I'm wondering about the new ship upkeep change.



"Changed the upkeep formula (cost 1 per CP --> cost 0.4*CP max per CP)."



What exactly is CP max?

Is it the amount of CP the fleet each fleet is using?

Is that the max number of command points you can you can have in the fleet?



If the latter, then the fleet size technologies actually increase our upkeep significantly, even though we didn't add any ships or change any fleets around?



If so, this is quiet a bad change, its further discouraging the research of combat technologies if you're not using them. Because if you have more max CP and you're not using your fleets offensively, its costing you way too much. -> This results in an aggressor who does invest into these VERY expensive but vital technologies making short work of the ones who didn't.



Endless space (at least multiplayer) already suffers from the fact that aggression is so much better and easier than defence (I play both builds alot). This is because defenders have no bonus besides ships reaching the battle like 1 turn earlier, so to defend you need stronger fleets than the attacker. But if this is true, the defender is then completely capable of becoming the attacker and overrunning the original attacker, either way there is almost never gonna be a situation where neither side can attack. In this situation, the only reason for not attacking is to avoid getting ganked.

A better way to think about it is this. Before this patch, each CP of fleet costs one dust/turn to maintain. After this patch, each CP of fleet costs a variable amount of dust/turn to maintain. The maintenance cost goes up as you research techs which increase your fleet CP cap. At the start of the game, your fleet cap is 5 (7 for craver). So, at the start of the game, each CP of fleet costs (5 * 0.4) 2 dust per turn. Later in the game, suppose your fleet cap is 15, then each CP of fleet costs (15 * 0.4) 6 dust per turn. So the same ship costs more, when you increase your tech level.

Fleets now cost a minimum of 20% more upkeep at the start of the game than before the patch. Custom race with Anarchists 2 for 3 CP max comes to 1.2 dust per CP.



In other words, the player, who typically generates far less dust per turn than the AI, especially at higher difficulty levels, will now have an even harder time of maintaining a large enough fleet to deal with the AI's endless hordes of ships. This in turn makes a dust victory even more difficult for the Player.

So I did understand this right...

Then my point about this being a bad change still stands (at least for multiplayer).

Single player is easier to balance is in terms of resources, because any nerf to the resources of the player can be counted as a increase in difficulty.



However as I said for multiplayer, this just makes fleet maintenance more expensive for players who are not doing anything with it (ie defending). While an aggressive player does pay more, he can likely afford it, through either dust recyclers or bushido.

While this may still sound okay, what this will probably mean is that the non-aggressive players (especially newer ones) will keep a much smaller defending fleet or avoid researching fleet CP techs to decrease upkeep. This will actually result in an easier time for aggressive players where the increased upkeep is a totally acceptable investment for a weaker foe.



What can help balance this would be if fleet upkeep is significantly reduced while in hangar, or there is some sort of supply system where every ship under the supply takes a smaller upkeep than every ship over.

@Mothar: The AI can't make endless fleets anymore either. Just observe them play. They have the same problems as the human and in early-mid-game you will rarely see them having a whole lot of fleets.

There even have been reports about the AI going broke when they built too many ships. An issue that I've made a workaround in my Mod and that the Devs said they would fix in a future patch.



@ryousei: I kinda agree that this change is somewhat illogical. How does maintaining a single ship become more difficult with a bigger number of ships that potentially could be in a fleet?

Having it scale with Tonnage as in 1 Dust/50 Tonnage or so would have achieved the same goal and made sense.



Also I feel that building ships without the intention to using them can waste you quite a lot of Ressources. But I don't feel that it puts too much of a disadvantage to a defender. Invasions usually take enough time to muster up a fleet to counter the agressors fleet.



If before you could have made a huge fleet to attack an unsuspecting opponent, you can't do that anymore.

So if before you could attack with 10 fleets and blockade all of the suprised defenders systems, you now might only be able to afford 3 fleets. And matching that is far easier for the defender.

I absolutely love the change to fleet maintenance. It's literally a God-send in MP. Fleets were so rediulously cheap to maintain it was laughable. Having them not scale over time just compounded the problem. The net effect was, making dust and infrastructure build-up generally pretty much irrelevant for those with tendancies to early rush and crush the game by turn 30-50.



With the change a player can no longer rush the cp cap techs and just spam cheap glass cannon ships without regard for any improvements and such. Now you must build up some infrastructure if you wish to maintain a large military prescence. Kudos on a fabulous change!



Zazen

Well then Zazen, feel free to not exit the lobby when you see i am in there.



Everything is relative and works out just fine still with some minor adaptations which i will keep to myself. Rest assured, rushing is still healthy.

Kyu wrote:
Well then Zazen, feel free to not exit the lobby when you see i am in there.



Everything is relative and works out just fine still with some minor adaptations which i will keep to myself. Rest assured, rushing is still healthy.

Nah, it's ok, I have better things to do with my discretionary free-time than watch you try your hardest to ruin game after game...There's plenty of other players out their that don't do that to play with.

I think I would have preferred an upkeep cost that scaled with the cost of the ship, but I think this system works fine too. I dont think it's as illogical as it first might seem either. Just think of it as additional infrastructure necessary to maintain the capacity for larger fleets.



For example, having a larger fleet cap means more administrative, maintenance, and personnel costs. In addition it could represent the additional cost of command facilities/ships (not shown in game terms). I mean otherwise, what is the rationale for 'fleet cap' in the first place? Why COULDNT someone just send 10 ships together to a fight and not 5? So I look at fleet cap as the capability/doctrine/support structure to field larger task forces. And that comes at a cost, even if you dont currently have a large number of ships on the roster.

I think its one of the dumbest changes I have seen yet, worse its about as bassackwards are you can get.



So let get this straight, simply because I can have larger fleets individual ships suddenly cost more to maintain?



Other more logical changes would have been.



1) Increase maintenance cost for any vessel which is not comprised solely of support modules by X amount when operating outside your or your allies sphere of influence



2) Use the CP cap as a discount rate to the fleet cost. So, raise the cost to maintain ships by whatever means you want, see #1 for an idea. Then apply the CP as a discount to the number of ships you pay maintenance on always discounting those costing the most first. This would REWARD you for researching the higher CP technologies as well as not punish you for taking the traits which increase your CP.

Redsang is now godly. I seek it more than bluecap. I also now use the dust planet exploit as opposed to industry, after hitting pop cap on system.