That's how it's always been, but that's not exactly optional.

that's mandatory.

optional implies you have the option to use, or not use manpower when building ships, but you don't.

i find it really frustrating because some of my games i'll be -9000 manpower when im just building ships to sell, or scout, etc. - i don't actually want to stock 300 manpower  on each ship lol

I think it'd be nice to have the option to choose weither or not a ship autostocks manpower in it's "design" area, so i could make some scout ships that i know will never have to invade and never waste MP when i want to use it on ships that do need to invade, etc. - additionally, i'd suggest a counter balance to this, all ships require "some" minimum manpower, like lets say 10% of what the ship max is.

I think what amplitude meant by "optional" is you "can" build the ship when lacking the manpower, but it will snuff up it's fair share as soon as you have the MP available

There's more to Manpower(MP) than that.

You need it basically to invade. Each ship has some of it and you use it when you invade an enemy planet. Even a scout has some basic MP. You dont need it for other actions.

Early on its not wise to invade as your planets are in baby steps. They need MP to build up as on harder difficulties AI will be launching some invasion forces to your planet. Though Planet MP =/= Ship MP- they share same name but are 2 different systems. 

As you unlock more tech you can supply MP better. When you start thinking about invading AI planets you should have some backbone military. Then its easy to convert 1pop to MP(though i think the conversation is broken currently). 

All MP goes into global poll which you can access from military screen and in the left tab you can see your free MP. Below there is "manage" where you can distribute Infantry/Armor/Air forces and upgrade them with different attributes. These upgrades cost a lot of MP- more than your ships. But in general you cant go wrong here- every investment is worth it as they make invasions less effortless and more powerful.

And that's about it,

Cheers!

jhell wrote:

Hello guys,

Eventually the idea is to have invasion modules carry the manpower needed for invasion, and in this case the manpower required for ships would be the minimal amount required for the ship to run (so a lot smaller than now).

As we don't have the modules ready yet for now every ship carries a good amount of manpower to let players and AI invade systems.

Yeah man, so we are back to how it was in ES1...

And it was totally fine, no idea why you guys had to go through all this manpower stuff again.

We had a killer fleet cleaning the orbit, and invasion fleet to drop the bad boys planetside.

Now it's a mess.

Like, I understand that the system is supposed to slow me down from eating half galaxy alive, but hey, if you guys cannot kill my armada, it's not my problem, right?

The problem of choosing how you fill the manpower is the potential micro it could generate; one idea above was to set it per ship design, but it's still not necessarily ideal as when you want to change it you need to go through ship design again and retrofit the ships.

But we definitely hear the need for more control on this matter :)

EDIT: just to let you know that the idea to modify the ship efficiency based on its % of filled manpower is something we discussed a while back. Not that crazy and might actually make it in the game once we have the invasion modules in :D

Hello,

As jhell mentioned, we're going to lower default ship manpower, and allow earlier unlocking of invasion modules. This will come with the revamp of the tech tree we're currently working on.

We might also explore the idea of ship efficiency based on manpower. Manpower aboard is a crew that allows you to better perform; and some weapons could focus on destroying manpower more than damaging the ship.

Cheers,

jhell wrote:

The problem of choosing how you fill the manpower is the potential micro it could generate; one idea above was to set it per ship design, but it's still not necessarily ideal as when you want to change it you need to go through ship design again and retrofit the ships.

But we definitely hear the need for more control on this matter :)

EDIT: just to let you know that the idea to modify the ship efficiency based on its % of filled manpower is something we discussed a while back. Not that crazy and might actually make it in the game once we have the invasion modules in :D

I see, thank you for the feedback in this! I really do look forward to seeing that, and yes while i completely understand where you're coming from regarding "potential micro", i've found, just as in EL and ES1 you guys have done a good job historically of having "optional" micro, things that most players can automate and leave to their own devices, but that those who want ever so fine control could optimize - maybe slaving the MP consumption on build to the ship designer might not be a good idea, but something along that lines such as a button on the UI panel that you click when you build a ship in the city builder that would issue a build command with the option of blocking all MP transfer (+ a option in fleet or ship command card to unblock/block toggle MP consumption) - Or - a global block in a menu somewhere.

Both of these methods require more development and more work than is probably desired, so i don't expect to see them in the game - but this kind of design philosophy amplitude has taken to heart in the past and is one of the reasons why i really enjoy pretty much every game that's been put out.

if anything i'd like to see a combination of 2 or 3 of these, because even if MP costs are lowered substantially, early game aggression (especially in Multiplayer) is going to be very difficult to do, you'd have to spend a very large number of turns -not- building ships, just so you build your invasion fleet -first- as to most effeciently use the MP. even building scout ships will hinder your ability to create a proper invasion fleet, so optimized builds will want to forgo that route, and it just seems to be a little bit jarring when i try to theorycraft it. i wouldn't want to participate in that kind of optimization, it would just be unfun - as it is now for me. in the current system i suffer the same issue, where every time i build a ship that i know is fodder, a scout, or something that won't last very long i regret it and eventually start shuttiing down my production when im preparing for war, due to that very reason. for early game aggression i build escorts first, and i -have- to, for that reason i mentioned. even with a module system that issue, while diminished, will still exist. 

Thanks again and sorry for the wall of text :)!