Stargem wrote:
In my suggestion, population taken scaled to ship size. A Dreadnaught consumes 6 CP, therefore 6 population. 24 destroyers equal 24 CP, thus 24 population.

I really dislike the idea of spending pop on ships, it's far too onerous. A larger fleet maintenance cost would give us the incentive to continue developing the economy and provide a sink for all the dust gathered end-game. Also it would make an economic victory much more difficult to achieve if military focused. If the cost is higher based on number of ships instead of number of fleet command points, this would also give a reason to build less, but bigger ships (I don't know if the fleet maintenance already works this way, but if it does it's hardly noticeable and needs to be increased).



The lack of rally points and repeat build queues is insane, these really need to be added to make even a small navy more manageable.



While we're at it, we need to be able to scale the interface separate from the resolution. At 1080p the fleet interface on the galaxy view is all but worthless.

I. To counter high industrial out put which gives high number of ships

Make so that it requires same CP value amount of SP is needed so that

stored ships in hanger get out from there. Number of SP will defines the

CP worth of fleet in service.



SP could be given in these manners for an example.

a. Each player have 10 free SP.

a1. Possible race wise SP free bonus.

b. For each owned system that has more than 3 population, empire has 2 free SP.

c. 3 level system improvement which gives SP points at cost of its construction,

maintenance dust and "industrial maintenance(IM)" cost.

Industrial maintenance cost will deduct indicated amount of industrial points from

the system each turn.

Lv.1. Cost 200 / Dust -4 / SP 3 / IM 15

Lv.2. Cost 500 / Dust -7 / SP 7 / IM 105

Lv.3. Cost 1400 / Dust -11/SP 12/ IM 540 for example

Thus at final level, player would get 22SP from that system at cost of 660 IM.

This means if the system has initial 1200 production per turn, it will be halved.



Number of these structures and their cost will reflect the degree of war effort.

Thus also affecting the production penalty for non military use installations.



II. To counter the dust abundance for ship purchase.

Increase the dust purchase cost for ship with higher tier tech component.

Also increase the base military ship buy cost.

My suggestion was the result of trial to avoiding any possible fuzzy rules.

An empire's war effort(base free Supply Point and SP points from supply structures) would reflect the total possible usable CP. Thus owning SP = usable CP. With penalties on per turn industry output.



Lv.1 structure provided one SP for 5 industry output penalty.

Lv.2 had 15 industry output penalty for each SP. 3 times more than previous level.

Lv.3 required hopping 45 for each SP.

This was given in mind of nerfing later stage industrial output lot more than earlier stages.



This method could pose problem if not balanced right, if that was possible, but still not too complicated in my point of view. All you need to check is (current CP)/(max SP) and decide which systems to be military ship yard and supply/command point providing system, as it becomes harder to build all economic/tech structures. It could introduce new kind of strategic choice. Although, it could use a simple table to inform which structures are in which system to provide better management on placing of those supply point structures.



Also, a mid-later stage tech must provide Lv.1 SP structure free of cost to alleviate building hassle as it becomes relatively cheap to build anyway on all systems with certain population.





Given all that if this issue was alleviated in some way, it would help replayability by reducing hassle, both on single and multiplayer.

colonyan wrote:
This would not reflect the empire's industrial might. Is that OK with you?

I have been thinking about it, and the answer is possibly.



I see it from your perspective where an empire is able to produce X number of tons worth of supply's to operate its navy and armys.



But on the other hand the current command system for fleets also reflects the problems with command and control for a lightspeed armada.



Both are applicable reasons to one or the other, I am unfortuatley bias towards my idea



(And in such a system keeping fleets in your own empire should be easy, as long as you spread your fleets out to avoid attrition in a single system.

So this means each system accounts which units they have built?

More in line with the system where they currently are, with the upkeep savings are made for not having to funs a logistical fleet to ferry them supplys.

Penalty applies when units made from different system stacks?

Penalty applied when more ships then your command limit are in a single system, so two of your own fleets.

More details would be nice to examine your case.

I do apologise, I have never been good at this suggesting thing.

This is a possible approach. Even more so if dust maintenance rise somewhat proportional to distance from the center of the empire. Meanwhile, it could be a large advantage for the Harmony.

Indeed, I hadn't considered range before but yeah a fleets upkeep for a logistic system would need more funding due to range from....the capital? As I don't dnow hoe the game would calculate the empire centre......what about the light years distance from the empires influence to fleet?

Igncom1 wrote:
A players current max

This would not reflect the empire's industrial might. Is that OK with you?

Igncom1 wrote:


And for attacking fleets, I believe they should also follow the same rule even in enemy systems.

So this means each system accounts which units they have built?

Penalty applies when units made from different system stacks?

More details would be nice to examine your case.

Igncom1 wrote:


As for a penalty for attacking fleet following the rule from before could also have a slightly larger upkeep when in energy territory.

This is a possible approach. Even more so if dust maintenance rise somewhat proportional to distance from the center of the empire. Meanwhile, it could be a large advantage for the Harmony.

