Issue #1



Ships cost don't scale well with production capability. By mid-endgame ships are so cheap that it isn't uncommon to have dozens or even hundreds of ships active. This creates a micromanagement hell that is further aggravated by the lack of options like repeat build, waypoints and auto fleet manager. Things can get very hetic when you can build 30 ships/turn in a single system. The hangar UI isn't very helpful either. It takes an unreasonable amount of effort and time to select and launch a full fleet when you have a lots of ships in the hangar. After all the chore you have to go throught to launch and position yours fleet comes the worst part, the fight. The game at the current state just isn't able to handle the "endless fleets" issue. Having to wade through dozens of fleets in a single turn just to have another dozen come in the next turn takes too long.



Proposal #1



The first step to address the issue would be to implement a repeat build option like MOO2 had. Also when launching all selected ships in the hangar the game should automatically divide all the ships into full fleets.



I think this wouldn't be too hard to implement yet it would offer a big improvement to gameplay, specially MP.



This would make ship/fleet managing easier but wouldn't fix the "endless fleets" issue.



Proposal #2



An easy way to handle the absurd number of ships would be to simply increase ships cost/hp/tonnage/upkeep and weapons/defence modules cost/efficiency/tonnage by 500%. This would basically reduce the number of ships/micromanagement to 20% while keeping the ships value. Instead of a full fleet of 5 ships at early game you would have 1 ship with the same firepower/cost as 5 ships. Transports and Corvettes could be left unchanged to not mess with scouting/colonizing.

Balam wrote:
Ships cost don't scale well with production capability. By mid-endgame ships are so cheap that it isn't uncommon to have dozens or even hundreds of ships active. This creates a micromanagement hell that is further aggravated by the lack of options like repeat build, waypoints and auto fleet manager. Things can get very hetic when you can build 30 ships/turn in a single system. The hangar UI isn't very helpful either. It takes an unreasonable amount of effort and time to select and launch a full fleet when you have a lots of ships in the hangar. After all the chore you have to go throught to launch and position yours fleet comes the worst part, the fight. The game at the current state just isn't able to handle the "endless fleets" issue. Having to wade through dozens of fleets in a single turn just to have another dozen come in the next turn takes too long.

If by "waypoints" you mean to manually choose a path, you can already do that by holding Shift.

Balam wrote:
The first step to address the issue would be to implement a repeat build option like MOO2 had. Also when launching all selected ships in the hangar the game should automatically divide all the ships into full fleets.



I think this wouldn't be too hard to implement yet it would offer a big improvement to gameplay, specially MP.

I wish there could be an order for the build queue or something, or maybe you can select a bunch of ships as a group in the build queue so that when the construction is finished, the game will launch those ships as a fleet. This would also tie in well with you "repeat build" idea.

Balam wrote:
An easy way to handle the absurd number of ships would be to simply increase ships cost/hp/tonnage/upkeep and weapons/defence modules cost/efficiency/tonnage by 500%. This would basically reduce the number of ships/micromanagement to 20% while keeping the ships value. Instead of a full fleet of 5 ships at early game you would have 1 ship with the same firepower/cost as 5 ships. Transports and Corvettes could be left unchanged to not mess with scouting/colonizing.

500% sounds like a radical adjustment. I think the production cost of modules should be increased slightly, and with the amount of modules people tend to put on ships, a slight adjustment would cause a larger increase in a ship's production cost.



It would also legitimize the strategy of not designing fleets that use 100% of their tonnage.

Balam wrote:
Issue #1



Ships cost don't scale well with production capability. By mid-endgame ships are so cheap that it isn't uncommon to have dozens or even hundreds of ships active. This creates a micromanagement hell that is further aggravated by the lack of options like repeat build, waypoints and auto fleet manager. Things can get very hetic when you can build 30 ships/turn in a single system. The hangar UI isn't very helpful either. It takes an unreasonable amount of effort and time to select and launch a full fleet when you have a lots of ships in the hangar. After all the chore you have to go throught to launch and position yours fleet comes the worst part, the fight. The game at the current state just isn't able to handle the "endless fleets" issue. Having to wade through dozens of fleets in a single turn just to have another dozen come in the next turn takes too long.



Proposal #1



The first step to address the issue would be to implement a repeat build option like MOO2 had. Also when launching all selected ships in the hangar the game should automatically divide all the ships into full fleets.



I think this wouldn't be too hard to implement yet it would offer a big improvement to gameplay, specially MP.



This would make ship/fleet managing easier but wouldn't fix the "endless fleets" issue.



Proposal #2



An easy way to handle the absurd number of ships would be to simply increase ships cost/hp/tonnage/upkeep and weapons/defence modules cost/efficiency/tonnage by 500%. This would basically reduce the number of ships/micromanagement to 20% while keeping the ships value. Instead of a full fleet of 5 ships at early game you would have 1 ship with the same firepower/cost as 5 ships. Transports and Corvettes could be left unchanged to not mess with scouting/colonizing.

