplanes, and finished off by their navy. Just my 2 cents.

Geth aren't prone to delusional thinking. They are prone to sound planning. It was likely built for the exact purpose it served, that of a massive space bulwark against any potential aggressor, with the quarians at the top of that list of potentials.



Not sure if serious? I assume you're being intentionally obtuse, based upon your earlier posts on closely related topics.

You know the Andromeda Initiative is a special case. It's a reach; an asspull, as we all expected, in order to get us to a new galaxy. It's not too bad as asspulls go, but I'd not try to start making assumptions about "what's easy" based upon what the Ai has achieved; especially before we've played the game and seen any context. It could be that one or more trillionaires poured their entire fortunes into the Ai.

The Crucible was similarly unique. The galaxy could afford to go all-in, since the alternative was extinction.

The proper answer to the question in the OP is the one posted above by Arcian .

Well, dreadnought still have to hit their targets and in order to do that, they need to line up their main guns. We now that size impact maneuverability and that sensors in the ME universe are sub-light ... at least as far as we know now, wouldn't be surprised if the AI also developed FTL sensors, I mean they kinda had to to take long range scans of the helios cluster or their measurements would be 2.4+ million years out of date and useless (not much of an asspull, yea right).

*cough* Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, without FTL sensors, the computer needs to calculate a firing solution and line up the target based on its current speed an velocity. It may be possible that current dreadnought were found to be the best compromise between turn speed and firepower, i.e. they are just small enough to still hit anything while still large enough to deliver a hell of a punch.

That's my head canon for now anyway. You ebtter practice coming up with those OP, I have a feeling you'll need that skill in the near future.

The battleship Yamato is another example. 

She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest battleships to sail during World War Two. Their main guns were also the largest ever mounted on a warship. Both ships were sunk by American aircraft.

But the dreadnought power is depends on the size of their main weapons. Hence, you want bigger dreadnoughts. The most effective one we've seen in the trilogy is also the largest, which is probably not a coincidence.

But you can change the question to 'why not build bigger carriers' if you want. As the ME universe has Aircraft carriers analogues and they are the size of dreadnoughts.

It's not cost prohibitive, not with the AI being a thing. But your second point is perfectly fair, I even mentioned it in the OP.

But looking to the evidence from the games, the closest thing to an answer to that question we have is the one geth super dreadnought taking on the entire Quarian fleet (and winning). 

Again, you analogy is out of whack.  Dreadnoughts on earth were battleships with bigger guns that enabled them to fire on enemies from a greater distances.   However, projecticals on earth are affected by friction and gravity.  As we learned in ME2 on the Citadel, in space a projectile will travel indefinitely and "ruin someone's day somewhere" if it misses it's target... So, any ship of any size can fire at a long, long distance as long as their computer can accurately work out a firing solution.  So, in the ME universe, a bigger gun would do more damage, but not enable the ship to fire from. a greater distance.

On earth, the concept of the super-large battleship pretty much went the way of the dodo after WWI.  Contributing to it's demise was the rise of the aircraft carrier.  Some classes of dreadnoughts were also armored in such a way that their decks were also susceptible to enemy air attacks and attacks from projectiles being fired from longer distances (i.e. on an arc).  Aircraft carriers are large so that they can house more aircraft and aircrew.  They are efficient as mobile fighter launch bases and that is why countries still invest in building them but do not invest in building dreadnoughts.  The advent of guided ballistic missiles fired from smaller, more stealthy ships (e.g. subs) are also more efficient than the old dreadnought.

Since Shepard and crew escaped the geth dreadnought in a geth fighter, it is likely that the geth dreadnought was more akin to an aircraft carrier than a dreadnought (although Bioware seemed to enjoy using the term "dreadnought" to describe any larger vessel in the ME universe).  Far tougher to blow a bunch of fast, mobile geth fighters out of the sky than one ship firing on you from a distance.

In addition, the geth dreadnought is using Gardian anti-fire lasers.  If you bring EDI on the geth dreadnought mission, she will further explain that the dreadnought "is using "ultraviolet frequencies instead of the standard infrared" to which Shepard will respond "Expensive. Bet it gives them an edge in close combat."  Tali indicates that it was those lasers that "carved right through" the shields of the Quarian ships that rushed the dreadnought.  It's superiority is not about distance (as you suggest), but about accuracy.  Also, Tali later indicates that it is the geth's "planetary defense canon" that was ripping through their fleet... so, it seems obvious that the Quarians were not just engaged with the dreadnought, but also with the defenses on Rannoch itself.  We also later find out from Legion, that geth squadrons from the server were also inflicting heavy losses on the Quarians.

The Nexus has a different purpose... to bring as large a population as possible to Andromeda... so deciding to invest in it would involve a totally different set of considerations than investment in a dreadnought.