A players current max



And for attacking fleets, I believe they should also follow the same rule even in enemy systems.



As for a penalty for attacking fleet following the rule from before could also have a slightly larger upkeep when in energy territory.

Igncom1 wrote:
Its more of a ... point.

OK, that could work for defending side. How about attacking empire?

Attacking empire fleets can still be stacked without having penalty?

Also if you wanted to add penalty invading fleet as well, how would you do it?



And how would you define your "max fleet"?

Its more of a anti-stacking mechanism where you can have as many fleets as you want but if you go over your max ship limit in any system (By having more then a single fleets worth of ships) then you infer a financial penalty.



So that during a game a player will try to keep fleets from occupying the same system at the same time to avoid the penalty.



This way we will see much more 1 fleet on 1 fleet actions during a war rather then by having a player stacking up to 14 fleets in the same system to defend a particular choke point.

Igncom1 wrote:
Rather then a global supply limit for ships, why not simply inter a penalty when a player has more then 1 fleet in a system (Dependant of max fleet size) using a local systems resources for supply's?

...

I feel like it works similarly to your system but in a more simple way that is easy to learn.

I have hard time following what you mean here. While, I'm guessing that you are referring to a system closer to old CIVII or Alpha Centauri unit support cost system?

In those games, each time city made a military unit, it "supported" from that city and paid one shield/mineral each turn. More city builds unit, less production power it had.

I wonder if you mean that. But I agree that simpler and effective it is, better it will be.

Rather then a global supply limit for ships, why not simply inter a penalty when a player has more then 1 fleet in a system (Dependant of max fleet size) using a local systems resources for supply's?



That way it would be easy to afford 1 fleet per system, but by having more then 1 fleet in a system you would have to pay a greater upkeep amount making keeping multiple fleets per system inadvisable?



That way an enemy even with a larger fleet would be hard-pressed to deploy them into a concentrated area without substantial costs, giving a advantage to the smaller empires logistically without taking away from the multi-front potential of a large empire.



I feel like it works similarly to your system but in a more simple way that is easy to learn.

Igncom1 wrote:
That doesn't seem to make much sense, you build supply's?

Sense you mean in term of mechanism or the naming I used? Yes, supplies. Never heard of it? If you move military ships, its gonna cost fuel/replacing mechanical parts/ammo/maintenance/supplies for crews, you name it.



If you're talking about mechanism wise, these installation can be thought of military defense industry complex that costs man power and resource which could be used for other means like economy or research.

Igncom1 wrote:


That systems seems to heavily favour the empire with more systems and ES already has enough problems with that.

I think that depends on the balance of the pricing of the installation and its maintenance. I don't think if calibrated correctly, all system would be able to afford all 3 level structures. Maybe for the example, I would reduce the SP from Lv.1 to 2 and Lv.2 to 5.



Edit1: Well, if I think of it, this idea tries to reduce over all number of ships through out the game especially the mid-late stage.

Although, if we raised per player free SP to 30 and no free SP from owned system, it would gear more toward even number of moving ships per empire.

That doesn't seem to make much sense, you build supply's?



That systems seems to heavily favour the empire with more systems and ES already has enough problems with that.

Tridus wrote:
That was Civ 4, it was called "war weariness". The other difference is that in Civ 4 it basically impossible to have one city building entire stacks of units every turn (whereas one system can build entire fleets in the ES endgame).

Sure, but if you think about it, a city vs. a system is very different. I mean, in modern sci-fi this is how it usually works.

Upkeep?



But I do have a crazy idea, of something like a conscription penalty for producing more then a single ship in a system during a turn to continuously stack until you give like a 3 turn recover period?



So like -2% approval for each ship built over the limit, stacking for every turn you do this unless you wait the 3 turn reset to let people calm down and stuff.





But it is kinda long shot for a kind of drawn out mechanic that could probably be resolved by improving the worth of single ships while still retaining the feel of a star spanning empire that should really have hundreds of ships anyway.



I dunno, I get the CP cap as it's an organization thing that is hard to do over light speed, but I do feel like the current system is kind of a zerg rush.......What if fleets needed to be spread out over a players empire? like a kind of upkeep buffer for each system to give a -50% discount to a single full fleet in orbit, and to then double the upkeep of fleets naturally so players have to spread out their fleets over their empire or risk logistical problems? I dunno, that could also be far fetched....as it also doesn't really help when a fleet attacks and your armada suffers just as bad for coming to the aid.



Humm...but yeah thats what I think we need, a way of getting 1 vs 1 fleets during attack and defence in a system, that way a larger armada simply spreads out to cap other systems rather then all stacking on one.....Grand strategy games use attrition, could we use a similar mechanic with upkeep or something to keep a invader from stacking up and encourage space superiority?



Its a difficult problem.

I'm all for a change in how multi-fleet battles are handled, but I still think there should be some repercussion (resource or logistical) that hampers your ability to crank out that many ships every turn forever.