I would fully support those approaches. Due to the fleet CP limit preventing one final epic battle between two gigantic fleets all is limited to those boring skirmishes between dozens of fleets per turn. Followed by another dozens in the next turn because ships are so cheap. This must be solved somehow

ørret wrote:
I would fully support those approaches. Due to the fleet CP limit preventing one final epic battle between two gigantic fleets all is limited to those boring skirmishes between dozens of fleets per turn. Followed by another dozens in the next turn because ships are so cheap. This must be solved somehow

Why do so many people want to remove one of the most integral balancing mechanics of the game?

Fenrakk101 wrote:
Why do so many people want to remove one of the most integral balancing mechanics of the game?

Maybe because it is stupid, constringent, irrealistic, unexplaineable, boring, static and it favours endless extremely boring combat orgies.

ørret wrote:
Maybe because it is stupid, constringent, irrealistic, unexplaineable, boring, static and it favours endless extremely boring combat orgies.

And the opposite favors complete and total fleet spam, as well as rampant CPU power waste, early-game rushing, and basically removing strategy from the game and leaving it up to "who can put the most ships in a fleet and get it to the enemy first?"

Just because you can't play a game within the confines of a rules system doesn't mean the game is wrong. That's like trying to complain that you should have 16 pawns each in Chess instead of 8. Maybe 16 pawns on each side would be pretty badass, but trying to balance a game where 20 very powerful ships could possibly outmatch 5,000 scout ships is unfeasible, stupid, unrealistic, unexplainable, boring, and favors extremely boring combat orgies. If you want games with enormous or nonexistent unit caps, go play something else. Don't come and find a game what's been in open alpha for three months and development for eighteen and think the game should take a completely different direction just because *you* don't like it.

Fenrakk101 wrote:
And the opposite favors complete and total fleet spam, as well as rampant CPU power waste, early-game rushing, and basically removing strategy from the game and leaving it up to "who can put the most ships in a fleet and get it to the enemy first?"

Just because you can't play a game within the confines of a rules system doesn't mean the game is wrong. That's like trying to complain that you should have 16 pawns each in Chess instead of 8. Maybe 16 pawns on each side would be pretty badass, but trying to balance a game where 20 very powerful ships could possibly outmatch 5,000 scout ships is unfeasible, stupid, unrealistic, unexplainable, boring, and favors extremely boring combat orgies. If you want games with enormous or nonexistent unit caps, go play something else. Don't come and find a game what's been in open alpha for three months and development for eighteen and think the game should take a completely different direction just because *you* don't like it.

The "early game rushing" is a strategie that can be countered easily because focusing on ship production will let you get behind in research and system development which is fatal. But why preventing it? It is a feasible strategie to try eliminating an oponent early.

Uhm who says i can not play with this? I won a lot of games against Human enemies and beat the AI at endless several times so i dont have difficulty problems with the principle im am just bored by it (and not only i as i get it)

Why do you compare the game (or generally 4x games) with "Chess" it is pretty much not like chess and i hope it was never intended to be that way oO'

What i absolutely dont understand is this statement of you:

Fenrakk101 wrote:
trying to balance a game where 20 very powerful ships could possibly outmatch 5,000 scout ships is unfeasible...

Because this is exactly the current situation. One fleet of high experienced and technically advanced ships can (and will!) destroy hundreds and thousands of equal CP fleets because due to the binary defense principles they will take no damage in battle (actually they even will heal HP in battle) and because you can not overthrow such a fleet in numbers due to the CP contraint this one single fleet will unstopable rampage through the galaxy making the game pretty much like a boring movie.



The performance consumption you mention is an argument but there are solutions for this as well.



And yes you are rigth i came to ES quiete late (actually after the release ) so i had no change to influence the development early. But does that meand i am not allowed to discuss what i consider as problem?

ørret wrote:
The "early game rushing" is a strategie that can be countered easily because focusing on ship production will let you get behind in research and system development which is fatal. But why preventing it? It is a feasible strategie to try eliminating an oponent early.

Because the thing you have to keep in mind is, the game is balanced around the idea of fleet caps. Without fleet caps, you upset the balance of the game. Sophon and Horatio players will likely take issues with your argument of countering fleet spam with many ships of your own.

ørret wrote:
Uhm who says i can not play with this? I won a lot of games against Human enemies and beat the AI at endless several times so i dont have difficulty problems with the principle im am just bored by it (and not only i as i get it)

Again, this all goes back to balance. Games like Sins are balanced around the idea of having fleets of dozens or hundreds of warships. Endless Space is only concerned with smaller, more manageable fleets.