Antera wrote:
I think we need multi-fleet battle. Triggers when you have a certain number of fleets on both side in the same system. Then you go into a deployment screen, pick which fleet you want to take up which battle position (you won't be able to see how your opponent is arranging their fleet) and then hit go and watch the lot of them annihilate each other.



Well there's plenty of ways to arrange large scale combat, this is just one of them. Many games have try many ways to handle these kinds of things before. Its really just a matter if ES so go epic with its late-game battle or if it should go smaller-scale, more tactical.

This is my favorite solution. A stays system is a gigantic place. If full of industrial infrastructure it can produce billions of tons of warship, and with futuristic automated systems, I don't see warships needing crews of more than, say, a few dozen each.



But being able to resolve more than 24 units fighting per two click, and massive hundred-unit battles would make the endgame EXCITING!

memetics wrote:
The more ships in a fleet, the lower their battle stats (attack, defense, ...?) after a certain minimum size (say, 6 ships? 10?). Reflects inefficiencies in logistics of large fleet management. That would certainly control for destroyer spam and make larger ships more valuable.

That would make the problem worse, as you've optimized having smaller fleets without changing the number of ships I can build. That means even more fleets and even more battles to take out the same number of ships, without doing anything to hinder my ability to build more ships.

A cap on the total # of fleets in the sky (excluding scouts and colony ships): one battle fleet per system owned, maybe? One per every two or three systems? Would make for an interesting change in war strategy earlier on, too. (Battle fleet could be defined as a fleet with, say, > 100 MP / invasion points.)

We go to battle and wipe out most of each others fleets. One turn later, we're both back at the cap, having accomplished nothing. That's how I feel about the endgame right now, and a ship cap doesn't fix it unless production is addressed because we can just get back to the cap in no time flat.

Militarization disapproval: more CP in sky = lower system & empire approval (could be modified by race traits up or down depending on race focus).

War fatigue: Good idea, but should be modified by race traits; more warlike races should experience less fatigue, and the converse

Diplomatic penalties (with AI) for war fatigue / excessive CP / MP. Up to and including having other races break treaties and even declare war on you for being too hawkish.

Temporary approval penalty per lost ship (again, could be modified by race traits)

Well these would all eventually slow things down one way or another, but I'm not sure it'd be enough to slow down ship production enough to make a difference.

So in the interest of fun, maybe we should consider more seriously changes that streamline the end-game (just one example: click a button to make all fleets attack, instantly resolve, and give you a report, say) rather than end-game queue-nerfing / fleet-nerfing / economy-nerfing changes.

Being able to resolve 15 combats in a single one would make it less annoying, but the problem still exists of churning out fleets per turn. Fixing the insane production growth curve is the only way to fix it, in the end. It needs to take longer to make ships in the endgame.

Okay: Problem = ship spam and skewed economics late in the game.



How about some or all of these solutions:

• The more ships in a fleet, the lower their battle stats (attack, defense, ...?) after a certain minimum size (say, 6 ships? 10?). Reflects inefficiencies in logistics of large fleet management. That would certainly control for destroyer spam and make larger ships more valuable.
• A cap on the total # of fleets in the sky (excluding scouts and colony ships): one battle fleet per system owned, maybe? One per every two or three systems? Would make for an interesting change in war strategy earlier on, too. (Battle fleet could be defined as a fleet with, say, > 100 MP / invasion points.)
• Militarization disapproval: more CP in sky = lower system & empire approval (could be modified by race traits up or down depending on race focus).
• War fatigue: Good idea, but should be modified by race traits; more warlike races should experience less fatigue, and the converse
• Diplomatic penalties (with AI) for war fatigue / excessive CP / MP. Up to and including having other races break treaties and even declare war on you for being too hawkish.
• Temporary approval penalty per lost ship (again, could be modified by race traits)
  
  

A limit on production to one ship per turn per system would not make sense to me - if the system has been developed to allow such high production, why wouldn't the player be allowed to use it? Seems like being penalized for success. Game balancing is important but not at the cost of fun. Balance instead should be found by adjusting the economic factors to make them work better, not to slap an arbitrary limit on successful play.



For example: if dust and industry get too high in late game, there could be an inefficiency factor to control them: the more pop in a system, or empire (or both), the greater the inefficiency, reducing dust, industry (or all fids?) Still, it seems endemic of 4x games that the end game usually is a foregone conclusion: the most successful empire runs away with it all, which makes sense: success breeds success. It generally happens in real life, too, with civilizations and corporations.



So in the interest of fun, maybe we should consider more seriously changes that streamline the end-game (just one example: click a button to make all fleets attack, instantly resolve, and give you a report, say) rather than end-game queue-nerfing / fleet-nerfing / economy-nerfing changes.

lol The games end game isn't broken it is just an hassle.

ThatMG wrote:
The game breaks down at endgame (single player and MP), letting anyone get there is your fault or the options of the map your generating.

What... so you agree that the game has broken endgame. But the fault lies with players for "letting" it get there? That's a ludicrous claim.



If game design is broken, it is developers' fault, not for players for having to experience the broken parts.