EDIT: It occurred to me that I honestly don't really know what point you were trying to make with this sentence, so if my response doesn't actually respond to what you were saying, my apologies. But I'm leaving it in here because I feel it's still a relevant point.

ørret wrote:
Why do you compare the game (or generally 4x games) with "Chess" it is pretty much not like chess and i hope it was never intended to be that way oO'

I could have also gone with Checkers. My intent was to convey the idea of a rules system (not because I don't think you understand rules, but the term "rules" is obviously more relevant in Chess than in RTS games)

ørret wrote:
What i absolutely dont understand is this statement of you:



...



Because this is exactly the current situation. One fleet of high experienced and technically advanced ships can (and will!) destroy hundreds and thousands of equal CP fleets because due to the binary defense principles they will take no damage in battle (actually they even will heal HP in battle) and because you can not overthrow such a fleet in numbers due to the CP contraint this one single fleet will unstopable rampage through the galaxy making the game pretty much like a boring movie.

Which is why you can't ignore your tech trees. If you try to win the game while completely ignoring one tree or the other, you're not going to get very far very easily. You *can* spam a single Dreadnought with ten thousand scout ships, but the game is designed in such a way that this is prevented; you need to counter those ships with tech. That's why the West tree has technologies that increase the CP cap, the South tree gives new designs, the East tree gives new resources, and the North tree gives new weapons. Even if you're aiming for a military victory, it's impossible to ignore those trees.

And the binary limits do break if you try to spam a thousand ships against a single Dread*. Even if you just use Kinetics, and even if the Dreadnought could destroy more than one ship per battle, the Dreadnought's defenses can only counter so many rounds per phase, and it can only have so much HP. Like you said, the Dreadnought will restore HP in battles; but in a single battle, if it's fighting hundreds or thousands of ships, it would be incredibly easy to wear it down and destroy it.



NOTE: I changed my "20 ships" example to a single Dreadnought for the ease in imagining and understanding the scenario.

ørret wrote:
The performance consumption you mention is an argument but there are solutions for this as well.

But at a cost, which people on lower-end computers might not appreciate.

ørret wrote:
And yes you are rigth i came to ES quiete late (actually after the release ) so i had no change to influence the development early. But does that mean i am not allowed to discuss what i consider as problem?

Yes and no. You can't go onto the Minecraft forums and tell them to make the game an RTS - there are upper limits to what you can suggest and seriously expect. Of course, if you suggested a Minecraft RTS as a mod or a third-party game, your voice would ring louder; Castle Story is already looking like RTS Minecraft, and it looks pretty damn good.

That said, there are already people talking about removing the CP limit in a mod. You should look into that.





As a final note: I'm not trying to say that wanting the CP cap makes you a horrible person or anything like that. I can see reasons why people would want it gone - but I am definitely of the opinion that removing it is a bad idea. For example, I mentioned before that the West tech tree increases unit cap - removing the cap would mean military players can ignore this tree, and on top of that, you would be removing a crucial Cravers advantage. That said, you can still go and try to remove it - in a mod, though, not remove it from the vanilla game. And I'm certain the devs have much more important things to work on.

@Fenrakk101 i

I have one question to you: Do you really still play the game?

I ask because i was also quiete enthusiastic when i started playing ES and i did like the principles of the fleet CP's in the first place. But now after having played ES for quiete a while i find myself rather playing M002 than ES because there is simply much more strategie in there and i really think such silly, logically unexplainable and constraining factors like "fleet CP" has a big part in this.

ørret wrote:
@Fenrakk101 i

I have one question to you: Do you really still play the game?

I ask because i was also quiete enthusiastic when i started playing ES and i did like the principles of the fleet CP's in the first place. But now after having played ES for quiete a while i find myself rather playing M002 than ES because there is simply much more strategie in there and i really think such silly, logically unexplainable and constraining factors like "fleet CP" has a big part in this.

I enjoy ES a lot more than games without unit caps or with incredibly large unit caps. I find myself constantly losing in SoaSE simply because I can't keep up with fleet production. I spend a lot of time on infrastructure and research, and the game simply doesn't reward that as much as it rewards massive fleet spam. In ES, focusing on research is a more viable tactic, because if your fleet is stronger than the enemy fleets, your opponent can't simply spam them - like you said, the ships will heal in battle if they're not losing enough health faster than they're regenerating it.



Of course, you could probably go on and say that maybe I just had a few too many bad experiences with my friends pounding me into solar dust and that I'm just projecting, but that's your opinion. I still believe that removing the unit cap would "break" Endless Space - it's like going into a cake recipe and taking out an ingredient. If you try to bake a cake without eggs, you're not going to end up with something very appetizing. If you're a person who doesn't like eggs, you might continue demanding eggs be removed from the recipe, but the simple fact is that it cannot be done. So go eat some pie or something, and let the cake connoisseurs enjoy their delicious dessert.